What is Orange all about?

The exact same week that many of our staff went to the Exponential East Conference in Orlando, Florida I attended the Orange Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. What is the Orange Conference? It’s the largest Family Ministry conference in the world where between 6,000 and 7,000 children, student and family ministry staff and volunteers converge to talk about how to better minister to families in our community.

The theme this year was For our Neighbors. Each class and seminar drove home the theme challenging us to reach out more into our communities, and minister to our friends and neighbors. It was an amazing three days learning a lot about strategic events, developing an effective volunteer leadership team, and about creating a culture in our church where we are investing in our young children and families. You can see some of those lessons in a post I did for my blog last week.

Quotes that really made me think and challenged me from that week:

• “Parenting is one of the loneliest jobs in the world. If we are for our neighbors we never let parents parent alone.” – Carlos Whittaker
• “If our church went out of business, would the community even notice?” – Jeff Henderson
• “Don’t be right. Be Jesus.” – Bob Goff
• “Young people can download thoughtful preaching but they can’t download thoughtful mentoring.” – Kara Powell
• “Instead of seeing busyness as a badge of honor, maybe we should see it as a brokenness.” – Doug Fields
• “We don’t have to agree with each other to be for each other.” – Reggie Joiner
• “Your love for God is demonstrated and authenticated by how we treat those around us.” – Andy Stanley
• “We’ve got to stop acting like discipleship is about information, and realize discipleship is about relationship.” – Reggie Joiner
• “You can make excuses, or you can make progress. You can’t make both.” – Carey Nieuwhof
• “Fail trying. Don’t fail watching.” – Bob Goff

What quote challenges you?

Tom