ORANGE

This is day 1 of the Orange Conference. (If you don't know about Orange, check the link. It's a pretty cool concept about church ministry.) I am blogging on some of what I heard tonight so I can keep it fresh. You reading it is just icing on the proverbial cake.

• Sometimes we think what we're doing (to reach others) is working, but it's not. This could be because it works for US, but it doesn't work for others. This especially hit me as it applies to worship music. I've recently set a goal for myself to write a worship song that a brand new believer with no church background would write. So many worship songs have words like glorious or redeemed or exalt. While these are Biblical words, they are not something the average new believer would say with authenticity. I wonder how much of our worship music doesn't touch new Christians because it seems so "churchy".
• Offering a "blended" service to keep everyone "happy" may be completely ineffective because it's not really relevent to anyone. Trying to combine service elements from different styles of worship can be powerful, but often it's just a random combination that seems to have no forethought, and that's just annoying.
  
• Are we making it easier or harder for people to come to God? This question also came up at the DRIVE conference at Northpoint Church last fall. I'm glad it came up again because I think I'm ready to ponder it in a new and different light. I may touch more on this in a subsequent post.
• Ministering to the family unit as a whole is not only possible, but it is powerful. It shows all the members not only the stories of our faith, but it also shows each member that they have something to contribute to the whole. The Bible story used as an example of this was the story of Nehemiah. When he was gathering people to help rebuild the wall around the city, he called families to come together for this common purpose. Imagine how the kids of the day felt when they saw that wall come up and realized that they had a part in it! How empowering for them!

The next installment will hopefully come at the end of the day tomorrow.