This post is part of a series of posts called XP3 101. Be sure to check out the entire series! You can check out the previous post in this series by clicking here.

Hey there! I’m CJ, the Managing Editor of XP3 High School curriculum, and I’m here to close out this XP3 101 series with a few links and resources we thought might be helpful. Because here’s the thing I love most about what our team gets to do with Orange: XP3 is more than just a curriculum. It’s a strategy.

Take a look.

DEVOTIONALS

This is obvious, but I’ll say it anyway. As youth pastors, even if we preach the best messages on the planet, it doesn’t mean our students will automatically develop a personal faith. They need tools to help them spend time with God daily. So to help your students grow, here’s what we’ve created for you.

• DAILY SCRIPTURE IMAGES. These daily images and prompts are our newest upgrade to XP3 and are now available as part of XP3 Middle School and XP3 High School curriculum.
• WIRED. This devotional by Sarah and Rodney Anderson is our newest devotional journal from XP3. It’s a 4-week devotional experience that focuses on Jesus’ Greatest Commandment: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s designed for both new believers and not-so-new believers alike.
• KNOW GOD. This 28-day devotional gets back to the basics of knowing God as it helps students unpack the four things they can do today, and every day, to help them know God better.
• LIVE FREE. This devotional by Ben Crawshaw is a 5-week journey through the life of Paul and helps students discover how, like Paul did, to live a life of grace and freedom through Jesus.

BOOKS

Like you, we care about your students a lot. But we also care about you, so we’ve written a few books with leaders and student pastors in mind that we hope you’ll find helpful.

• THINK ORANGE. This is the book that started it all. We would highly encourage you to spend some time reading through it. There’s also a LEADER HANDBOOK. (Here is a short video that walks through the key principle of thinking orange.)
• ORANGE ESSENTIALS. This book is pretty much the cliff notes version of Think Orange, but does a great job of casting a compelling vision. A great book to share with someone (i.e. your senior leader) to get them to understand the vision. Here is a link to an Orange Essentials kit, but towards the bottom of the page you can hear Reggie (founder of Orange) cast some vision about who we are too.
• IT’S JUST A PHASE. This is the book that will help all of your next generation ministries (cradle to college) align and understand the importance of each specific phase of ministry and how to leverage it. (JustAPhase.com has some great info, too!)
• MAKE BELIEVE. This is our newest book by XP3 and, in it, Ben Crawshaw and Kevin Ragsdale unearth five ideas that combine faith and imagination (plus practical steps to help leaders turn those beliefs into behaviors) with the goal of reinvigorating student pastors’ hearts and ministries.
• LEAD SMALL. This book isn’t exactly for you, student pastors, but we think you’ll still want to read it. Lead Small (by Reggie Joiner and Tom Shefchunas) clarifies the responsibility of the small group leader for those who work with children and teenagers and establishes five common threads so that those who choose to lead in any size church can work off the same blueprint. It’s basically a job description for your small group leaders.
• CREATING A LEAD SMALL CULTURE. Lead Small wasn’t for you, student pastors, but this one definitely is. If Lead Small is the job description for your small group leaders, Creating a Lead Small Culture, written by Reggie Joiner, Kristen Ivy, and Elle Campbell, is the job description of anyone who is leading, or wants to launch, a small groups strategy. It’s how to make sure your church is a place where every student is known by someone and has a place to belong.

EVENTS

When it comes to pouring into leaders and youth pastors, we don’t stop with books! Here are the events we put on especially for church leaders like you.

• THE ORANGE CONFERENCE. This is our annual party of over 7k kids, youth & church leaders in the Atlanta area (it’s amazing).
• THE ORANGE TOUR. The Orange Tour is a smaller version of The Orange Conference that travels around each fall. It’s a great way to bring along some volunteers or other staff members that couldn’t make it to Atlanta for The Orange Conference.

AND MORE

• WEEKLY. This is our online subscription tool that gives you some amazing resources for both parents and youth leaders. This saves countless hours of trying to recreate resources to equip and empower leaders/parents on a weekly/monthly basis. If you want to be more strategic about partnering with parents and training leaders, but you don’t have a ton of time to invest, GoWeekly.com is definitely worth checking out.
• RETHINKING YOUTH MINISTRY. This is a podcast put together by our XP3 team. You can download episodes wherever you listen to your podcasts and then visit RethinkingYM.org for more info like show notes and links to resources!
• LEAD SMALL APP. This is an app (for iOS and Android devices) for you and your small group leaders. This app helps keep you connected with parents and students and also has the ability streamline communication via a customization subscription option.
• ORANGE STORE. This the digital home for all of the resources Orange creates!
• ORANGE STRATEGY GUIDE. This is a free PDF that you can download and share to help others—like senior leaders and other staff members of your church—better understand what the Orange strategy is all about.

Okay! That’s all! Congratulations, you have officially completed this XP3 101 blog series. Hopefully you feel a little more informed than you did before, and maybe you’ve even uncovered a few new tools or strategies you didn’t know existed.

If you have more questions about what XP3 is all about, or how it can work for you, get