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Disclaimer: this post is about a popular “debate” in church world today that you may have zero interest in.

There is a debate in church world over different models, or ways of doing church. I blogged a while back about this here (sorry the video isn’t there). Basically, people who don’t like churches that encourage inviting people to church label those churches as “attractional”, saying all they do is yell “come to us” and aren’t concerned with living among people and representing Jesus Christ. They claim the “Biblical” model is “missional”, which could be defined as living among people, in culture, and leading them to follow Jesus through a personal relationship only. Some, but not all, generally don’t like the idea of a church gathering or service, and would rather see the church be a network of small groups only.

Tim Stevens started another conversation on this topic with this post. Today he referenced Alan Hirsch’s claims that the “attractional” model will only reach 40% of Americans. I still have no idea how he got that number when 63-67% indicate they would be somewhat open to attending church if someone invited them.

Here’s my main problem. This debate seems to assume that all American churches are either “attractional” or “missional”. I would argue there is at least one other model, and I’ll call it “fellowship”. Fellowship is a church word used to describe the relationships and community among people, typically Christians in a church. I believe at least 80% of American churches are the “fellowship” model, meaning they are designed with Christians in mind. I would say “attractional” and “missional” are designed with non-Christian people in mind, and therefore both are largely different from the “fellowship” model.

The problem is, some people assume the “fellowship” model is the “attractional” model, and because the “fellowship” model isn’t working, neither is the “attractional” model. I can probably only think of 5 or so “attractional” churches in my area, but I could easily name 50 “fellowship” churches.

All of this assumes that a church is just one or the other, when in fact all churches are a measure of all of those models, and probably more.

Sorry for the overuse of quotes, but that’s my way of letting you know I think all the labels aren’t worth much. Knowing which model you are is worth a lot, mislabeling churches and then judging them solely on your idea of what they are isn’t worth anything.

I attended the Orange Conference before Drive, but blogged about them in reverse order for no good reason. Here are my thoughts and takeaways from Orange:

• The Gwinnett Center is a pretty amazing place.
• It was cool to hang out with Mike Kelly and his crew for much of the conference.
• There was obvious intentionality in having less of a “star worship leader” feel, and more of a focus on having a community of worship leaders lead the times of singing together.
• A lot of the guest speakers did not share a message or “talk”, and instead were interviewed by Reggie.
• The “tweet up” (coffee house meet up of folks on Twitter) was fun. Free smoothie’s were a plus, too.
• The Orange staff team works their butts off, and I’m amazed they can pull off a conference like that with a staff their size.
• Rev Run was a guest, and that was pretty cool.
• Perry Noble’s talk was tied for my favorite part of the conference. He talked about his 7 core convictions about Family Ministry. He killed it, and I laughed so hard I was in pain.
• My other favorite part of the conference was connecting with other ministry leaders and Orange staff.
• The new Orange website launched, http://www.whatisorange.org/
• The new Orange Parents website/blog launched: http://www.orangeparents.org/

I’m looking forward to the Orange Tour coming to Washington D.C. in the fall, and I hope a ton of our children’s ministry volunteers will be able to attend.

In the previous two posts (here and here) I shared some thoughts on my experience at the Drive Conference last week. In this post I’ll share the remaining thoughts and takeaways I had. You can see a highlight video of Drive 2010 here. You can see a bunch of the videos that were played at Drive here, including “Sunday’s Coming”, a hilarious spin on how most churches plan services.

Here are my final takeways:

• Andy’s last session was on tension. I won’t share too much, as it looks like that’s the theme for the Catalyst Conference and he’d probably appreciate not having the talk given away on blog world (although I’m sure it is outlined elsewhere). Essentially he said part of good leadership is knowing the difference between problems that need to be solved and tensions that need to be managed. Knowing the difference and making that clear for your organization can help you make the right decisions.
• I’m thinking about tensions we have to manage in CCC Kids, and in CCC in general. I want to make sure we aren’t viewing them as problems that need to be solved, thereby creating more problems.
• “New organizations need more vision than management”. I’m not even sure where I got that, but it’s so true.
• I attended the breakout that was a Q&A with Andy Stanley, his wife and assistant. That was pretty cool mostly because he shared some about his relationship with his dad, the issues they had to fight through and how they came through it. It was an transparent, vulnerable time for him.
• During the Q&A Andy mentioned that he thinks the senior leader in an organization should make as few decisions as possible, pushing decision making down to those who are directly responsible. He didn’t talk about that much but was eye opening as it’s clearly counter intuitive.
• I connected with and learned from a ton of ministry leaders, including the guys from True North Church, Kendra Fleming, Patrick Mitchell, Rich Barrett, Rob Marks, Casey Ross, and David McDaniel among others. I’m grateful for the time and wisdom they shared.
• I went to the Orange Conference alone, so it was even more cool to have a ministry partner with me at Drive. Huge props to Tom’s brother for letting us stay at his awesome house. I really enjoyed meeting his brother’s family and having dinner with Tom & his brother while we were there.
• There were some great quotes that came through the twitter feed that I should have saved. One example was “we cannot reach our full potential without learning to love correction.”

Well, now comes the difficult task of applying these learnings.

Yesterday I posted about key learnings I had from a specific session at the Drive Conference. This post will share all the other things I’ve been learning through the other main session and the breakouts.

Main Session #1

• In the opening session Andy Stanley noted that the Colosseum was dedicated to all the Christian martyrs who died there and now crosses hang over the 2 main entrances (the Emperor’s entrance and the VIP entrance). His point was that Christians who lived when it was constructed and used as a celebration of death, slavery, and all sorts of evil could never have imagined that one day it would be dedicated to Christian martyrs, that crosses would hang there and symbolize the resurrection of Christ and not murder, and that people all over the world would be celebrating Jesus.
• Andy’s point was that with God, all things are possible. He challenged everyone asking – What did you once think was possible, but the realities of life have led you to believe it is impossible?

Breakouts – Day 2

• The right people are the foundation of a successful creative process
• The breakout on the creative process made me think a lot about the tension between artists and non-artists, especially when a non-artist leads an artist. Obviously everyone has some level of artistic ability, but clear tensions exist between people who are project/task oriented and people who are not. Not every artist isn’t, but many aren’t. I’m wondering how can someone like me (total non-artist) effectively lead artists in a local church?
• Excellence is simply exceeding expectations or doing the best you can with what you have, in a sustainable way.
• Churches should hire leaders who are people magnets.
• When it comes to money – What do you want for your people (not from)?

This was the greatest quote, from David McDaniel, and it was in the context of financial stewardship but applies to everything:

Why would God allow you (the leader) to break his principles personally and continue to bless your vision corporately?

Over the last week I’ve been to the Orange Conference and I’m at the Drive Conference now, and I’ll share some of my thoughts and learnings from the 2 conferences in random order here on the blog.

In this post I’ll share some of what Andy Stanley talked about in session 2 of Drive 2010, which was titled Rules of Engagement and talked about how North Point Community Church plans their services/environments for adults, students and children. Here were my takeaways from the session, which was extremely helpful and practical:

• Churches must define “the win” for their Sunday services. For North Point it is when an unchurched person experiences helpful content, engaging presentation and appealing context and then comes back next week with a friend. Their long term win is for people to think and act differently in light of God’s truth.
• Andy showed a chart they use to plan their service. You can see that chart by downloading the Rules of Engagement PDF from http://insidenorthpoint.org/programming/downloads/
  • The red columns are every week
  • Yellow is optional, doesn’t happen every week
  • It’s like a funnel because the service hopefully captures everyone in the beginning and leads them somewhere on purpose.
  • The common ground is emotion, not information. They start by finding a common emotion among everyone who might be in the audience (unchurched, churched, men, women, high schooler, senior citizen, etc).
  • Andy essentially starts at the beginning of the funnel again when preaching, trying to re-involve everyone emotionally before leading them somewhere with the message.
• I think my favorite part was how Andy used Luke 15:1-6 to illustrate how Jesus started with a common emotion (feeling of losing something important), and tapped into emotion throughout, on the way to teaching a new idea about how God thinks.
• In planning and evaluating, they ask:
  • How will this make people feel?
  • What do we want them to feel?
  • When is it appropriate (in the service) to make people uncomfortable?

I’ve heard Vince Antonucci talk about how he would try to plan a service that would begin by making people laugh about something that they would eventually be emotionally drawn into and challenged about by the end of the service.

I’ve thought about how this can apply to our children’s ministry environments at CCC as well as our services.

What’s the win for your Sunday services? What process do you use to help people get there?

Sam Luce had the great idea of having everyone who is attending the Orange Conference post their breakout selections and why they chose them. So, here’s my Orange Conference schedule along with the breakouts I chose and why.

Wednesday, April 28

• Arrive in the afternoon.
• 7:30PM – Main Session #1
• 10:00PM – Tweet Up at Chocolate Perks

Thursday, April 29

• 9:00AM – Main Session #2
• 11:30AM – Breakout: Say What you need to say as a children’s small group leader - I’m attending this because small groups are the destination for our children, and we want them to be great!
• 2:30PM – Breakout: Leading through the budget crunch - I’m attending this because we can always use help with making the most of our resources.
• 4:15PM – Main Session #3
• 7:00PM – Family Experience Showcase

Friday, April 30

• 9:00AM – Main Session #4
• 11:30AM – Breakout: Difficult conversations in leaders’ circles – I’m attending this because difficult conversations are a part of leading and I’m interested in what Sue Miller has to say, because she rocks.
• 2:30PM – Breakout: Sticky volunteers for children’s ministry – I’m attending this because the Baby Dedication breakout with Kendra is full, and because I want all the help I can get with making children’s ministry a place where volunteers stick!
• 4:15PM – Main Session #5
• 6:00PM – Go home and get ready for KidStuf!

If you are going to Orange, what breakouts are you attending?

Our church is just over 4 years old, and we have had to develop a lot in that short time for all of our ministries, including our children’s ministry. Fortunately we used resources and ideas from a ton of great churches, including North Point and CCC in Naperville, IL. Our curriculum and strategy partner, reThink, was also a huge help in that process. What that meant was, we typically didn’t have to create resources from scratch and instead had to tweak something that already existed.

We’re far from finished, and I’m sure a lot of what we have done could use further improvement and refining but I wanted to make all of our resources available to children’s ministry leaders everywhere. So, I’ve uploaded everything our church has created for children’s ministry, including processes and systems for leadership, administration, environments, events, and resources for volunteers and parents.

Head on over to the FREE RESOURCES page to see what’s available. Contact me if you need editable files and please send me back anything you improve upon!

Originally posted on OrangeLeaders.com Blog last Saturday

One of the toughest transitions for a child is going from preschool to elementary school. Think about all the possible changes they have to deal with such as a full day of school, progress reports, reading, and most importantly no nap time. That transition can be tough in a church environment as well.

Two of the most intimidating parts of transitioning children from preschool to elementary in our church are entering the environment and the large group time. Entering the environment can be overwhelming because unlike our preschool rooms, elementary is completely open until large group is over and kids from grades K-5 are all together. Large group can be intimidating as well because that type of production is completely new to them.

To ease the transition, we created an event that provides an opportunity for the incoming kindergartners to experience the elementary environment with their parents. The parents check them in, stay with them during the plug-in activities and large group. Once large group is over, the kindergartners are placed in small groups just for them with a leader who gets to know them and help them connect. During that time, we get the amazing opportunity to sit with the parents and walk them through our strategy for elementary children, talking about the environments, events, and resources available to help them continue the conversations at home. That time with parents allows us to address the 3 things that Reggie says parents are silently asking when they come into our churches:

1. Give me a plan
2. Show me how it works
3. Tell me what to do today.

Parents – How else can we help you ease the transition?

Church Leaders – How do you ease the transition from preschool to elementary in your church?

Jennifer and I have tried numerous budgeting systems (envelopes, mvelopes, Excel, spend it all, spend what’s left, etc).  Last year we switched to Mint.com, and coupled with a few other tools it has been amazing.  I hope that by sharing this it will help other people manage their money better as well.

• We cut our food budget by 25% simply because we became more aware of how we were spending.
• We reigned in what I categorize as “personal expenses” and have a better idea of everything that is in that category.
• We’re saving 5% more monthly.

In addition to that, I can see all of our accounts in one place (checking, savings, credit union, investments, retirement).  At any point I can know where we are in terms of each budget category, and I can check it from anywhere with internet….including my phone.

Here is everything we’re using to really make it work…

• I started with Dave Ramsey’s Gazelle Budget Lite form to see how he recommended dividing up the pie.  That was mostly helpful for grabbing the categories and percentages to use as a starting point.
• I created a monthly budget in Excel.  On the left I listed all the expenses, grouped in the categories from Dave Ramsey’s site.  On the right I had the income sources. So, individual expenses had dollar amounts and percentages (of the overall budget), calculated from the income total on the right side. It also lists Dave’s recommendations right there for comparison, and I didn’t stick exactly to what he suggested.
• I set up our Mint.com account and added all our financial accounts.  Mint will try to assign expenses to categories, but it’s not always right and every Friday I go in and assign the previous week’s expenses to the right category and tag.
• The primary categories in Mint can’t be changed, so I created tags that exactly matched my Excel budget, which uses Dave Ramsey’s system.  So, on Fridays when I go through, I tag every expense appropriately.  Essentially every expense has 2 labels, the Mint.com category and the custom tag, but I only rely on the tag.  That probably takes 15 minutes a week.
• At any point I can go to the Trends screen and click on “spending by tag” and see a pie chart of how things are broken down for that month, and I can compare month-to-month.

It’s a lot to set up but it’s really easy to maintain.  Just a note, Mint.com has a budget feature but it tries to rollover surpluses and overages from month to month and that’s not how we roll.  Plus, I didn’t like not being able to change the primary categories.

How do you manage your benjamin$?

Below is an infographic from pingdom.com about Google.  Gotta love the simple, sticky mission statement: