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The Secret Sauce of Speaking

When it comes to student ministry, my favorite role is communicating.  I find so much joy and fulfillment in brainstorming series, writing content, speaking, and developing the other teachers on our student ministry team.

Over time, I’ve learned quite a bit about teaching–from trial and error, listening, mentors and from attempting to formalize my method so that I can help others improve.  Over the next couple of weeks I want to share some of the secret sauce.  Here’s lesson number one…

One of the most important skills a speaker can develop is the ability to view the communication as a conversation.  In other words, this is more than a presentation, sermon or lesson.  This is a relational connection.  There is so much more going on than content exchange.  Think about it:  Whenever you listen to a sermon or presentation (and you’re actually listening) there is a conversation running in your head.  You say things like:

  • “I’m not sure I agree with that.”
  • “Wow.  I know exactly what she’s talking about.”
  • “I’m not sure I like this person.”
  • “How did he know exactly what is going on in my life?”
  • “Why is he still talking?!?!”

A master communicator knows how to tap into this conversation and even guide it.

The internal conversation begins as soon as you step on the stage or in front of the class.  The first questions everyone asks are:

  • “Do I trust this person?”
  • “Why should I keep listening?”

How do we tap into the internal conversation and guide it?  Give your audience the answers to these questions as they are asking them.

DO I TRUST THIS PERSON?

When I’m sitting in a coffee shop, writing an introduction for a teaching or presentation, I’m asking myself,  “How can I connect with my audience so that they feel like they know me and trust me.”  This usually involves a personal story that connects with the overall topic and demonstrates some vulnerability and understanding.  In a few days, I will be teaching on conflict in friendships.  My introduction includes a personal story about a friendship from college that meant the world to me, but I accidentally wrecked it. The story relates to the topic and builds trust with my audience because I am vulnerable, real, and demonstrate an actual working knowledge about the topic.   My story builds trust.

WHY SHOULD I KEEP LISTENING?

Now, about the second question:  It takes energy to focus.  It takes discipline to engage with a communication on a heart level.  And we all checkout when we feel like the teacher or presenter is talking about something that doesn’t actually matter or doesn’t relate to our lives.  As a teacher, it is easy to blame the audience for not paying attention but here’s the thing:  It isn’t the job of the audience to pay attention.  It’s the job of the communicator to capture their minds.

So, the task for a communicator is to convince the audience that they NEED to stay engaged.  As my friends at Orange say, “you have to create tension.”  You’ve created tension when your audience’s internal conversation says:

  • “I need to know this.”
  • “He’s right, I don’t understand this issue.”
  • “This topic could change XYZ in my life.”

A great introduction creates tension.  It answers the question everyone in the room is asking, “Why should I keep listening?”  In my teaching about friendships, I will say, “I’m not the only one who has wrecked a friendship am I?  We all have someone in our lives who was a close friend.  Is there a way we can navigate conflict in our relationships without blowing up the friendship?  This is what we’re going to talk about tonight…”

A great introduction answers two questions everyone is asking, “Do I trust this person” and “Why should I keep listening.”  Think about it:  Within the first few minutes, every great movie convinces you to root for the protagonist and care about the tension.

  • You fall in love with Nemo and care about whether or not he will find his dad.
  • You think Matt Damon is hilarious and really don’t want him to die alone on Mars.
  • You root for Forrest and want him to win Jenny’s heart.

Every great movie answers these two questions and so should every presentation or teaching.  Just remember two words:  trust and tension.

But here’s the thing, from what I’ve learned, your injection of tension only lasts for 5-7 minutes.  Then, the audience’s mind start wandering again.  Then what do you do?  I’ll share some ideas in my next post.

 

 

image credited to wisepig via Flickr

 

 

 

Shower Office

I’ve decided to move my office into my shower.  No seriously.  After conducting tens of hours of rigorous scientific research, I have realized that 9 out of 10 of my genius ideas occur to me in the shower.  There must be something about the humidity and the water.  So, I’m moving my office to my shower.  I’m still working on the issues of waterproofing my laptop.  I’m sorry if this image causes you to be a little sick but I assure you this is for the best.

Ok. Actually, after thinking about it a bit longer, I’m realizing that creative ideas spring upon me in other places–like when I’m forced to walk long distances, when my phone is dead, when I have to drive alone without music, that one time I went for a run, and when I’m trapped in elevators.  So, after a bit more thought, maybe it isn’t actually my shower that is a conductor for creative energy…maybe it is quiet, a lack of structure and maybe even boredom.

I’ve come to realize that for me, creative energy requires certain conditions in order to be released.  When I am rushed, hurried and frantic, creative ideas and innovative schemes seem to dry up.  Maybe creative energy needs space.  Stop.  Listen.  Be patient.  Turn down the noise.

My suspicion is I’m not alone in this.  Whether you are an engineer, an artist or a stay at home mom, creativity and innovation propel all of us toward greatness.  We all need ideas.  Ideas unlock the places where we are stuck.   I’m discovering that there is a way to structure our frantic lives for creativity and innovation.  It probably involves letting your phone run dead, walking instead of driving, or carving out space for a longer shower.

All this is so counter-intuitive.  We believe that running fast, busyness and long hours are what make us productive.  Admittedly, this is partially true.  However, without space for quiet–for curiosity, wonder and undistracted thought, the ideas, innovation and creativity will dry up.  Perhaps our daily schedules need blocks of running fast interspersed with blocks of locking ourselves in a closet.

The world needs your creativity.  We need your ideas.  Do us all a favor and create some dead space.  Be bored.  Take your time.  Power it down.  Let’s generate creative thoughts and fresh ideas.  I bet our lives, families, offices, schools and churches will be better for it.

 

image credited to r. nial bradshaw via Flickr

 

 

Because It’s Friday and You need a Laugh

It’s the Friday of Labor Day weekend and because I care, I’m sending you out with a laugh.  This ridiculous video is from our middle school summer camp.  We always produce a series of comedy videos for camp and this year, we created a bunch of commercials for our fictitious Lifeline TV Network.  Props to Al Shepard, Steve Carigon and Luke Koskinen was putting together hilarious videos for our students and volunteers.  Enjoy…

Whicked Bluegill from Lifeline Student Ministries on Vimeo.

Identity Lessons from Harlem

Last month, our high school ministry filled a couple charter buses and headed off to New York City for a week of serving and learning. It was a great experience, we partnered with CSM and Reach Global Crisis Response.

While we were there, I spent a day serving alongside a summer school program in Harlem and overheard a conversation unlike any I’ve ever heard. I was walking alongside two young Dominican boys. We were on our way to a local playground. I began eavesdropping when I heard this line, “What are we?” Here’s how the conversation went between two Dominican American kindergartners.

“What are we?”

“You’re Dominican American.”

“Why?”

“Because you weren’t born here. You were born in the Dominican Republic.”

“Oh.”

“What are you?”

“I’m American Dominican because I was born in American.”

I was struck by this conversation. Listening to these two little boys struggle to put words to their identity reminded me of what it’s like to watch and listen to the students we serve and lead.

  • “Who am I?”
  • “Where do I belong?”
  • “Am I valuable?”

These are the primary questions our students are trying to work out. I’m convinced that identity building is the most important task of adolescence and therefore the most important task of student ministry. Who you believe you are is paramount. It influences every decision, every relationship, and every boundary.

I believe we need to spend less time teaching our students how to live and more time telling them who they are. Based on what our team is seeing and hearing, our students don’t believe they are valuable. They don’t believe they are worth much. The values and pressures of our culture are having terrible impact on their minds and hearts.

Culture is saying: “Whoever you are is perfect!” While simultaneously saying, “You are only valuable if you look like a supermodel, compete at the highest level or score in the top 10%.” In other words, it’s all based on performance. It’s a confusing at best and emotionally crippling at worst.

Unfortunately, I think that many Christian parents and student ministries are guilty of the saying essentially the same thing: “Whoever you are is perfect!” While simultaneously saying, “You are only valuable if you follow all the rules, attend every event and generally make us feel like we are succeeding as a ministry.” It’s still based on performance.

I believe we should help our students build an identity that is rooted in what God has said and demonstrated rather than on who they are and what they are good at.

In other words, “Whoever you are is imperfect. You are valuable because you are created, unique, loved, pursued and forgiven.” In other words, your identity isn’t based on your…it’s based on Him.

My point is that we need to be careful that we don’t teach our students to build their identities on what they look like and what they are good at. When we do this we are simply painting a shiny veneer on what our culture is already saying. This isn’t what our students need.

Our students need to understand that their identity begins and ends with Jesus. This understanding is fundamentally different because it isn’t based on beauty or performance. It’s based on the unchanging truths of the Gospel.

Let’s get serious about teaching our students about their identity because what they believe about themselves influences every decision, relationship and boundary in their lives.

 

image credited to Sophie via Flickr

 

 

Make it Happen

I’m currently in a blog series about creating a magnetic volunteer culture.  I believe that fantastic volunteers–specifically small group leaders, are the key to a transformational student ministry.  Here’s what I’ve written on the topic over the last few weeks:

How to Take Your Student Ministry to the Next Level

Give Them What They Want

Raise the Bar

Today, I want to share a little about making it happen.  What do you need to do to create a magnetic volunteer culture?

 

MAKE IT RIDICULOUSLY FUN

If you want a magnetic culture, people must love serving in your ministry.  It has to be a blast!  I’m convinced that in our ministry, volunteers have more fun that students.  We purposely target aspects of our programming at our volunteers.  We create videos that will be funny for our students and hysterical for our volunteers.  We put on a leader retreat that is over the top.  Essentially, we believe that if you want a magnetic volunteer culture, you must create a volunteer experience so compelling and fun that volunteers would rather be at your program than anywhere else.
Another easy way to make it ridiculously funny is swag.  Give your volunteers free stuff!  It keeps them happy.  It makes them feel valued and it is great marketing.
If you need more ideas on how to make it ridiculously fun, here’s a post I wrote on how to pull off an epic volunteer retreat:  click me

MAKE IT FREE

Step two in making it happen is to remove every obstacle that hinders a volunteer from serving effectively.  One of the biggest obstacles in student ministry is money.  Events, trips and retreats cost money.  It costs money to take a student out for coffee.
Let’s be honest, some of the best student ministry volunteers are college students because they are close in age to students, have tons of energy and (whether they believe it or not) have tons of free time.  What college students don’t have is money.
If you want a magnetic culture, remove the obstacles that prevent volunteers from doing great ministry.  The first and biggest is money.  In our ministry context, we have decided that volunteers will never pay for events, trips and retreats.  We’ve had to rethink some of what we do in order to pull this off but it has been worth it.  We’ve even gone as far as to create a fund for our volunteers who don’t have the money needed to take students out for coffee or lunch.  We believe in one-on-one conversations and we want our volunteers to do amazing work so we have removed the obstacle of money for them.  Make it free.

MAKE IT OBVIOUS

People want to know how they’re doing.  It’s part of human nature.  This is why we have grades, why we keep score and why cars have speedometers.  We want to know how we’re doing.
Also, it feels like a million bucks when you know you’re killing it–when you know you are meeting or exceeding expectations.  Everyone loves that feeling!   So, if you want a magnetic volunteer culture, promote that feeling!  Make the expectations and grading scale obvious and clear (in writing) and then encourage the heck out of your volunteers.
The truth is that most people don’t like quitting something they are really good at.  When you make the expectations obvious and when volunteers know they are doing a good job, they are very likely to stick around for a long time and tell their friends that your ministry is a great place to serve.  Boom…now you have a magnetic volunteer culture.

MAKE IT DOABLE

Here’s one of my pet peeves in student ministry:  ministries that require too much from their volunteers.  “Listen, we’re gonna need you here Sunday mornings for the service, Sunday night for the youth group service and Wednesday night for small groups.  We also have events twice a month, a fall retreat, a winter retreat, a summer retreat and four mission trips…”
We all know that student ministry is crucial and we all know what is at stake but no one can pull off that volunteer load for long.  You might get a few crazies who have no lives but over the long haul, you’ll only manage to hang on to volunteers for a year or two at the most.  Great student ministry–the kind that truly transforms lives, requires long-term investment over years of a student’s life.  You have to make volunteering doable!
In our ministry context, we keep it simple.  Our program only meets once a week.  We only ask our volunteers to show up for 3 hours once a week because we want them to have the time to get on the student’s turf.  Our training meetings are attached to our programming.  We only require 3 events per year:
  • a leader/parent brunch (2 hours)
  • a leader retreat (1 night)
  • a winter retreat (2 nights)

When you make the volunteer load doable and manageable, volunteers feel like their ministry is sustainable.  Did I mention we take the summer off from programming?  Our volunteers come back after a summer break ready to absolutely crush it.  It’s great.

 

So, if you want to make a magnetic volunteer culture happen in your student ministry, make it ridiculously fun, make it free, make it obvious and make it doable.

 

 

photo credited to Nick Saltmarsh via Flickr

Raise the Bar

In in the middle of a blogging series on creating a magnetic volunteer culture.  A magnetic volunteer begins with giving them what they want:  community, a mission and a guide.  Today, I want to talk about raising the bar for our volunteers.

Over my student ministry career, I’ve noticed something.  People want to know what the standard is.  Everyone wants to know how they are doing.  That’s why we have grades.  That’s why we keep score.  That’s why we celebrate accomplishments.  In addition, everyone wants to know what the rules are.  That’s why we have speed limits.  That’s why we have regulations.  That’s why God gave Israel 10 Words.

It’s the same for volunteers.  It’s disorienting when you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing and how you’re doing.  A magnetic volunteer community requires clarity on expectations.  This will help improve your student ministry in two ways.  Volunteers will typically play by the rules.  And, volunteers will rise to the bar you set.  So, let’s raise the bar!  Here’s what I mean.

 

RAISE THE BAR FOR EXPECTATIONS

What exactly does a small group leader do in your ministry?  What are their roles?  How often should they meet with students?  What do you want to happen during small group time?  What events should they attend?  How would they ever know if they are meeting those expectations?  Clarifying these things will bring peace to the hearts of your people and raise the impact of your volunteers’ ministry with students.

Secondly, how do you want your volunteers to behave?  Do they know how they are expected to behave?  What are your standards for dress, language, social media behavior, driving and meeting with students?

It can be uncomfortable to be a volunteer and to sense that their are expectations but to not have clarity on what the expectations are.  The clearer we are on communicating what the boundaries are and what winning looks like, the more healthy and magnetic our volunteer culture will be.

If you’ve never put together something like this, here are a few examples from our ministry:

SG Leader Expections

FM Covenent Staff

One last thing, if you’re going to have expectations, you have to be willing to enforce them.  Volunteers are the backbone of everything we do in our student ministry.  We simply must have great volunteers who are invested and committed.  If a volunteer isn’t fulfilling expectations we will have up to three meetings with the volunteer:
1. Clarify the expectations 
“Hey, you haven’t been meeting the expectations.  I just wanted to meet with you to make sure we’re on the same page on what the expectations are.  Can you do these things?  Yes?  Great!  Let’s meet in a few weeks to check on your progress.”
2. Set a deadline
“Hey, you’re still not meeting expectations.  Can you do this?  Yes?  OK.  I’m giving you 2 weeks to implement these things.  If you’re still not meeting expectations, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to step down.”
3. Enforce the expectations
“Hey, you’re still not meeting expectations.  I’m really sorry but I don’t think this is a good fit for you.  I’m asking you to step away.”
In most cases, meeting number 1 is all it takes because the volunteer thinks, “Oh!  They are actually serious about this.  I better step it up!”

RAISE THE BAR FOR INVESTMENT

Creating a magnetic volunteer culture requires investment.  Volunteers who feel like they are being invested in and growing are likely to stick around for a long time.  The beauty is, when you invest in volunteers, they grow and volunteers who are growing make fantastic leaders.
However, we have to be honest about human nature.  Very few people grow naturally.  We get comfortable.  Most of us require pushes, big and small.  Who has the relational authority and equity to make these pushes?  The people we trust–the people who we are confident love us and have our best interest at heart.
We have to understand that while we need our volunteers to grow, we don’t automatically possess the relational authority to ask them hard questions, challenge their habits or call them into deeper spiritual practices.
If you want the relational authority to speak truth into a volunteers life, you must first invest.  They must know that you care.  This means that your volunteer community must be built on quality relationships, and someone on the student ministry staff needs to be driving the relational culture because investment matters and investment can’t happen outside of trust.

RAISE THE BAR FOR COMMITMENT

Here’s my one sentence descriptions of how high school girls feel about their small group leader…
Freshman year:  “I bet you’ll ditch us.”
Sophomore year:  “You actually came back?!?”
Junior year:  “If you ditch us now we’ll kill you!”
Senior year:  “Can I be in your wedding?”
Graduated:  “Will you be in my wedding?”
Sure, I’m oversimplifying, but my point is that it takes time for a small group leader to gain the trust of students but when trust is achieved, the relational connection becomes powerful.  If a small group leader has invested and stayed connected, by the time that small group is in the last two years of high school the potential is phenomenal.  I’ve been continually amazed by the quality of relationships that develop when a small group leader stays invested for years.  It’s incredible and the spiritual impact is unlike anything else I’ve seen in ministry.
When an adult comes alongside a group of students and invests in them over the long-haul, the result is pure magic.  On the flip side, I recently spent a couple days buried in the statistics of our student ministry.  One of the measurables I was studying was retention.  My questions:  Why do students drop out?  What are the factors that contribute to good retention?  The clearest indicator I found was the student’s small group leader.  If their leader bailed during high school, the student was very likely to walk away.
More than great programming and content, atmosphere or experiences, the most powerfully attractive factor we have in student ministry is the small group relationships.  In many ways, our success is contingent on the longevity and commit of our small group leaders.  We must raise the bar here.
Magnetic volunteer community requires raising the bar in three crucial ways:  raising the bar for expectations, raising the bar for investment and raising the bar for commitment.  I hope you’ve found this helpful.  I’ll be sharing more ideas soon.
photo credited to koocbor via Flickr

Give Them What They Want

I believe the most important factor in a transformational student ministry is a team of magnetic volunteers.  That’s why I’m devoting an entire blog series to building a magnetic volunteer culture.  The first step is to give them what they’re looking for.

GIVE THEM A COMMUNITY

Young or old, Gen X or Millennial, we all want to belong.  We long for that feeling of “family.”  This longing is hardwired within us.  We are at our best when we have a place to belong.  Your volunteers are looking for a community.  Give it to them.

I’ve discovered that when you build a culture that provides volunteers with a place to belong it’s really hard to get rid of them!  I’m serious.  It might sound crazy, but we have a hundred and a half small group leaders and it really isn’t that hard for us to recruit them  It’s common for us to turn away applicants because we don’t have enough small groups for them to lead.  Mostly, I believe this is because we have a reputation of providing our volunteers with a second family.

Each small group leader in our ministry context serves alongside 8-10 other leaders in their “house.”  These leaders sit together at weekly leader meetings and collaborate to lead programming in a house every other week.  In addition, each of these “houses” has two volunteers within it whose primary role is caring for and guiding small group leaders as they lead their students.  Year after year, these “house” teams evolve into something like family.  It is common for our “house” teams to meet an hour before our programming for a leader meeting and to then go out for apps and drinks after our programming because they simply love being together.

If you give your volunteers a place to belong as well as a place to serve, you will create something powerfully magnetic.  It’s amazing to watch.

 

GIVE THEM A MISSION

Not only do we want to belong, but we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves.  We all long for a cause worth giving our lives to. Volunteers are looking for a mission to invest in.  Give them what they are looking for.

One of the biggest mistakes that student ministry leaders make is asking too little of their volunteers.  It’s easy to think that we’re inconveniencing volunteers so we end up saying things like, “Look, if you just show up and keep the kids from breaking something, I’ll buy you dinner.”

We do just the opposite.  We ask our leaders to pour their lives into students.  Right up front, we tell them that this is a massive investment–it’s exhausting, it’s long, it’s hard and oh, and we need you for at least four years.  How can we ask for all this?  We can because we paint a compelling picture of why this investment is so epically worth it and we can show it in the lives of graduated students and their leaders.

We’re investing in the next generation.  We say things like, “In a culture that has largely abandoned teenagers, you have an opportunity to be a mentor.  The impact that your investment will have is incredible.  Listen, in our ministry, you’ll be the youth pastor.  You’ll be the one who knows our students–what they are going through and what they need.  It’s a huge responsibility and an amazing opportunity.”  I’ve learned that this is a mission that many young adults are willing to invest in–especially if they experienced the benefits of a spiritual mentor when they were young.

Give your volunteers a mission to live for.  Don’t make the mistake of asking too little of your volunteers.  Paint a compelling picture of why small group leaders are so powerful in the lives of students and invite your volunteers into the mission.  Then, watch them get to work and just a warning…be prepared to be amazed.  Volunteers who find a place to belong and are sold out to a worthwhile mission are incredible to watch!

 

GIVE THEM A GUIDE

Students aren’t the only ones on a spiritual journey.  Our small group leaders need investment, direction and care too.  In other words, volunteers are looking for someone to guide them–someone has to have the maturity, resources and time to do this because your ministry is only as good as the quality of your volunteers.  If your volunteers aren’t growing then your potential is being stifled.

As I mentioned earlier, in our ministry context, each volunteer is placed within a “house” team.  Each of these teams has a leader of each gender that we call a coach.  A coach is a volunteer who has ministry experience.  Most of our coaches led a small group of students before becoming a coach.  They know all the tricks of the trade and are great at offering advice and tactics for leading small groups.  In addition, our coaches are typically a few years down the road from our small group leaders.  They are more mature in their faith and more established in life.  Because of this, we ask them to invest in the lives of our small group leaders.  We give them a budget and require them to meet up with their leaders one-on-one over coffee and lunch and journey with them.

We firmly believe that our ministry rises and falls with the quality of our volunteers and that’s why we invest in them so heavily.  Providing them with a built in mentor is a great way to invest in them.  Maybe you don’t have the personal or the budget to create a second tier of volunteers to “coach.”  If this is the case, I think that person needs to be you.  One person can really only deeply invest in about 6 students.  If you have more than 6 students in your student ministry, then it’s time to start investing more into your volunteers than you’re investing into your students.  It’s simple math.  Go for the more strategic investment.

So, how do you create a magnetic volunteer culture?  It all begins with giving them what they’re looking for.  I believe every person longs for a family, a mission and a guide.  If you are able to provide your volunteers with these three things you’ll be well on your way to a powerfully magnetic culture.  Stay tuned.  I have a few more ideas on building a magnetic culture and I’ll be sharing them over the next few days.

 

 

photo credited to timlewisnm via Flickr

 

Summer Projects

If your student ministry is like ours, you have ten billion things to do this summer.  There is fall planning, mission trips, camps, recruiting, curriculum writing, students to hang out with, volunteers to care for and develop and then something called a vacation.  I don’t know what that is but I’ve heard it’s nice.

All these projects are a little overwhelming.  If you’re like me, when the list of projects eclipses 10, my brain gets overloaded and I don’t know where to start.  Then…I do nothing.

This summer we’ve implemented 2 project management tools that have changed the game.  The first is Basecamp.

 

Basecamp-Logo

I have fallen in love with Basecamp.  It is a simple, online tool that has streamlined our workflow.  You can create projects, to-do lists, to-do lists within to-do lists, due dates, and assign people to manage to-do lists.  It has a calendar tool and works well with Outlook and Gmail.  We love it.  Here’s a screen shot of our Camp Lifeline project page:

Basecamp-Logo

The second tool that has made our lives better this summer is Creative Boards.  I bought 3 of their boards.  One functions as a “to-do” list of all our summer projects (white are planning for the fall and red are planning for our summer camp).  The second is a “doing” board and the last is a “done” board.

Every morning our team meets for 15 minutes.  Each team member reports in on progress, what they are working on today and what they need from other team members to accomplish their task.  During their report, they move projects from the “to-do” to the “doing” board.  Here are a few pics…

IMG_3672

IMG_3673(1)

IMG_3675

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Hopefully some of these ideas are helpful.  Enjoy your summer projects!

4 Things I’m Excited About

As some of you know, I recently returned from the Orange Conference in Atlanta.  This is my favorite conference in the world for student and children’s workers.  Every time I attend, I leave recharged, entertained, re-visioned and re-impassioned (I think I just made that word up).  But seriously, the Orange Conference is the best time of the year for me.  I want to tell you about 4 things I’m super excited about after attending OC15.

XP3MS

The First thing I excited about is the new XP3 Middle School Curriculum.  One of the areas where I have the most to learn is contextualizing curriculum in a developmentally appropriate way for middle school students.  The truth is that the middle school brain is not like a kid’s brain and it’s not like an adult’s brain.  It’s like, well…a middle school brain.

I’ve had the privilege of previewing some of the material and it’s pretty fantastic.  You can actually get it for 25% right now.  Check it out:  XP3MS

 

IT’S JUST A PHASE

The theme of the Orange Conference this year was “It’s Just a Phase.”  The focus was on the different phases that kids walk through on their way from the crib to adulthood.  It was brilliant and I swear I didn’t cry at all thinking about my own kids growing up….not even a little.

The cool thing is that the theme is encapsulated in a new book which I absolutely love.  I’m serious.  If you are a parent, children’s worker, student ministry person or whatever, you gotta check out the It’s Just a Phase book.  It’s really great..and colorful because that’s important.

It's Just a Phase

THE ORANGE TOUR

OK, so maybe you didn’t get to go to the Orange Conference this year because you had a wedding to go to, couldn’t get off work, or maybe there was a big NASCAR race you couldn’t miss…wow, I hope that’s not the reason.  The good news is that the Orange Tour is coming.  I love the Orange Tour because it’s short and compact.  If you’re new to the Orange strategies and you’ve been hesitant to fly all the way to Atlanta and spend a week at the Orange Conference, come to the Orange Tour.  It’s only a day and you’ll experience what Orange is all about and decide whether it would be a good fit at your church.  Did I mention it’s $50 off right now?

I’m excited about the tour this year because Reggie will unpack the concepts of “It’s Just a Phase” a little more.  Also, I’ll be bringing my entire team to the Tour in Detroit so if you’re going to be there we should totally hang out!

 

OC16

The last thing I’m pumped about is the Orange Conference next year.  Yes, I’m already thinking about next year.  Here’s a little of what I’m excited about…

Great Communicators

Andy Stanley
Andy Stanley

Ridiculous Amounts of Fun

RJ3_8918

 Incredible Worship

OC15-45

Oh and a burger from this food truck…

IMG_2475

I’m telling you, The Orange Conference is the best.  If you haven’t been, you should give it a shot next April.  And, if you’re going next year, look me up!  I’d love to hang out.