What are some effective ways to inspire, encourage, and equip parents in your ministry?

There seems to be a lot of resources on youth ministry websites that provide youth workers with practical ideas and effective ways to inspire, encourage, and equip parents in your ministry. So I want to suggest something that probably won’t be on a list of 10 things you can do to help the parents of the youth you minister to.

Here it is: Make sure you have a parent prophet in your faith community to tell parents the truth about parenting adolescents. It will probably need to be someone other than you, the youth pastor. If you are a 25-year-old youth worker without children, it is impossible to be the truth teller concerning parenting. Until you’ve experienced parenting (especially parenting of an adolescent), it is wise to have another pastor, parent, adult youth leader, or all of the above serve in the role of speaking truth to Christian parents in your faith community. If you aren’t old enough to serve in this role, you can definitely provide resources, information, and content to your parent prophet(s). The prophetic message that needs to be heard by parents is sometimes one of encouragement and sometimes one of exhortation.

As Vicki and I began our family back in the early '80s, we were firmly entrenched in a Christian culture that held the view that spiritual marriage relationships would be perfect if you put God first (you won't even argue or disagree with one another), and as long as you follow the rule book, you will also raise perfect kids who will never wander from faith in Jesus Christ.

Our culture overall and our church cultures specifically have created an unrealistic expectation that parents have a responsibility to raise perfect kids. Even if we could produce the perfect kid by the cultural standards of academic achievement, moral excellence, economic success, and productive citizenship, this certainly doesn’t mean we have nurtured and shaped disciples of Jesus Christ.

Too often Christian parents are made to believe that if they follow a specific formula, they are sure to raise spiritual giants. If you don’t raise a spiritual giant, well, it’s because you aren’t a spiritual parent, so goes the logic. This view of Christian parenting is a lie and is not consistent with Scripture. Too many Christian parents live in insecurity and shame over what is perceived as their inability to serve as guides for the spiritual formation of their children. We were not made to parent alone without the help of a community of people committed to being the people of God.

While I believe that we parents have a crucial role in the Christian formation of our kids, we have taken on too much responsibility with the idea that we are the ones who transform them. We resort to desperate tactics and rules we hope will somehow turn them into the kind of young adults who believe and do the right things. We often overlook the role we have of nurturing the environments where God’s Spirit transforms them.

We must help the parents in our faith communities quit living under the guilt of trying to parent successfully and embrace the concept of parenting faithfully. In January, Christianity Today featured a cover story written by Leslie Leyland Fields.

She stated, “We are not sovereign over our children—only God is. Children are not tomatoes to stake out or mules to train, nor are they numbers to plug into an equation. They are full human beings wondrously and fearfully made. Parenting, like all tasks under the sun, is intended as an endeavor of love, risk, perseverance, and, above all, faith. It is faith rather than formula, grace rather than guarantees, steadfastness rather than success that bridges the gap between our own parenting efforts, and what, by God's grace, our children grow up to become.”

Parent prophets can encourage the parents of the adolescents we minister to and help them through the challenging task of raising their kids.

On the other hand, parent prophets must also be willing to exhort and challenge parents. One of the most alarming trends I see today (as a youth worker for 36 years, a father for 30, and a grandfather for 4) is the emphasis parents place on preparing their children to excel in sports. I love sports. I play sports. I follow sports. However, there is something terribly dysfunctional about parents pushing their kids to excel in sports by investing in personal trainers and jumping from one competitive sports season to the next in an endless pursuit to raise the next LeBron James, Tiger Woods, or Andre Agassi. I know college is expensive, but the likelihood of training your child into a college athletic scholarship is about as probable as winning the $200,000,000 lottery.

I am disappointed that many Christian parents aren’t more zealous about making the Christian formation of their teenagers a first priority. Where are our values as Christian parents? I wonder what parents who define themselves as practicing Christians would choose if they could pick (with a guarantee) between a) my kid will be a major, successful, and wealthy sports star, or b) my kid will love Jesus Christ and faithfully live a life glorifying God?

We need parent prophets to speak truth into the lives of parents in our faith communities. What if Christian parents invested in the Christian formation of their children as passionately as some parents invest in the athletic training of their children? I believe this kind of investment in the spiritual development of the emerging generation of young people is desperately needed.

This post originally appeared on Slant33(used with permission)

 

Comments

[Jamie_Roach]

Love it! Like so many things we (parents)must learn the art of living in tension or with paradox. On one hand, trying to "drive" our children, as if they were a car, to a destination of our choice, simply violates who they are as "wonderfully created human beings". On the other hand our children long for and want our involvement and guidance in their lives. We must not leave them on their own by either allowing ourselves to be distracted with other pursuits or by allowing the popular stories of today, like "athletic super-star", write the scripts for their lives. I want to be involved in my children's lives as a non-anxious presence, trusting the Holy Spirit will use me (and others) to do her work in their lives.

[Mike]

Good word Jamie and by the way, you are a great parent.

[Grant Wood]

Appreciate these words from you Mike and Jamie...the performance pressure is so huge for parents, and it leaves little room for presence and nurturance.