Orange Week: Game Changer

Last year the Orange Conference theme was “Move” and they challenged all the participants constantly by saying, “it’s your move”.  This year the theme is “Game Changer”.

As I thought about this theme, I thought of a few game changing moments in my ministry. One game changing decision I made years ago was in regards to parent involvement.  When I first got involved in youth ministry I didn’t want as many parents involved because I felt like I wanted my ministry to be a service to them. I wanted to take care of their kids and give them a break.  Although I had nothing personal against them serving with the youth ministry, I didn’t see any real benefits to their help either.

Then, through a series of evaluations and processing with others, I felt that if we were going to have the impact I desired in ministry, we needed parents to be more involved.  As I had parents more involved, I saw the benefits they offered.

Some of those benefits were:

• They could be a positive role model, showing teens that parents do care and are involved, in a healthy way, in the life of their children
• Parents are normally very reliable.  The bottom line is that they want to help.  After all, they help with sport teams, school activities and community events.  Why wouldn’t they be able to help with church stuff?  So having some extra bodies around to help set up, clean up, serve and be there with the students was something I could trust they would do really well.  I could rely on them.
• By having parents involved, it provides an extra avenue of promotion because they will be telling all their friends who have teens that they are coming and encourage them to come.
• It takes the burden off of you to do one more thing. For example, providing food for an event.  If parents help out and serve in this capacity, you can focus on other details of the event rather than worrying about every little detail.

The benefits of having parents involved are there.  It benefitted me years ago and it still benefits me today.  The perfect example was the Super Bash ’12 that we did (I’ll be blogging about next week).  Without their help and support, our Super Bash would have never been as successful as it was.  And when I decided to really utilize them in my ministry, that became a GAME CHANGER for me.

What about you?  TAKE A MINUTE right now and share a game changing moment in your ministry.

Oh, and while you are at it, don’t forget to sign up for Orange ’12 right here.  You won’t regret it.