Thoughts from the Orange Conference - Students

Part 3 of my thoughts from the Orange Conference.  These are some bullet points of ideas that I'd like to plug into my ministry to teens.  Keep in mind that these are just bullet points, and don't hesitate to ask questions if anything is unclear.

• The 4G gospel – we were created “Good” and of great worth to God.  “Guilt” from our sin separates us from that goodness and from God.  “Grace” inspired God to send Jesus to make a way for our relationship with God to be reconciled, and it is “Gratitude” for what God has done that motivates us to turn from evil do good.
• Set specific goals for each year (ie for the freshmen, for the sophomores, etc…) and communicate those goals to each student, mentor and parent.
• Connect them to service, not to a person or a program.  People and programs can be taken away, but if they learn to love God through serving others, they can build new relationships and programs.
• Match-make inter-generational partnerships 1 at a time.
• Provide them with specific actions they can take to be missionaries at school
• Invite them to invite others
• Don’t just assimilate them into the youth ministry; assimilate them out of it as well.
• When it comes to your program Only do what you can do with excellence
• When it comes to relationships remember that God is more interested in your availability than in your ability.
• Teach them how to study the bible; don’t just tell them to do it.  For starters try this: “Pray, Read, Think, Write, Pray.”  Pray – that you will understand what you are about to read, Read – keep it small enough to digest, Think of something you can do with what you've read, Write it down (no longer than a tweet or Facebook status), Pray – that God will help you practice what you've read.
• Give them goals then can attain.  (one example- Going from 0 bible study to 7 days a week would be great, but they may feel like failures if they don’t meet that, shoot for 4 days for starters, and work up from there)
• Remember that the lesson isn't over until it has been applied
• Teach their parents about grace – teen years are when they should be transitioning from doing what is right out of guilt (or fear of punishment) to doing it out of gratitude for the Grace God showed them when he sent Jesus.  Grace will need to be modeled in the home.
• Change the gauge of success – from results to steps.  (one example: rather than how many friends have gotten saved, to how many times you shared your testimony.)
• Students won’t believe they are significant until they are given something significant to do.

Thoughts from the Orange Conference - Parents

Part two of my thoughts from the Orange Conference.  These bullet points represent the ideas and inspiration from the conference that relate to how I interact with the parents of the teens I work with, but also how I try to help the parents in our church take a more active role in partnering with the church to fulfill the great commission.

• Ask parents why they personally need the church.
• Ask parents “what would make the church such an indispensable part of your life that you would beg your friends to give it a try?”
• Take a video of each parent saying “I am ___________, I am a parent and I partner with the church because _____________.”
• Think: Going orange isn't about refining or adding programs.  Adding programs is how you go more yellow.  Going Orange requires the church to elevate the red.
• Think: What if going orange doesn't mean obligating families to another program or night out, but showing red that we believe that they are essential to the strategy of the church.
• Think: in terms of empowering red, rather than instructing it.
• Build relationships of trust with parents by communicating, by excellence, by connecting them to a small group leader, by creating opportunities for parents and kids to make memories together, by pointing them to resources, by planning some of your teaching based on their input, and by being available to give guidance.
• Ask parents what faith skills they need help teaching their kids, plan your ministries around these felt needs, and parents will be much more likely to partner with you.
• Partner with parents to create a list of annual spiritual mile stones (steps) for their kids from cradle to college, plan your ministry around these, and review them frequently.
• Provide a visual that will help us all remember that the days we have with kids are numbered.
• Match-make partnerships and inter-generational relationships for kids, and for parents.
• Remember that vision fades with age.  Ask the next generation what they need in order to be ministers to their peers.

Now hopefully something you just read inspired or intrigued you.  If so, please post a comment so we can talk.

Thoughts from the Orange Conference - Personal

I just attended the Orange Conference in Atlanta.  

It was the Orange Conference that first inspired me to blog, and honestly I had recently given up on blogging, but I am inspired to try again.

Over the next four days I will post bullet points on my thoughts from the Orange Conference.  They are just bullet points, not complete thoughts.  So if you want deeper understanding of a point or two you'll have to comment and ask.

Today we start with the things that impacted me personally. These bullet points capture the changes that I hope to see in my approach to people and ministry:

• Community is Messy. That’s okay God uses messy.  When I try to avoid mess, I avoid the things that can cause me and others to grow.
• See people for who they can become in Christ, instead of for their biggest mistake.
• Invest in the Kingdom of God, not in building a kingdom. God’s kingdom is bigger than my church.
• Be more available. – Thousands experienced Jesus’ abilities (ie speaking, healing, and miracles) but only about 120 people were huddled together praying after his resurrection.  These were the people who had experienced his availability.  It was through these people that He changed the world.
• People will not believe they are significant until they are given something significant to do.
• Cast vision big enough to scare high capacity leaders. Big vision attracts high capacity leaders.
• How people respond to my message has more to do with my approach than my argument.
• Fight for people, rather than with them.
• Remember that people outside the church won’t believe something “because the bible says so” The authority of the early church came from their love. Their love was demonstrated by putting their belief into action, not just by talking about it, is what caused people to listen to their message, and gave authority to their words.
• Think about how appealing the smell of fresh baked bread is.  Anyone passing by a bakery longs for what is inside.  I should be like that as a Christian.

Now hopefully something you just read provoked a thought.  If so post a comment, and let's talk.

Sign Post 4

Carey says that the 4th sign that your church is ready to meet unchurched people is that, "4. You’re good with questions." 

HE clarifies by saying  "This one’s still hard for me. I like to think that every question has an answer. I think one of the reasons unchurched people flee churches is they feel shut down when every question they ask has a snappy or even quick answer. They will find answers, but you need to give them time. Embracing the questions of unchurched people is a form of embracing them."

Do you have all the answers?  Most of us don't, but most of us do have answers that satisfies us.  Interestingly enough, our answer may be VERY different from the answer that the Church down the street has.  If we care about theology at all, then we probably picked our church because that's where we found the most satisfying answers t our big questions. I don't know about you, but some of the questions that I have about faith are BIG.

When faced with big questions, it can be tempting to find a satisfying answer, and accept it, rather than to dig into it and think critically about it.

It is one thing to have searched the scriptures and be confident in a biblically based answer to a difficult question.  

It is another thing entirely to say "because God says so" without having a clue where in the Bible it says so, or how the answer is in keeping with the character of God.  

An uninformed Christian, especially who insists they know the answers, can do more harm than good when it comes to reaching the lost.

We are called to make disciples, which means being disciples.  We are told to teach people to obey everything Jesus commanded us. That means we need to know what he commanded... And I highly recommend where he said it, the context in which it was said, and how it is in keeping with the character of God as described in the entirety of scripture. 

Until we are willing to do this, we won't be able to go into all the world and make disciples.

Sign Post 3

Carey’s third sign that your church is ready to reach unchurched people is  Your attenders are prepared to be non-judgmental. 

"Unchurched people," he writes, "Do not come ‘pre-converted’. They will have lifestyle issues that might take years to change (and let’s be honest, don’t you?). Cleaning up your behavior is not a pre-condition for salvation, at least not in Christianity. What God has done for us in Jesus saves us; not what we have done for God. Is your congregation really ready to love unchurched people, not just judge them? One of Jesus’ genius approaches was to love people into life change. If your people can do that, you’re ready to reach unchurched people.”

This doesn't come naturally to me, maybe because of the bubble in which I grew up. (see Sign Post 2)  

Early in my ministry the church I was serving was positioned right next to "Job Corps" a place where people who struggled with conventional education could get job training. The place didn't have a great reputation, because some of the residents had been 'sentenced' to attend Job Corps as an alternative to serving jail time.  

A new Senior Pastor came on board and thought Job Corps would be the perfect place to go to grow our student ministry, much to my chagrin.   

"Culture shock" would be a mild way of describing what happened when you took a group of 12-16 year old church kids and combined them with a group of 16-24 year old people who had never seen the inside of a church.  As a 20 year old who had grown up in a bubble, I was WAY out of my league. Being overwhelmed only fed many of my stereo types of unchurched young adults.

Needless to say that a little more strategic planning might have made for better ministry.  Very few people, shared the pastor's vision for reaching the students at Job Corps.  Even though the bulk of the heavy lifting ministry fell to me, I was one of those who wasn't catching the vision...  But I did learn a great deal about judging a book by it's cover, and about letting people grow before asking them to change.  And in my next church, when the kids with the pink hair and lip piercings came through the door, I was determined to have a different attitude, and we had a very different outcome.

I’ve tried to steer clear of talking about my current church while discussing Carey’s sign posts.  But I have to brag on them just a little. 

One of the first things I noticed upon coming to church was a guy in his 40’s to 50’s with a bright pink curly Mohawk sitting among a see of suits and ties.  Observing him you could tell that he didn't feel a bit out of place, nor was he treated differently.  When a giant, purple haired, biker-looking guy showed up and sat in the front pew week after week, he was embraced and loved, even when he threw up during a service…  The folks at my church may generally look and act a certain way, but they don't judge other books by their covers.

I believe my church also does a good job letting at not expecting people to act like Christians until they actually become Christians, and even after they decide to follow Jesus they are allowed to ‘grow up’ before being expected to ‘clean up’. 

This doesn’t mean that sin is ignored.  It just means that you don’t start pruning before the seed has taken root, and had some time to grow.  

Sign Post 2

Carey's second sign that your church is ready to reach the unchurched is that "People in your church actually know unchurched people."

This one was a blind spot for me for a VERY long time.

Growing up I went to Christian School, and went to church.  My friends all came from one of those 2 places.  Now I work in an office full of Christians and I go to church, and most of my friends come from those places, other than that I am with my wife and kids

It is hard to be evangelistic when you live in a bubble, like I do.

I used to say that it was a matter of calling.  Some are called to plant seeds, and some are called to water them.  I shrugged of any discomfort with the lack of personal evangelism in my life by telling myself that I was called to water seeds.  Practically speaking, this meant that someone else brought them to church and I took it from there...

I compartmentalized the disciple making process.  Saw it less like a result of deep relationships and more like an assembly line.

To be sure we all have different roles to play.  God uses us as a body, and we all have different functions in the body.  A young man from our youth group recently decided to follow Jesus. His journey began when he saw the difference in two young ladies who made that decision a year earlier.  Curious about the changes in their lives, he asked them lots of questions.  When they didn't know the answers, they asked me questions, and shared the answers with him.  Eventually he came to a small group where one of our volunteers talked with him, then he had a conversation with one of the students he met at the small group, and during that conversation, made a decision to follow Jesus.  This is a beautiful picture of the body of Christ.  All kinds of different parts doing their work, resulting in eternal fruit.

A vital part of that process was two young ladies knowing an unchurched person.  They were light, in the world where God had them.  They lived out the scripture that tells us to "live such good lives among the pagans that they may see your good deeds and glorify your father who is in heaven".

We are told that a vital part of evangelism is to live our lives among the pagans.

So what do we do when we realize we are living in a bubble?

Well for me the answer is a wife who really understands this need to know and live among unchurched people.  She is intentional about making sure that we have people in our lives who aren't part of the bubble.  She gets uncomfortable in the bubble that is so natural for me.  Living among the unchurched is one of the big reasons she started working outside the home again. It if wasn't for her, this would have remained a major blind spot in my life.

If you find yourself in a bubble, I don't presume to know what specific steps God wants you to take.  I do know that  if we don't make knowing unchurched people a priority, then aren't really making the great commission a priority.

Sign Post 1

Today we will examine the first of Carey’s signs that your church is ready to reach unchurched people.

Carey Writes:  [the first sign that your church is ready to reach the unchurched is] Your main services engage teenagers: I've talked with many church leaders who want to reach unchurched people who can’t understand why unchurched people don’t like their church. They would be stumped until I asked them one last question: do the teens in your church love your services and want to invite their friends? As soon as I asked that question, the leader’s expression would inevitably change. He or she would look down at the floor and say ‘no’. Here’s what I believe: if teens find your main services (yes, the ones you run on Sunday mornings) boring, irrelevant, and disengaging, so will unchurched people. As a rule, if you can design services that engage teenagers, you've designed a church service that engages unchurched people.

Is he really advocating that we should want our main church service to be so shallow, and superficial that a narcissistic teenager would actually enjoy coming to church?

Maybe, but I think his point is that we should re-think who it is that attends our largest gatherings.

Freshman lectures at college have the largest attendance, as the course work gets more technical, more detailed, more advanced, the class sizes get smaller and smaller.

In the church we tend to do the opposite.  We offer intro level stuff in small groups, and intermediate and advance stuff to our largest audience.

Fixing this does not mean that we water down the message. Scripture is clear that the spiritual menu consists of both milk and solid food. I may prefer a good steak, but I will not deny the nutritional value of milk.

I will deny the nutritional value of Kool-aid. 

But what if the mature crowd were to gather, not because they want a steak, because they have a deep desire to carry out the great commission:  Go into all the world and make disciples.

What if this group of Christians, fully capable of grilling solid food in their own back yards all week long, comes together each week intent on using their combined gifts to reach those who do not yet know Christ.

This group of people would remind you that salvation requires that we deny ourselves and follow Jesus. 

Jesus, whose life they are trying to imitate, gave up the comforts of heaven and took on the nature of a servant, for the sake of an unchurched world. 

Thus, to them, aiming to engage on the level of the teenager no longer seems stupid, shallow or superficial.