Category: Think Orange

Orange Books!

My friends at reThink have launched Orange Books!  I’m super pumped about this.  Many of the books by reThink authors like Reggie Joiner have deeply influenced the way I think about student ministry and family ministry as a whole.  I’m a huge fan of the Orange philosophy of ministry–it’s all about churches and families partnering together to promote and elevate spiritual growth in our kids.  I love it and we’ve done our best to implement these ideas in our church and family ministries.

You can check out their latest books at orangebooks.com.  Also, they are running a promo that runs through tomorrow in which you can score sweet prizes for buying one of their books.  You can check out the promo page here.  All the books at the site are great but If you’re looking for a recommendation for student ministry, I would tell you to read Creating a Lead Small Culture.  Here’s a little blurb about it.

 

Creating a Lead Small Culture from Orange on Vimeo.

Where I’m Taking My Students Next Summer

Earlier this summer, I did something rather crazy.  After a 10 day mission trip to Malawi, Africa, I flew directly down to Knoxville, Tennessee to check out a camp.  I mean, I flew from Malawi to Johannesburg to New York, ditched my team, flew to Atlanta and then on to Knoxville where my boss Brian picked me up in a rental car.  Then, we drove to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  If you’re keeping score, that’s 15+ hours of layovers and 20+ hours of flying.  I was beyond exhausted and I’m sure I smelled beautifully.  Oh, and I’m pretty sure our team made it home safely.  I think.

Normally, after a long mission trip I fly directly home, climb into my bed and sleep for three days but I just had to get down to Tennessee to check something out.  What was that, you ask?  High School Camp.  Starting this summer, reThink started putting on their own high school camp and I just had to see it.

I was impressed.  So impressed, in fact, that I’ll definitely be bringing a coach bus or two of high school students with me down to Tennessee next year.  Here’s why:

1.  reThink gets the power of small groups.

I love reThink as an organization because they are smart and strategic.  They are driving next gen. ministry forward.  They are helping us all think better about what we do.  They understand that small groups are the backbone of student ministry so everything about High School Camp is built around small groups:  housing, meals, programs, activities, experiences, etc.  It’s the perfect camp to elevate groups and capitalize on existing relationships or, to forge new ones.

2.  The Orange Tour for free!

If you’ve never been to the Orange Conference or the Orange Tour, this is your year!  The Orange Conference is the best conference out there for student ministry and children’s ministry.  Also, if you plan to be at the Orange Tour in Troy, MI, look me up!

My favorite thing about High School Camp is that the Orange Tour is essentially built into the camp schedule.  Youth pastors and volunteers get an hour a day with Reggie Joiner.  His content in these sessions is fantastic.  I’m pumped for my volunteers to receive some of the best training out there as part of the High School Camp package.

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3.  Zero Prep

We put on our own middle school camp and it is amazing.  I can say that without feeling like a bragger McBraggerson because I have very little to do with it.  Our team did an incredible job putting on the best camp I’ve ever been a part of.  With that said, we’re all in a coma now.  I don’t think we have the capacity to pull off another camp for our high school students.

The awesome thing about reThink’s High School Camp is that you show up with your students and volunteers and simply pastor them.  No prep required.  Beautiful.

4. Ginormous Water Slides

Spoiler alert:  The camp isn’t housed at a camp, it’s at a resort with ginormous water slides.  The resort also includes a huge arcade, several mini-golf courses, a mini-bowling alley, a rock climbing wall, a for reals grown up golf course, a ropes course and a million other fun elements.  Pardon my terrible photography…

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5.  Dollywood

Did I mention that Dollywood is right down the road?!?  Actually, that’s probably not helpful.  My bad.

6.  Epic Lights

Maybe it was because I hadn’t slept in 2 days or that I had just returned from Africa but the light show that accompanied the large group programming blew my mind!  What I mean is that the stage and production quality was on par with what you would experience at an Arena concert.  The students were LOVING it.

7.  Professional grade communications

I’ll be honest, at first I wasn’t sure about the teaching quality because I kept falling asleep.  I assure you it wasn’t the teacher!  It was that I hadn’t slept in 30 hours and I was sitting down in a dark room.

However, I did listen to a second teaching after a good night’s sleep and it was fantastic.  reThink writes the curriculum for High School Camp (think XP3) and it is delivered by a national level speaker.  It was great, and of course, it is designed for great small group conversation.  I love this because, in the past, it has seemed like any time I take my students to a camp, I either get great music or a great speaker.  Here, both were A+.

8.  I can worship to that!

Speaking of worship, if you’ve been in church work for a while you can probably relate to how critical I am.  It’s hard for me to really engage church services without evaluating the programming or noticing what is wrong or cheesy.  It’s one of the curses of working at a church.  What I loved about High School Camp is that the quality of music and production was so phenomenal that there was nothing to complain and I could relax and just engage in worship.  Maybe now you think I’m a horrible person.  Or, if you work at a church, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about.

9.  Limitless Options

Pigeon Forge, the closest town to High School Camp is one of the strangest places I have ever been to.  There are literally limitless options for things to do…go carts, music, restaurants, giant dinosaur statues, shopping, a Titanic museum, amusement parks, theater, golf, and weird combos of all the previously listed options–think dinosaurs living on the titanic which is actually a large amusement shopping mall.  You really have to see this place to believe it.  My point is that if your group gets bored with the ridiculous amount of options at the resort, there are a bazillion things to do in Pigeon Forge.  Or, you could plan a fun excursion before or after camp.

10.  I thought the Smoky Mountains would be a lot more smoky.

I love mountains, camping, hiking, and natural beauty.  Pigeon Forge is situated in the Smoky Mountains.  First off, the scenery is amazing and secondly, if you or your group hate touristy things, there is plenty to do in the Smoky Mountains.  You could take your group camping after camp for crying out loud!

All this is to say that I’m going to High School Camp this summer.  I’m wickedly pumped about the impact the experience will have on our students and volunteers, and how easy the experience will be to plan for.  Maybe I’ll see you there.

If you ant to check it out, here’s a link to reThink’s High School Camp page.  Fear not, if everything I said about camp in Tennessee sounded terrible, they are holding camps in Florida and Texas as well.

My Favorite Volunteer Celebration Ever

A few weekends ago, our Family Ministry team threw down my favorite volunteer celebration ever.  I still have a perpetual fist pump going.  Look, maybe it’s not the best volunteer celebration in the history of the world but it’s the best one we’ve ever done.  If you’re interested, here’s what we did.

TASTY TREATS

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The first order of business in any great party is food.  Without good food the whole enterprise is in trouble.  I’m just saying.  Our volunteers came into the building and were treated to cheesecake and coffee.  In my book, that’s a win.

 

CHAOS AND FREE STUFF

After tasty treats, we corralled everyone into one of our auditorium spaces and played a variety of mixers and stage games.  We pitted department against department because we’re competitive like that.  Here’s what we played:

  • Always start with a Raffle…because free stuff is awesome!
  • A mixer called In Room Scavenger Hunt.  Click here for a description.
  • Powerade Flip Out.  It’s the Minute to Win it Game called Stick the Landing except we play four people at once flinging bottles on the same table.  Essentially it turns into madness with players blocking each others shots and throwing each others Powerade across the room .  It’s a riot.  I’m pretty sure we stole the idea from Stuff You Can Use.
  • Head-to-Head Flappy Bird.  Somehow our tech geniuses figured out a way to put two iPads on the projector screen at the same time.  I don’t even know…but it’s amazing.
  • Clumps.  A great mixer with a weird name.  Here’s how to play.
  • Quiz Bowl Time with Andy LoveHandles.  Sorry, this isn’t really duplicate-able.  One of our team members plays a game show character who throws Little Debbie Ding-Dongs at contestants when they get an answer correct.  It’s a little dangerous and a lot hilarious.316814814_219c1f4ed3_q

FUNNY PEOPLE

For the next element, we brought in a local improv group called River City Improv.  They were a huge hit with our volunteers.

 

MEANINGFUL WORDS

After the improv group, our Senior Pastor of Family Ministries, Brian VanderArk shared a few thoughts about “moments.”  I’ll send you his notes for $500.  Actually, he’ll probably just give them to me if you want them.  The key was, it was short and meaningful.  Volunteers heard, “What I do matters!”

 

CUTE KIDS

To cap the night, we showed this thank-you video.

Volunteer Celebration: Thank You from LifeLine Student Ministries on Vimeo.

 

There you have it.  The best volunteer celebration ever.  Feel free to steal any or all of it…except the video.  That would be weird.

Why You Need to Go to the Orange Conference

Last week, I traveled to Atlanta with a few members of our Family Ministries team to join 6000 others for the Orange Conference.  As a student pastor, I’ve been to a lot of student ministry and family ministry conferences.  In my opinion, this was the best.  If you serve students or children, you need to go next year.  Here’s why.

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1.  Food Trucks

Everyone knows that the most important thing about conferences, or life for that matter is food.  Maybe I’m a little obsessed but I love great food.    Spice, flavor, combinations and ethnic touches dazzle my palate.  One of the things I love about Orange is that they bring in food trucks–seriously, one of the smartest inventions of all time.  Also, I love sitting around the table with people I care about or want to learn from, sharing a meal and talking about ministry and strategy.

 

2.  Laughter

Ministry is a sloppy bucket of stress.  Particularly at this time of year, we’re all slightly to moderately frazzled.

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“Did you just stick your finger in an electric socket or maybe hug a nuclear warhead?”

“Nope.  Just finished small group.”

“Cool.”

Orange brought an insane amount of comedy this year.  At times, I was crying because I was laughing so hard.  I woke in the morning with sore abs.  This may have more to do with sloth than comedy…Either way, thanks for the ab workout.

 

3.  Value

Sadly, not every work environment or church values creativity and artistic expression.  One of the things I love about reThink and the Orange Conference is a high value on creativity and art.  They understand the work it takes to write good curriculum, produce quality videos and create engaging programs.  It’s more art than science for sure.  It’s a lovely feeling to be told over and over again that the work we do matters.  Also, I saw a bunch of ideas that I’ve already begun stealing.  Don’t tell anyone.

 

4.  Collaboration

The thing I love the most about reThink is that they elevate the local church.  They are constantly looking for ways to connect people like me with other youth workers who serve in similar contexts or think about ministry in the same ways.  Through my new friend Jeremy at reThink, I met a bunch of youth workers at Orange.  I’m pumped to engage these men and women in conversation about how exactly we do this work God has called us to.  I love collaboration.

 

5.  Shared Wisdom

For me, the best moment of Orange was Andy Stanley and Reggie Joiner demonstrating how to talk to middle school students about same sex attraction.  This is obviously a conversation in which many churches have dropped the ball.  The mantra I walked away with is this:  “We believe the church should be the safest place for students experiencing same sex attraction.”  I’m in for struggling toward this goal.

 

6.  Strategy

I could talk strategy all night.  Specifically, I love to sit around with student ministry workers and discuss how to do what we do better.  I love to dream, evaluate, fret, deconstruct, and tinker with concepts and practices.  The Orange Conference is an excellent place to do this.

 

7.  Restoration

I’ll be honest, I limped into the Orange Conference this year.  It’s been a beast of a year.  I’m in a new and challenging role, we opened high school ministry on a new campus, hired 4 new staff, battled through the worst winter in recent history (which translated into numerous cancellations and a momentum free fall).  A week ago, a ll I really wanted was June because June means the ministry regular season is over.  And yet, somehow, someway, through food trucks, laughter, imparted value, collaboration, shared wisdom, and strategery sessions, I’m back in the ring itching for a fight.  I’ve fallen back in love with my work, my team and the struggle of passing on faith to the next generation.

Here’s to you reThink for an “eptastic” week.  And for the rest of you, let’s meet up in Atlanta next April.

 

 

static hair photo credited to Jeff Latimer via Flickr

Be Spiritual…Have Fun!

I happen to be an Orange kind of guy.  Our church has a close relationship with the brilliant people over at reThink.  Yesterday, Jon Grunden wrote a great piece for the Lead Small Blog on the importance of fun.

Here’s a clip:

When my students start to wander away from God, or it just doesn’t seem like anybody is paying attention anymore, I have the tendency to run to the to-do list.  The to-do list is safe and it makes me feel spiritual, but most often it just serves to remind me how far I am from where I want to be with my guys.  It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do with my guys is have fun. 

When it comes to student ministry, Jon is a genius and he’s a a lot of fun to work with.  He’s taught me at least 73% of what I know about student ministry.  Do yourself a favor and check out the rest of his post.