If you wander down the Kids corridor at Sutton Vineyard Church on Sundays you will see a lot of orange.
That isn’t an accident!
Our Kids leaders wear orange because in our church we follow the Orange Philosophy.
But what is the Orange Philosophy, what does it mean for our kids and how can it help support faith development at home?
What is the Orange Philosophy?
Take the Church and the home.
Think of the Church as yellow.
And think of the home as red.
The idea of orange philosophy is to bring together the church, represented by the colour yellow, and the home, represented by the colour red.
If you mix yellow and red, you get orange. If you combine the church and the home and if they work together, they can have a far greater impact than solely relying on one. If the purpose of both the family home and the church is to build God’s Kingdom in the hearts of our children and young people, neither one can do it without the other.
The red home
If the red home tries to raise children who know and love Jesus without the church, they miss out on a community of supportive fellow Christians, their children miss out on learning what it is to do life with other followers of Jesus and the weight and the responsibility of raising the next generation is just too much for a parent to handle.
Much of our society today tells us to keep ourselves to ourselves, to keep our problems private and to battle through parenthood alone because ‘your kids and your life aren’t my problem’.
But orange fiercely challenges that train of thought.
Jesus fiercely challenges that train of thought.
We were never designed to go it alone in any areas of our lives let alone parenting! If you are a friend of someone with kids, an auntie or uncle, a Kids or Youth leader, a teacher or if you work with Kids - whether or not you have your own kids, you are a vital part of those children’s lives. Without you demonstrating the love of Jesus and modelling Christianity to those children, the chance of them growing up to know and love God are slim.
We need our village, we need our church around us.
The yellow church
On the opposite side of the red home you find the yellow church, trying to raise men and women of God without input from the home.
That doesn’t work either.
Statistically, a child who is a regular church attender spends around 40 hours a year in church. That means our teams only have 40 hours with our kids to teach them
what it means to be a Christian
who Jesus is
to guide them in knowing how to talk to God and listen to Him
to worship with them
to share God’s word with them
to pray for and with them
to introduce them to the Holy Spirit
to cultivate a strong relationship between them and their father in Heaven
Imagine trying to do all that with 40 hours a year. It just isn’t possible!
In contrast, the number of hours parents and carers have at home with which to influence their children is 3000. 3000 hours seems like a more reasonable time frame for those things! We fit as much as we possibly can into those 40 hours we get with kids at church but research has shown that the number 1 influence on a child’s life is their parents, carers and guardians.
As a parent, carer or guardian this may sound overwhelming, but don’t feel pressured! The church and the home are both comprised of broken, imperfect people through whom God has chosen to tell His story. We’re all going to get it wrong sometimes but if all of us at church commit to supporting families with youth and kids and if all of the families commit to taking the lead in their child’s walk with faith with our support, if we add a whole load of grace, love and divine power, we’ve got the best chance of seeing our children grow up to know and follow Jesus.
That’s something worth putting the effort into.
That’s what the Orange philosophy is.
The home and the church coming together to raise the next generation of Christians.
If you have any questions about the Orange Philosophy and how we encourage and support faith growth in our young people at Church and at home, email kids@suttonvineyard.org