Orange 12: My GameChanging Story

(picture originally uploaded to Flickr by I, Timmy)

Reggie probably doesn’t remember this, but 10 years ago my wife and I had lunch with him at a conference put on by Kidz Blitz called Fresh Air. I was in my second year as a full time children’s pastor. That conference was the first time I heard Reggie share his passion for what it might look like to actively partner with parents. Reggie asked me tough questions about ministry, my church, and my calling. He challenged me to not settle for the easy answer or the status quo. That was a gamechanger for me. I remember going back to my room with my wife that night and bawling because his challenge awakened boxed up dreams and desires to help families become fully devoted to Christ and his Kingdom mission in this world. That moment shaped my approach to all that I’ve done. 

Ever since then, I’ve had the deepest respect for Reggie. Over the past 10 years I’ve seen him continually grow and learn and practice the advice he gave me: not to settle for the easy answer or the status quo.

At the opening session of Orange 12, Reggie did it again! He didn’t back away from what he knew needed to be shared. He challenged each of us to admit to the messiness of the Gospel and live in the tension of that mess. (I’ll blog more about that in another post.)

Thank you, Reggie, for unknowingly being a mentor and gamechanger from afar.

There’s one more day of the Orange Conference left. It’s my hope to gather some other Gamechanger stories from people here and share them with you.

Have you had a gamechanger moment in your life? What was it? How did it change you?

GIVEAWAY FOR BLOGGER WEEK FEBRUARY 4-8, 2013!!! I am giving away a free registration for Orange 13! (This is just for your ticket to Orange. You’ll have to still come up with a way to get there and you hotel stay.) You have three ways to enter:

  • Leave a comment with your gamechanging story;
  • Share this post on your Facebook wall (be sure to tag me so I know); or
  • Tweet about this post (be sure to include @henryjz in your tweet so I know)

All entries must be done by 11:59 p.m. (PST) on February 8, 2013. I will randomly choose a winner.

Check out the other Orange Blogger Week bloggers!

Amy Dolan Re-Imagines Partnering with Parents

I love Amy Dolan‘s perspective on spiritual formation and how to engage families from all walks of life. Check out this amazing post over at her blog on what I believe is a much better way to see what are job is as children’s ministers when it comes to partnering with parents.

“helping parents identify things that get in their way, and then leading each to cast aside the preventers. a new way of partnering with parents.”

Happy Holidays? Does it really matter?

Reblogged from From Gordon West, KidZ PreZ:

Click to visit the original post
  • Click to visit the original post

We just heard yet another news story about the evergreen tree with colored lights on it being called a “holiday tree” this year. We attended the Phoenix Symphony yesterday for a wonderful afternoon of “Holiday Pops,” where Santa Claus wished us all “Happy Holidays.” And last night a very kind Home Depot employee noticed my VBS t-shirt before telling us that he refuses to obey corporate policy and always wishes people a “Merry Christmas.”

Read more… 361 more words

Here's a great post from Gordon West about how we need to spend more time living out Jesus every day and not focus just on "putting Christ back in Christmas."

#OrangeTour comes to the San Francisco Bay Area!!!

#orangetour #thinkorange #sanjose @reggiejoiner

I’m excited to be at the Orange Tour at Westgate Church in San Jose, CA.

#orangetour #thinkorange

I thought these name tags with your Twitter handle were great!

Reggie opened up with a great challenge to meet the changes of culture in a positive light. I love this emphasis by Reggie and the ReThink group. He challenged all of us to think about how we are trying to reach the 75% of the people who will never enter the church. I can go on about my ideas of the theological and sociological ideals that have led to the church focusing on just the 25% who are already here, but that would take too long and many of you would nod off. In short, I agree with Reggie that we have lost sight of one of our imperatives to go outside of ourselves and respectfully engage those who don’t believe what we believe.

If you haven’t attended anything Orange, and you are in any type of ministry that engages families, what are you waiting for? Check out one of the Tour stops or go to the Orange Conference!

#MAKEASTAND

Have you heard of this amazing 8 year old?

“Gandhi was one person. Martin Luther King was one person. Mother Theresa was one person. Why can’t you be one person?”

Vivienne Harr, an 8 year old girl in Fairfax, CA saw a picture of two boys who are victims of modern-day slavery carrying huge slabs of rock on their backs. She decided that she wanted to raise enough money to free 500 kids from slavery. With the help of her family, she set up a lemonade stand in May of 2012 to accomplish this. She has made lemonade and shown up to sell it everyday since then. So far, she’s raised $20,000! She has inspired people all over the world to join her efforts and is even collaborating to come out with her very own brand of lemonade of which all profits will go to Not For Sale.

What are we doing in our children’s ministries to inspire children like this? Is it even important to do so? How do we go beyond inspiration to empowerment?

Family Ministry Blog Tour

I’m a couple of days late on getting this post up for the Family Ministry Blog Tour. (You can take a look at all the other posts on this tour here.) Life’s been crazy between being a dad taking care of kids on summer break, beginning research for my masters thesis (which has yet to take any coherent form), and working part time as part of the children’s ministry team at Menlo Park Presbyterian.

Figuring out what it means to minister to families has been something I’ve wrestled with since I stumbled upon a Children’s Ministry article in 2001 about a church in Atlanta that was doing a shared family experience. It talked about how this church was finding ways to intentionally partner with parents in the discipleship of their children. Following that, I had the opportunity to hear the family ministry director of the church at that time speak at a conference. While at that conference, I was able to grab lunch with that ministry leader and was challenged about my ideas and prejudices in children’s ministry.

Fast forward to the present… I’m still wrestling with what it means to minister to families! My views, thoughts, philosophies, understandings and practices continue to change. I’ve been in ministry as a volunteer and on staff. I’ve been in megachurches, small churches and churches in between. I’ve worked as a solo children’s minister and as part of a team. I’ve also served in various contexts in the United States and Canada. Family ministry has looked differently in each of the different places I’ve been.

I’m currently reading a book by Stephanie Coontz, a historian and family researcher, entitled “The Way We Never Were.” In it, Coontz details and debunks our fascination with the idea of a “traditional family” by shedding light on what families, especially American families, have looked like over the past 200 years. One of the themes in the book is that we will not be able to move forward and help families thrive if we continue to long “for a past that was never as idyllic or uncomplicated as we sometimes imagine” (p. xxviii). While Coontz is referring to helping families thrive socially, I believe the same issue is keeping us from helping families thrive spiritually.

As I survey the different discussions surrounding family ministry, I have heard many voices calling for a return to “gospel-centered” or “biblical” families. While these calls are well-intentioned, I don’t think they do much to help families enter into what Skye Jethani refers to as the “with-God” life. The reason for this is because those calls infer that there is an ideal style or model of family that exists or existed. Those calls berate families for falling short of this mythical ideal and, in turn, discourage parents who already feel deficient in how they are conducting the direction of their families.

Family has always been in a continual state of flux. (Note that I did not say that the Gospel has been in a state of flux.) There has never been a “golden age” of family life and there never will be; trying to point back to one is pointless. So, how do we move forward and frame what family ministry is?

First, we recognize the gospel story is a story… God’s Story. It is a story of hope, love and redemption that God began at creation, turned on its head with the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ and continues to write today.

Second, we recognize that the idea of family is a continually changing story. Families throughout history and locations will look different from each other, and each of those families is writing their own stories.

Third, we help families discover how to allow God to rewrite their stories rather than God simply being a recurring character or footnote in their stories.

This kind of family ministry is messy. This kind of family ministry doesn’t have all the answers. This kind of family ministry isn’t about replicating an ideal family type. This kind of family ministry empowers each family to uniquely become more like the family God wants them to be rather than the kind of family I think all families should be like.