Reggie Joiner's Blog, page 40

What’s Your Ministry Leadership Attitude?

I love being a dad. I love the idea of walking with these kids as they discover the world. I love the opportunity to see things from such a different perspective. I even love my two boys jumping/attacking me at all hours of the day. However, what I don’t love is . . . crying! It drives me absolutely crazy. For the most part, I have to accept that it’s the only way they know how to communicate at such a young age. However, I did discover a phenomenon that greatly reduced the amount of crying a...

Build A Better Tuesday Morning

A sense of dread always filled the office on Tuesday mornings. Smiles were few and conversations were brief as the anticipation of what was to come weighed heavy on all who gathered around the table to meet.

A quick prayer was said, followed by the words, “Okay guys, let’s talk about the. . . .”

What followed “the. . . .” was whatever needed to be debriefed. At the church where I worked, the weekend service was always on the agenda.

The discussion that would follow resembled surgery, as each...

Five Steps To Building A Healthy Team Dynamic

Do you remember your first day of your ministry job? I know I do! You couldn’t wipe the smile off of my face! You could tell from a mile away that I was a newbie. Then slowly, over the next month or so, the smile began to fade, replaced by a frown and tears. You see, I started my job at the beginning of a new phase in our children’s and students’ ministry. In the words of one of my beloved southern friends, “God was fixin’ to do somethin’!”

Some of you may have the illusion that if God is at...

How I Discovered My Sweet Spot In Leadership

Year number nine was my best year on staff as the director of premarital ministry at Watermark Community Church. The ministry I helped lead grew like crazy, premarried couples were challenged, encouraged and heard the gospel, and we were having a great impact in both our church and in the Dallas community. In April of 2015, the staff team I was on just put together a national conference like none other, and my boss and I stacked hands and agreed to continue to partner together in marriage min...

Keeping The Vision Strong

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality” – Warren Bennis

In Proverbs, it is written that “where there is no vision the people perish.” That must mean then that where there IS vision the people will flourish. Vision is a word that we hear often in ministry leadership. We spend many sleepless nights developing it, countless hours casting it to our teams and just about all of our budgets to carry it out. The vision that God has placed in your heart accounts for pretty much e...

3 Easy Ways to Impact a Middle Schooler’s Identity and Faith

11, 12, 13. These are the awkward years. You remember right? Greasy hair, frizzy hair, don’t care. Weight gain and weight loss. You feel like an adult but everyone treats you like a kid.

Life for a middle schooler is rough. Forget trying to figure out who you are in Christ. Preteens are hanging onto the struggle bus for dear life.

Of course you now know that middle school drama, like everything else, won’t matter in a few short years. With the right approach you can help preteens focus on thi...

The Fruits Of Integrity

“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” – CS Lewis

Integrity. It’s a word we hear a lot in leadership, especially in ministry leadership. What has always baffled me about integrity, though, is that it is commonly talked about as “who you are when no one is looking.” If integrity is based on how we act when nobody else is around then how can other people honestly judge an individual as a person of high or low integrity?

Integrity is so much more than who a person is...

What’s In A Name?

by Emily Meredith

Last May, my dad retired as dean of the College of Christian Faith at Dallas Baptist University. During his twenty-one years there, he learned the name of every student in every one of his classes. As soon as he received his class roster, my dad would start memorizing the class list, looking at student ID pictures to help him put names to faces. He challenged himself to recite the entire list of ninety names from memory on the first day of class. And he did it, without fail,...

Three Essential Ways To Identify God’s Vision

You have them all the time. Week in and week out you dream, plan, create and execute. But at the end of the day, when everyone goes home, when the “atta’ boys” wear off . . . how do you know the difference between a vision that God has given you versus simply a good idea you came up with? God created and gave us our abilities, so is it possible to have ideas that are good but not aligned with Him?

Here are three essential ways to identify when an idea is a God-given vision instead of just sim...

Volunteer Recruiting Made Easy?

Recruit. Enlist. Mobilize. Enroll. Sign up. Engage.

These are all words that come to mind when more volunteers are needed in ministry. Let’s be honest, even words like snag, muster and coerce can make their way into the conversation in desperate times! No matter the size of the ministry, from a coffee-shop church plant to a multi-campus mega-church, there always seems to be more opportunities to serve than servers! Over many years of interacting with churches around the country, I can only r...