http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/tags/plant Orange Leaders Forum en-US Sat, 04 Feb 2012 04:00:38 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/search.php http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/topic/how-do-i-implement-orange-in-a-start-up-church#post-6 Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:25:19 +0000 Beth Nelson 6@http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/ <p>In many ways, you have the ideal situation. You are designing a church model from the ground up, and you don't need to transition out of anything. That said, even new organizations can suffer from fuzzy vision, unclear direction, and unsynchronized strategy. The key is ensuring that all leaders stay on the same page and to create a model that is internally consistent.</p> <p>The first step is to think through the implications of becoming Orange across all aspects of your ministry. In our opinion, the simpler the model of church you run with, the easier it will be to accomplish excellent family and adult ministry. Rather than run dozens of programs (or plan to run dozens of ministries as you grow larger), pick a few well-chosen environments that serve adults, children, students, and families.</p> <p>In <em>The Seven Practices of Effective Ministry</em>, Reggie Joiner, Andy Stanley, and Lane Jones described how their family ministry strategy was an integral part of a step-based model of ministry that they implemented church-wide. Another great book is Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger's <em>Simple Church</em>. Both the <em>Seven Practices</em> and <em>Simple Church</em> serve as good companions for an overall model of ministry that works well with Orange ministry and are easily applicable to church plants.</p> <p>If you do only a few things and do them well, you might discover these benefits:</p> <p>- You have a much better chance of becoming excellent at something.<br /> - Participation in what you are doing will likely go up. When there are fewer options, people tend to participate at a higher level.<br /> - It becomes easier to get adults to serve in family ministry and other environments because they are not out at church five nights a week.<br /> - Families have more time to spend at home - because what happens at home really is as important as what happens at church.</p> <p>Regardless of what specific things you decide to do, spend time before you launch to study the issues and engage in meaningful discussions with your team of leaders (staff and key volunteers). Don't just agree on the mission (all Christian mission and vision statements basically affirm the same truths); take the time to agree on the strategy. Make sure there is agreement to this question: how will we accomplish the mission God has given us? The more agreement you get on that question, the more you will experience true alignment as a team, and the greater the potential of your congregation to do something significant becomes. </p>