Partnering with Parents

Okay, so it's been a week since I've updated, and for that I'm sorry. It's still my goal to post 2 - 3 times a week, but circumstances prevented me from keeping up this week. I'll try to do better in the future. Part of the challenge is deciding what to write about. I've had a lot of things going through my mind this week, including how to deal with ever-growing responsibilities. I'm not going to get into that now, but I'd just like to say how much I admire people that can juggle tons of responsibilities and pull them off relatively well. Hats off to you CEO's and moms!

But on to the topic of this post. The other day I ran across an article from Children's Ministry Magazine. You can check it out here. In this article, Group (the publisher of the magazine and a lot of curriculum material) gives their summary of the "State of Family Ministry." They talked to parents and church leaders alike to see what they felt was the most effective ways for churches to partner with parents in raising their kids spiritually. There are some surprising (to me, at least) figures in there and it got me thinking about my ministry.

You see, over the past couple of years, I've felt God shifting the focus of my ministry from just ministering to kids to ministering to kids and parents. Perhaps a better way to put it would be that I felt the most effective way to minister to kids was to partner with the parents in their God-given role as the spiritual leaders of their kids. What I came to realize is that my influence in the lives of the kids that I see every week is very minimal. Sure, I think I do a great job teaching these kids, doing everything possible to make the lessons memorable and impactful. But, like I tell the kids, the real living for Jesus doesn't happen at church. It happens when their at school, soccer practice and most importantly, home. I'm sure most parents and educators can agree with the fact that a 30 minute lesson on Sunday does little to help with a problem on Friday. The most effective learning happens in those "teachable moments" when kids get to instantly apply what they're learning. This is especially true for elementary age and younger, though certainly still applies for teenagers and even adults!

When it comes down to it, I'm not there to help the kids in my class process the daily life lessons. I can't guide them through how to love their enemy when they're nursing a black eye. I can't remind them to treat others how you'd want to be treated while they're beating up on their little brother. That's the unique role of the parent (and as a parent, I can appreciate the variety of teachable moments that kids give you throughout the day). When I realized this, I knew the best way for me to minister to kids was to partner with parents.

And that's where you come in, oh reader. For the past two years I've been trying to figure out how to partner with parents. There are a number of changes I've made to how we used to do things (I won't go into that right now, partly because it'd ruin the question I have for you). And there's a lot more ideas I'm kicking around. So my question to you is this: how do you think church leaders can best partner with parents to raise their kids spiritually? You don't have to be a parent to answer, though I'm hoping to get lots of parental input (especially from ones that have kids in my class). To help you get the thought juices flowing, read the CMM article. It suggests that great classes and take-home materials is all that parents need or want, but I'm not so sure about this. Please post your thoughts by commenting, either here or on my facebook. Or you can email me. Thank you everyone for reading this. I'm very blessed to get to have a forum to communicate my heart and thoughts. Blessings!

Dustin Brown
twitter.com/dbrown9