http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/tags/programming Orange Leaders Forum en-US Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:27:01 +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-fit-a-family-experience-fx-into-our-schedule#post-93 Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:33:46 +0000 fomchurch 93@http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/ <p>I am about to enter a dream world...lots of pressure to do it well too...we are doing a monthly FX beginning this month. We are doing it the last Sunday of each month to kick off the next month. Here's the kicker - we are replacing our adult services with the family production! The entire church will be involved and are very excited. We have a coffee shop that will make special kids' drinks on those Sundays...greeters will all be wearing KidStuf t-shirts, etc. Coolest thing is that doing it this way was the pastor's idea! We did a preview on August 16th on a Sunday night to give people a glimpse of it and introduce our new cast...we had 230 people show up (at a church that does not do Sunday nights). The max seating in our worship center is 280! </p> <p>The original reason that led to doing it on Sunday mornings like this was a space issue - the worship center/gym is the only room big enough to do the production - also cuts some costs since some of the tech equipment was already in place. However, I believe the better reason is that the whole church takes ownership and puts families at the center of it's mission every month! </p> http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/topic/how-do-i-fit-a-family-experience-fx-into-our-schedule#post-13 Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:06:46 +0000 Beth Nelson 13@http://www.orangeleaders.com/forums/ <p>First, decide as a team what you want the goal of your FX to be - do you want to strengthen your current families, or do you want to reach out to new families? Also, perform a realistic assessment of the culture in your community. For example, is Wednesday night still known as a "church night" in your city? If so, maybe Wednesday night is good. If not, and if families have sports, lessons, and other programs going on Wednesday night, maybe you need to stick with a time on Sunday. For example, if high school football is huge in your community, it is not likely that families would forego the football game to come to your FX, so take Friday night off the table as an option. You might also pick a time when there is no other competing activity in your church (in other words, don't try to do FX during your adult Sunday school hour; it will be almost impossible to get parents to attend, much less<br /> participate as actors, tech directors, etc.) If you have to move into what might be considered the lunch hour, bring in pizza or<br /> sandwiches and allow families to enjoy a time of fellowship along with the program. Just try to start somewhere, even if it's once a quarter or a couple of times a year (around Christmas or Easter, for example).</p> <p>In the first year: Use FX to launch the ministry season (it could take the place of an adult service or be held as a special event), then another at Christmas, and another at Easter.</p> <p>In the second year, or if you have more resources: Hold your FX the first week of the month as a Family Night on Wednesday or a weekend evening. </p> <p>As a final step: Hold a weekly FX at a regular time. </p> 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>