So last January I was preparing to head up to Dallas for the Orange Tour and in my excitement I flippantly declared the following week “Orange Week.” The folks at ReThink thought it was a good idea, so the following week a rag-tag group of incredibly Kidmin Pastors blogged about the Orange Strategy. It was an incredible experience, an almost overwhelming source of information and ideas. Well, it’s getting ready to happen again. Why so soon?

Well, next week the 2011 Orange Conference opens for registration and that’s worth getting excited about. So, with some help from the ReThink team, we’ve organized another Orange Week (let’s call it Orange Week 2.0) and it’s going to be even better than before. Check out the blogging team this time around.

• Pete Wilson
• Michael Hyatt
• Carlos Whittaker
• Ron Edmondson
• Craig Groeschel
• Tony Morgan
• Jeremy Zach
• Michael Bayne
• Chad Swanzy
• Tom Shefchunas
• Kenny Conley
• Sam Luce
• Jonathan Cliff
• Gina McClain
• Tony Kummer
• Wayne Stocks
• Nick Blevins
• Anthony Prince
• Dan Scott
• JC Thompson
• Matt McKee

Pretty incredible, huh? So, it all starts tomorrow and runs for 7 days straight. This year will be less about strategy (you will hear some though) and more about ideas and practical implementation of the Orange Strategy. One week from now, you’ll no only know more about what it means to be Orange, but you’ll have steps that you can take now to become Orange in the way you operate you ministry.

So, this is simply the warning. Later today I’ll have links to all the blogs participating and more information about the daily posting schedule and topics. If you’re not included on this list, but want to share your thoughts and ideas, contact me and I’ll make sure your ideas are heard!

New to all of this, let me catch you up. Here are the daily recaps of the first Orange Week:

• Integrated Strategy
• Refine the Message
• Reactivate the Family & Elevate Community Part 1
• Reactivate the Family & Elevate Community Part 2
• Leverage Influence

Those links alone will keep you busy reading for hours.

Also, a big thank you to newer blogging friends who jumped in to help and contribute substantially. Dan Scott, I look forward to knowing you better, you’ve certainly got a lot of respect from me. Anthony Prince, I look forward to getting to hanging with you again this year at Orange and getting to know you more. JC, are you coming to Orange this year? I like to hang out with you more too. Regardless, I’m probably changing my twitter and facebook profile pic to that fat baby pic… I loved it that much. Kendra, I’ve enjoyed our conversations and finally meeting you last week. You’re insights to this Orange process have been wonderful. Nick Blevins, I had no idea who you were until this week. So glad you jumped in, both to hear your ideas and to begin following your blog.

Huge props to my friends at ReThink. You all are amazing. Betsy for taking my idea and putting a little gasoline behind it (ie… all the free stuff to give away). Kevin Benson for taking 20 minutes or so and talking at the Orange tour about this blogging and twitter medium. Thanks to Reggie, Sue and others at ReThink for your passion and message!

Last of all, thanks to everyone who visited the blogs (this one and everyone elses) this week. Seriously, you lit this one up this week. There was so much “noise” in the social media space about Orange Week there is no doubt that it got some attention and others are beginning to explore this ministry strategy.

Although Orange Week is over, it’s not the last you’ll read about Orange on this blog. However, you probably won’t see 25 posts dedicated only to Orange anytime soon, except in late April for Orange 2010. Hopefully I’ll see you all there! If you’re not registered yet, what are you waiting for, clikc the badge on the right.

• I started off Leverage Influence with a post about engaging students in meaningful ministry as a means of discipleship.
• Kendra Golden compares us engaging students in ministry to a drug dealer getting a kid hooked on drugs. Ha! I don’t think I ever would have taken that approach, but I like it in a weird way.
• Matt McKee posts about Leveraging Influence using another story form OrangeLeaders.com but then also sharing how it’s done at his church. One of the last things he said was significant. It was about being territorial about students and realizing we can work together to reach them.
• Sam Luce talks about the excellent relationship he’s always had with his youth pastor and how he’s been able to use students to serve in the children’s ministry and the great benefit they bring.
• Jonathan Cliff writes a post about personal experiences of growing in his faith when given the opportunity to serve in a significant way and how this is a powerful way to impact students through their service in Children’s Ministry.
• JC talks about the difference of using teenagers as opposed to developing them and what developing students in the light of service actually looks like.
• Dan Scott writes more about the strategy his church uses to leverage influence and empower students to serve within the church and outside the church.
• Gina talks about how serving is the most “actionable” component of the strategy and how we can empower students to serve both inside and outside the church. She also gets bonus points for adding DC Talk’s “Luv is a verb” video. I have very special memories associated with that album.
• Anthony talks about involving students in the mission, not just them being the mission. Good stuff with great examples.
• Nick Blevins also write about leveraging influence. He talks about how students have to see that they are the church as opposed to just attending one.

Elevate Community

• Kendra offers a very interesting view into the importance of Christian community. Of all the Christian disciplines, it’s the one discipline that translates easily to a new believer. It’s how God designed us, to have community.
• Matt McKee’s giving away ten Family Times Packs.
• Matt McKee pulls a story off of ornageleadders.com to illustrate this point, a story Reggie tells about his daughters need for affirmation as well as a description of what elevate community looks like at Matt’s church.
• Sam Luce writes about two components: The bigger you grow, the more intentional about being small you have to be and the world cannot compete with community.
• Jonathan Cliff shares personal thoughts about elevating community. He realizes that although he’s so much in the center of their lives today, it won’t always be that way and he must begin to seek out who those additional voices must be that will speak into his kid’s lives.
• JC shares his story about a Sunday School leaders had the kind of influence on him that we desire our small group leaders to have with our kids.
• Dan Scott shares about the strategy of his church in regard to small groups in every stage of a child’s life. I like it!
• Gina McClain writes about elevate community from her experience. I really like how she talks about equipping small group leaders to partner with parents… something that isn’t always central to the small group strategy.

Reactivate the Family

• Anthony has some great ideas about how his church is organizing some simple events that better connect families.
• Nick Blevins writes a great post about all the opportunities his church provides to activate the family. They seem to have a lot of really great ways to connect parents with their kids.

What about his middle name? Do you know it? Yeah, you do… it’s actually Reggie. However, his first name is pretty top secret. Thanks to my good friend Matt McKee, he got Reggie to confide his first name… and this little known secret is a good one!

So, here’s a little contest. I know a lot of you out there already have Think Orange. But do you have Think Orange personally signed by “________” Reggie Joiner? I think not. Who knows, it might become a collectors item. So, here’s the fun little contest. If you can guess Reggie’s first name, you’re going to get an autographed copy of Think Orange as well as a copy of the new companion workbook. The workbook isn’t out yet, so you’ll get both books as soon as it’s ready.

We’ll run this little contest until Sunday. The person who guesses his first name or gets closest to his first name wins the books. Feel free to post as many guesses as you’d like or fill a comments with as many guesses as you want.

It helps when the commitment to community is a part of your church’s DNA. If it’s not, then you need to find a way to change that. Otherwise your effectiveness to reach kids, specifically in student ministry will be severely limited. Fortunately for me, my church has small groups as a core part of the DNA. However, when I arrived almost 2 years ago, there had never been small groups in the children’s ministry. Now I’ve known a lot of childrens ministries have have existed without small groups, but not when there are small groups in every other aspect of the church. Needless to say, the leadership was begging me to launch small groups.Two years later, our elementary kids are more connected than ever. Because small groups are valued the same way in middle school, the 5th graders will promote right into a 6th grade small group. It’s too easy.

However, what we’re working on right now is taking is getting this DNA for community all the way down the line. What do I mean? Let me ask this question. What would community look like for a 1 year old? How about a 3 year old? We’re currently working on opportunities to create community environments for those very kids. Sure, the value of community is most realized when they’re older, but every kid needs community and we’re exploring what would look like for the youngest of those in our church.

Reactivate the Family

• I start up this element of reactivating the family with the main though, the church has taken the parents God-given role and we’ve got to give it back. There’s a lot of “talk” about family ministry and incorporating the family, but unless we get parents motivated about actively engaging in their kids spiritual lives, we’re not getting anywhere.
• Kendra delivered an powerful post on Reactivating the Family from a very unique perspective of being a foster parents and working with the birth parents of the foster kids – a worthy read for sure!
• Matt McKee explore the definition of “reactivate the family” and shares his experience from his church. Like many others, he’s not satisfied with how they’ve engaged families (although he’s tried several methods) and he’s asked the question (specifically to other portable churches) how they’ve seen success in this aspect.
• Sam Luce is giving away a DVD resource called Exit Interview. You still have time to win, so do what he asks.
• Jonathan Cliff talks about his experience of reactivating the family through several changes he’s made at his church this year. My favorite part was where he talked about the inspiration for engaging families came from his role as a parent first.
• Sam writes a sobering post about what happens when we don’t reactivate the family. It’s one thing when the kids who walk away from faith is a statistic, but something entirely different when you can put names and faces to those stats.
• JC writes of several ways to put the responsibility the church has taken from parents back in their hands. Also, I must admit, I love the image that goes with this post. I don’t get it, but i love it.
• Dan Scott’s first post on reactivating family is about the various levels in which parents partner with our ministry. I so much appreciated his second post about doing a family experience (This is Dan’s specialty). What I loved so much is what he shared about the purpose beyond the family event. That is reactivating the family! Dan’s last post was a guest post from the middle school pastor at his church. Great post on engaging paretns of middle school kids!
• Gina writes a great post about reactivating the family, how it doesn’t have to be another event for you to administrate, but a way to encourage parents to do something different.

Elevate Community

• I started off this element describing what it means to elevate community. Essentially, community is the best thing church has going for it, better than anything the world and culture has to offer.
• Anthony Prince write about elevating community at his church. An interesting tactic he embraces is by recruiting parents as small group leaders (not their own kid’s groups) so they’ll see the value of connecting with their child’s small group leader.
• At first I didn’t see where Nick Blevins was going with his post on elevating community. What he was doing though was stating a case that building a community for kids isn’t easy. Neither are most of the best things in life. Thanks Nick!

Sheesh, these recaps are taking me longer and longer. Thanks for participating everyone! There should be another great give away tomorrow as well as a few more announcements I have. Oh, and I’ve got a funny little contest where you can win some stuff signed by Reggie. I’ll tell you about that tomorrow!

I’d like to spin this in a way saying this is the way we planned it, but that’s just not the case. There was some confusion among the stellar Orange Week blogging team and it looks like I might have been the source. I planned for today’s topic to be “Elevate Community,” but some thought it was “Reactivate the Family.” I propose a simple solution.

I officially declare this Tuesday of Orange week: Two Post Tuesday!

Essentially I’m releasing tomorrows topic today as well and we’ll spend both today and tomorrow exploring both of these posts. If you want to jump on board and blog on either of these elements, jump on in, you’ve got two days.

Don’t forget, we’ve got another give away both today and tomorrow as well.

• I started off the day with a post defining the strategic element of “refining the message.”
• Jonathan Cliff talks about the results he’s seen in the last two years as they’ve practiced this idea of refining the message through the curriculum choices they’ve made. His post stands out the most to me thanks to the graphic coloring sheet of Absolom’s unfortunate death. Even more interesting was that Jonathan still has this now infamous coloring sheet.
• Gina’s giving away a really cool resource. Click here to find out how you can get it before it’s gone.
• Anthony Prince throws in his two cents concerning messaging. He describes how his church as intentionally refined the message depending on the audience and objectives of that program.
• Dan Scott writes three blog posts concerning refining the message. The first defines the element and how their use of 252 Basics allows them to clearly refine their message. The second post amazingly demonstrates how they refine their message through the experience. Last of all, Dan writes a post about marketing in the light of refining the message. Dan shares practical things of how they do this at Ada Bible… very helpful information!
• I wrote a second post about refining the message mainly focusing on what I’ve been thinking about concerning developing a biblical worldview in the lives of our kids and how refining the message might help us to do that.
• Kendra Golden shares a very unique perspective about refining the message. She talks about how as a content developer for many years, she sees the importance of “the message” finally when her child hits the student ministry and doesn’t seem to be grasping the true message. Maybe he is, but the reality is that the messaging was confusing and it caused Kendra as a content developer to see how to craft a message that resonates with kids as well as family with kids in multiple programs.
• Matt McKee approaches the concept of packaging and communication. Refining the message isn’t always about content, but about delivery. If we knew that we could present the content in a differnt way that would produce greater results, would we? Check out Matt’s thoughts on this element.
• JC throws out a post from a bit of a different perspective, of how when we refine the message, we also make it more potent and powerful. I agree. There’s a lot of noise in the church at times… sometimes we have to say less to say more.
• Nick Blevins jumped into Orange Week with a great post on refining the message. I like his use of “knowledge puffs up” as a reminder that trying to teach it all to the kids can be counter productive.
• Gina McClain wrote a great post on refining the message. My favorite line: Creating an echo isn’t easy to do. But then it isn’t easily forgotten either.

In addition to these posts, we had two other bloggers jump into the Orange festivities. Henry Zonio (who’ll be coming to Orange this year) threw out some information on Orange to his readers and pointed them toward all the Orange mania. In addition, Eric Griffin posted about his thoughts on Orange and how some obstacles to overcome are denominationally driven, something I’ve never really thought about.

That’s it for right now. If I missed one, leave a comment and I’ll add it. Gina’s give away is still up for grabs and there will be a new give away announced tomorrow. Oh, and I’ve got a BIG… er, HUGE announcement tomorrow. Hang on tight people, good stuff is coming you way!

I’ve been thinking a lot about this very thing lately. At my church we use 252 Basics and My First Look. It’s great curriculum. However, I do think that every church needs to evaluate their own unique situation, determine their target and evaluate what message needs to be presented. Obviously, there are central biblical truths that need to be communicated in every church, but not all churches are the same and neither is the demographic of the people they’re trying to reach.

Here’s what I’ve been wrestling through the last few months. In George Barna’s book Revolutionary Parenting, he defines a biblical worldview.

A biblical worldview, as defined by the Barna study, is believing that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is completely accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.

In his book he provides further clarification of what the life of a spiritual champion looks like which includes this worldview and specific behaviors.

So as I think about the concept of refining the message, I’m thinking about what do I specifically need to present over the context of 18 years to produce spiritual champions? It looks like regardless of what curriculum I use, supplemental material is needed. Obviously we’ve learned that parental leadership is the only way we’ll pull this off, but in most churches if parents get engaged, it’s using material that ties into what the kids are learning on the weekends, which would affect the message we present on Sundays.

Any thoughts?