Reign Ministries

History

In 1980 he wanted his youth group to experience an overseas mission trip for the summer. However, at the time there were no youth mission organizations that emphasized discipleship and evangelism as Louie envisioned. So, he organized and led the trip himself.

Louie found that his eight-week, overseas, mission experience had a profound impact in students' lives. It could not be paralleled in the traditional format of four years of church and youth group. The reasons were simple: continuous, intensive focus in an environment where everything about the student's life had changed-food, friends, bed, and activity.

The challenge was that church was a community designed to provide an essential, but fundamentally different environment and method of influence in students' lives. It is not practical for Christians to live like they are on a trip, or like they can live for 8 weeks.

Louie also had a conviction that teens can effectively share their faith with people that have a harder time receiving from adults. And they have an important role in the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

These realities led Louie to form Reign Ministries in 1981. Out of a basement office in Louie's home, Reign Ministries sent the first official Royal Servants team overseas in 1982. The team was comprised of 44 students and staff. Amazingly, over half of the members of that first team are now involved in full-time vocational ministry.

Since that first summer mission trip in 1982, God has blessed Reign Ministries in several different ways. The first is in the amount of students now participating, as well as the number of full-time staff members working in the ministry. In the summer of 1983, Reign Ministries sent 128 students and staff on three Royal Servants teams. At that time, Reign's staff numbered in the single digits. By 1998, over 400 students and 46 staff were ministering abroad, as well as impacting hundreds more students and youth workers through its other branches of ministry.

A second way God has blessed Reign Ministries is in his provision of an office building. March 1, 1999, marked the closing date of the first office building ever owned by Reign Ministries.

God continues blessing Reign through the expansion of its Royal Servants teams. For the first seven years, Royal Servants teams primarily impacted the countries of Western Europe. The early teams focused here because English is spoken as a primary second language and allows students many opportunities to share their faith.

The expansion of outreach teams outside Western Europe began in 1988, when Louie & Dave Childers embarked with 48 Royal Servants alumni on the first World team. The World team traveled to the Netherlands, Israel, Egypt, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, and China. Following the 1988 trip, World trips were also taken in 1990 and 1994.

Other team expansions included Russia in 1991-96; the Ten: Ten team, targeting North America 1995-98; Asia teams-China, the Philippines, India and Nepal-1995 through today; South Africa 1996-2000; Australia, New Zealand, and Brazil in 2000.

An important concept introduced in 1995 was the "Blitz" teams. Blitz teams were five to six week experiences instead of usual eight-week experiences. Also in 1995, Louie began a leadership team that he named the Dream Team, which has since been renamed the Nehemiah team. To date Reign Ministries has served to assist over 8,000 students impacting almost 60 different countries around the globe in response to its vision to raise up an army of 100,000 committed students who will shake their world for Christ.

In 2003 work began to fulfill a long-time dream (since 1988) to develop a school of discipleship training. Over the next year Kevin Rusack devoted himself with our staff's input into the creation of Kairos Discipleship School. Since then we have seen several classes of new and amazing students give six months of their lives to intentional discipleship and training for a lifetime of ministry. In 2006 we moved the Kairos Discipleship School to Kansas City to expand our ability to disciple more young adults. That year we also changed from being a six- month school to 10-month school.

In 2006, Reign embraced a new reality in narrowing our focus from doing many things for the kingdom, to a more narrow approach to fulfilling our mission and vision. We renewed our focus and attention on Royal Servants, Kairos Discipleship School, and a developing youth ministry effort in the United Kingdom.

Our History at a Glance

1980-Louie's youth group ministers overseas

1981-Louie forms Reign Ministries

1982-First Royal Servants team

1983-Three Royal Servants teams

1985-Royal Servants increases to six teams

1988-World Team

1991-First Russia team, Tom Ives becomes Royal Servants Director

1991-Canadian office opens

1994-Move office from Louie's basement and rent office space in Minneapolis

1995-Blitz, Asia, and Dream teams introduced

1996-First South Africa and 10:10 teams (USA) introduced