so many thoughts from ORANGE...

Well, I am sitting here in the Atlanta airport, waiting for my plane to take me back to VA to pick up the moving truck and come on to our new home in Clarksville TN. I have been at the ORANGE conference here put on by the REthink group and Reggie Joiner. We took 13 of our team from Grace Community and spent three days dreaming of what could be if preschool, children's, and student ministry planned, ministered, and worked together to influence children and students in our city and partner with parents as they raise their children.

For so long each area of ministry has exsisted independently, taken their group of volunteers and huddled in their own world with no care for the other area of ministry. I know this because I have led student ministries in 2 "megachurhes" during the past 7 years and the environment was no different at either one. Every are of ministry did their own thing, fought for bigger budgets, announcement time, and energy from the church as a whole. We all just kind of did our own thing and stayed busy as ever going from THING to THING, EVENT to EVENT, WEEK to WEEK. We had great intentions and great plans but we did not work together. We were busy and did some good things but at the end of the experience I wonder if there might be a better way.

We dreamed about this better way for three days at ORANGE. Well for that matter I have come to GCC to see what can happen with a Family Ministry concept since I am the Director of Family Ministry. So many people wonder what in the world I am going to do and I can prmise you this is is going to be different no mater how many times you will just refer to me as the "youth pastor". Well here it is...I basically lead some of the sharpest preschool, children's and Student leaders in the world to try to develop a master plan for leading children and teens to follow Christ and empower parents to be the biggest spiritual influence in their lives. Family Ministry is about partnering with parents to influence their children for Christ. Parents are the most powerful spiritual influence in a child's life so why not do everything we can to help them build into their kids. The great thing about my new job is that I get to dream about what could be if a team of preschool children's and student leaders worked together to invest in the family together. The other great thing is we actually get to carry our our dreams and live in faith. We do not have all the answers and we are committed to being life long learners. We lead together, we plan together, we share one budget, we go to battle together, we pry together, we worship together, we help each other, we create for each other. We are one team who work together and what i learned this week by being with my team is that God has put some incredible people in this little year and a half old church. If you get a chance go to http://www.orangeconference.com/ and check out what went down this week. It is gonna be wild to see what happens at Grace because of our time to dream and pray together this week. God is gonna do some wild things!