I am headed to the Orange Conference in Atlanta in 11 hours and I have had a few individuals ask me about it and what it means. Here is a snipit from their site that explains it pretty well:
The Orange Conference is an opportunity for churches to have their key leaders in a room together being challenged about what it means and what it takes to reach the next generation. It's not a children's ministry conference. It's not a youth ministry conference. ORANGE IS THREE CONFERENCES ROLLED UP INTO ONE EVENT. It's the only place that a senior pastor, student pastor, children's pastor and volunteers that work within these ministries can learn together and begin formulating a strategy to impact the lives of the people in your congregation by...
...creating a plan for handing off kids from preschool ministry to children's ministry; from children's ministry to student ministry; from student ministry into college ministry - a plan that works among these age groups to build a strong foundation of faith, grow it, challenge it and mature it before students leave your ministry to become independent adults in this world.
...equipping parents with kids at every age level to become the primary spiritual leader for their kids - to partner with them so that the one hour the church has with kids each week is multiplied at home.
...creating opportunities for families to invite their neighbors to a relevant and engaging environment at your church - to see what happens to their own faith when they begin investing in those around them.
This gets me excited and makes me dream of the possibilities that could occur when church deliberately took steps to be "orange".
Why Orange
Orange is a color that symbolizes INTEGRATION. It's the brilliant result of a merger between two more traditional influences - red and yellow. Just like something radically new happens when red and yellow come together, there is a different kind of culture that is established when the Church understands the value of a true partnership with the family. There is a different kind of culture that is established in a church that really values a compreshensive and integrated strategy. When church staff members step out of their silo-style departmental thinking and start playing together, it creates synergy. Your team must be intentional about alignment. You can never get on the same page if you don't spend quality time in the same room discussing the things that really matter.
Orange is a color that suggests CHANGE. It's the primary color for autumn, a season of transition. You might be thinking, "Don't things turn orange right before they turn brown and die?" Actually, smart leaders realize there's a life-cycle to any organizational model. Every innovative idea and creative program will ultimately grow old. Styles and methods need to change more frequently than we are willing to allow. That's because the idea of change makes comfortable Christian leaders nervous, and it keeps the Church lagging behind culture. As a result, we give a generation the perception that the Church and maybe even God are irrelevant. Churches are notorious for feuding over what is already dying while they lose focus on the timeless principles that really matter. Just remember, even the most ground-breaking version of today's Church will ultimately have to be redesigned and reborn.
It is my belief that we definitely need change in the church and this is a great avenue of change and so much of the change is grounded in the Deut. 6 priniple within the ministry of Orange.
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