Family Ministry Building Progress

For the past several months, the Family Ministry Team and many valuable volunteers have been working on the Family Ministry Building getting it ready for our growing ministry. Every week, God sends more children and families our way, and we are truly humbled that He would allow us to serve these families through SpringWell Church.

Here are some photos of progress that is being made just this week! Hope you enjoy them.

This is our giant logo hanging on the front of the Family Ministry Building facing Wade Hampton Blvd. It measures 20' across and 11' high!

Here is another shot of the logo. You can see it in perspective to the front of the building. Notice the car parked to the left.

We are building a temporary preschool auditorium because we don't have the room for all the kids on Sunday mornings! Greg, SpringWell's facility guru, and his team of awesome volunteers are knocking out a wall here.

This is Jackie painting an orange stripe in one of our nursery rooms. She has a real heart to serve. There is a purpose behind the color orange, and yes, we know how bright colors can affect children.

Why You Should Believe in Orange

What would you fight for? I mean really fight. Not the kind of fight you talk about when a slow driver pulls out in front of you, cutting you off in traffic, and then going e...x...t...r...e...m...e...l...y slow. Are you frustrated? Yes. Will you fight about it? Probably not. Not if you have any sense, anyway.

What would you fight for? I mean fight to the death. Would you spill blood for a front row parking space, or a front row ticket to see your favorite team play your favorite sport? Would you lay it on the line with someone who disagreed with your political beliefs or your religious beliefs? To the death? Only one walks away?

When it gets down to it, there is probably not much you would fight to the death for. But what about your family - your better half, your kids? Would you fight to the death for them? I would...and am. I would fight for my family without hesitation - to the death. Whatever it takes to protect them. I am fighting for my family right now. And yes, this fight is to the death.

Of all the enemies your family has in this world, there is one that stands above all others. This enemy hates you and your family and is doing everything within his power to make sure your family is destroyed. His Hebrew name is Satan. Jesus called him the Deceiver. The Devil. Some of us can look at our family and see the battle scars that the Deceiver has inflicted on us - divorce, depression, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, broken relationships, runaway children, absent fathers, detached mothers. The Deceiver has been attacking the family for a very long time. He started with Adam and Eve and he continues his brutal assault today. Your family has been hit, my family has been hit, and the battlefield is littered with countless bodies - members of families who became victims of the Deceiver's merciless attacks.

Why haven't we done anything about these attacks on our families? I'm not sure. Maybe we wrote them off as "life" or "fate." Maybe we were too weak to fight back. Maybe we didn't even realize we were being attacked. Or...maybe we did want to fight back, but we just didn't have the weapons. Why should you believe in Orange?

1. It is biblical.
2. It may be the best weapon we have, not only to protect our families from the attacks of the Deceiver, but to actually hit back.

Fight for the heart of your family.

Why I Believe in Orange

When I accepted the position of Family Pastor at SpringWell Church in January of 2009, I knew I had my work cut out for me. Not because morale was low or there was a lack of leadership. It was really because SpringWell had decided to go in a different direction and hire a Family Pastor who would actually start a Family Ministry. So, after the right people rolled the Urim and Thummim* and they suggested a "yes" for me, I became the new family point man.

Everything was good. Until I started writing my ideas about Family Ministry down on paper. I knew biblically what it should look like, feel like and smell like, but the more I wrote, the bigger this Family Ministry thing got. It was turning into a giant octopus like the one in the old Disney movie 20,0000 Leagues Under the Sea that attacked the submarine. It was huge, strong, relentless and I couldn't see around it's massive tentacles. So, I did what any normal pastor would do in time of need, when the answer just isn't clear and hope seems, well...hopeless. I became frustrated.

Surfing the WWW one day soon afterwards, I found a book at Amazon.com called Think Orange. And honestly, the only reason it even interested me was because the author had the same surname as me - Joiner. We even spelled it alike. His first name was Reggie, though, not Chip. And when I saw a photo of him, I thought he was my long, lost brother my mother never told me about. He was a very handsome man - brown hair, bald (except on the sides), oval face. I couldn't place my finger on why I liked Reggie Joiner so much. That's a picture of Reggie above, not me.

Turns out Reggie Joiner was the Family Pastor at North Point Church in Atlanta, GA, and had written this book called Think Orange. As I read through the introduction and discovered what Reggie's book was about, I immediately ordered it. Days later, when the UPS truck dropped it off at my house, I feverishly ripped open the package and began reading. I finished it that night.

I discovered two things by reading Reggie Joiner's, Think Orange:

1. Reggie and I may look alike and spell our last names the same way, but that is where the similarity ends. He is a LOT smarter than I will ever be.
2. The ideas that had been floating around in my head for so many months about Family Ministry that I could not properly convey - Reggie put into words that made complete sense.

So, why do I believe in Orange? Because it explains Family Ministry from a biblical perspective, it creates a strategy to get us from where we are to where we need to be, and because it works. Over this series of blogs, I am going to walk through Reggie's book, Think Orange with you. I won't give away any deep, dark secrets - you need to buy the book for those (and it is worth buying). But I will discuss the ideology behind the book and allow you to comment on the content. I would love to have an open forum discussion about this. Orange is what SpringWell is buying into, and I believe we have already seen some great fruit (Get it? Fruit? Orange?) from being early adopters. But we are only seeing the tip of the proverbial iceburg with this.

I look forward to hearing from you and your thoughts/feelings about Orange.


*(See Leviticus 8:8) Little is actually known about the Umim and Thummim except that they were probably precious stones or flat objects that God used to give guidance to His people. The High Priest kept them in a pouch attached to his breastplate. It could be that each object had a "yes" side and a "no" side. The priest would spill both from his pouch. If both landed on their "yes" sides, God's answer was positive. Two "no" sides were negative. A "yes" and a "no" meant no reply. Kind of sounds like a Magic 8 Ball, doesn't it? But they were really used by the Israelites in important decisions.