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?  

The greatest thing for me at The Orange Conference is connecting with old friends and making new ones.  It fires me up connecting with youth workers/youth pastors that understand:

-  parents are the primary influence of a student’s life

-  students also need more non-parental committed adults who care, love and cheer them on in this complicated thing called:  life

-  how to reach this unchurch next generation of mid to late adolescents

This year’s Orange Conference theme is game changers.  So the conference will be filled with content and stories about defining moments that have transformed the way people do ministry.  Also Orange will be debuting some amazing and new resources for orange minded ministry leaders.  My personal favorite is the new book:  LEAD SMALL by Reggie Joiner and Tom Shefchunas.  LEAD SMALL offers up best practices for leading a Small Group, and provides encouragement for the everyday heroes who play a key role in implementing the Orange Strategy.

But if you will NOT be attending The Orange Conference this year…. don’t worry The Conference will be live and well documented all over the intra web.

BLOGGERS
I would highly recommend checking out these (Orange student pastor) bloggers.  They will be blogging live at The Orange Conference.

Tom Shefchunas: UthMin.net | CoachShef

Michael Bayne:  Michaelbayne.net

Tom Pounder:  Ministry Blackboard

Ben Kerns:  Average Youth Ministry

Ben Read:  Intentional Student Ministry

Ryan Millard:  RyanMillard.com

Paul Mannino:  Orangedad.com

Terrace Crawford:  Terrace Crawford.com

The official list of Orange Conference bloggers Click here

This blog wont be live at the OC12, but this is a great Orange youth worker blog– to check out:  Stuff You Can Use

BACKSTAGE
Tune in to www.OrangeLeaders.com Wednesday night through Friday afternoon to catch the opening session, Family Experience Showcase, backstage interviews with many of our speakers, and perhaps most exciting to you, giveaways! Jared Herd, Matt Mckee and myself will be hosting the backstage extravaganza.  Click here to stream The Conference.

#THINKORANGE

The Orange Conference 2012 is right around the corner: April 25-27, 2012– to be exact.

Things around the Orange office are getting pretty crazy because it is conference time. And I am really enthused about this year’s conference.   The theme is all about “game changers” which is a catalyst that requires you to radically alter how you do ministry.  I am excited to join thousands of ministry leaders endeavoring to understand how game changers can redefine and adjust what we do in order to be more effective in reaching this next generation.

Networking:  On Thursday night, April 26th 7:30- 9pm the XP3 Students team is hosting a two-part networking event.  The first part will be at Skyzone (a huge warehouse with a lot of trampolines).  At Skyzone we will do a dunk contest and a dodgeball tournament. This place is a blast but you can get hurt if you are not careful.  In fact…. while we were filming the promo video, I hurt my knee, had to go to the emergency room, and will undergo surgery on Friday.  To view the promo video (and me hurting myself while trying to dunk) watch the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The second part of the networking will be held at a different location so we can have more intentional conversations around the Orange Strategy in relation to student ministry.  If you want to register for the XP3 Students networking event click here

YS@Orange:  We are thrilled to be joining forces with the team at Youth Specialties to offer four workshops during the Pre-conference at OC12.   I am amped to hear about how YS will be talking about the unique role of youth ministry vs. children’s ministry.  This is such a huge topic that needs to be address.  The common view youth pastors hold about children’s ministry workers is that they are annoying and just babysitters. I deal with so many youth workers that cannot stand or even care about children’s ministry.  However, if youth pastors want to have continuing success and sustainability they need to invest resource in, and pay attention to, their children’s ministry.  You can read more about YS@ Orange here

Friendships: Seeing friends at Orange is one of my favorite parts about The Orange Conference.  It is so fun being with old and new friends that I have been interacting with over the years.  The Orange Conference is like one big family reunion.  Last year I made some really great friends who I am looking forward to seeing again soon.  It is sooooo refreshing to connect with youth workers who share the same ministry strategy and who are super-passionate about reaching the next generation.  Friendships are a gift and I love that I have opportunities to be around like-minded youth ministry friends just to hang, talk life and youth ministry.  My youth ministry relationships are what have kept me alive and passionate when things get tough in ministry.

If you haven’t already please check out The Orange Conference website and if you are coming I would love to hang, connect, and see ya at our XP3 Student networking event.

Last week, Marko on the Slant33 blog asked the question of:

We have learned that teenagers live in a world isolated from adults, and unfortunately, most of our ministries perpetuate this.  How are you addressing this problem?

My thoughts:

Students in the American church are experiencing a loneliness epidemic known as systematic abandonment. So what are some responses when addressing abandonment?

In my youth ministry experience it has been my mission, joined with the Holy Spirit, to intentionally respond to this systematic abandonment issue. I have responded in two approaches: 1) Proactively assimilating students into the church body; and 2) Getting more adults in the lives of kids through the small group model.

(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.

____________________________________

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?