Are You Playing for Keeps?

          A couple of weeks ago I was blessed to attending a conference that I have fallen in love with over the past couple of years.  The conference was the Orange Conference which focuses on developing a family ministry that connects children, youth, and college students under one umbrella while seeking to partner with parents to have a greater impact on the next generation.  This conference and their materials have been truly life-changing to me personally, the way I parent and the issues that we tackle with our students during our weekly gatherings.

            As I attended the conference this year I had an understanding of what to expect in my mind however that was quickly altered following the opening session on Wednesday evening.  During that session they revealed the theme for the conference and the underlying message behind it.  For some reason this particular theme began to pull at my heartstrings and caused me to think about the way I parent and equip the parents of the students I am blessed to work with. 

            The theme for the conference was Focus which zeroed in on the impact that we can have in the life of a student.  The theme was based out of an experiment that North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, Georgia decided to do a few years ago.  They gave parents a jar of 936 marbles representing the weeks of influence that we have with a child from the time they are born until they graduate high school.  They challenged their parents to remove the necessary number of marbles to get to the age of their child representing the number of weeks that they had left to influence their children.  A few months later they sat down with the parents and discussed how this experiment had altered the way they parented their children.  Rather than fixating upon the few weeks that they had left many of them reflected upon how they had been more intentional with their children/students because they now had an understanding of the brevity of time that they really have to impact their child.  These parents made statements such as,

“When you see how much time you have left …

·         …you tend to get serious about the time you have left

·         … you tend to make the most of what matters most

·         … you tend to value what matters most

·         … you value what happens over time

·         … you tend to be more present for a few

As we expanded upon this over the course of the conference we discussed the thought there are six things that every child/student needs from us.  They need time, love, words, stories, tribes, and fun. 

·         A child/student needs time in order to create history

·         A child/student needs love in order to prove their worth

·         A child/student needs words in order to provide direction

·         A child/student needs stories in order to see perspective

·         A child/student needs tribes in order to create a sense of belonging

·         A child/student needs fun in order to create connection

As we journey together over the next year we will explore how we can "play for keeps" with the time of influence we have left with our children/students.  (If you can’t wait to see how much time you have left with your own child there is an app which is available for I Phones by searching “Orange Legacy” which will let you know the number of weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds you have left).  We will also be looking at the fact that what we do every week matters in the development of our students as well as how to invest their lives through time, love, words, stories, tribes, and fun.   

We look forward to partnering with you and sharing in this discussion as we seek to impact the next generation with the combined influence of parents and the church!