Ministering to students & their parents

I remember getting a phone call one Spring afternoon at the local church building where I was working. I was a weekend Youth Minister at a small church and we had been without a Sr. Minister for about six months at that point. God had impressed upon me that I should start asking people plainly if they wanted to start following Jesus — he had shown me that the fields were ready for harvest, all I had to do was ask. it had been amazing, I would ask in the middle of a conversation, being as subtle and loving as I could and people would simply respond with, “Yes, I was hoping you’d ask me that question.” I was flabbergasted at how the simple act of asking produced so much fruit — the field was definitely ready for harvest.

That is what I did with one young man at the end of a Bible Study we had every Tuesday. We would go out to a location, talk about scripture with the location being a giant illustration for what the passage said. At the end of our time at a local apple orchard where we talked about the type of fruit our lives were producing, I asked him if he wanted to follow Jesus. He said, “Yes I do, how do I do that?” I showed him and like an Ethiopian he said, “shouldn’t we go back to the church so I can get baptized now.” Being a young Youth Minister, I got caught up in the moment and said, “of course!” Without the guidance of a senior leader, I just dunk the kids while his fellow Bible Study friends watched. Needless to say, I was flying high after this encounter.

A day later camp the phone call. I gave everyone a Bible that baptized that year and wrote a little note in the front. I had done the same with this young man, who had taken it home, and, like a normal teenage boy, tossed it on his bed and forgot about it. His mother was picking up laundry the next day and found the Bible on his bed. She promptly called him in, asked what had happened, and he told her the story. She was excited for him but mad a me. I should have called her and her husband so they could have gotten the grandparents and cousins all gathered up, or at least that’s what she was sternly telling me on the phone. I had made the big mistake of not consulting the parents before I helped an excited student take one of the most important steps in his life. Imagine not telling the parents of a bride and groom that they were getting married, imagine not telling the dad their baby had been born, imagine not inviting your favorite uncle to your child’s first birthday party, for this family, not talking to them first was exactly the same offense.

We work very hard to meet our students where they are in life. Which means many times we get to know them well but don’t always get to know mom and dad well. There’s a couple of problems in that scenario. Many times teenagers and their parents are at odds with each other, its a normal part of adolescence that will subside with work on both sides of the issue. However that means many times teenagers don’t want people they trust outside their family (e.g. Youth Ministers/Adult Youth Leaders) to mix with their family, specially their parents. Which means we opt into ministering to the students separate from the parents. There are some parents that are excited bout that, they don’t know what to do and a trusted adult who can “fix” their kids would be great for them. You can start to see the issues that creep into this scenario.

Remember when you minister to the student you are ministering to the parents and even the whole family. We have to keep in mind that we are the student’s friend, not necessarily the parent’s friend, but we also have to remember that we are their ADULT friend. Which has a lot of ramification that the student can not always see so you have to help them see it. Simultaneously, the parent’s may see you as someone who is competing for their son or daughter’s affection. So drawing the lines and remembering your are serving both of them is very important.

Confidence that you will give good advice and keep their dirty laundry to yourself goes a long way with students. When they know you have wisdom that they need and that you will, unlike their teenage friends, keep their secrets teenagers will line up to talk with you. You become a safe place and that becomes a sacred duty. AND is a totally other blog post from this one.

What you may not know is that this sort of safety is gigantic for a parent. Many times they are praying for an adult who can speak into the life of their son or daughter because they have lost the influence they once had before puberty hit. Which means your ministry to their kids is a ministry to them by proxy.

So how do you minister to parents without loosing face with their kids? First off you over-communicate. Make sure they not only know the events on the calendar (which isn’t much communication, we can all read calendars) but your remind them of why the events are important for the students and their families. That’s more than just vision casting its involving the parents int he theology and philosophy of what the student ministry is doing.

Four times a year I try to lay out for our parents not only the events we are going to do over the next quarter but how the events flesh out our beliefs, theology, and approach to ministry. In those meetings I talk a lot, but then I have some interactive questions and activities that get the parent’s thinking and talking about why they want their kids to be part of what we are doing. Many times these discussion help me tweak the plan moving forward.

Then two or three times a year I offer parent workshops. Opportunities for parent’s to get together and talk through a topic that is specific to parents of adolescent kids. One discussion each year is the use of social media and how social media is shaping our students. Parents are not as into that world as their kids are, so this is usually a lively discussion, especially when they see the brain science part of the discussion.

Two or three times a year we have a parent/family time at our regular meetings. We invite the parents to join us on a service project, a worship time, and a Bible Study. This is all so the parents can interact with what we are doing as a ministry but also encourage our kids to interact with their parents as fellow disciples, breaking the normal dynamic. This serves this two fold purpose well, especially when don’t call it “parent’s night.” What we do is let the parent’s know that over the next quarter they should look at the schedule and join us at one UP night, one IN night and one OUT night.

We then invite parents to take part in what we are doing as chaperones. This is an obvious one but needs to be stated. When kids see their parents helping other students it reminds them that their parents are trusted adults too and can really help them in a time of need. If a parent can be an adult leader its transformative for their relationship with their son or daughter.

One of the most effective things we do is try to empower the parents to be in charge of their kids’ discipleship. In adolescence they may have to delegate that authority to a trusted adult, but ultimately they are the ones called by God to disciple their son or daughter. When the parents take that seriously, then their kids take it seriously. That is when you see transformation in the families. The hard moments become opportunities to to find the work God is doing in their lives (both kids and parents). You cannot manufacture the bond that this sort of work does between a parent and child.

How do we empower, that is the tougher part, we have to mentor and train the parents to be disciple makers. If we don’t then they can’t lead their kids to be disciples, they will always have to rely on others to do it for them, continuing to grow the gap adolescence usually creates. This means that an arm of your ministry has to to be dedicated to training and growing the parents. You will need to partner with other leaders in the church, but this sort of collaboration will change your ministry. So however your church develops disciples, collaborate with them to have a group built for the parents of adolescents.

Part of our empowering is the Milestone events. Help create moments that speak to the significant transitions in the life of family. Do a simple event to invite elementary students into the middle school. Involved the parents, give them pointers, tell them what to expect, and remind them they are the disciple makers. For the 8th grade Milestone we usually have the High School students create an encouraging event that invites the Middle School kids into the a new environment. It also gives the High School students an opportunity to think about who they might mentor, which puts the ministry in to the hands of the students (another longer blog post soon). The largest milestone we do is the High School Graduation. There’s not a lot of pomp and circumstance, they’ll do that at school, instead we create a rite of passage moment for the families. We invite the students and their parents to a nice dinner where we ask the families to first bless their graduate with words and expressions of love. Then we ask Mom and Dad to stand up in front of the all the families and speak grace and truth over their daughter or son as a way of inviting them into adulthood.

As you can see ministering to families can be more rewarding than you imagine. Its a lot of work, but well worth the time. If you think that this is a lot, you would be correct, but it is also one of the most neglected sides of Youth Ministry. Many times it’s because the younger youth leaders don’t realize the need for it and they have so much going on already, it is easy to forget. If you will devote at least half a day a week to working on how you will minister to parents, your ministry will thrive, you will have tons of vocal advocates for you, and it has the potential to change the trajectory of whole families.