Don't stop TRYING to connect with parents!

Chelsea (my wife and an amazing leader) and I have been evaluating our effort to connect with, empower, inform, and partner with parents at Relevant Student Ministry. What have we concluded? IT IS HARD! I think this is why student pastors stop striving to partner with parents. We are not evaluated on life change happening in the family we are measured by numbers of teens attending our programs. Looking for life change within the family is difficult to measure because guess what, it is rooted in the family. Sometimes we get to see it but most of the time we don't. When we can't see it we tend to give up. We tend tend to move toward where we get immediate feedback. We tend to focus all our effort on just connecting with teens because well that is our what many of us have been conditioned to do and just to be honest what we are good at. IT MAY BE HARD TO PARTNER WITH PARENTS BUT...IT'S WORTH IT! There are some things we have to focus on no matter what percentage of our parents choose to embrace the idea. The power of a parents actively investing in their teenage son or daughter is beyond measure. If just 50% of families in our student ministry choose to take ONE step toward partnering with the church, that 50% is going to make a huge impact in the lives of those teenagers. We have to remember that we can't demand an all or nothing approach to partnering with parents. We have to enable several levels of partnership and encourage parents to take the next step. This is about empowering the family and the family matters to God, He made it. We have decided that we are not going to quit when it get's hard. Partnering with parents is more than a strategy it's a way to care about what God cares about.