I’m heading to Atlanta tonight for a quick trip to meet with the folks at XP3 Students which is a part of the Orange conversation started by Reggie Joiner. One of the guys who works for the XP3 group is a pretty hip guy named Jeremy Zach who writes one of the blogs I read regularly about how he views youth ministry. He’s sharp and also pretty handsome so clearly he’s an expert. He’s works primarily with crazy youth pastors so he’s invited us to come and be with him for a few days.
This “Conversation” that I’m a part of is basically putting a small group of Youth Workers from around the US in a room with Dr. Chap Clark and having us interact with him for the day and kick around ideas and best practices for how we see the future of youth ministry going as it relates to parents and families.
If you’ve followed my blog or know me personally you know this is an area that I’ve really been digging into in the last year. Figuring out how to partner with parents and to come along side of them as they love and disciple their own kids is something that Youth Ministry hasn’t historically done very well. And I’m not alone in thinking this. Even Doug Fields on his blog today started a new series on how to be a more “Family Friendly” youth ministry.
I’m committed to helping my team and church figure out how we can best set things up so that what we are doing is intentionally being aware of how we can best support the family. Do we do this right all the time? Absolutely not. We’ve probably stumbled more than we have succeeded but fortunately for us parents have been incredibly gracious. We’ve also had some great successes which pay off in huge ways.
There are some great people coming to this event and I’m looking forward to learning from them. I know that this whole thing is being taped because they told me to wear a solid color shirt and to comb my hair. Hopefully they will let me do some posting about it and I’ll update you all on what we’ve talked about.
XP3 Orange Student ThinkTank
I’m heading to Atlanta tonight for a quick trip to meet with the folks at XP3 Students which is a part of the Orange conversation started by Reggie Joiner. One of the guys who works for the XP3 group is a pretty hip guy named Jeremy Zach who writes one of the blogs I read regularly about how he views youth ministry. He’s sharp and also pretty handsome so clearly he’s an expert. He’s works primarily with crazy youth pastors so he’s invited us to come and be with him for a few days.
This “Conversation” that I’m a part of is basically putting a small group of Youth Workers from around the US in a room with Dr. Chap Clark and having us interact with him for the day and kick around ideas and best practices for how we see the future of youth ministry going as it relates to parents and families.
If you’ve followed my blog or know me personally you know this is an area that I’ve really been digging into in the last year. Figuring out how to partner with parents and to come along side of them as they love and disciple their own kids is something that Youth Ministry hasn’t historically done very well. And I’m not alone in thinking this. Even Doug Fields on his blog today started a new series on how to be a more “Family Friendly” youth ministry.
I’m committed to helping my team and church figure out how we can best set things up so that what we are doing is intentionally being aware of how we can best support the family. Do we do this right all the time? Absolutely not. We’ve probably stumbled more than we have succeeded but fortunately for us parents have been incredibly gracious. We’ve also had some great successes which pay off in huge ways.
There are some great people coming to this event and I’m looking forward to learning from them. I know that this whole thing is being taped because they told me to wear a solid color shirt and to comb my hair. Hopefully they will let me do some posting about it and I’ll update you all on what we’ve talked about.
2 Responses to “XP3 Orange Student ThinkTank”
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I hope the trip goes well. I’ve used XP3/orange stuff for a few years and respect them alot – got to meet Jeremy a month ago. I hope you have a fantastic conversation and I look forward to the fruit.
From my perspective, a lot of the parent/family impetus is led by older youthworkers who have now “grown up” and watched their own kids gorw/graduate/move on. It seems to me that we (youthworkers) face an ever increasing load of possibilities and objectives, and family/parents just piles onto that. Part of me wants to raise my hand and say, “umm, but isn’t that the job of the Adult CE department?”
ThinkOrange cured me of that whining with their brilliant take on the local church having a strategy for genuine family ministry. But I still feel like I flounder where to begin in taking practice steps.
Have an awesome trip!
Andy
I totally agree with you about youth workers wondering if ministering to adults should be their responsibility. We for sure haven’t trained younger youth workers to see the value if wholistic ministry. I think we’re going to have a harder time though training the rest of the church to see the value in it. Stoked to see it happen though