Carey Nieuwhof

The Orange Families Podcast

I'm already getting  questions from people about how they can get their hands on the messages for the Orange Families series that started last Sunday at Connexus.

This is a huge series for us, because we built our church around a family ministry strategy.  In Orange Families, we're covering for the first time the parenting strategy that Reggie Joiner and I have been developing over the last year.  I'm so excited to share it with our families and the wider church community (some of you have heard snippets of this on the Orange Tour and at last year's Orange Conference, but this is the first full run at it).

The easiest way to get the messages is via the Connexus Podcast. Just go to iTunes and search "Connexus Community Church" and our audio and video casts will pop up (don't have iTunes? click here.)  Subscribe away.  It's free.

You can also go to our website where we stream the messages.  You can also burn a DVD for yourself off our site.  Click here.

If you are a church leader or volunteer who wants to know more, I'm teaching a breakout at the Orange Conference on how to position your church to maximize a parenting series.  Orange is an awesome conference (you have to get to it) and, if you're interested, the breakout covering this is called "Communicating the Family Ministry Strategy to Your Church". 

Really looking forward to the next five weeks of Orange Families.  Excited by how God might change families because of it!  Looking forward to hearing your feedback and comments!

Outsourcing

One of the ways people exercise power when not connected to Christ is to outsource everything you don't want to do to someone who will do it.  Some of this makes sense.  No one has a monopoly on gifting, and to work in a team that's healthy and diverse is pretty phenomenal.

But the shadow side of outsourcing and delegation is that it can lead to an abdication of responsibility.  When I was in high school, I thought math was so awful I remember thinking "when I get older I'm just going to hire someone to do my math."  Right.  Then I ended up in ministry.  Glad I married a smart woman and have smart kids.  And that I have a calculator. And that I don't do the finance at Connexus.

That attitude is not healthy.  Nothing wrong with not being good at something, but I absolved myself of responsibility.

Been doing lots of prep work for our Orange Family series that starts February 15th. One of the things I'm wondering about: have families outsourced spiritual development?  I don't mean in some old-school "let's read six chapters of the Bible while we sit in neatly lined up rows" kind of way, but I mean do we expect someone else to raise our kids spiritually?

What do you think?  What's your experience?  If you're struggling in this area, can you identify what the issue might be? 

I'd love to hear back from you!

Great Ideas

I love getting around leaders who make me think.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to be at the North Point staff meeting where Reggie Joiner spoke. 

After serving at North Point for over 10 years, Reggie left the staff there to devote all of his time to ReThink.  As part of that move, he's traveled the country meeting church leaders.  Yesterday, he shared some of his learnings.  Here are a few highlights that got me thinking:

• People who are anti-mega church tend to be the people who already go to church.  That hit me pretty hard.  Obviously, large churches do a pretty good job of attracting unchurched people.  Church people find large churches too big.  I'll chew on that one awhile.

• Maybe the job of the communicator is not to resolve tension, but to create it so that people leave having to wrestle with what was said.  I love that!  I think that happens a bit already in good preaching, but what would happen if we made that a goal?  In family ministry, we say that what happens at home is as or more important than what happens at church.  Maybe that's true of big church (when adults gather) too.  

• You can tell people they are significant, but until you give them something significant to do, they won't feel significant. Okay, that's just way too true. It made me think - maybe the problem of burnout in churches is not that we have given people too much to do, maybe it's that we've given people too many insignificant things to do. 

What do you think?  Do we need to create more tension - more wrestling, in preaching?  Do we ask people to do things that are not really significant?  Is there anything wrong with a large church?

PS. If you want more stuff like this, you might want to get down to this conference where this kind of sharp thinking will be all over the place.

2009: A Missional Marketing Decision

Last week, we talked about why we stopped a lot of outside marketing at Connexus in 2008 and asked some questions about when marketing might be helpful.

Yesterday we had one of our final 2009 budget meetings.  We had $5000 budgeted to market a parenting series we're doing in February of 2009. The problem is, you can't reach many homes with $5000 when your ministry area has 200,000 unchurched people in it.

So here's what we decided: we'll try to do more for less. We cut the marketing budget by several thousand dollars and decided to focus all of our marketing on putting invitations for friends into the hands of people who already attend Connexus. What we mean is things like cards and invitations our attenders can share with friends and family, or even gift cards for meals out for people who come for the first time. That's less money, but we hope it's more impact.

Here's our thinking:

• $1000 designed to produce resources regular attenders can use to share with their friends might produce greater results than $10,000 or $20,000 randomly distributed in neighbourhoods.
• It will help us stick to our belief that growth happens best when people invest in relationship with friends who don't go to church and invite them to come with them.
• Viral growth is always the best kind of growth. Buzz generated by people who love something is always compelling.  That's how the early church grew.
• People who come in on the invitiation of a friend have a friend to guide them through their spiritual journey.

So in 2009, no external advertising.  Just a few well made resources in the hands of attenders who can share it with friends.

Would love your thoughts, reactions and ideas.

What Marketing Might Help With

So yesterday I blogged on the downside of marketing in response to Tony Morgan's post about why churches should stop marketing.

Really grateful for the questions/comments Nick and Dan offered in regard to yesterday's post, so here's a little more.

• To me, starting a church is as much as question of narrow-casting your vision as broadcasting it.  While all church leaders want numbers, I think it's better to have 15 core leaders who share the same heart and strategy than 100 people who have competing strategies sitting around the table.  If I was to market, it would mostly be only to get the right people around the table. I think that can be done relationally in start up or through carefully targeted marketing. (North Point started with no marketing, but some partners use them.)

• Once you have your core, and the DNA of your church has gelled, marketing can be a friend when it empowers your team to more effectively invite their friends.  Rave cards can help alot and we are constantly putting materials into the hand of our regular attenders to help them share the message (for example, starting with our next series, anyone who asks gets a free CD of each message). 

• I think the best application of marketing, if a church is going to do it, is to connect with unchurched families over parenting. The average unchurched parent doesn't lie awake at night wondering what some senior pastor is going to talk about next...but they do lie awake some nights wondering whether their kids are going to be all right. Most parents just don't know the church can help them.  If a church has a great family ministry strategy, some marketing can help make the connection.  Since helping families win at home is the heart of our mission, and the only money we really have set aside in 2009 is to market a series and strategy aimed at parents we have planned for February and March 2009.  But we are going to deeply encourage our regular attenders to get their friends to that series, so it's a way of supplementing our strategy.

Overall, I think the withdrawal from spending tens of thousands of dollars on marketing has been healthy.  It has

• Refocused me on ensuring that personal connections between people and Christ and people and people are being made.

• Given us a more accurate read on what's really happening at Connexus.  No 'fake' growth.  Any growth is from buzz that people give to people.

• It has better focused who comes to our church.  There has been a little less church shopping and more personal connection.  For me, that's a win.

Other thoughts?

Vision Disconnect, or Strategic Difference?

I have loved the opportunity to connect with leaders on the Orange Tour this year. We get to talk about family ministry and leadership, two subjects I love.

But as I sat down with lead pastors in over half a dozen cities, a few things became clearer for me.  We often talk about being aligned on vision as leaders. I know I talked about it for years with leaders.  But this fall it became clear to me that maybe it's a bit of a false discussion.

Here's why: just about every follower of Jesus I know is reasonably aligned on vision.  We love God and think Jesus is who He says He is.  Think about every church vision statement you've seen.  How many have truly been off base?  Some are written better than others, but have you ever really disagreed with one?  They're pretty much all restatements of the great commission.  Mainline...evangelical...non-denominational.  We all pretty much say the same thing.

Here's where we differ: not on vision, but on strategy.  One church prefers a hundred programmes.  One church prefers all things to be directed to groups. One church prefers cutting edge music, the other like blended worship.  One church defines a particular strategy for family ministry, another simply let's various strategies arise.

When you can begin to separate out vision from strategy, it does several things:

• It stops the discussion from being personal or "moral".  We agree on the mission and vision, we just have different approaches to accomplishing it.
• Narrowing the issue down to strategy allows a team to become more aligned.  It's far easier to unify a team around a common strategy than even a common vision, because a strategy is specific.
• It allows us to celebrate differences.  Do I love our strategy?  Completely!  So does our staff and leadership team.  I think it's great (not perfect, but still great).  But I don't have to disrespect another church's strategy to celebrate ours.  After all, we share the same vision - we're just taking different routes to fulfilling it.

There's more to say on this, but I wanted to throw this out there to see if it resonates at all with you. Is this a helpful way of thinking about this?  What benefit to leaders and staff might come out of thinking through things this way?

I Am Attracted to Two Things

I was at church Saturday night listening to Reggie Joiner bring the message.  (I have loved just being in church the last two weekends - not leading anything, just plugging into God as a Christ-follower.)  Something Reggie said in the middle of the message stopped me in my tracks.

If you really want your home or church to be attractive to people, two things need to be at the center of your community:  forgiveness, and joy.  People are attracted to forgiveness and joy.

That struck me as so completely true in my own life: I am attracted to people who offer forgiveness and who exude joy.   It also rang true as the heart of the message about Jesus.  What is the cross about if it's not about forgiveness?  And what does reconciliation with God bring if it doesn't bring joy? 

It's so real when it comes to reaching out to our friends and neighbours. Why would anyone go to a church that makes them feel like they need to pay for their own sins or where people live in a community that's merely some kind of lecture hall on truth or just a really lame party?  That's not actually close to what the scripture teaches.  The radical nature of Jesus' grace is that all is forgiven and we are invited into God's joy.

Those words deeply challenge me?  Do I forgive deeply enough?  Do I celebrate people and forgiveness and love and God deeply enough?  Is our community a place of forgiveness and joy?  Is my home?

So much to chew on, pray about and grow in.  So glad I went to church.

Self-Control: That Thing in the Bible No One Talks About

Now that it's fall, that means my bike is going to go away soon and I will have to resort to other forms of exercise, which means the likelihood of me exercising plummets.  Worse, my appetite always spikes when the temperature drops.

Enter the long lost art of self-control.  I'm a hit and miss guy when it comes to self control.  I have learned the art well in a number of areas of my life, but diet and exercise (and a few other persistent pests) still lag. 

It always surprises me when I read through the classic passage in Galatians on the fruits of the Holy Spirit that self-control is listed in the same sentence as love, joy, patience and kindness.  If we're really relying on God, self-control will factor huge into our walk with Christ.

This article argues that self control is easier when we focus on the overall picture and goal, not the specifics of the moment.  For example, instead of thinking how not to eat more cake, think instead about overall health and the goal of eating better.  Participants who thought big-picture and long-term exercised more self control.  It reminds me of God's promise to always help us when faced with a self control issue if we would turn to Him (big picture v. small picture).

It also reminded me of one of the parenting principles we teach in Orange: imagine the end.  Parents often get stuck in parenting because we get lost in the details of the moment - life is so busy we let our tempers fray and petty things ruin the day, or we're lose patience because of our daughter's attitude.  When that happens, we lose focus on the overall goal of raising kids who are fully alive in Christ. Self-control in those moments comes more easily If we constantly keep the end in mind.   When we keep the end in mind, we'll focus our parenting on what matters most.

How's your battle with self-control?  Any of these learnings helpful?  What do you find helpful?  Did the article (or scripture) resonate for you?

If Your Friends Could Preach....

So as a companion to last week's post about what you would choose to be the next message series, here's a fresh angle.

In your conversations with your friends who don't attend church, what subjects keep coming up?  What might be a subject that help move them from disinterested to curious to even maybe trying a weekend service?

Anything's game.  Have some conversations and report back.  Or offer some thoughts from recent conversations.  As we plan the 09 preaching schedule, I'm all ears.

What are your friends thinking about?

Loving Seattle and Families

Had a great weekend.  It was fantastic to be in Seattle for two days for the Orange Tour.  Being around Reggie Joiner and Sue Miller and the rest of the Orange team always energizes me. These guys are sharp, and deeply devoted to reaching families. 

We also met a great group of senior pastors and church leaders who are engaging change at a deep level.  I feel excited for families in the Pacific Northwest.  It was awesome to see the number of Canadians who traveled down to Seattle too (and people from Idaho...big trek!)

I think I also fell in love with the city of Seattle. I found myself gasping out loud at the beauty of the trees/mountains/water/city all flowing into one around Seattle.  I would love to go back just to visit.  Ever been there?  Wish I had more time to explore.

As I got back to Connexus Sunday morning it was great to see families engaging.  It was kind of fun to watch our parent-paging system go off again and again during the 10 a.m. service - usually a sign of new families whose kids hadn't quite "settled".  Our family ministry team has some awesome fall plans to help families engage in leading their kids to Christ and experiencing baptism together this fall as well (stay tuned).  I get excited when I see friends inviting friends and I think of the changes that are happening in families this week because some church leaders cared, sacrificed and gave. 

No real point to this post except a bit of thanksgiving for some church leaders at home, in Atlanta (Orange HQ) and on the other side of the continent who care enough to want to change the landscape of church and family in this generation.  I feel grateful to be a tiny part of that.