Recently I posted here about a shift to took place inside of me when it came to parents. I began to see them differently. I saw them more for who they are… people that love their kids with all they have and are willing to sacrifice a lot for what they think is best.
Remember the equation for the Orange Strategy is Red (love of the home) + Yellow (light of the Church) = Orange (two combined forces making a greater impact)
Yet the reality of parenting is difficult, beautiful, refining and often time disillusioning. Many parents I talk to that have already walked a ways down the path of parenthood understand themselves a little more as parents. They know (from experience) just how inconsistent they are at incorporating spiritual disciplines in their family life. They still bristle internally at the last spiritual conversation they fumbled through with their child.
We know that people (in general) will repeat what they ‘feel’ they do well. They will not repeat what ‘feel’ they don’t do well. It’s a simple concept.
I’m not going out to play basketball tonight. Why? Because I stink at it.
But I will sit down and write tonight. Why? Because I’m good at it.
Apply it to parents discipling their kids and you get the reality… if parents don’t experience success in incorporating spiritual conversations/disciplines into their family life then they’re less likely to do it.
I found that one of the things I wanted to do was to inspire parents to pick up the reigns of spiritual leadership again… mistakes and all. But how do I do this? It’s not like I have parents as an audience in my ministry every week. And other methods of mass communication don’t have the personal touch needed to really communicate the message. I needed a way to gain an audience with mom and dad and combine the love of the home (red) with the light of the church (yellow) for an Orange Infusion.
Given that I’m not a fan of creating another event for parents to attend I started looking for opportunities within events that already exist. One of those events was weekly small groups. In my church adult small groups meet every week within homes throughout the community. This is where we want people to ‘do life together’. To confide, celebrate, encourage, sharpen, etc. It seemed like a great audience for this message.
So I started visiting small groups throughout the week. I’d contact the small group leader and ask if I could visit their group and talk about parenting and the daunting task of raising kids to love Christ. I was hard-pressed to find a small group leader that didn’t identify with that. With each group visited I walked away more and more fueled to keep pushing forward. I knew each time I left that a seed was planted and what was shared would flavor many conversations in the future.
Is it the perfect way to communicate a message that may re-engage parents on the journey of leading their kids to love Christ? I don’t know that there is a perfect way. I like the personal touch with this method. I liked the connection I was able to make with parents in my ministry. Serving in a larger church requires ‘big church’ systems that can feel impersonal. This was personal.
Not efficient.
But personal. And I like it.
