How the Orange Conference Impacted a Ministry

There are a lot of conferences that you can attend that can help you and your ministry. I have been to a wide variety of them. Some of them have been great, some not so great. The one conference I keep coming back to year after year is the Orange Conference. The Orange Conference is geared towards Family, Children and Student ministries, but also open to Senior Pastors and other Campus Leaders (see more info on ReThink Leadership).

The reason why I keep coming back to this conference is because of the impact it has had on my ministry. Every year I go, I always come back with something to apply directly into my ministry. For instance, it impacted the way I…

• minister to High School Seniors. I’ve always done something cool for high school seniors when they graduated. But up until this session with Brad Griffin, I never intentionally planned a way to minister to high school seniors the entire year leading up to their graduation. I took the insights and learnings from this session and strategically planned out a better, more effective way to prepare high school seniors for their life after graduation.
• strategize Events. Events are important for ministries to do for a variety of reasons. However, what I realized about my ministry was that I wasn’t being strategic about them. I was just doing them to do them and have a blast. Ashley Bohinc’s session on building a year round event strategy directly impacted my ministry and help our program better use events as a jumping off point and connecting them with home groups and small groups.
• equip Middle School leaders. This was another session that Ashley Bohinc lead as she gave us 4 things middle school leaders need to know and understand from you, the head leader. Some were new insights and some were great reminders, but the bottom line was it helped me better understand and equip middle school leaders.
• view social media as a tool. When social media was becoming more and more impactful in the lives of students (and everyone honesty), the Orange Conference had Jon Acuff share about what social media was and how we can be using it as a tool to reach parents and students. Attending that specific session years ago changed the way I thought about social media as a tool.
• train my own volunteers. What I love about this conference is that after the conference is over they take the show on the road in the fall and do Tour Stops. These tour stops are packed full of info the Conference presented, just condensed into a day or 2 event. The great thing about these stops are they are often cheaper for teams to attend and they are more local for your group thus enabling more of your volunteers to attend and experience what you experience in the conference.

These are just 5 of the ways the Orange Conference has had an impact on my ministry. There are countless other ways, small and big, that attending this conference has been amazing. That is why I keep coming back. Year after year I learn something and apply it into the ministry that directly changes things.

That is why I am planning on going back to in 2019. And the cool thing is that you can come with me. If you want your ministry to be impacted like this, the great news is that you can sign up early on Oct. 18th for the 2019 Orange Conference and get a big discount! Just click here to find out more information on it and sign up for what could very well be a year of impact that you get out of this year’s conference.

What do you think? Have you ever been to the Orange Conference? How has that helped you in your ministry? Share below or on social media using #ymsidekick when you share.

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