At The Orange Conference  2012, I led a breakout centered around this idea of:  How does a youth pastor connect with parents of students?

Over the course of 2011-2012, I really tried hard to find practical ways for youth pastors to connect with parents since it is so difficult and many youth workers are intimidated to try it out.  So after many conversations with many different youth pastors and relying on my past experiences, I compiled a list of practical ways to reach out to parents.

I argued that connecting with parents is not about taking one big step.  It’s about taking many small, intentional, and strategic steps.  It doesn’t matter if you are dealing with disengaged, engaged, involved, invested or aware parents.  The goal is to get any type of parent to take one step in the right direction in order for them to connect with your youth ministry.

Connecting with parents is the first effort in partnering with parents in student ministry, which is why the connection process is so instrumental.

Connecting with parents in small daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly steps

DAILY

• Act like every parent wants to connect with you.  God cares about parents so youth pastors need to care.  If we don’t believe parents want to connect with our student ministry, then we will start to blow off the parent connection.  It is more about having a mindset that parents are primary. It is more about believing in them rather than putting on a program for them. Believe that parents want to become better parents and they want the best for their teen.

•  Deliver on promises.  Believing in parents and delivering on your promises are the two things that will get you more trust and respect with parents.  Whatever you communicate or promise, please deliver on.  Conclude youth group when you say you will.  Arrive home from camp when you say you’ll be home.  For example, when our youth group would come home from winter camp I would call one parent and let her know we were on our way home and give her an ETA.  This appointed parent would call all the parents letting them know of our ETA.

•  Protect teens.  Safety is going to be parents #1 concern.  Parents are entrusting you with their teen, so think like a parent.  Think through best ways to protect and keep their teen safe.  Complete background checks.  Update and revise medical and liability release forms yearly.  Stop the pranks, hazing, gossip and bullying.  Have insured and reliable transportation.  Make sure students buckle up.

•  Return ALL calls and emails.  Youth pastors hate the phone, but moms love the phone.  So if a parent contacts you via email or phone, call or email them back!

•  Respect parents.  Parents are the primary influence– this is demonstrated in not only sociological research but in the Bible.  So you got to respect the parent’s authority, perspective and rules.  For example, when the youth ministry has it’s little sexy sex series, let parents know what will be talked about.  Plus give parents an option to talk to their student about sex before some crazy 20 something youth pastor with a faux hawk informs them about virginity.

•  Commit to praying for parents.  This is so easy, but one of the hardest things to do.  I simply pray over my parent roster.  Nothing facy just a quick prayer for the health and wealth of the whole family.

 WEEKLY

•  Get to know parents and meet with them.  Youth pastors need to know parents as people, before parents know us as pastors.  Knowing your families story will help you meet their needs as a family.  Do contact work like you would do contact work with students.  Meet parents where they are at.  If a dad wants to meet at 5am.  Do it.  And dress accordingly.

•  Create great environments for teens.  Develop contagious environments so students have a great experience and want to come back.  Parents love when their son and daughter love to do something other than playing video games or going to the mall.

•  Communicate, communicate…reiterate.  Communicate in multiple mediums.  Try to find ways to integrate multiple mediums into one.  Whenever communicating with parents do three things: inform, equip, encourage.

•  Invite parents with a purpose.  Plan an event where you are intentionally and strategically encourage parents to come to youth group.  Having an open door policy is great, but most parents will not come.  Have a plan on how you invite parents because parents need a reason to come into your student ministry environments.

•  Be seen.  Be seen on Sunday morning.  Be seen either before, during or after church servie.  On Sunday mornings parents are on your own turf, so expect to use a good chuck of your time to connect with parents. Be seen after youth group.  Go into the parking lot and greet parents as they are picking up their kids.  Be seen in the community i.e. sporting events, grocery store, coffee shops, mall etc.

MONTHLY and QUARTERLY

•  Training for unchurched and churched parents.  Create events that any parents can attend.  Family issues are a felt need for any parent.  Get licensed Christian counselors to host a seminar.  Get your more committed and engaged parents to help plan and orchestrate the event.  The goal is to get your disengaged parents to come so you can connect with them, so do an event that appeals to them.  I had a lot of success doing parent events outside of the church walls.

  Regardless of the size or style or cultural setting of your church, the issue of family is universal. -  Joiner, Reggie. Think Orange pg.  229

•  Listen.  Listening = humility.  Parents love to talk, so shut your mouth and listen to their concerns, thought and ideas.  Send out a family assessment surveys so you can get an idea of what families are needing and wanting from their local youth ministry department.  This assessment will give you great feedback and data on what your families are needing from their local youth ministry department.

•  Value organization.  Youth pastors are horrible at administration and organization.  But in order to win over parents, organization is essential.  Get a strategy and get organized.  If you aren’t organized, find someone who is.  I had a lot success recruiting moms who knew know to administrate like no other.  Parents need to know you have all the details figured out.  Create calendars and newsletters that inform parents about your plan and direction so they are in the “know”.  I never had a parent tell me I was giving them to much information.

•  Get parents early.  Connect with parents right when their son/daughter is assimilating into your student ministry.  Get parents in the elementary to middle school transition.  And get parents in the middle school to high school transition.  A parent is very open to connect when their son or daughter is moving into a new phase of teenage life.

•  Find others who can help you.  I am not a parent.  So I never pretended like I could relate to parents.  So I found parents who could help me.  Plus parents hang out with parents and know the landscape of parenting a teen.  In fact, I heard about one youth pastor who wanted to connect with parents so bad, he hired a parent to ONLY connect with the parents within his youth ministry.  Also  empty nesters can be a great resource.

Bottom line remember 3 things:

1.  Get parents to take one small step in the right direction to connect with your youth ministry
2.  These small steps will exponentially transform your parent partnership and connection.
3.  Celebrate the small wins because connecting with parent is hard.  So when a parent connects with you throw a party for yourself!

Questions:

How do you connect with parents of students in the midst of your choatic youth ministry schedule?

What are some creative ways you have connected with parents?  

(pic brought to you by:  Miss Blackflag)

As a youth worker, one of the nastiest teen bullying episodes I encountered was on facebook.  I knew cyber bullying was happening, but I didn’t know it got so mean, dirty and out of control.

I quickly learned:  Students can leverage their social media influence to bully students they don’t like.  And the scary thing is that the cyber bully can easily frame any student by easily manipulating and destroying their online presence in a matter of seconds. Students are more inclined to be really unkind online.

So how do we (parents, peers and pastor) help kids who get caught in this social media bullying crossfire?

Parents:  The youth ministry needs to not only educate but enroll parents to help protect and monitor their student’s social media presence.  The monitoring of the parents will greatly help when you (the youth pastor) hear and/or see the online bullying happening.  When others would tell me about online bullying or I would see it for myself I would simply shoot the parents an email/text saying:  ”You may want to look at your student’s facebook page”.  The biggest advantage to online bullying is that it is public domain, so everyone can see it and help stop it.

According to Pew research (Pew’s research ran a series of seven focus groups with teens aged 12 to 19):

77 percent say they’ve (the parents) checked a website that their child has visited. Two thirds have searched to see what kind of data showed up about their child.

86 percent of teens said they’ve gleaned “general advice” from their parents on using the ‘Net safely’.

58% of teen internet and cell phone users told Pew that “their parents have been the biggest influence on what they think is appropriate or inappropriate when using the internet or a cell phone.

More than six in ten teens report that they know their parents have checked their social media profile, and 41% of parents of online teens have friended their child on a social network site

Parents are key when trying to prevent online bullying.  They can stop it before it gets out of control or it is too late.

Peers: friends are obviously a huge part of a teenagers life.  So it may be wise to get other trusted adults to lean into the peer network when confronting cyber bullying.  We can invite the peers (of the one being bullied) not to join in on the cyber bullying and also stand up to the bullier by asking him/her/they to stop.  Ask the friends to stand up for what is right when they see their friends getting bullied.

According to Pew research:

But over half (55 percent) said that most of their peers ignore the bad treatment or bullying of others. Nineteen percent admitted that they “frequently see others join in the harassment.”

The role of the friend is very pivotal because how he/she responds, determines if the online bullying continues.

Pastor:  As a youth pastor, I think it is our responsibility to help assist, correct, confront, discipline, encourage and equip our students’ online lives.  Students always need more help in how they navigate their online world.  Also don’t hesitate to confront the cyber bully.  I had no problems confronting the cyber bully who was bullying students in the community.

Plus if parents know they have another trusted-committed-online savvy adult looking out for their teen online, then parents will automatically love you.  I am a big advocate for youth pastors pastoring their student online.  This online pastoring not only protects their students, but invites students to be like Jesus in their online relationships.  A student simply needs to be taught and modeled how to conduct their offline and online presence.  Essentially both the online and offline Christian teenager needs to love and reflect Jesus in every  ”space” of their life and they may be looking to their parents and youth pastor for help.

According to Pew research:

70 percent of teens said they’ve gotten advice from teachers or other adults at school and in the community.

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Questions For the Youth Pastor:

How do you educate parents about social media?  Do you feel like your parents are checking their students online profiles?

How involved should a youth pastor get in “pastoring” their students online?

Do you find in your context that online bullying is a happening frequently?  Why or why not.

What other ways can youth ministries stop online bullying?   How have you dealt with online bullying in your youth ministry?

(Theological Foundations pics brought to you by:   Some rights reserved by liikennevalo)

Over the past 3 years, I have really been thinking about what theologies are youth workers responding to?  How are youth pastors thinking theologically?

I strongly believe all youth ministries not only need a strategy but a theological emphasis.  The youth worker allows the Scriptures to shape their ministry strategy and programs, and not the reverse.  Here are 3 theological foundations that are influencing the trenches of youth ministry:

(1) Family Ministry (Deut 6 and Proverbs 1:8-9):  There is an insane increase of young-kidless youth pastors who know mom and dad are the primary spiritual leader in a student’s life.  Student pastors are on mission to get the family and community involved in the life of a teen.  Student pastors are realizing that shepherding does not happen from stage but at home and with an adult small group leader.

(2) Spiritual Formation (Galatians 5):  Spiritual formation is a sexy term for sanctification.  Spiritual formation in youth ministry is all about developing the “whole (shelom)” student.  The formation process happens when Biblical knowledge is mixed with experience, and the encountering and revealing of the Holy Spirit.

(3) Missiology(Luke 10.1-3): Youth ministries are wanting to be marked as a place that sends young people out that demonstrates the Kingdom of God to others.  More and more students are wanting to do Jesus style of ministry outside of the church.  Students are wanting to become missionaries across the world and across the street so they can restore the world.  Basically youth pastors are reminding teenagers their entire life is missionary work so at the age of 12 they better get to work if they said the “sinners” prayer.

I think it is cool that there are a lot of youth workers thinking theologically so they know for a fact their youth ministry ways are the teachings of God.  In the next 10 years, if youth ministry does these 3 theologies really well, youth ministry will be on a great trajectory.

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Do you agree or disagree with my assessment?

What are some other theologies shaping youth ministry?

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Regardless of the size or style or cultural setting of your church, the issue of family is universal.  –Joiner, Reggie Think Orange p.  229

One of the biggest evangelism efforts should be to reach out to all families in our communities.  Everyone has a family, so family is a shared interest for everyone. If youth ministries were able to speak to the needs of the family there would be some amazing outreach potential.  Student pastors are trained to train their students to evangelize their friends at school. In fact, I go to great lengths talking about the insane importance of evangelism in our youth ministries:  Talking About Jesus, Persuading Teenagers About Christ, explaining the theory of Inside/Out Evangelism, and illustrating Strategies in Youth Outreach. Youth ministry evangelism is a great thing but what if youth ministries widen their reach beyond students to all families in the community?

The church’s historical view of family:

-  church was at the center of community

-  family was central to the church

-  families saw the church as their community

-  sunday school was taught by parents/grandparents and rarely attended by teenagers

-  youth groups were lead by lay leaders and focused on fellowship

-  discipleship was the primary task in the home

-  church staff was limited to immediate and broad pastoral concerns

How youth ministry drifted away from the historical view of family:

-  student ministries detached themselves from the church family

-  tends to solely focus on making Christian families holier and better

-  advocates for individualistic discipleship for it’s students

-  promotes that big church is only for adults

-  community doesn’t see church as primary influence or as a resource to families

How youth ministries can reach out to families in their community:

Encourage missional parenting – missional parenting means:  1)  that Jesus-loving parents love and care for students who don’t have great home situations and 2) Jesus-loving parents love and care for other parents who do not attend the church.  Sometimes Christian students are not living in Christian homes, which means that these students will need a Christian influence from many other Christian adults, in particular other parents.  In my experience I always had a handful of amazing church families who really felt called to take in these students by: paying for their  camp/event fees, providing hospitality towards them (open door policy to their home), giving them rides to and from church, praying with and for them, and befriending their parents.

Parents interact with other parents, which can lead to Christian parents influencing other unchurched parents to come check out church or understand what youth group is about. Honestly I think missional parenting is the biggest factor in reaching unchurched parents.  The parents of your youth group students immediately become fully time missionaries!

“With the deconstruction of the modern sentiment of maternal love, a new, postmodern sentiment has emerged, one that might be called shared parenting.”  David Elkind, Ties That Stress The New Family Imbalance, page 53

Host parenting seminar at your church – Every parent in your community might needs tools to be a better parent.  So why not have a Christian therapist or respected Christian parents in your community come to your church and do a parenting seminar and invite the entire community?  Possible seminar topics:  commitment to one another, adequate time together, effective communication and conflict management, expression of appreciation and encouragement, find a shared spiritual life that gives meaning and purpose for the family. I have done this is the past and unchurched parents are way more open to coming to church when they are getting free parenting tools.

Communication – Bombard parents with communication.  Parents are always wanting to be in the “know.”  It is especially important to communicate with parents who don’t attend church themselves but who have students who do.  Unchurched parents are immediately suspicious of and lacking trust for the youth pastor and the church’s youth ministry.  Communicating what is happening in the youth ministry will (hopefully) help parents trust the youth pastor.  In the past, I wrote quarterly parent newsletters to inform, equip, and encourage parents.  I made this parent newsletter as public as possible.  I didn’t use much Christian jargon because I wanted the newsletter to appeal to all parents, not just parents who already attended our church.

Purchase parenting books in bulk and put them on your bookshelf – All parents will need books on how to parent through their teen’s life stages. Great books to recommend families on parenting:   Reggie Joiner and Carey Nieuwhof Parenting Beyond Your Capacity, Chap Clark, Parenting Teens In A Myspace World, and Michael Bradley, Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!:  Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind.  I bought all these books in bulk to pass on when a parent came to me with their teenage and family problems.  I could simply listen and pray with them, and then provide them a free resource that I trusted and knew it had great parenting content.

Do family events in your community that are sponsored by church – I had great success as the youth ministry partnered with other church ministries to do family based events.  i.e. beach BBQ, church picnic, camping, serving events, bowling nights, attend a pro baseball game, and all family church rummage sale.

Live out A theological understanding of incarnational witness and evangelism – Jesus engaged relationships with no expectations.  He was the light to the lost.  Therefore youth pastors need to be aware “other” parents are watching your every move when you are in public.  So don’t be a jerk.  Emulate Jesus to the best of your ability.  Reach out to have a relationship with parents even if they don’t want it.  Parents need to know you care and want to listen to their needs and concerns.  My point:  Be the Kingdom wherever you go.  Befriend, love, and serve all families.

Questions youth ministries need to think about:

(1) How does a youth pastor come alongside a students’ parent when they (parents) don’t want anything to do with the gospel?

(2)  What educational topics do parents need to be informed about?

(3)  What do we do, when parents don’t see the added value of youth ministries partnering with them?

(4)  What are other ways youth ministry can serve the local families in the community?

(5)  How do we serve the unconventional families in our community?

Orange and XP3Students are very interested in figuring out the way technology is changing the family landscape and giving parents (with teenagers) practical advice of how to deal with it.  I think youth workers need to speak to what aspects are greatly impacting all families (both in and out of the church).

At my previous church, we had 5th graders on the new 4G iphone (with unlimited minutes, texting, and internet usage) communicating with their parents trying to coordinate their rides home from church.  I also had high school females sending and receiving 5,000 texts a month and mad at their parents because they had to pay the overcharges.  In contrast, I had students who were only allowed to use mobile phones to talk to their parents.  Then again, is technology the only problem that is impacting the family?

I think it is safe to say: our culture is moving into the digital age which is changing teenagers and parents. But how does a youth worker equip both the teenagers and parents on how to deal with this digital domination?

Questions For Student Pastors or Teen Social Workers:

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-  What is the effect of technology on the family?

-  What other aspects (besides technology) are impacting the 21st American family?

-  What are some of the major issues unchurched families are encountering?

-  Should a student pastor/social worker use mobile technology to communicate with parents?  How does a student pastor/social worker use mobile technology to communicate with parents?

-  From a youth pastor/teen social worker perspective, how have you observed the families in your church/organization phone usage? What effect does parents phone usage have on their teens?  What effect does teen phone usage have on parents?

-  Do parents in your church/organization monitor their teen’s mobile technology usage?  Why or why not?

-  Is technology usage regionally or socioeconomically driven?  Does income level change what impacts the family? Basically do all families struggle with the same things?

-  What percentage of family communication happens online?  How much of your family rhythm is centered around technology?

-  What is the most effective time families spend together that is not centered around technology?

-  As you look to the future, do you believe that technology will deepen family relationships or diminish family relationships?  Why?

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**  Any feedback would be extremely helpful!  Also if you have any additional insight regarding:  What Is Impacting The Family? Please provide them in the comment section or email me directly.