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In Think Orange
, Reggie Joiner gives a good answer to this question, since he is apparently also asked this question on a regular basis. He says it boils down to the difference between principles and programs.
Most leaders trying to bring about change make the mistake of trying to get people to buy into programs. Instead, leaders should begin by getting folks to embrace principles, which are more big picture and harder to dispute. Some of these principles that Reggie finds pastors embracing are:
- No one has more potential to influence a child’s relationship with God than a parent.
- No one has more potential to influence a parent than the church.
- The church’s potential to influence a child dramatically increases when it partners with a parent.
- The parent’s potential to influence a child dramatically increases when that parent partners with the church.
So start with these principles, or other principles that reflect the deep change you’re trying to bring about. Let the programs flow from these principles organically once folks have bought into the principles.
I’m going to start giving that answer now also. Thanks, Reggie!
Just like in yesterday’s blog I’m going to basically transcribe a story from Reggie Joiner’s Think Orange in this blog. It’s such a powerful and memorable story that I hope you share it with other parents.
One afternoon he and his daughter, Rebekah, “were having a conversation—a rather loud one. It was one of those ‘you’re thirteen and you will do what I say and I am your father and you have to listen to me and that’s just the way it is’ kinds of moments.”
That’s when it happened. She took a verbal shot at me that totally caught me off guard. It hit me so hard I heard myself catch my breath. I had never dreamed one of my children would say what she said to me…
I was so shocked. I had no comeback. It was so personal that I was extremely hurt.
I did the only thing I could think to do at that moment. I left. I walked out of the room, down the stairs, through the den, into the garage, got into my car, and drove off. Have I already said that I was really upset, and very, very personally offended?
I was driving down the road, feeling betrayed, when about fifteen minutes into the drive, my mobile phone rang. It was Rebekah.
‘Dad, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You know I really didn’t mean what I said…But why did you leave? Why did you walk out? I need to know that our relationship is worth fighting for.’
Beautiful expression: a relationship worth fighting for. Do students know that their parents will fight for a relationship with them? What security that brings to a kid.
When I first heard about Reggie Joiner’s “orange” philosophy, my first concern was that he didn’t value the impact of non-family adults in a kids’ life. Now that I have read Think Orange and talked with Reggie Joiner, I know that’s far from the case.
Reggie tells a great story about his own relationship with his son. It’s such a good story that I’ll be telling it to other parents. So that you can share it with parents also, I’m going to basically transcribe it in this blog.
One night, Reggie’s sixteen year-old son, Reggie Paul, came home past curfew because he had been out on a date with a girl. Reggie remembers,
I confronted him in his room. I said something that probably wasn’t the wisest thing for a father to say…I told him, ‘You are late coming home from a date, and I just need to know what’s going on in your relationship, and I need to know now. I want you to tell me everything.’
He looked at me and said exactly what you’d expect him to say: ‘No, I’m not going to tell you that.’
Then I said to him, ‘You have to tell me; I am your father.’
He said, ‘No, I’m not going to tell you because you are my father. You make the rules.
I was so flustered. I felt paralyzed. I didn’t know what to do.
The next day, I showed up at Andy Stanley’s office and said, ‘I just don’t understand it. I’m trying to get my son to tell me what’s going on, and he won’t tell me anything.’
Andy thought for a second, then with his gift of mercy said to me, ‘Well, did you tell your father everything?’
The next day I went back to Reggie Paul. I said, ‘I talked to Andy and he said he didn’t tell his father everything either, and I should understand why you won’t tell me everything. I’m trying to be okay with that. But here’s the question: if you won’t tell me, then who will you tell?’
His response was easy. He said, ‘That’s fair. I’ll tell you who I’ll talk to.’ He named someone.
As soon as he said the name, I felt a huge sense of relief because the person he named had been a lifelong friend of mine.
That’s the type of web of relationships every student needs, and that’s the type of relationships every parent and youth worker can point students toward.
A few weeks ago I was in Atlanta for the Youth Specialties National Youth Workers Convention. One of my favorite aspects of the convention is the chance to connect with old friends, and meet new ones.
I got to have dinner with Reggie Joiner, founder and CEO of the reThink group (as well as Brad and Kristen from his team) and he gave me his book, Think Orange. I had been wanting to read it so I was grateful to get it from Reggie himself.
There is so much good stuff in this book—for youth workers and parents—that I’ll be devoting the next several blogs to it.
Let me begin by explaining what “orange” is. According to Reggie, yellow is the “light” of the church, and red is the “heart” of the family. When you bring the two together, you get…yup, you guessed it…orange.
Reggie describes the premise of the book: “As long as churches do only what churches are doing, they will get only the results they are presently getting. And as long as families do only what families are doing, they will produce only the outcomes they are presently producing. To experience a different outcome, we have to embrace a different strategy.”
The strategy? Orange. The church and family working together to influence kids.
According to Reggie, the average church has 40 hours/year with a kid (when you subtract holidays, vacations, schedule conflicts). The average family has 3000 hours with that kid. Reggie demonstrated this once while he was speaking by bringing out 40 small plastic balls to represent the 40 hours of church/kid contact time. Then he brought out several shopping carts, filled to the rim to represent the 3000 hours the family has with that same kid.
I’m going to recommend this book to our children’s pastor and youth pastor. In fact, I’d like the three of us to meet together to discuss it. I want my church—and the church in general—to move more toward orange.
Today is World AIDS Day, established by the World Health Organization in 1988. While government and non faith-based organizations may be making a big deal (or at least raising awareness) about AIDS Day, often the Church sits silently on days like this. That’s too bad. When we fail to speak and act on behalf of the suffering we miss opportunities to engage students in our ministries and communities in seeking justice.
Today at FYI we wanted to point you to a few free resources to help you engage AIDS — perhaps today, or perhaps as you plan for the next few months:
1. A few years ago we wrote a curriculum in partnership with World Vision and Youth Specialties designed to help engage youth ministries to learn about and act on the injustices surrounding the global AIDS epidemic, most especially in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s still available as a free download on our website to use in your ministry.
2. We also created a year’s worth of monthly ideas for use in worship, prayer, and small groups to engage kids around AIDS, poverty, and other global concerns. It’s all available for free download, too.
3. World Vision offers ideas specifically geared to college student ministries here, which can easily be adapted to high school or middle school ministries.
4. Beyond youth ministry, last year we partnered with World Vision and the Willow Creek Association to provide this free curriculum resource for adult small groups and families.
Be sure to let us know what else you’re doing to engage youth and families around AIDS and helping them act with justice toward those who suffer from HIV/AIDS.
Recently I was speaking at the Youth Specialties National Youth Workers Convention, and Andy Stanley from North Point Church in Atlanta was one of the general session speakers. He was talking about how to lead in the midst of uncertainty and he was trying to show the difference between vision and plans.
He had the audience repeat after him: vision remains but plans change.
Then he made it more vivid. He said, “Fall in love with your vision but date your plans.”
Love that. What’s the vision we have for our families and our ministries? That’s long-term. This month, or this season, the plan to accomplish that vision might look one way. Next month, or next season, it might look different.
Be married to your vision but be ready to be divorced from your plans.
Today I was reading the story of the ten lepers. You know the one — Jesus heals ten lepers and only one, the Samaritan, comes back to express his gratitude. Even after many years of following God and reading this story, it hits me every time. It hits me because I so easily become like the nine lepers, and take so much of life for granted. Yet gratitude takes nothing for granted. Gratitude is one of the neglected spiritual practices in our time.
I remember worshipping in a small gathering of believers in the highlands of Guatemala, and being amazed at the profound gratitude of these believers who, by my standards, had so little in life. But they were overflowing with gratitude.
What would happen if in every youth group in every church in America, we cultivated a heart of gratitude for life? But first it needs to take deeper root in our own lives. So I am pulling out my gratitude journal and ending each evening the next month with my reflections on gratitude, not just for Thanksgiving day but everyday.
This quote by Thomas Merton captures a lot of what I want for my own heart of gratitude.
Gratitude is more than a mental exercise, more than a formula of words. We cannot be satisfied to make a mental note of things which God has done for us and then perfunctorily thank Him for favors received.
To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us — and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is grace, for it brings with us immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder, and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference… Gratitude is therefore the heart of the Christian life.
When I was dating my now-husband, I quickly realized his spirituality looked different than mine. I felt closest to Jesus sitting down, reading my Bible and journaling. He felt closest to Jesus hammer in hand, helping build a house with a group of people in Mexico.
In God Is Closer Than You Think
, John Ortberg writes about different spiritual pathways that help us experience God’s presence:
- Intellectual pathway
- Relational pathway
- Serving pathway
- Worship pathway
- Activist pathway
- Contemplative pathway
- Creation pathway
While John encourages us each to have some involvement in each of the pathways, we probably have a few that feel most natural to us. For me, it’s #2, #4, and #6. For my husband, it’s #1, #3, and #7.
I think it’s time we move past simply encouraging our students to have quiet times. Those are good things, but there are lots of different ways to experience God’s presence.
Are we worrying about the wrong things?
Are we too overprotective, or too irresponsible?
How do we measure risk?
These are questions that haunt parents, especially when something goes wrong with one of their kids. Case in point: last week, trying not to be overprotective, I let my toddler climb on a kitchen stool (nurturing his newfound love of adventurous climbing). We ended up in urgent care. We have gates on our stairs to keep that same toddler from crashing down them, but our family lives and plays in an urban neighborhood with a moderate level of crime. It’s all measured risk. But the measuring can be flat-out unnerving.
Last Friday Time ran a feature called The Growing Backlash Against Over-Parenting, pitting “helicopter” or “stealth bomber” parents against the emerging consortium of “slow-parenting” gurus. As Free-Range Kids mom Lenore Skenazy argues, “We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.”
The article is definitely slanted in critique of the hovering phenomenon that has led parenting trends of the past decade or more. Wherever you stand on that, what’s certainly worth evaluating is how much our parenting is driven by fear. At one point author Nancy Gibbs notes, “Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind.”
All parenting requires measured risk. But I sure don’t want to be eaten alive by fear about my kids while I’m measuring. How do you see parents of kids in your ministry working through these dynamics, and how much does fear drive the process? What have you learned from parents who operate out of a different mindset?
I’m reading John Ortberg’s God Is Closer Than You Think. John’s a Fuller trustee, a Fuller alum, and just an all around good friend of Fuller.
Recently on an airplane I read John’s encouragement to simply walk through your day with Jesus. Start by simply reviewing your day’s calendar with Jesus, talking with Him about anything that makes you feel nervous or overwhelmed. As you drive, imagine Jesus is sitting with you. As you talk with others, imagine Jesus in the room, experiencing the conversation with you.
So today I’ve had this “walk through the day with Jesus” perspective. I woke up and drove to the gym at 5:45 am, and I asked Jesus to help me experience Him during my weight lifting class. During my e.mail, I was more aware of Jesus. As I was driving later in the day, I relaxed, knowing that Jesus was with me.
It’s not like Jesus showed up in any incredibly profound way today. But I was more aware of Jesus. And that made me more relaxed, and more aware of the moment. I think I’ll try this tomorrow too.
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