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Why Orange Curriculum is Bad
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- Опубліковано 15 сер 2024
- In this eye-opening podcast episode, Elizabeth Urbanowicz analyzes the effectiveness of the popular Orange Curriculum and discusses the pitfalls of proof-texting moral lessons. We'll even look at scripture-based alternatives to Orange Curriculum. Don't miss this essential conversation on transforming kids' ministry for the better!
For show notes and transcript visit:
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Resources Mentioned:
Preparing Kids to Confront Unbiblical Ideas within Christianity
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Learn more about the Foundation Worldview Curriculum:
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I don't dissagree. But must every other curriculum be so boring? No one is competing with Orange. If we want better, we have to write better.
Check out Brite. My church is currently looking into switching to it.
@@kindlegarrett4017 thank you
The Gospel Project and Answers in Genesis are great.
Wow!! Thank you so much for showing how good character and morals are NOT what leads us to the Savior!!! We need to know that we need to decrease and let Him increase as The Savior, Redeemer, Healer, Hero of every day!!!
I feel you're definitely missing some key understanding. You're doing to the Orange curriculum what you accuse them of doing to scripture.
You perused their stuff and cherry picked out things that fit your point.
If you did a full deep dive into the motivation of creation, their goals, fluid structure and child development based approach you would have a better understanding of why their lessons are done the way they are and how they are designed as a singular tower building strategy of faith.
Ive deep dived on dozens of curriculums, and havent found any with such a comprehensive, family & church unified structure. I went through all of this to go "ma'am didnt read the book. She should've started there and then started with Reggie Joiner videos."
Your policy that children dont actually need an age appropriate teaching unless its before or after corporate worship is a proven fallacy. Were losing 80% of our youth at 18 to unbelief. Less than half of them ever come back or identify as a Christian within 15 years after they leave as an adult.
Many are bored, unengaged, and have no basic understanding of the foundational principles of their denomination or church at the age of 18. Studies show that outside of attending church, many parents have little to no idea how to disciple their own children. They come to church and expect the church to teach and disciple their children.
How many hours with these children do parents have vs the church?
Orange tackles these issues in a practical way that makes sense for parents with all age group's and reinstates the community and village mind set the church is supoosed to be.
How do you expect to accurately criticize concepts when you don't seem to grasp the actual time the average family is willing to invest in attending church and your ending statement is to dissolve children's church?
Yes there are great curriculums that exist out there. This might be one of them. But you're missing core structures of the American family dynamic, child development structures for learning and connection, and dissolving the concept of age appropriate learning. Nevermind the issue of the current issues of the amount of teens and young adults who walk away from the church with no foundational principles or belief.
Here is my take, and I would love to hear other people give their thoughts to challenge mine.
I'm not a children's ministry director, but I have worked and volunteered in churches that have used Orange and have been able to be involved with thinking through strategies for teaching kids the Bible and using Sunday school curriculum, as well as have used the material as a sunday school teacher myself. The way I would succinctly describe Orange is that I find it "theologically lacking." I think it is far from great, but it is also far from outright heretical.
My (limited) experience with children's curriculum is that you don't get "excellent everywhere." That is to say, you *either* get really great theology and grounded Biblical Lessons OR you get all the "extra" stuff that comes with curriculum. All that polished nice stuff that is easy to work with and takes hours off of time needed to put together online media for website and socials, newsletters, bulletins, decorations for your spaces, videos and graphics etc. Think of all the sorts of things that just take a lot of time.
The thing is, on a surface level, it seems like it would be great to eschew all the "flash in the pan" sort of stuff and just keep things basic and focus on the Bible. But you still need to communicate with your people, you still need to have stuff to show to your kids so you aren't just lecturing to them. You still need games that have been thought through from a pedagogical perspective so that they actually teach and aren't just filler, and on and on. That all is necessary EVEN WHEN you intend to "keep things simple" and aren't aiming for flashy and cool. And those things take a lot of time.
When you buy children's curriculum you are going to have to adapt it to your specific use. If the theology is lacking you're going to have to adapt it and make it more robust. When all the extra stuff is missing you are going to have to spend time creating all THAT material. As a children's minister, what do you actually want to spend your time on? Do you want to spend your time on graphic design and coming up with theme ideas and making sure activities and crafts are actually teaching, or do you want to spend time adapting the lessons to make sure that they are the best, most truthful teaching? And even if you get the best of the best, most robust, theologically sound curriculum, I would hope you are still going over the actual content with a fine-tooth comb!
So with all that in mind, I think a curriculum that puts all the "extra" stuff on autopilot so you really don't have to put attention to it, and where the director and volunteers can focus their time on the content and making sure it is great VS one where they know the content is great and so put that on autopilot but then need to spend all their time adapting (or outright creating ... because let's be honest, it often just isn't there!) all of the extra material they need to run a Sunday school.
Now, this obviously only applies if you find Orange (or similar) materials "lacking." If you think it is heresy, we'll need to have a different conversation. I personally think that Orange has good bones, it is just far too generic (in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible) and needs a lot of supplementary work to fit a church's specific theological bent.
But to end on my experience, when I was young I taught Sunday school without curriculum and would pour hours and hours into making engaging lessons for the kids without the aid of curriculum. I just don't have that time anymore (any also, because of my inexperience, I'm not sure that hand-crafted lessons were getting a theology boost anyway--I don't think anyone looks at a young person teaching other young people the Bible and thinks that the best quality of such an arrangement is that young person's advanced expertise!).
On the other hand, when I volunteered at a church that used Orange most of that ground work was done for me. I didn't have to think about, for example, a short game that fits the theme and displays a teachable moment to insert when the grade 2 boys needed to move. All of those sorts of things were supplied for me! On the other hand, I always knew I could easily crack open the Bible and spend more time making sure the kids understood the story of the day, or spend more time going over the memory verse, or spend more time in prayer. or spend time explaining how the story connects to the Gospel message. None of those things needed me to spend hours in advance crafting lesson materials, or hours afterwards crafting follow-up materials. The only prep I needed for those things was making sure that I myself was grounded in God's Word and I was familiar with the Bible story I was teaching--which were things that I would be doing whether I was teaching Sunday school or not.
I think a great curriculum is one where your leaders can show up spiritually prepared (and with knowledge of the lesson plan) and all of the rest of the work is largely taken care of--either by the curriculum itself, or because the curriculum makes it easy to streamline that prep. I notice that for many "theologically great" curriculums, all of that sort of prep is the part that is "lacking." I'm seeing this even now as our children's minister has moved to a different curriculum to get something more Biblically grounded than Orange and her workload has massively increased. Do you want your teachers spending their valuable time in spiritual preparation, or in lesson plan and activity preparation?
Just my thoughts though, and I would love to hear others' inputs. Especially if you've encountered curriculum that is excellent on both fronts.
Kids love it when you're super preachy with them, definitely keeps your church growing
I'm meeting with my church about Orange. I am nervous because there is so much to cover.
How did the meeting go? I am also meeting with my church about Orange. I'm the Children's Ministry Asst. Director and they're considering using it for the teen ministry. I am 100% against it and I'm worried I'll just be dismissed and bulldozed over.
I would encourage all of you who have criticisms around orange curriculum to download their sample curriculum and see for yourself. Jesus is at the center of what they do, and this video is poorly representing what Orange curriculum and Orange strategy is all about.
This is what I was thinking. We use Orange at my church I actually taught yesterday. You want to engage these children because if not the message will go right over their head and they'll get bored. I don't get the how it's viewed as "making the child the hero" because most lessons teach the child how to help like Jesus did. It points back to God and how God wanted it to be in whatever story is being used.
Exactly, there seems to be confusion about what the website is highlighting. The strategy is the how ministries can reach children and parents. It’s not the what. That’s found in the curriculum.
This!
you nailed it! My previous church used to use the orange material. It’s like sweet frog for church. It’s very appealing, but altogether unhealthy and not nutritious. Thank you for this.
I really found your podcast very helpful. Blessings
As soon as you said all children should go to adult corporate worship you lost all respect from me as an educator in the field of early childhood.
This was great! I've been reading some books on biblical parenting and I was really annoyed that they treat scripture the same way...basically cherry picking a scripture out of context to "support" their point when clearly it isn't even talking about their point. Thank you for addressing this issue! The Bible always points us to Jesus and our need for him; that's what we as parents and teachers must do as well! Thanks Elizabeth and team!
I feel like this is a completely misrepresented review. I am both a small group leader at a church that uses orange, and a mom of four kids taught by orange curriculum.
Orange is a strong believer in the church and family working together to teach the children. Which as a mom I love. They provide everything I need to dive deeper with my kids at home. They teach them to take a piece of scripture and literally apply it to life. For example in January the monthly theme was responsibility. They learned that when we show responsibility with little, we can be trusted with much. Another month we learned about what God says about friendship. And when my kids were struggling with friends I could ask them what God says and they could quote the scripture and turn it all back to God. God is 100% at the center of the curriculum. It does not teach to depend on self.
Our church also did a family worship service today. Your suggestion that kids be in central worship is so off. My 2&4 year olds did not get anything out of the service, and neither did I. No, we don’t need to teach them to sit through the whole service, because toddlers aren’t meant to sit still for an hour.
I 100% disagree with this “review” and would not go to my church.
Thanks, Elizabeth. I'm concerned about the mega-church that sent my wife and me as missionaries to the Philippines. They use Orange. Your video will help my friends 'back home' to hopefully persuade the church's pastors to dump it. (I just sent your video to them.)
Blessings, thank you for this video!
Thank you for this great video- your heart for children to learn God’s truth is so evident and all your videos have been incredibly helpful! I have sadly seen firsthand how orange curriculum ultimately leads to churches full of ‘good’ kids who have no idea who Jesus is or what the actual gospel even is. 😩😭 Many people on orange’s leadership teams have very progressive views and do not hide it on their personal social media accounts. 😩 It is heartbreaking and terrifying that this curriculum is so popular. And also heartbreaking that so many are being led astray with progressive thinking. 😭 Thank you for speaking the truth, in a whole lot of love 😊💕 God bless you and your wonderful ministry! 💕
💯thank you so much for the great care to keep pointing families to Jesus and His Truth.
Orange is a strategy not just a curriculum. You only reviewed a little bit of an all encompassing, family oriented, ministry strategy.
I disagree with your assessment. There are many applications from scriptures. Orange may choose one application from the book of acts, and you may choose another, but that doesn’t make theirs, shallow or nonexistent. There are multiple lessons from the story of David and Goliath. Just because one lesson focuses on a different application, doesn’t make it invalid or shallow.
Your negative predisposition toward the orange curriculum shows pretty loudly!
another brilliant podcast - thank you so much. Given me some great next steps to follow up with at my own church
L take hahah.
these criticisms are all ways out of context. from a glance you are inserting opinion and biases and how you assume what they are saying. they are sharing biblical principles just like you. teaching truths. Jesus is always glorified. you both are on the same team man. reaching kids with the Bible in a relevant and meaningful way. this is why genz and alpha will roll their eyes on companies like you.
I have materials from Truth78 and what I have is fantastic!
I completely disagree with your interpretation and as a person who definitely hasn’t invested enough into actually understanding the strategy of Orange you are way off base.
What about Hyfi?
I can agree with the orange strategy and some of the ideas with how to manage a solid and relational small group- all of that is solid. But I personally have been struggling with the curriculum for a few years now because it's really watered down and seems to miss the point of a lot of scripture. Personally I wish my church would dump orange and find a more doctrinally sound curriculum (or just scrap the children's ministry all together but that's another topic entirely).
Would you also talk about Reviews of Saddleback kids?
After watch at least 20-30% of the 170+ saddleback kids videos for elementary students at home, I realized that the teachings seam to be ok and hard to discern.
The structure includes a theme. Such as miracle, human identity, fruit of the spirit…
The interpretation from a Bible story is always drawn ahead of an animated video. A Bible verse is also picked.
However, sometimes the interpretation of the Bible story is questionable or at least cherry picked. In the recent miracle series, they didn’t mention that all the miracles Jesus did was to show his glory and God has the sovereignty of performing miracles or not. They only tell you that the miracles were cool and powerful and God can help you that way.
After surveying many videos, I haven’t found one that explains to you about the problem of sin. In the ones that touched a little bit of the problem of evil or suffering, they just said Jesus will help you. The model Christian kid in one of the video who just got baptized told the three steps to become a Christian : accept, believe and call Jesus. One of the worship songs is called I choose, talking about I choose Jesus instead of God chose us. The series about identity only talks about people are good and God sees us as good and special.
It seams that the videos cherry pick all the good rewards about being a Christian. And they try to avoid tough questions about sin.
In conclusion, these videos have the danger of feeding into the self and encouraging high self esteem but miss the chance to preach the whole council of God.
If you have a question you would like for us to answer on a future podcast, you can submit it here: foundationworldview.com/podcast
The Curriculum that should be followed is the Sabbath is Saturday not Sunday and start keeping The Feasts and Festivals of our Savior Jesus aka Yeshua Ha Moshiach. Like Passover etc.