I absolutely loved Craig Groeschel’s talk at Orange this year. He essentially communicated many of the philosophical and strategy positions behind Orange, but from his own personal perspective and experience. His shocking statement was that we should not aim to raise well rounded, highly educated and happy children. That’s what our culture communicates as a need, but this doesn’t line up with the scriptures.

• Well rounded really isn’t best. It’s average in everything. When hiring someone, you’re typically looking for someone who is good in one or a handful of areas.
• Well educated isn’t necessarily the best either. How many parents send their students to great schools only to have them lose their faith in exchange for intellect.
• Seeking happiness isn’t best either. Our culture worships the false god of happiness. Seeking happiness in itself is fleeting.

I’m not advocating that any of the things above are bad. I want some of those things for my kids… but it’s not the central object of desire. The scriptures say, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his own soul.”

Instead, we should aim to raise single-minded, Christ-centered, Bible-anchored world changers. YES! This is what I want!

Craig had so many other great nuggets of wisdom, I’ll end this post by listing them here:

• Parents: You will always be the most important voice… but you must not be the only voice.We must have intergenerational voices. Not just 20 year olds speaking into 16 year olds, but 60 year olds into 16 year olds.
• Raise your expectationsWe have dumbed down and lowered our standards. We must raise the standard of what we can expect the next generation can do. In biblical times, a child would have memorized the first 5 books of the bible by age 12. Of teenagers, we expect then to go to school, don’t get anyone pregnant and make your bed. We’ve lowered the standard and raised an entitled generation. Everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.
• Craig expected all of his kids were expected to have a mentor and be a mentor. How many 11 year olds think they can mentor? Those who have parents who think they can. Craig’s 16 year old wrote a book. How many 16 year olds wrote a book? Those who have parents who think they can.
• Raise your kids to be investors. Raise your kids to be owners. Tell them, you can lead a Bible study. You can lead your teacher to Christ. They can own a business. You can be in leadership at our church.
• Rules without relationship equals rebellion.
• If it’s not real to you, they’ll know. They are fake detectors. If you want to see them forgive freely with grace, forgive freely with grace.

As much as I prefer schedules and order, the real work of ministry doesn’t always happen that way. It happens at inconvenient times and beacons us to get personally involved, sometimes in uncomfortable ways. It’s funny how I’ve been experiencing this a little more lately. For years, I’ve worked with people who really understood the messiness of ministry. They lived and operated fully immersed in it. At times, I criticized this approach because there was no structure to scale and grow. I still stand beside my impressions, but I believe that there needs to be a balance of both in our lives. For me, I need to experience more of the messiness of the Gospel in my personal life and ministry.

Reggie Joiner opened up the Orange Conference with a very compelling talk about the messiness of the Gospel. It was probably one of the more significant talks Reggie has given at an Orange Conference.

Jesus set the example of what messy ministry looked like. His three short years of ministry were filled with frustration, difficult conversations and great tension. He didn’t live a sinless life to set a great example… he lived a sinless life so that he could pay the price for our sins. The disciples continued the ministry that Jesus began and it involved colliding with humanity is a personal and often painful way. They met people’s needs in dire circumstances that was often inconvenient and uncomfortable. I think that the reality that I’m discovering is that I am called to make disciples and it will never fit into my nice and neat schedule. Discipleship is messy and it will involve personal investment and sacrifices outside of my comfort zone. I’ve just got to learn how to be okay with that and walk into this lifestyle more willingly and then I’ll experience the joy that comes from seeing the gospel at work in the lives of others.

While at The Orange Conference last week, Andy Stanley spoke specifically to to the issue of staff culture. Many of the points I’ve heard before in one of his leadership podcasts, but it was a great and timely reminder. He spoke at length about creating a staff culture where mutual submission is present. Yes, God may have called key leadership and senior staff to do something significant and the primarily purpose for additional staff is to serve that vision (I truly do believe that), but this doesn’t mean that senior staff doesn’t and shouldn’t serve the staff that works for them. This type of mutual submission creates a healthy culture where people want to work.

Specific points from Andy’s talk include:

1. Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone. Don’t buy into the myth that you have to do it for everyone.
2. Systematize top-down service.
3. Create and maintain a sustainable pace.
4. Celebrate and reward mutual submission when you see it. What’s rewarded is repeated. What’s punished is avoided. What’s neither rewarded or punished gets neglected.
5. Confront your ego. If you have a big ego, then let your staff know.
6. Drop the term loyalty from your vocabulary. If you need to demand loyalty, you’ve got personal loyalty problems.

All of these items are leadership gold, but I wanted to speak the the two that stuck out to me the most.

Systematize top-down service

I recognize that I’m a systems guy to the core. I’m always looking for time-savings tools that allow me to automate tasks. I also recognize that systems also keep me accountable. There are things that I want to do, but left to my own devices, I’ll neglect them. I need a reminder or process that triggers my action. Andy talked about how they do 3 month reviews for every employee. In this review, new employees communicate how leadership could better help them get their job done. Whenever possible, they act on this request as an opportunity to serve the staff. So, I’m writing this one down as an area for personal development. I want to serve my staff and I want them to feel like they’re loved an valued, but I’ll be far more successful at this when I create a system to help me.

Create and maintain a sustainable pace

This statement brings all kinds of conviction and guilt at times. I suffer from work-aholic tendencies. I take on more than I can handle and on top of that, I’ve been attempting to maintain two jobs for the past year as opposed to just my normal work. In addition, I’ve taken on some side projects that are both time consuming but also very important to me. At this moment, I don’t really know what a sustainable pace is. I’ll have to dissect this one more… maybe asking for a little help here from others.

I’ve actually been able to attend more breakouts than last year… and I’ve actually been paying closer attention in the general sessions as compared to last year. I hope to publish my notes from some of the sessions/breakouts later tonight. I also had the opportunity to lead a preconference breakout on yesterday, and include some notes from that as well.

Stay tuned…

My boss, the Executive Pastor at Gateway is coming with me to Orange (Which I’m super stoked about) this year. He came to the Orange Tour in Dallas and has read Think Orange, so he gets the whole Orange strategy. This is the first time I’ve brought someone who isn’t on my kidmin or student ministry team, so I’m not sure what breakouts he should attend. I told him that I’d pick out his breakouts for him.

I’ve been told in the past that sometimes the senior pastor breakouts were great, but they weren’t necessarily focused as much on the Orange Strategy. I really want him to take in Orange, whether that means he attends breakouts for senior leaders or whatever.

So, do you have your boss attending Orange or have in the past? What breakouts would you recommend? Here’s the page/list of breakouts. Thanks for your help!

This April I’ll be attending my 5th Orange Conference and I must say that I’m very excited. Last year was an incredibly experience from connecting with some of my favorite people, learning from some of the greatest leaders in ministry and being honored with the opportunity to lead a handful of breakouts.

Well, I must have done all right as I’ve been invited back again to lead another breakout. I’ll be leading Preconference Workshop #3 “How To: Connect with Parents Via Social Networking.” This is on Wednesday at 1:30 PM. Here’s what I’m excited about.

• If you select the “Social Media in Ministry” track, you’ll find four workshops being taught by Matt McKee, Gina McClain and me. I think it’s a fun that I get to be a part of this track with some of my best friends in ministry.
• I led this same workshop with Matt McKee this year, but don’t you worry, this breakout is getting a total overhaul. So even if you attended this breakout last year, you’ll get all new content.
• Only a week after breakout registration opened up, this breakout is already over half-way full. If you want in, you better sign up before it’s full (and no, I will not tell you what the breakout is about later… ha!).

Here’s the description:

HOW TO: Connect with Parents Via Social Media
What would be the ultimate take home for parents when they leave your ministry? Parents need more than a take home sheet of paper. Use Social Media instead to spread ideas, communication, and create strategies that will enable you to better connect and partner with parents. Leverage social technology to broaden your impact.

However, as a dad who “knows his stuff pretty well,” I’ve come to realize how much help I really do need. Four years into unpacking the Orange strategy, this stuff has hit home in a new way was my four an a half year old boy has come to an age where what I say and do has significant consequences. I’ve “accidentally” fallen into some really cool “God moment” conversations and it made me realize that I really need to be far more intentional at this age. Because of my experience and role in ministry, I have a bevy or resources at my fingertips, but I find myself in situations often where I honestly don’t know what to do next. It doesn’t take too long to figure out what resources or what conversations to focus on, but I’ve become keenly aware of the fact that as a parent, I need help. I have been able to lean on the experience and resources from others as well as my own ability to do a little research, but it makes me realize that if I feel a great need for personal help, how much more must other parents need a little help.

In addition to being another spiritual influence int he lives of kids, the church really does need to develop a resource list and path for families. Even if we can can convince parents that they can and should be the primary voice in their kid’s lives, they’ll become quickly frustrated if we don’t help them take the lead. In the next six months, I’m developing a resource/experience guide for parents, especially in the kidmin years. I’d be curious to see what others have already assembled or who might be interested in collaborating on such a project.

I think my last big take-away from the Orange Tour was this little concept.

Make it easy for parents to win!

In Think Orange, Reggie describes the four levels of parenting.

1. Aware – These are parents who may be outside your church. Studies have shown that most parents are aware that the moral and even spiritual development of a child is their responsibility.
2. Involved – These are parents who are in our churches. They’re around, maybe following Christ, but they’re not really doing anything intentional with their kids.
3. Engaged – These are parents who are beginning to be intentional. They’re trying things that they’ve not done before.
4. Invested – These parents get “it.” Whether you provide a plan or not, they’re going after it, developing spiritual champions.

Here is what I appreciated tremendously. Reggie shared that you’ll probably never get more than 20-30% of your parents to the invested level. As much as we’d like for it to happen, it’s just not going to happen. Set your expectations.

However, it’s possible to get a lot of parents to engage. It doesn’t take too much effort to take a parent who is doing nothing to start doing something… and this small change can produce huge results. We’ve got to celebrate the small changes. This is huge!

This is why this information was really refreshing for me. We’re in the process of developing a milestone family strategy and we’ll be putting a lot of effort into getting parents to engage with the plan. I would expect that the parents to truly engage in this strategy and follow it through are more likely to be invested parents. However, at the same time we’re panning to launch easy stuff, resources and opportunities to help parents do small things.

I guess it was just good for me to hear this stuff so that I know how to balance, that I don’t get frustrated by less people getting to the invested level where huge numbers are engaged.

I’ll leave you with one last quote that ties this all up and certainly rang a bell for me.

So, consider how everything ties to the next thing and in all of this, make it easy for parents to win!

From day one of engaging with Orange (more than 4 years ago), the word strategy was a word I heard often. It’s not a new concept, but it was something that was brought to my attention again last Friday and I’m glad it was. Reggie painted a clear picture of the importance of strategy. He described how many great churches have incredible mission and vision statements that never really seem to do anything. Many of those church’s doors are closed now.

Strategy – A plan of action with an end in mind.

I love it. I’m leading a breakout at Illuminate in Nashville in a few weeks titled, “What Matters Most.” In this breakout I’m going to speak about how sometimes we lose track of that particular “end” in mind or maybe the “end” we’re focused on really isn’t as important as it should be.

I wonder what would happen if we as ministry leaders scripted out all that we did in a given week or month and then asked the very important question, “What is specific end we’re trying to get to as a result of this event/program/resource/meeting?” I think it would reveal what things we’re doing that are strategic and those things that are just wasting time. Man, do I hate wasting time. What’s worse is when I’m wasting time and don’t even know it.

Families, kids and students need us to be as strategic as possible. We must be strategic with our time, our tallent and our resources. How are you being strategic today?

This Orange Tour was different for me. I was a little nervous. This was the first time I’ve ever taken student ministry volunteers. In the past I’ve brought my student pastor, but the team as a whole had never really been represented. They were very excited to have been invited and showed up in force. The Orange strategy is certainly something I believe in and I was more nervous that the student ministry volunteers would not connect with it or that it would somehow be a miss for them. Every year the Orange Tour has been one of the best conferences/seminars I attend and for no real reason, I was just nervous that it wouldn’t be as good as it had in the past.

Well, the day didn’t disappoint. If one year’s tour could be better than the previous one, this one was… but I must say that each of them stand out equally on their own. I learned so much, I was reminded of so much and I was inspired with so many new ideas. It was amazing and initial reaction from most of the student leaders was incredibly positive. I think there is still a lot to process with them, but overall, it was a great experience.

This week I’m not as much going to regurgitate my notes for you, but more or less share about what impacted me the most and what I plan to do with such thoughts. So, stay tuned for my Orange Tour Gleanings!