Reggie Joiner's Blog, page 51

How to Connect with Christmas Visitors at Your Church

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Really! It is! Not only do we get to exchange gifts, watch classic movies, eat well, and maybe play in the snow. We get to host more visitors than usual at our churches. For various reasons, many people choose to visit our churches for Easter and Christmastime. What an amazing opportunity for us to connect with families from our communities, who don’t usually visit.

Now, it is time for us to get ready for them. How will we connect with them? What will...

Three Things Kids Need to Hear From Ministry Leaders

It’s the most wonderful time of year! The holidays are a fantastic few months of pure joy and hope. It’s an opportunity for people to share thanks for the blessings God has done, rejoice in the love of God through Christ’s birth and hope for a new year and a fresh start.

As joyful and happy as these months are for a lot of people, it can also be a very challenging time of year for others. Just because someone is supposed to feel joy and hope over the holidays doesn’t always translate into rea...

Keeping an Intentional Connection on High Attendance Holidays

Holidays and high church attendance days seem to go hand-in-hand. People we’ve never met and people we haven’t seen in a while all seem to be present at once on Sundays connected to holidays. In addition to the Sundays, we have special events and services that are designed as easy on-ramps for people to join our communities of faith. Holidays give churches a great impetus to influence the faith of parents, kids, and students that we don’t get during the rest of the year. However, because of t...

Maintaining Marriage Sanity During the Busy Holiday Season

Although Summer is my favorite season, I’ve always loved the events that happen this time of year. I love bundling up in a blanket on cold metal stands watching a football game. I love the smell that permeates the neighborhood that comes from roaring fireplaces. I love the hot beverages that usually accompany this time of year. Most of all, I love the holidays!

Holidays have always been a very special time of year for me. As a kid, they meant being able to play with the cousins that I hadn’t...

Making a Place in Your Ministry for Children With Special Needs

“The King will answer and say to them, ‘I assure you and most solemnly say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it for Me.’” – Matthew 25:40 (AMP)

Oftentimes when we think of this verse, our thoughts are drawn to the homeless, the helpless, the sick or the poor. We think of third-world countries, people without food or clean drinking water, and children who are growing up without opportunity. During the last five years, our c...

Maximizing Family Time During the Holidays

The hustle-and-bustle of the holiday season doesn’t just pertain to shopping. Ministry work seems to get kicked up a notch between October and February. We have Fall Festivals, Hallelujah Nights, Trunk or Treats, Thanksgiving events, Christmas services, New Year’s services, and new families coming to jump-start their faith journeys this year. With all of these moments that are scrunched together by calendars, how we can make sure to protect our family time?

Establish your family time early in...

4 Key Elements to a Great Volunteer Celebration

It’s a wonderful time of the year to celebrate your volunteers!

I love Christmas. I love the lights, the tree, the gifts and most of all the time with friends and family celebrating the beautiful gift of Jesus. This is the perfect opportunity to take a moment to say a big “thank you” to the volunteers that serve so faithfully in your ministry. For many, Christmas is the half-way point. Some signed up at the beginning of the school year, (maybe thinking they wouldn’t make it this far). Other v...

Partnering With Local Schools This Holiday Season

The holiday season is here! Radiant red, forest green, sparkling white and a host of other colorful decorations are everywhere. Our festive cities have wrapped the once bare light poles with fresh garland and artificial snowflakes. Lively shopping centers have placed a massive tree where there once was a stunning fountain. And as we cruise through our neighborhoods, we see that some of our celebratory neighbors have added a little Christmas flair to their houses. The blissful holidays are upo...

How to Activate and Motivate Ministry Volunteers This Season

(Cue the music)

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
Everywhere you go.
Take a look at the 8 and 10
Vacancies once again.
With not enough help and too many kids, oh no!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! 
And volunteers, you need more.
’Cause the scariest sight to see are the rosters that will be
Empty and forlorn.

It’s Christmas, and you need more. More time, more supplies, more space and more ministry volunteers. As exciting and rewarding as Christmas is, for those of us...

How to Coordinate a Community Service Day for Your Ministry Team

Love sacrificially serves. And if you are reading this, you most likely agree. Jesus essentially delivers that statement to the disciples, but they have no idea what they are in for.

“Here is my command. Love each other, just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than the one who gives his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command,” (John 15:12-14, NIRV).

Thousands of years later, we have the honor, privilege and choice to serve through sacrifice as well. In mos...