Browsing all posts in Orange/Family Ministry.

Valuing the People Around You

If you want to attract and keep great people around you, value them.
As I watch my own patterns, I realize this truth – I gravitate to where I feel valued most.  My guess is you do too. Probably your favourite people to be around value your input, listen to your ideas and respect you both [...]

What Happened Christmas Eve

So we rolled with our Christmas Eve services and I think our Service Programming team (the sweet team that creates our services) did a great job straddling the tension between giving people what they want and delivering what people need.  As last week’s post pointed out, Christmas is an especially tough service to plan.
So what [...]

Heart Attack

So I’m going to share a little piece of my world with you today.
One of the hardest battles I face internally is related to my heart.  Like you, I’m most effective when my heart is fully engaged.
But over time, it takes work to keep your heart fully engaged.  It usually unfolds this way – starting [...]

The Orange Families Podcast

I'm already getting  questions from people about how they can get their hands on the messages for the Orange Families series that started last Sunday at Connexus.
This is a huge series for us, because we built our church around a family ministry strategy.  In Orange Families, we're covering for the first time the parenting [...]

Outsourcing

One of the ways people exercise power when not connected to Christ is to outsource everything you don't want to do to someone who will do it.  Some of this makes sense.  No one has a monopoly on gifting, and to work in a team that's healthy and diverse is pretty phenomenal.
But the shadow side [...]

Great Ideas

I love getting around leaders who make me think.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to be at the North Point staff meeting where Reggie Joiner spoke. 
After serving at North Point for over 10 years, Reggie left the staff there to devote all of his time to ReThink.  As part of that move, he's traveled [...]

2009: A Missional Marketing Decision

Last week, we talked about why we stopped a lot of outside marketing at Connexus in 2008 and asked some questions about when marketing might be helpful.
Yesterday we had one of our final 2009 budget meetings.  We had $5000 budgeted to market a parenting series we're doing in February of 2009. The problem is, [...]

What Marketing Might Help With

So yesterday I blogged on the downside of marketing in response to Tony Morgan's post about why churches should stop marketing.
Really grateful for the questions/comments Nick and Dan offered in regard to yesterday's post, so here's a little more.

To me, starting a church is as much as question of narrow-casting your vision as broadcasting [...]

Vision Disconnect, or Strategic Difference?

I have loved the opportunity to connect with leaders on the Orange Tour this year. We get to talk about family ministry and leadership, two subjects I love.
But as I sat down with lead pastors in over half a dozen cities, a few things became clearer for me.  We often talk about being aligned on [...]

I Am Attracted to Two Things

I was at church Saturday night listening to Reggie Joiner bring the message.  (I have loved just being in church the last two weekends – not leading anything, just plugging into God as a Christ-follower.)  Something Reggie said in the middle of the message stopped me in my tracks.
If you really want your home or [...]