Reggie Joiner's Blog, page 15

How to Train Volunteers or Staff with Masterclass

Have you ever struggled to re-communicate something powerful you once heard? Maybe it was through an Instagram Reel that popped up on your screen or while on the front-row of a conference. You attempt to tell your friend about it over lunch and can’t quite state it as eloquently as the person you heard it from.

 

We’ve all been there. You’re planning your next season of staff or volunteer training content and suddenly feel ill-equipped to cast the kind of vision that will stir the hearts of men....

How to Plan Your Parent Event Rhythm This Year

Leaders often get tunnel vision when focusing on their specific ministry—I mean, it’s what we get paid (or volunteer) to do. But after 20 years in ministry, I have come to believe that every great kid and student strategy happens when a great parent strategy is in place…and that’s often a step that’s overlooked. 

 

Every parent has more influence in their kid’s life than any of us leaders could ever have. 

 

Yet parents are often an afterthought in our ministries. Sure, we may inform them about ...

Six Things Every Kid Needs

When I (Kristen Ivy) first became a mom, I was working with Reggie Joiner – Founder and CEO of Orange. He told me something that forever changed the way I view parenting. 

 

Reggie gave me a jar with 936 marbles. Each marble represented the estimated weeks between birth and high school graduation. He challenged me to remove a marble each week to help me see the amount of time I had left with my baby. 

 

I know that sounds a tad depressing on one hand, but the point of the jar is this:

 

When you...

One of the Most Powerful Relationship Hacks in Life & Leadership

I was five-years-old, standing in front of the one-hundred-person congregation of Fairview United Methodist Church. Each Easter, every child would give a short Easter speech or poem, and I was ready to give mine. But my mom, evidently, did not think I was ready to give mine. She was sitting in the front row and when I started my speech, she started mouthing the words to me. I calmly stopped my speech and said to her, “Stop doing that. I want to do it all by myself.”

 

I started over, but when I...

Resilient Faith

When I (Kristen Ivy) think about the faith I want my children to have, I think about a Ted Talk by Bhakti Sharma. In this Ted Talk, she describes how she became the first Asian woman and the youngest in the world to set a record in open water swimming in Antarctic waters when she swam 1.5 miles in 41.14 minutes in 2015. The water temperature was only 1° Celsius, but she was truly unprepared for the water’s density. She describes that it was like swimming through oil. 

 

As you can imagine, she t...

Five Ways to Own Your Inspiration in Ministry

We have this notion about creativity that it only comes in sudden thunderbolts of inspiration. This is how I used to go about my creative work. I’d sit around waiting for the lighting to strike and the idea to magically pop out of my brain and onto paper. Time and again, though, I was left disappointed when nothing seemed to click. After lots of reading on creativity and inspiration, I discovered that this isn’t how creativity works. 

 

In fact, a lot of research has been done about cultivating ...

5 Ways to Own Your Inspiration in Ministry

We have this notion about creativity that it only comes in sudden thunderbolts of inspiration. This is how I used to go about my creative work. I’d sit around waiting for the lighting to strike and the idea to magically pop out of my brain and onto paper. Time and again, though, I was left disappointed when nothing seemed to click. After lots of reading on creativity and inspiration, I discovered that this isn’t how creativity works. 

 

In fact, a lot of research has been done about cultivating ...

Ten Hacks for A Budget-Friendly OC23

No matter how large or small your church might be—whether or not you’re gifted in areas of financial strategy and stewardship—things probably look different these days. You may be operating with less staff, your priorities may have shifted, and your budget may be a fraction of what it used to be.

 

If you’re leading in the church today, you’re well aware of how giving patterns have shifted significantly. As inflation continues to increase, we see the toll it’s taking on many households and pocke...

Leading in the Tension

These days, tension feels almost unavoidable. Nowhere feels safe from the potential land mines of disagreement, conflict and misunderstanding. It’s everywhere in culture which can be difficult enough. But that polarization often has a way of causing tension in our teams. So, what do you do when the place where you—and the people who call your church home—go to find refuge is experiencing tension? What happens when your team is navigating polarization and tension? 

 

As leaders, the best thing yo...

Four Reasons Leaders Choose Orange Conference

I’ve been asked this question many times… what is it about the Orange Conference that keeps drawing thousands of leaders every year? Almost 80,000 leaders have attended Orange Conference since it started over a decade ago, and thousands more are planning to attend next April.

I’ve seen many events come and go and have their time in the spotlight. They’ve given me great memories and dozens of stories about events and tours over the years. But nothing compares to the impact and hype of Orange Conf...