Breaking Down the Benefits of an Orange Curriculum for Educators
Orange creates biblical materials that link church and family to influence kids’ lives because they know two voices are more powerful than one. This emphasis is reflected in their name: Orange represents yellow and red, representing the combination of the church’s light and the home’s heart.
They provide four age-specific curriculums: First Look for preschoolers, 252 Kids for elementary and preteens, and XP3 Middle School and High School. They also host multiple conferences and share free resources like blogs, downloadable guides, and podcasts.
Increased Family Engagement
Orange is a church curriculum that uses experiences to reach kids with the gospel. Thousands of churches of all sizes, locations, and denominations use it. The program is designed to influence children to churches that use Orange curriculum by inspiring wonder, provoking discovery, and fueling passion.
Their unique strategy leverages the critical influences of both church and home to impact a child’s spiritual development. Their color scheme, “yellow and red,” represents the idea that combining these two influential voices is more potent than alone.
Parents have the most time and influence over their children, so partnering with them is central to the Orange strategy. They create resources to help parents better engage their children at home and encourage them to talk about their faith with them. Their curriculum includes fun games that adapt to a child’s knowledge level and learning style and teaching tools such as object lessons and story-based video clips. This helps teachers engage their students and make learning more accessible. They are also a leader in digitally delivering content, allowing them to stay relevant with today’s technology.
Increased Discipleship
One thing that distinguishes Orange from other kids’ ministry curriculum providers is their emphasis on family. They understand that parents have far more influence on a child’s spiritual development than the church, so they create experiences and resources that promote a partnership with parents. This includes a parenting blog, an app, and opportunities for a “Family Experience” (FX).
Orange believes they can significantly impact children more than alone by equipping leaders and parents with the tools they need to take their faith home. As a result, the roots of faith are more likely to stick than without a supportive community.
However, what is troubling about this philosophy is that it appears to be influenced by progressive Christianity. The director of Orange’s children and preteen curriculum lists his pronouns in his bio, retweets well-known advanced Christian speakers, and has even spoken at churches that don’t believe in the absolute authority of scripture. These teachings have filtered into their curriculum and are now used by thousands of churches worldwide.
Increased Communication
Orange uniquely creates biblical resources to unite the influential voices of church and home to impact kids significantly. Their curriculum focuses on the three core elements of wonder, discovery, and passion. They believe combining these will help kids grow their faith roots, see themselves the way God sees them, and fuel their power to make a difference in their community.
They use a combination of storytelling visuals, drama sketches, and music playlists to connect kids with their peers and leaders. Their content is also available on their website, podcasts, and app. This makes it easy for parents to follow along with their children at home.
They also provide training and resource tools for church leaders, like volunteer guides, training videos, blogs, downloadable guides, and podcasts. They also host yearly conferences, including a leadership conference for senior pastors. These events are held around the country and are made possible through the support of sponsors like Playlister.
Increased Attendance
Orange is an experience-based curriculum provider that offers various lesson plans for preschool, kids, and elementary school students. They create engaging content for students, leaders, and parents with interactive videos, storytelling visuals, music, and more. This helps create a community and builds a strong connection between children, families, and volunteers.
Their unique approach focuses on partnering with families to encourage spiritual growth. Their logo uses yellow and red to represent the two most influential voices in a child’s life – the church and home. Orange believes that when these two influences are aligned, they can have a more significant impact than alone.
This family-focused strategy has yielded several benefits for churches, including increased attendance. However, it appears that progressive Christianity has infected Orange and doesn’t uphold the authority of God’s Word. The director of their kids and preteen curriculum lists “progressive” as a spiritual practice on Twitter, frequently retweets well-known progressive Christians, and promotes books that have been labeled as “theologically liberal.” Regardless, Orange is still widely used in thousands of churches worldwide.
Increased Community
A primary focus of the Orange strategy and curriculum is leveraging the critical influence of church and home. The organization gets its name from Orange, which represents the combination of two forces- the light of the church and the heart of a family. The belief is that when these two voices combine, they are stronger than either voice on its own.
They achieve this by creating age-specific weekly church curricula that are designed with the help of child development experts and experienced church leaders. They also host multiple conferences throughout the year and offer a variety of resources, including blogs and downloadable guides.
Their 21st-century curriculum uses storytelling visuals, drama, and music to connect with kids. They also believe that kids need a community of caring adults, so they encourage parents to participate in their kids’ spiritual growth.
Additionally, the organization has developed social-emotional learning skills to teach students how to manage their emotions and empathize with others. They are also committed to making it easy for small group leaders to prepare with email templates, leader devotionals, and a mobile app that provides critical information for the week’s lesson.