A couple of years ago, the people at Orange asked me to help them rally and champion people who do NextGen/Family ministry. It’s the role I was hired for almost 7 years ago at Gateway. When I took the role, there were only a handful of us around the country, but it seems to be one of the fastest growing roles right now. Right now I have over 300 NextGen/Family pastors on my contact lists and it grows every month.

We’re defining the NextGen Pastor as the one person responsible for all age group ministries at a church (at least infants through high school). Every church has one. It could be the senior pastor or a discipleship pastor and more and more, it’s people with the specific NextGen role.

We’ve found that there aren’t any resources for those in this unique role. There aren’t any conferences, books or DVD’s. However, we have some pretty amazing NextGen breakouts and networking opportunities at the Orange Conference.

So, about four months ago we started planning NEXT, a gathering for NextGen/Family Pastors in Atlanta. I’ve been working on connecting all the NextGen people and getting them to come. NEXT starts tonight and we have 80 incredible leaders from all over Canada and the US coming in. The conversation is going to be pretty amazing.

We’ll keep the conversation going on twitter and instagram with #iamnextgen. I’ll share more of the experiences and conversations soon.