Hi! I’m Brett and I’m an Orange Specialist, or OS, as the Orange insiders call us. Before I had this OS gig, I was a ministry leader just like you, navigating the vast waters of the Orange ocean trying to figure out the best way to use all of the amazing resources that Orange offers.

But, if I’m being honest . . . I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it.

I’m guessing that you might be a lot like me. You may be a new Orange leader who just signed up for one or more of our curriculums. Or, maybe you have been using Orange resources for a while. Either way, I’m betting that at some point you have felt confused or overwhelmed by the amount of incredible resources Orange gives you.

You might be thinking, “Where on earth do I start after I download this zip file of Orange goodness?”

When you become an Orange curriculum subscriber, you’re not only receiving great content like teaching scripts, small group guides, parent resources, set designs, and many other resources, but you also get access to your Orange Specialist, a member of your team who is passionate about seeing you and your church WIN with a generation of students.

As soon as you sign up for a curriculum license, you are assigned an Orange Specialist based on your location and church size to personally assist in implementing Orange curriculum and strategy. Every Specialist on our team has extensive family ministry experience in situations just like yours. Plus, we have each helped hundreds of leaders just like you.

This means that if in your situation you are leading your ministry and balancing a full-time job at the same time, your OS is talking to other leaders in your exact situation.

Or, if you are a portable church that sets up and takes down every Sunday in your local public school, your OS is connecting with leaders just like you who are experiencing the exact same things.

Or maybe you are adding a campus to your church, and you are managing hundreds of students and ordering thousands of paper plates and pipe cleaners every single week, all while having to plan and produce your weekly program. your OS is connecting regularly with leaders who are also placing similar orders every week and are managing the same level of craziness that you are.

You can glean from your OS’s personal ministry experience, as well as from the experiences of the thousands of other ministry leaders that our team interfaces with year in and year out. Pretty cool, right?

But, first things first: If you haven’t heard from your OS, you need to. All you need to do is scroll down to the bottom of the OS website (OrangeSpecialists.org) and click on “Find your OS.”

Once you know who your OS is, I want to make sure that you know the specifics of how your dedicated OS team can best partner with you. We break it down into three simple words: Connect, Customize, and Coach.

Connect

The first one is connect. The truth is, one of the main things we strive to do is to know you as a ministry leader and to know your ministry context. We don’t want to just be your curriculum provider. We want to partner with you to strategize your ministry goals, help plan your messaging calendar, brainstorm ways to best recruit and train small group leaders, discuss how to better parent with parents, and so on.

We love connecting with you as a ministry leader, but we also want to help connect you with other ministry leaders. In fact, we would love to connect you to a community of other ministry leaders who are also using the Orange strategy and curriculum in their ministries. We work with over 50 denominations all around the world, and with churches of all sizes and demographics.

So you might be a volunteer leading the charge, with no budget at all, and have eight students attending your program regularly. Or, you might be a full-time ministry leader getting paid the big bucks, with a huge budget, and have 122 students attending your program regularly. Whatever your context looks like, your OS has talked to ministry leaders in the same position as yourself, and we would love to connect you with them!

Customize

Another thing we like to do is help you customize your Orange curriculum. We want you to take this curriculum and make it fit your context. We hear this from our curriculum partners again and again. They say, “I feel like I can be using my curriculum way better. What am I missing?”

This is where the customization conversation comes into play. There are so many tips your OS can share with you on how to best use Orange curriculum. Our team answers questions all the time like:

“What are the best practices for using your curriculum?” 

“How can I set my volunteers up to win every week?”

“What is the most effective way for me to utilize Orange resources to connect with parents?”

So, if you’d like some assistance in customizing your curriculum, make sure to connect with your Orange Specialist. We are happy to help!

Coach

Lastly, our team is passionate about coaching you through any ministry challenges you might be facing. Whether it’s troubleshooting systems issues, brainstorming recruiting strategies, or helping you formulate ways to cast vision about change to your senior pastor, we are here to help you develop a plan. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we’d love to offer our experience and the ideas we’ve gleaned from our vast network of Orange partners.

So as you jump into the world of Orange, remember: You are not alone. Our Orange Specialist team wants you to know that our partnership with you doesn’t end with a transaction of curriculum. We are in it for the long haul to help your ministry win and to celebrate with you when you do!

So, if you have questions about any of these XP3 101 blogs you’ve just read, or if you would like to talk through something non-curriculum related in ministry, we’re here for you.

And don’t forget to find out who your Orange Specialist is by clicking here.

We look forward to connecting with you soon and we are excited to help you out along the way!

Missed any posts in this XP3 101 series? Here are some links to catch you up:

• What is XP3?
• What does “XP3” mean?
• The 7 Segments
• Teaching with XP3
• The XP
• The Parent Cue
• Small Groups
• Scope & Cycle
• XP3 MS and HS differences
• What is an Orange Specialist?
• More Resources for Student Pastors