Orange From A Distance: The View

During Orange week, many bloggers are writing about all of the great things they learned and gained while at Orange conference last year.  Not being there myself, I thought I would share what I learned despite my absence.

I find it ironic that being in ministry to families makes it more difficult to minister to your own family.  I say difficult, but that isn’t totally true.  You really just need to be more intentional about ministering to your own family.  Doug Fields addressed this in his session at Orange.  The thing he said that stuck with me the most was letting your family “have dessert.”  Your family should BENEFIT from you being in ministry.  They should get privileges that others may not.  While this type of thinking could go too far, I’ve already begun looking for ways to make sure that my son (and other children not yet born) get to have some dessert, and this means more than just getting leftover pizza after youth group.

Another thing that has really rattled my brain is the idea of the story of the church colliding with the stories of those around us.  Isn’t that why Jesus became a man in the first place?  So that the story of a holy, awesome God would collide head on with the stories of fallen, broken humanity in such a way that none of the stories would ever be the same.  The story of God was flipped on its head by His incarnation.  The story of mankind was forever (literally) changed.  This same thing can happen when the church, empowered by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit collides with the world that He is drawing unto Himself.  For the record, I do not know what session this whole idea really came out of, but the theme of the conference was collide, so I reckon it came from a composite of multiple sessions and this is just how I’ve pieced it together in my head after six months.

I am not going to pretend like this is all I got out of the conference, I just want you to see that much can be gained even from a distance.  If I get the chance, and I am working to make that chance a reality, I will excitedly be spending a few days in April hanging and learning with others who are on this Orange journey.  If not, I’ll be gleaning as much information as I can.

For information about the methods I used to get information from Orange from 700 miles away, please check out the other half of this article on my blog SmalltownKidmin.

FREE GIVEAWAY Just a reminder, we are giving away three free copies of a new family tool called Cue Box. Here is how we are doing it. The purpose of Kidmin1124.com is to spark conversation and discussion. So, we’re going to offer two different ways to enter to win one of the Cue Boxes. First, leave a comment on any of the Orange Week posts through October 5. Tell us about your experience with Orange, comment on something raised in an article, or just come right out and tell us that you’re commenting because you want to win a cue box. For every comment or reply, we will enter you in the drawing. Also, we’re trying to get the word out if you tweet or retweet any of the articles on Twitter from this series, we will enter your name in the drawing once for each tweet. Just make sure to include @Kidmin1124 in the tweet somewhere so we can find it. The more you comment, and the more you tweet, the greater your chances of winning. We will close the contest on Sunday, October 10, 2010 and draw our winners on October 11.