Is this a problem, or is this normal? Shouldn’t the families in our churches have schedules? Practices? Games? Homework? Is it realistic to expect church commitments to remain consistently at the top of the family to-do list?
Though all of us have differing ideas and strategies for engaging with the parents of the students who attend our programs, we’ve gathered the following four in-the-trenches youth workers together to share the struggle of reaching and engaging parents from their perspectives.
Katie Mussat is minister to students at First Baptist Church Shreveport, Louisiana. Katie recently graduated with her M.Div. from George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. She received a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy from Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. Katie’s father has been a youth pastor for more than 26 years, so you might say Katie has grown up in youth ministry. Besides ministering to students and their families, Katie loves to run with her husband, Aaron, watch movies, drink lots of coffee, and spend time enjoying the outdoors.
Hal Hamilton has been the youth and college team leader at First United Methodist in Tulsa, Okla., since 2007. He has five children, ages 15 to 23. He has been in full-time youth ministry with his wife, Annamarie, since 1986. He earned his M.Div. from Asbury Seminary and a D.Min. in youth, family and culture from Fuller Seminary. Hal loves basketball, soccer, missions, worship, teenagers and young adults, strong coffee, chocolate cheesecake and the Rocky Mountains. He blogs occasionally at HalHamilton.com.
Neely McQueen is a student ministry pastor at Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, Washington. She’s been working with students for nearly 20 years in various ministry roles. She’s married to a missions pastor and has three amazing kids.
Jason Clark is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and has been serving in student ministry for 12 years. Currently, he is a student pastor at Woodmen Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition to serving at Woodmen Valley Chapel, Jason is a youth worker coach for Lead222 and the creator of SwitchTV: open-source digital teachings and resources for student ministries. He’s been married for more than three years to his wife, Becca, and they have a 7-month-old son, Xander.
YWJ: Many youth workers struggle to develop or maintain credibility with parents. How can youth workers gain credibility with families?
Katie: Credibility with parents is difficult, especially with young youth ministers or youth ministers without children (such as myself). It is easy to feel that you cannot relate to parents because you are too young or not a parent. At the same time, most of your time spent as a youth worker is with youth, and not as much with their parents. The lack of time spent getting to know parents can create a barrier, which is difficult to navigate around. I have found it helpful to over-communicate with parents. Providing them with as much information as possible (especially in regard to safety) helps parents know you are mature enough to care for their kids. At the same time, I have made it a goal of mine to send parents encouraging notes here and there, letting them know I support them and sharing with them how I am seeing spiritual growth in their kids.
Neely: Be credible. Not to simplify the solution but by creating a culture in your ministry of being open and honest about all the processes and programs is not only easy but the right thing to do. Parents are welcome to come to anything we do, and they are free to ask any question they may have of us. They probably won’t love everything, but they have access to everything. Every Sunday, we have a parent or two who sits in our program, and the fact that we don’t put up a big fuss about their presence adds to their perception of us and our ministry.
Jason: I agree with Katie that credibility with parents for a young youth pastor without a child can feel as realistically attainable as finding Sasquatch. That was true for me all throughout my 20s. I’ve put into practice three simple standards that have proven to be quite helpful for me with earning credibility from parents. First, I’m as proactive to know parents as I am to know their students—nothing special or deep—I just show genuine interest in knowing their stories more. Second, I reassure them that I’m Plan B and they’re Plan A for their kids’ spiritual development. I’ve never offended a parent by communicating that; it’s actually been received as encouraging. Finally, I try very hard not to over-schedule or over-price their students through events and to let parents know that’s my intent when I’m planning the calendar.
YWJ: From your perspective, what one aspect of being a youth worker creates a barrier between the youth worker and parents?
Neely: Though not true in all cases, I have gotten a sense that many youth workers tend to see parents as a barrier to reaching students. We’ve all had a bad run-in with a parent: They don’t like the way you do things, the changes you make to a program, the fact that you choose to show a clip from a particular movie to their homeschooled student, etc. These moments show our view of all parents: We put up barriers between us to keep their words or complaints from hurting us; but we lose, and our students lose when we don’t choose to approach parents differently. I am learning to love parents and understand that most of them are struggling to parent during these difficult years.
Katie: I think the lack of relationship between youth worker and parents is the greatest barrier. As we grow in our relationship with our students, we don’t always get to know their parents as we wave goodbye and watch their taillights in the parking lot. I want to prioritize time spent getting to know parents within our youth ministry. For instance, I have created a list for parents to sign up to come to dinner at my home. My goal is to begin inviting parents, along with their kids, for a meal with my husband and me starting in the spring.
Jason: Time. In my limited experience, I’ve learned time is super valuable for families. A majority of barriers I’ve created have come from asking for too much time with programs and events. It hasn’t been as easy as limiting programming, but also being intentional to have things start at the same time whenever possible. For example, our student ministry starts any evening event or program at 5:30. Even if it’s inconvenient for us, we make every attempt to be simple, memorable and consistent for the sake of serving the family well. I also appreciate and agree with lack of relationship with parents being a barrier. Lack of intentional relationship with them can be a massive barrier and breed an us-versus-them mentality.
Hal: I think Katie raises a great issue. Our agendas and insecurities can get in the way of our relationships, and we end up competing with instead of supporting one another. I remember about 10 years into youth ministry a parent who would be proactive in telling me publicly, “You don’t have teens of your own yet, do you?” In my pride and defensiveness, I wanted to answer, “No, but I have worked with hundreds. How about you?” As I worked to understand, forgive and appreciate that parent, I realized he was coming from a place of insecurity and desire to appear competent. When I worked on the relationship, everything changed. We ended up working together and are still close friends many years later.
YWJ: Youth workers constantly compete with the family schedule. Sports and school plays always seem to win instead of youth activities. What’s at the core of this struggle?
Hal: I have known youth ministers who (believe it or not) proclaimed soccer was of the devil and others who threw a major multi-week party during the World Cup. As a parent, I want to remember two things: One is perspective—very few of us will play sports for a living. All of us will live eternally. Where do I want to invest my best preparation? The second is that I never stop teaching theology; actions speak louder than words. Which values do I want my kids to embrace? Developmentally, what am I saying to the 8-year-old if we miss Sunday morning church to participate in that week’s tournament? What am I saying to the 17-year-old varsity athlete if I encourage her to miss Wednesday night church for practice? As a youth minister, I need to grapple with something else. What is my theology of discipleship and what it means to be the church? What is behind my emphasis on commitment? Do students have to attend the program I have planned to be growing in their faith? How do I help my students learn and practice what it means to be salt and light? How do I help them engage the pervasive culture of sport with its accompanying issues of competitiveness, celebrity and disproportionate valuing of individuals in a kingdom way?
Katie: I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately. To be honest, this question makes me angry. I think feelings of anger bubble up within me when I hear this question because this is one of my greatest struggles as a youth worker. I take it personally when kids do not come because I want them to show up to our stuff. Sports always win. School always wins. I believe at the root of this struggle is the core values of our culture. A few weeks ago, I heard Dr. Kara Powell at the National Youth Workers Convention say: “We equate busy-ness with success.” We over-schedule our families. As youth workers, it is easy to follow suit and over-schedule our ministries. We buy into the lie that if we are busy then we must be doing something right. I have found I can stop the competition within me. I can begin to reorient my rhythm of life with rest. I can prioritize our youth ministry with a vision to plan activities with intentionality, prioritizing our time together to make every minute meaningful. At the same time, I also could spend more time in students’ schools and at their sporting events. I could see these seemingly competitive events as opportunities to encourage students and build relationships with their parents. I am learning ministry is much broader than students coming to me on Sundays and Wednesdays.
Neely: Wow, this is a deep question. In my opinion, the core of the struggle is that every person is trying to prove he or she is valuable and lovable—parents and students included. Students do it by trying to be extraordinary in something; parents do it by showing how extraordinary their kids are at something. So, let’s stop competing and just love them. I want students to show up, but if they don’t, we will still keep loving and caring for them. Practically speaking, we try to make sure every student in our ministry is being cared for (inside or outside the church) by a caring adult.
Jason: I think the core of this conflict is that a child is going to pursue what their parents applaud. Therefore, a wise culture shift that parents (and youth workers) could create would be to start affirming students’ character more than their talents. This doesn’t mean we ignore, devalue or diminish their talents: A well-meaning youth worker can create unnecessary tension with the activity and inadvertently shame the student for enjoying it, likely losing them altogether. It’s easy to hardline conform to the belief that “action communicates affections” or “presence shows priority,” but that type of thinking probably creates more damage than more devotion. Chances are, they’re not skipping your youth ministry for soccer because they like soccer far more than youth group. More likely, they’re willing to skip our program for soccer because soccer doesn’t happen 52 weeks a year—same time and same place. Rather, soccer only happens for 8 to 12 weeks a year. Students run a greater risk of missing out on more if they miss the irregular activity (e.g., soccer) for the regular one (e.g., youth group). This is where the onus falls on the youth worker to create an environment of missing out—where a student doesn’t just miss another Sunday but has missed out on something altogether. It becomes our job to put more effort into our flagship program so it falls into their category of can’t-miss. Another possibility is that students have roles and ownership on the soccer field, whereas they probably don’t in our youth program.
YWJ: How have you worked in concert with parents in the spiritual formation of students?
Jason: Ideally, the youth worker is Plan B and parents are Plan A. What tends to get missed, though, is the mutual understanding that both plans play different, unique and important roles in the formation of young people. I see the role of the youth worker as less egalitarian and more complementary. Youth workers have vital roles in creating opportunities of spiritual growth that can’t be recreated at home; but parents who are disinterested, spiritually lethargic and not invested eventually will choke out the impact of those environments we create. Whereas spiritual development only being communicated at home without input from adults who are not family members or a Christian peer community eventually will fall flat when the opinions of peers take precedence over the opinions of parents.
Katie: I used to think a student’s primary source of spiritual formation was the church. For some students, especially those without Christian parents or anyone raising them to find and follow Jesus, this may be true. However, with the help of Fuller Youth Institute and many others who are teaching us about sticky faith, I now understand my primary role as working in concert with parents, who are the primary influence of their child’s spiritual formation. I understand my role as a youth minister as walking alongside students in their spiritual growth journeys, pointing out Jesus as I see Him working and moving in our midst. Yet, my time is limited. My student’s school teachers and parents are with them for most of the time they are not at church with me. For me, this means seeking to be involved and informed about our adult education at the church. I want to learn how our adults (parents) are being formed spiritually. As parents grow as apprentices of Jesus, their growth will spread throughout their families. So, I stick my nose into the spiritual formation conversations for adults in our congregation.
Neely: I recently heard Jim Burns talk about the top influencers in the lives of students. Family was three of the top five, along with friends. Church may have filled the fifth spot. We are not the main point of spiritual formation in the long run—that’s just the reality. Youth ministers who seem to understand that truth work the hardest to equip and support families in the process of spiritual formation. That support can come in various forms, providing opportunities and conversations for families, as well as providing forums and avenues for parents to gain new insight on parenting their teens.
Hal: What has worked extremely well for me is having a monthly parenting class. I teach about three-fourths of the time, and the rest of the time I bring in respected experts from the community. My goal is to encourage what Richard Dunn has coined as pacing or walking alongside the students in our sphere of influence as intentional spiritual guides or disciplers. I take one topic and explore it through the door of social science in a one-hour session before worship. Each year, I revisit an overall understanding of the three stages of adolescence and the key questions of identity, autonomy and belonging and explore the light Scripture sheds on these areas. The rest of the year, I cover other topics that arise and address a felt need. This is one way I can be a support scaffold while equipping parents in their task of spiritual formation with their students.
