Team Leadership VS. serving in ISOLATION

The next few days of Orange Week 2.0 are going to focus on innovations we are striving for in the YELLOW (the church) spectrum of the Orange Strategy. When I talk about FAMILY MINISTRY at Grace Community Church I am talking about a team of leaders working together to accomplish the goal of synchronizing church leaders and parents around a master plan to build faith and character in the lives of the next generation. The heart of the ORANGE model of family ministry (yes there are other models out there that make my youth ministry heart cringe) is focused on the idea of doing ministry as a TEAM. The team we are talking about are leaders who are investing in the next generation...preschool, children, youth, and college! If the church is going to have a profound impact in the life of the family...the kid...the teen...the college student we better work together to make every year we have counts. Our hope is that as we move from doing ministry in ISOLATION toward a TEAM based model we can...

• Dream bigger dreams...
• Strive for the same vision moving in the same direction...
• Share resources for maximum impact in all our environments...
• Learn from each other...
• Laugh together...
• Develop more effective volunteer teams together...
• Push each other to be more innovative...
• Support each other...
• Care more about God's story rather than our personal "ministry picture"

I hope you will THINK TEAM when you hear the words FAMILY MINISTRY. If we are going to effectively engage this generation we have to begin to be as concerned with the CHURCH as we are about building the ministry area we lead. The direction and health of preschool ministry matters as much as any worship service you have planned for your teenagers. Connecting and investing in college students is just as significant as your next family experience in your k-5 environment. We need each other. We need to function as a team. Isolated ministry will never support the momentum we need to shape lives of this generation. Maybe it is time to leave our isolation to go to lunch with our preschool, children, or youth pastor and figure out how you can move toward working as a team.