Today’s podcast features an excellent tag-team duo in Reggie Joiner and Kristen Ivy. 

Reggie is the founder and CEO of Orange, a nonprofit organization providing resources and training to help churches maximize their influence on the spiritual growth of the next generation. Kristen works with him as the Executive Director of messaging, and they are both authors and co-authors of several books on parenting, discipleship, and small group ministry. 

Together, they have some incredible insights into what it looks like to raise godly children and how to parent in a way that is healthy and nourishing. For all the time-starved entrepreneurs out there who feel like family is the one juggling ball they keep dropping, this episode is for you…

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Episode Transcript

*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.

 

Henry Kaestner: [00:02:50] Reggie and Kristen. It is so good to have you both on the show today. We think that the topic of parenting and families has been incredibly important, especially, with all the things that an entrepreneur might look to balance. And yet, what's been even more relevant really in these crazy times, just a kind of to put this in a sense of history. A lot of people are going to be listening hopefully to this months and years from now. But right now we're recording this during what might be the height of the coronavirus situation. In fact, we hope it's the height. We hope it doesn't get any worse than it is right now. But overnight, we have all become homeschool teachers. We had a really neat podcast the other day with the head coach of the Baylor basketball team, which is the number one ranked basketball team in the country. And he talked about the fact that his new job was as a gym teacher for homeschool, for three kids. So instead of being in front of 30 million people on CBS and doing all the things around the Final Four, he's a schoolteacher like all of us are. And so we take on an increasing weight as the disciple-maker to our kids. And we think that this conversation is long overdue. And at the same time, it's probably perfect. So thank you very much for being there. [00:03:58][67.9]

Reggie Joiner: [00:03:58] Sure. We're glad to be here. You spoke Kristen's love language just then when you said Baylor,. [00:04:03][4.1]

Henry Kaestner: [00:04:03] Baylor basketball? Oh, my goodness, well you and Justin too. [00:04:04][1.3]

Reggie Joiner: [00:04:07] She was head cheerleader for Baylor. People don't know that, but she's got quite a Baylor history. [00:04:10][3.7]

Henry Kaestner: [00:04:11] Yeah. Oh, my goodness. That's very, very cool. That's awesome. Justin, did you know that? Justin is our executive producer and a huge Baylor fan, and somehow I know that he must have made this happen. Would almost be as if we had an Alabama cheerleader on here. We'd call William out on that. [00:04:26][14.7]

Reggie Joiner: [00:04:26] You got me on here, so you could get Kristen on here because of Baylor. I feel like it's a setup. [00:04:30][4.0]

Kristen Ivy: [00:04:32] It's a great place. Sic em bears. [00:04:34][1.7]

Henry Kaestner: [00:04:35] Amen. All right, good. Well, Reggie, why don't you get a start and give us a little bit of a background on orange, maybe tell us a little bit about your personal story and then what you got started down the road that you're on today, please. [00:04:44][9.2]

Reggie Joiner: [00:04:45] Yeah. I'll just try to give you a brief history. I mean, I obviously started Northpoint with Andy and a great group of leaders almost 20 years ago now. Plus, I guess. And during that season in time, my passion has always been kids and teenagers. I was a student pastor prior to that. So somewhere about a decade into that experience, a lot of churches started asking us to help them create experiences for kids and teenagers. And my passion has always been connecting the church to the family and the family to the church. So somewhere in that mix, we kind of basically turned that on and started letting churches kind of help us understand what they needed. And we started serving churches. We create weekly experiences for them that connect them to the home. And I guess orange is basically the color that we designed to kind of illustrate that. We were sitting in a restaurant one day and we said, how can we illustrate getting the church and the home on the same page? What would that look like? [00:05:43][58.4]

[00:05:44] And we decided, you know, colors do that. When you mix two colors, you get a different color. We didn't use pink because breast cancer has that. We didn't use green because environmentalists had that. We didn't use Purple because Prince has that. So we just went with orange, the light of the church. You know, the heart of the family on the same page combined together has a different kind of impact. So that became our kind of marching orders. [00:06:08][23.4]

Henry Kaestner: [00:06:09] So Kristin, jump in yourself and talk about the work that you guys are doing today and what's happening during the present. What are some of the projects you're working on to get you excited? [00:06:16][7.4]

Kristen Ivy: [00:06:18] Well, just like you said, today is an opportunity like never before for ministries to resource parents, since parents are in the home with their kids all day, every day. Right now, parents have a front row seat to everything going on in their kid's world. We're more engaged than ever before in our kids lives. I know for me, I have three kids. They're 10, 8 and 4. And we're doing activities together for home-school. You know, the swim coaches sending home instructions on how to stay active during this time when they can't go to practices. And the same is true for faith. So I love this opportunity that we've had over the last few weeks. Our teams have taken all the content we typically produce for a church environment and repackaged it to make it digital and online and easily accessible for families like my own. Like many families out there so that we can watch something together on the weekend and then do activities together to disciple our kids while we're in the home. And it's something that we've valued for a long time, like it's part of what makes us orange, that we talk about church and family together. And now I think we're getting to see it at a different level where churches are just getting massively creative in sending out to families resources to say, you disciple these kids and we're here to help you, we're here to support you. And so I think that's what's most exciting right now. [00:07:42][84.5]

Reggie Joiner: [00:07:42] I love what we do. I've always loved what we do. I think our goal is to make the church the hero in the community and to help the church make the parent the hero in the home. And I think at the end of the day, we've got to keep thinking that way. It's such an interesting thing that we have been saying for years to churches. [00:07:59][16.8]

[00:08:00] Not only should you think about the parents who are in your church on Sunday, but you should be thinking about the parents who don't come to church on Sunday. And the interesting thing about those of us who remember 9/11, 9/11, everybody showed back up at church. With this crisis, no one can come to church. And the fundamental question for churches has shifted. The fundamental question was, how do we get ready for who's coming this Sunday? Now, the fundamental question is how do we stay connected? Who can't come this Sunday? And so for us, we think we should have been thinking about that. And we need to always think about that even going forward into the future, because the church has this amazing opportunity to continue to rebrand itself in the context of communities that need the church still as that makes sense. [00:08:48][47.8]

Henry Kaestner: [00:08:50] It does. And this broader sense of not outsourcing the discipline of your faith to the church and really partnering with parents, I think is really, really crucial. And I think it's really, really key. And I'm glad that you emphasized that. I think that that is oftentimes missed. And I think that there's a great joy that comes from being involved in the discipleship process with your kids. For me, as a parent of three kids, I find that I get to disciple through that. We all know that we learn when we teach. And when I go through a youth devotional, I learn a lot more about my faith. Ours is, of course, a great faith. It can work for a child and then for the most advanced theologian of all time. But I get disciplined more when I'm involved in the direct participation in discipleship for my kids. So thanks for bringing that out. [00:09:34][43.5]

Reggie Joiner: [00:09:34] Well, I love that you say that. And I think for us, we had an interesting moment when we were in Hong Kong two years ago when we were talking to parents there who outsource a lot of their parenting because of their work force and because of the way they have to live. And the idea that you can't really outsource faith development is a very, very important principle. And I know it was interesting in that culture as we were working to go, how do we help parents who are used to outsourcing kind of embrace and get their arms around the idea that we need to champion this in our own homes? The other thing that I would also add to this, and I do agree that discipleship is something that parents need to own and be a part of. We have kind of a twofold philosophy and it almost seems like they're competing principles, but they're both true at the same time. One is that no one has the potential to influence your kids like a parent. We absolutely need to remind parents and churches of that. The second thing is that a parent is not the only influence a kid or teenager needs, especially as they grew up through the phases and in all of Kristen's research we show how the other adults become more important in their lives as they get older. [00:10:45][70.8]

[00:10:46] So when we can lean into the family and lean into the church and say, you guys partner together and you can do something together that you can't do separately, it changes the game. [00:10:54][7.8]

Rusty Rueff: [00:10:55] Yeah. I want to applaud you for that philosophy, being someone who teaches Sunday school for a long time. You know, the greatest compliment, I think a curriculum builder or a teacher in Sunday school can get is when mom and dad come in and say, I don't know what it is you're doing, but all they want to do is talk about it on the way home. Right. And they just talk, talk, talk. You know, about what they learned that day. And, you know, I want to applaud you for the way that you've intertwined that, because not only have you put the appropriate accountability back on the parent, but you have figured out how to stimulate the child to put the accountability on the parents. Right. Just like mom and dad, you know, you're supposed to do this with me. And I think that's awesome. [00:11:45][50.1]

Reggie Joiner: [00:11:46] Kristen said something yesterday that I would love for her to talk about a little bit. And it's the assumption that so many adults, teachers, churches make about parents. [00:11:53][7.5]

Kristen Ivy: [00:11:55] Yes. I think for a lot of us, as we teach the idea of partnering with parents, one of the most common questions that we get after we finished talking about partnering with parents is from a church leader who's well-intentioned. And this work is hard. And if you've been in it for, you know, even a week, you understand trying to partner with parents is really messy work. It never feels like it's working. It never feels like you've got it right. And so the most commonly asked question is, what about the disengaged parent? And having heard that question so many times, you know, it's been something we've reflected on a lot. And part of the response to that seems like, are we asking about parents who are disengaged from churches or parents who we think are disengaged from their kids? [00:12:39][44.5]

[00:12:40] Because the answer is fundamentally different depending on what group we mean, because there's a large constituency of parents who are disengaged from a local church but heavily engaged in their own kids lives, who care deeply about their kids future, who want the very best for their kid and for church leaders. I think it's important to remember that that's your greatest opportunity to go to those parents and say, how can we help you be the parent you want to be to help your kid have a good future? And then you remind parents, because we all need reminded again. I'm a mom of three and know how it's busy. It's hard work. Sometimes you just need someone who's kind of cheering for us in our corner to go, hey, just remember, there are some things in your kid's life like Reggie was saying, that can't be outsourced. The kids learn how to be humans from other humans and they can't learn how to be human from a textbook. I mean, they could learn math from a textbook without much human interaction. You know, they can learn facts about history from a Web site. But learning how to be a human and then learning how to be a disciple of Christ can only happen in the context of human relationships. And that's where the relationship between a parent and a small group leader or teacher is so fundamental. [00:13:48][67.6]

Reggie Joiner: [00:13:49] And we really want to challenge leaders everywhere to see the parent differently. I feel like a lot of our job is to lean into the church and go. There are parents who don't come to your church because they don't trust the way your church feels about them. And by changing the way the church sees the parent, we ultimately, hopefully can change the way the parent sees the church. [00:14:07][18.2]

[00:14:08] And that's kind of the goal. And I love the idea of discipleship needs to be turned back on in the home. We've talked about that for a decade. But I also like the idea that parents who are not Christians or who are not in the church are not necessarily anti-God and anti spiritual. They just need us to help them see how the thing they care about with their kids, which is their kids future, is connected to faith. And so many times we'll talk about Jesus and discipleship and faith that we don't show them how that connects to their kids future in a way that helps them go, Oh! Because every parent, all of us that are talking right now, we care about our kids future, their education, who they're going to marry, how they're going to live, how they're going to contribute in society. And we believe fundamentally that faith affects those things. So many times the church doesn't build that bridge in a way. So the average parent believes that the church is actually going to help their kid win emotionally and win physically and win mentally. And I don't know if that makes sense, but we've got to make the parent the hero in all those ways. [00:15:13][64.8]

Rusty Rueff: [00:15:14] Yeah. So you bring up an interesting point that I'm glad we can get to. So you've come up with a product, a service, if you will, for the church that then reaches a consumer. Right. A child, but ultimately a parent. And so, you know, we have a lot of Web entrepreneurs here. I hear from a lot of our listeners who say, you know, I'd love to bring this idea to my church, but I don't even know how to even think about that. It's like an enterprise sale. But it's really business to consumer. You know, can you talk a little bit about how you think about your product and then also how you think about going to market, because it's a tricky one, what you're trying to sell. [00:15:54][40.9]

Kristen Ivy: [00:15:57] That's true. We've definitely had that for years. You know, I think it works both directions. One is we have on our parent Web site is a Church Finder to help parents who are looking for a church who might cooperate with this kind of strategy, locate a church in their area that participates. And I think it's important because. Fundamentally, we believe that the local church matters and the local church should be the hero. And so everything we do is directing families to find the community that they need. That, you know, is right there, president in their zip code where you can participate locally when we're all able to get back in the same room together. So parents can go that direction and go back and find their church and either say, hey, would you guys consider it a strategy like this one? Because we find these resources helpful or parents who find the resources helpful can just go find a church that's already participating. And then we also go directly to churches just to say, hey, if you really want to win at what you're called to do to disciple a generation, you need to take pretty seriously this coddling of reaching out to families and helping parents win in disabling their own kids. Because we do believe that when a church adopts that strategy, they'll actually be more effective at discipleship because they're participating with the home. [00:17:14][77.2]

Reggie Joiner: [00:17:15] And we specifically use the word strategy because a strategy is a plan of action with an end in mind. We don't really love just random content—that has its place—but we want to make sure that we're providing churches and families a framework, a scope and cycle to where we're dialing in these three major things in these nine, you know, truths that we want from zero to college to kind of help a kid understand. [00:17:40][25.2]

[00:17:41] And the key to that is providing the church a weekly experience and providing the family a weekly experience that are synchronized so that they can actually, you know, engage together and a plan and stack hands on saying the same thing. Because when there's a common language, when there's a common strategy, the message gets louder. And when there are two relationships, the parent and the leader in the life of a kid, it kind of gives the kid, we think, a better chance of having a fulfilled future. So that's kind of the idea at the end of the day. We just basically market to the church directly and we market to the parent directly. Actually as we turn up the dial in marketing the parents directly, it keeps us honest because parents have a pretty high mark on quality. So marketing directly to the parents and winning there allows us to give the church's tools that they can win with parents if that makes sense. [00:18:37][55.6]

William Norvell: [00:18:40] It does. It does. Reggie and Kristen, William here. Thanks for joining us. I think I'm the youngest parent on the call. I've got a 2 year old that I've been told maybe I talk about too much on the podcast, but he's just really cute. I love him. And then I have a one month old and I've been told recently that the entire life of a child matter. So I need to be focused on this right now, too. So that's good to hear. For someone like me, of course, for everyone, I love to ask kind of two sides of the same coin, some version of what's the most common piece of advice you find yourself giving to parents on a regular basis. Just that thing that sticks out that just no one seems to see. And I think the other side of that coin is, you know, what's a very common mistake or struggle? You see a lot of parents going through and it's sort of how do you encourage them through that? So kind of two sides of a similar coin there. But can you walk us through that? [00:19:28][48.4]

Reggie Joiner: [00:19:29] Well, it's interesting that you ask that, I guess because I'm old sometimes I get parents who come up and say, so give me the one piece of advice. And we all know this isn't a formula. We all know that this is, you know, kind of hit and miss. That one thing that I would say to the parent would be the sooner you start dialing in other relationships besides yourself with your kids that you can trust, the better you set them up for their future. We say widen the circle all the time because there's going to come a point when your 2 year old is a 12 year old. And, you know, right now you walk into the door, they can't wait to see you. But when their 12 year old, they may be doing something else and they're not quite as interested and you'll be tempted to take that personal. But the problem is that in those days, as they're shifting, if we haven't invited other adults into their spaces, they won't have someplace else to go when they don't feel like or want to come to you. It doesn't lessen the role of the parent, it just invites them into a different phase of understanding how they're protecting the heart and the life of their son or daughter to go, hey, how do we widen the circle? And the sooner you start that, the more those people in place as you go along. That would be the first thing I would say. [00:20:39][69.6]

Kristen Ivy: [00:20:51] I think the primary thing that I would say to parents is that too many times we get focused on our own inadequacies because there's so much fear and we're so familiar with our own failure. And I think that shame has never made anybody a better parent. And we have to decide that we will forgive our selves and let God forgive us and accept God's forgiveness in order to be the parent that our kids need us to be. [00:21:14][23.3]

[00:21:15] Because I think we sometimes overemphasize how much our kids are judging us for our failures as humans and we underestimate how much they just want us to show up and be present and notice them and pay attention to them, to care about them and be in their world. I've talked to a lot of parents who feel like they've been counted out of the parenting game, maybe because their marriage fell apart or maybe because, you know, they had some moral failure or maybe whatever the case may be. We know that our kids are up close and watching our lives and so familiar with wherever we know that we've failed. And so I feel like the number one piece of advice for so many parents is just to say, let forgiveness be enough, let grace be enough and show up for your kids anyway, because they just want someone who will be in their life and be there for them no matter what. And your ability to accept forgiveness and grace will also extend to them so that they can know that it's there for them when they need it as well. [00:22:12][57.4]

Reggie Joiner: [00:22:13] That's great. And I would add a little piece to this, since what Kristen just said is better than what I wanted to say is that she has given a gift to my kids and my grandkids that I wish had existed when I was their age with young children. [00:22:30][17.0]

[00:22:31] We did about a two year project on understanding kids at every phase. And because of her background with Baylor and because of her education and because of her theology, we felt the need to take all that we know about childhood development. We ordered every book that was written in over a decade period of time. We put our team in a room and we just brainstormed how do we help the average parent understand child development and the average leader in the church understand child development. And she created a very simple book around the phases of each kid. We call them phase guides, their kind of journals that I would say to every parent, if you would just take a few hours this year, look into this little journal for a two year old and understand how they're wired and understand the six things that are changing about them. Spend some time with that. You'll understand your 2 year old in a way you never dreamed and understand that you can't parent a 7 year old the same way you parent a 2 year old. So we love to lean into parents and go, hey, have empathy for your child where they are right now and understand them. And so these simple guides for me have just been amazing. You know, watching parents, watching my children who are now parents kind of work through what these principles look like. I mean, I just wish I had had it when I was a parent and younger, because I think the call of the parent and the ability of a parent is to know their kid like nobody else does. And so we just want to give them a tool to kind of lean in and understand that. [00:23:59][87.7]

William Norvell: [00:24:01] That's amazing. Kristen, you made me want to get off the podcast and go give Liam a hug. But I'm going to stick it out and make it through. And Reggie, when you said it, it reminds me of a study I read a while back. I'm sure I'm going to miss it. But some version of they did a study about for a child to keep their faith and have to be active throughout their life. One of the biggest factors was the fact that they would have five people that are believers that they can look up to. [00:24:28][26.6]

Reggie Joiner: [00:24:29] That came out of Fuller. [00:24:29][0.5]

William Norvell: [00:24:30] OK. Was that Fuller? Yeah. And that makes so much sense. Right. When you think about. Yeah. Can't just be you. It can't be just you and your wife and your partner or your wife and your husband has to be more. [00:24:40][9.9]

Reggie Joiner: [00:24:41] I would even go as an illustration into what I would consider to be part of a marginalized culture in all the studies and the research that we do with, you know, ethnic and multi ethnic groups, kids in poverty don't make it out of poverty because of education. They don't make it out of poverty because of their talent. Kids are in poverty. Two out of every three kids who make it out of poverty make it out of poverty because of other adults who are in their life, who helped them take the next step and know where to go. [00:25:10][29.0]

[00:25:11] So you take that one principle and apply it to every kid everywhere, because there's theological poverty. You know, there's emotional poverty. You know, you could start looking at kids. They need other humans in their life, like Kristen said, to help them be human and keep moving. [00:25:26][15.8]

William Norvell: [00:25:28] Yeah, that's amazing. It feels like that's a part of, you know, I love the general principle behind your book. Don't miss it, which says parent like every week counts and I feel like that has to fall in there. But give us a little bit about that statement and then the thesis and principle behind the book. [00:25:42][14.0]

Kristen Ivy: [00:25:43] Yeah. So actually, when I was a parent with my kids about the age of years right now, kind of new mom, young, young, young kids, Reggie said, why don't you go get a jar of marbles and add nine hundred thirty six marbles to a jar and just take one marble out of the jar every week so that you can see how limited your time is with them. And talk about that feeling of wanting to just like hang up the phone and go hug your kid. I was like, what are you doing to me right now? You want me to quit my job? I just. Okay. I mean, I get it. But there's something to the count down and measuring your weeks and knowing that your time is limited as parents. And nobody understands this more than a parent who's had a kid graduate and leave the home because there's this weird thing where they think the weeks move slower when kids were younger, they just seem like they'd take a lot longer to move. And then all of a sudden, as kids get older, they just start speeding up and it feels like your marble jar is emptying much faster. But as you measure the weeks, as you count the weeks, as you're mindful of the limited days that you have with your kid, it reminds you to do more with the time you have now. Not in the sense of making sure that every moment is a Pinterest moment or you've got to be the perfect dad or you've got to get everything exactly right. But just going, hey, the little tiny things that you do are adding up much more than you realize. If you do dinner with your family two or three times a week, I mean, I'm kind of a low bar type parent. I live in the real world. Sometimes we're gonna go through the drive thru and call it a day. But if you're having some meals together consistently, if you're tucking your kids in at night, consistently, if you greet your kids in the morning with positive and affirming words consistently, those little moments add up so much more than I think we sometimes give them credit for. [00:27:33][110.3]

Reggie Joiner: [00:27:34] And the powerful thing about the principals in that little book, in the larger book, we talk about, you know, doing these six things over time is, again, not to shame the parent at all. We actually want to lean independent to go. Guess what? Here's what you're already intuitively doing. You may not even be aware of. But what if you became 10 percent more intentional about doing those things? And you understood the difference those things make because we think a 10 percent nudge to make a hundred percent difference in the life of a kid. [00:28:02][28.8]

[00:28:03] And I you know, Kristen kind of jokes about for parenting and working at the same time and what it looks like to be a mom. But one of the principles of that book is words over time. [00:28:13][9.8]

[00:28:14] And just the way she reads to her kids and her kids infatuation with books and stories, I'm telling you, they are some of the most articulate children you would ever meet. And I think it simply has to do with the fact that the words over time principle has been applied in her world, in life and as you know, kind of an English bent kind of individual. You know, I think there's a principle there for us to talk in terms of every kid everywhere. And what's happening is the brain is forming in how interaction with an adult who actually speaks to them and reading books will actually, believe it or not, change the trajectory of a kid's life as they're moving through reasoning and thinking through solutions because it's words that give them the power to formulate what they're going to do. And so anyway, something that simple becomes a huge, huge game changer when it comes to the average kid. [00:29:08][53.8]

Rusty Rueff: [00:29:09] Yeah. Reggie, I want to pick up on something you said about the influence of, you know, other adults in the life of a child. And I want to challenge our listeners who are entrepreneurs and creative. They're business people. They're smart. They can make an impact. They know how to influence others. If you're looking for a place to serve your children's ministry, your kid's ministry is the place that you ought to look at. [00:29:40][30.3]

[00:29:40] And a lot of times parents go, look, I do this, you know, seven days a week, minus one hour. You know, please. I don't want to go. The impact. You know who's who better to serve other kids in a children's ministry than another parent who's good. Right. So I so want to reinforce what you all are saying about the impact that adults, other adults can have. And, you know, we've got that time in our churches that those kids need to see those role models. And, you know, we as entrepreneurs, you know, we should step forward. [00:30:17][37.1]

Reggie Joiner: [00:30:18] Yeah, I 100 percent agree with that. I think what we're literally doing is, you know, I'm working in a small town every other weekend. This kind of broken there's about 3000 people in the town, 30 percent live under the poverty line, and the one thing that town needs and the one thing the kids in that town, five hundred teenagers in the entire county is another adult in their life. [00:30:41][23.3]

[00:30:43] And I know it. I sense it. I feel it. Because when those adults show up, it makes such a difference in the life of a kid. And I keep saying to the churches and to the leaders and to the Rotary Club and all the city council and the people as I'm working there. My goal is really boiled down to one thing. To put it consistently in life of every kid besides their parent. Because we know the difference that makes. Kristen has spent a lot of her life working in small groups and she's taught us so much in the context of what this looks like. But there just comes a point in a kid's life when what they hear another adult say is as important as what their parent says. I remember when I would be riding down the road with my 16 year old and he would say, Dad, Kevin said this or Betsy said this and I'll go. Wait a minute. I've been saying that for 16 years. But because somebody else said it, it came across different. [00:31:34][51.0]

Kristen Ivy: [00:31:35] And Rusty, I want to say something and it might be controversial or you might want to just edit this out. I don't know. I think oftentimes we fail to see the importance specifically of men working in kids ministry with preschoolers and with children. And I think when we look at the impact that someone like Mr. Rogers made in the lives of so many of us, I think we need some men specifically. And I don't know if your viewers, your listeners fall into that category who are business people who are, you know, building lives and doing amazing things, who can also really show the value of childhood by showing up for young kids while they're young and being a unique voice in their life. [00:32:25][49.9]

[00:32:25] I think we've got to push past any stigma that gets in the way of caring for kids, the way that they need to be cared for. And there is a unique thing that happens. I just believe this when a male, a man speaks into a kid's life. I just think we hear voices differently and it takes all of us. I'm not saying one over the other. I just think kids need all kinds of adults to show up in their world. [00:32:47][21.5]

Reggie Joiner: [00:32:48] And I also would say if if you look across the spread of a church from Zero to Cradle all the way to graduation, historically we have tended to feminized children's ministry and we've tended to masculinize student or youth ministry. And I think it's so important for us in this generation to make sure that teenage girls see women leading and that young boys, you know, have a man mentoring coach. [00:33:14][26.3]

[00:33:15] And that we've got to make sure that in this generation we're demonstrating to them what it looks like to have leaders who show up consistently in a way that they can identify with. Because if I'm a teenage girl, and I've never understood what that would be like. But if I'm a teenage girl and I never see a female leader leading, then I assume I can't. And what if I'm built, too? So the church has to catch up on what that looks like in a way that's practical. [00:33:47][32.3]

William Norvell: [00:33:48] Yeah, I agree. A watershed moment for me in the faith and work movement, as a corollary, was sitting with a mentor of mine. He said he sat in church for 50 years and all he ever saw on stage were pastors and nonprofit leaders. So he just internally assumed that's who God loved more, and that that's what he should do to serve the church and to serve Jesus. And it was until someone told him, you know, no, you can serve God in business, right? You really can. He said, but it just was osmosis. It just sunk in to that point. And as we do come to the end of our time unfortunately, I want to switch to the business side just a little bit. If you could speak to the business leaders, maybe a little bit, both to some that are parents, maybe how they handle work life priorities and how you've seen that go well. And then also, I'd love to speak to the business leader who is shepherding people because they may not be a parent themselves, but of course, lots of their employees and customers and vendors and suppliers are. How would you speak to them as well about creating a culture that values the things that you value and are trying to preach to the world? [00:34:52][63.2]

Reggie Joiner: [00:34:52] I would probably start with the last question first. I had this moment when I was sitting in Catalyst. During the years where I was hosting and Patrick Lencioni was on the stage and it was one of those fast moving messages where he was giving us a lot of content and a lot of pieces of information. And everybody was taking a lot of notes. [00:35:11][18.3]

[00:35:11] And then he paused in a moment and he said something that I have never, ever forgotten as a leader or as an entrepreneur or as a CEO. He said, if my father had had a better boss, he would have been a better dad. And I think sometimes we forget that when we have people who work for us, that how we treat them, how we lead them, how we speak into their world, you know, sets them up to go home one way or the other. And it's so important for us to just as a CEO or an entrepreneurial leader, to keep in the back of our mind. The people who work with us are parents and they go home and they're a reflection to their family of what happened in the course of the day. And you know, that would be the first thing that I would say, just don't ever forget that. [00:36:02][51.2]

Kristen Ivy: [00:36:03] Yeah, I think paying attention to this season of parenting that, you know, employees or anybody working for you as in is important because the seasons come with different stresses. [00:36:13][9.7]

[00:36:14] And then I also go back to my education days. I was a high school teacher. And one of the things they taught us in education is you'll never know what was going on kids world's 10 minutes before they walked into your classroom. And I think every day we have unique opportunities to assume that we don't know what was going on in a person's family life. 10 minutes before they walked in to the meeting with us. And to just keep that in mind, as we start a meeting together, as we, you know, begin a conversation lifetimes, there's tension and we're trying to drive forward with something. So we're all pushing really hard. But to just begin under the assumption you don't know what was going on. [00:36:51][36.1]

[00:36:51] And then at the end of the day, there's also this thing. And I know that for me as a parent, the end of my day professionally shapes the attitude I have when I walk in the door and greet my kids. And so being especially mindful of that end of the day moment as well, when it's high, high, high stress right before they walk in to be a parent, that's a unique opportunity to exactly what Reggie was saying and be a kind of leader that sets them up to win at home. [00:37:20][28.6]

Rusty Rueff: [00:37:21] But you don't totally turn off, you know, what you do in your business professional life when you just come home. Right. I mean, if you're a leader there, you've got to be a leader at home. [00:37:29][8.7]

Reggie Joiner: [00:37:30] And yeah, there are some people who have that ability, I think. I've never had that ability. I mean, it's just this is a part of me, I think, because this is a nonprofit. And I'm not sure that makes any difference because some people it's their life work. So it's just it's in them and it's hard to turn that off. I think developing the skill to learn how to be present is probably one of the most important pieces of this. [00:37:53][22.9]

Kristen Ivy: [00:37:54] Is it weird to say, though, that I have to remind myself, that my kids don't work for me? [00:37:57][3.3]

William Norvell: [00:38:06] Actually. It's funny. You mentioned Patrick. We had him on a podcast recently, too. And that's one thing he said. You know, his book, The Motive is about are you a rewards-centered leader or a relationship-centered leader. And he said that kind of the same thing, you know, if you get into parenting for your joy, for the rewards of it. I mean, that's not gonna work out too well for you in the best of times. You're 80 to 85 percent of what you do as a parent is not what you would choose to do with your time. And he would say the same thing as a CEO. And he said that on that podcast, which is you can't become a CEO because you think you deserve it and you think it's finally going to be your incredible time to shine. And it's just gonna be wonderful. Right. [00:38:46][39.4]

Reggie Joiner: [00:38:46] I think there's some of us that never wanted to be a CEO. I mean, I think that wasn't our goal. [00:38:51][4.8]

William Norvell: [00:38:52] Absolutely. And if anybody has a list of that podcast, they're listening to this when the motive is a classic Patrick fable, you know, take you 30 minutes to read and you learn a ton through it. And I'm surprised he slowed down at all. Usually when you see Patrick. He is one hundred miles an hour the whole time. But unfortunately, we have to come to a close. I hate that. [00:39:09][17.3]

[00:39:10] And as we come to a close, we love to do with our audience as we believe that God's word is living and breathing and speaks into our lives every day. And if you would come with us on that journey, we'd love for you to share what God may be doing through his scripture. Could be a verse you're meditating on it could be something coming alive to you in the season. It could be something you read this morning. But it's just always fun for us to see how God's word connects through our audience and through our guests. [00:39:32][22.1]

Reggie Joiner: [00:39:33] I think in this season, the passage in Corinthians that says Blessed be God, the God of all comfort, who comforts us with the comfort that we can comfort others. [00:39:41][8.8]

[00:39:42] I think everyone is going through a crisis at a different level during this season. And I think that we need each other more than we've ever needed each other. There's a sense in which that passage teaches us that there is a kind of comfort that only comes from God that we can't get from other people. But then it goes on to explain that he gives us that so that we can, in return, comfort those around us. And so there's a human factor and a God factor, both that exist in that passage when it comes to comfort. And we're living in a world right now where there's a lot of anxiety and depression coming into this crisis. There was. And now, especially in the teenage zone and the zone of middle schoolers, there is this accelerated anxiety, depression. And to lean into leaders like you guys and to anyone who has a position or a voice and say more than ever before. There's a generation listening, watching and needing for us to give them hope to say this is going to be okay. We're gonna get through this. And here's why this is such an important time to take that human comfort and hopefulness that we can have and hand it to a generation because. They desperately need to hear us say, we're going to get through this. [00:39:42][0.0]