3 Things Every Parent Meeting Needs
Big Idea: every parent meeting needs less information & more vision, connection & inspiration.
Death. Taxes. Parent Meetings. If you are in student ministry, these are 3 inevitable aspects of life. Actually, if you are licensed or ordained, be sure to talk to your church’s bookkeeper about some breaks that might make the whole “taxes” thing a little easier for you. But that’s not what this blog is about.
When I started out in full-time ministry, I knew that parents were important. I mean, it was how 80% of them came to our environments! Communicating to parents about what is going on in our ministry was important. How else would they know when to drop their kids off?! Obviously I’m kidding (a little). As a 21 year old, my view & understanding of partnering with parents was in its infancy at that point. Even after it began to evolve & be a focus for me, there was still something that took me even longer to figure out:
Parent Meetings.
I’m assuming you can relate to my experiences: you want to invite parents into what you’re doing, partner with them, resource them & equip them to lead their students too. So, you plan a parent meeting.
You communicate. You plan. You prepare. & who shows up? Roughly 6% of who you were wishing showed up. And if there were a 6% who probably didn’t need to show up, that’s the 6% that actually showed up.
Then come the 5 stages of parent meeting grief…
Disappointment that no one came
Annoyed that you feel like you wasted your time
Frustrated that parents chose something over your meeting
False pride that you care more about your students' spiritual lives than their parents do
And finally...the realization that maybe...just maybe...some of this is on you.
The truth is that the vast majority of my parent meetings were simply live versions of the emails we were sending out each week. I was asking for about an hour of their time out of a busy day & was pretty much just talking about details they could have read about. It’s embarrassing. #facepalmGIF. People might show up to see famous authors read their work or a musician to perform their songs, but who would have thought that it’s not a big draw when it comes to Youth Pastors & their parent emails ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Over my years, here are just a few other reasons I’ve learned about why parents don’t attend parent meetings…
They’re busy! This one is obvious. They’re juggling a lot & sometimes your meeting just doesn’t make the cut on an already busy day.
It’s not convenient. This one goes hand in hand with the previous, but when your parent meeting doesn’t align with other programming or takes advantage of them already being on-site, it’s unlikely you’ll get them to come back just for a meeting.
It’s not a part of their rhythm or your ministry culture. If your ministry does not have parent meetings & you start them, it may take some time before parents understand that they’re valuable.
They aren’t sure it matters. Especially if they left the last meeting wondering “did he just memorize his email and perform it for us?”.
Okay, enough self-deprecation. I think you get it at this point: I was terrible at parent meetings. It’s true. We could probably talk for 90 more minutes about why parent meetings are challenging, but instead, I want to move on & talk about something that hopefully helps.
I sure don’t have all the answers (if you do, please leave them in the comments below), but here are some things I’ve learned over the years that help make Parent Meetings more successful.
-Predictability-
“Whatever happened to predictability? The milkman, the paperboy, evening tv?” If you know the TV show that this theme song comes from, you are my people. When it comes to parent meetings, consistency matters. The earlier you can have parents save the date for your meetings & the more predictable the dates are each year, the more likely you’ll get parents to show up.
At my last church, we decided we’d try & get the parents together for a meeting 3 times a year. Here’s how we tried to make it consistent & predictable. Our fall meeting was the first Sunday that all schools were back in session (we pulled from 11 school systems, so the first of the school year wasn’t always so easy, but maybe it's easier for you). Our winter meeting was the first Sunday that all schools were back in session after Christmas. Our summer meeting was the last Sunday that all schools were in session (usually the end of May).
Parents got the hang of it pretty quick. We also were able to promote those dates to parents WAY in advance & block out the church calendar on these days.
That fit our context great. Maybe it does yours, or maybe it doesn’t. The point is that in your parent meeting strategy, figure out how many times a year you want to gather them & find a predictable time each year for you to have those meetings.
-Accessibility-
One obvious reason that parents don’t attend our meetings is that they’re busy. So, the best way to increase our chances of getting them to attend is to make it as convenient as possible. So, when are the majority of your parents already going to be around? Have your meeting then!
Every now & then, there may be some special events that draw parents to show up on a totally random evening, but you increase your chances 10 fold of parents showing up if it means they ‘stick around’ rather than ‘come back’.
For some, that might be a Sunday right after church. For others, that might be taking parents to a different space on Wednesday/Sunday nights during the same time as your youth programming. What this looks like for you might look different for others, but do your best to figure out the most convenient time possible for parents to attend. Maybe you even send a survey out to parents casting a vision of what the meeting will be, create some tension about why it’s important for them to be there & then give them a few options to choose from when they’re most likely to attend. That will give you some data to help make a wise choice.
-Push EVERYTHING you can to Video-
Your parent meetings should be filled with things that you can only do when you have parents physically in the room. It was a challenge for me to get 50 parents to show up for a meeting. But, when we would shoot fun, quirky little announcement videos to post & send out, we’d easily outdo that number with views.
There actually is some merit to sharing the info from your email newsletter announcements through a different venue. Have some fun with it & do it regularly so that you don’t have to take the precious, rare facetime you have with parents to cover the same things.
Even when it comes to your vision, inspiration & equipping pieces you present at a parent meeting, think about doing a short video talking through the same things. This can serve as a reminder for the parents that attended but it’s also a great way to help keep parents informed who weren’t able (or interested) in making it.
-Do what only a parent meeting can do-
If we have roughly 3 hours a year of scheduled facetime with parents, what is the most valuable way for us to spend that time?
What can we do in those 3 hours that we can’t do any other way?
Those are the questions that ultimately shaped how we started to structure our Parent Meetings. We came up with 4 key components of every parent meeting that, from my experience, became the most worthwhile aspects that we tried focusing on each & every parent meeting. We sure never perfected anything & continued to tinker here & there, but I believe these 4 core components help create the most effective parent meetings for us.
1. Cast vision
Kick-off each gathering reminding parents why you do what you do, when you do it, where you’re going & how you want to partner with them along the way. On paper, spending 5-10 minutes, 3 times a year talking through your discipleship process, your strategy, your vision, your environments & what they are designed to achieve doesn’t seem like overkill, but there will be times where it feels like it.
If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself in front of the parents, walking through those pieces & for some reason, you’re only making eye contact with the parents who could probably be up there sharing this information from memory. But guess what? It still matters.
Vision leaks. So it’s not only good to continually remind parents who are always around but always assume there is a parent attending one of these meetings & hearing this information for the first time.
2. Connecting with their student's small group leader
The number 1 conclusion that we ended up coming to is that the most important thing we could do with those 3 hours per year was to help build a personal connection between them & their student's small group leader. So, after a quick welcome, we’d send the parents off to small groups!
The focus was mostly conversational. We’d create agendas with questions that were usually focused on each season to build the relationship.
What are you most looking forward to this fall/summer with your family?
What was the greatest story over Christmas break?
What do you hope for your student this next school year?
What are you anxious about for the coming school year?
What is one thing I, as your student’s SGL, can do to help your student succeed this year?
Sometimes groups would even spend this time planning a parent/student small group event. We did our best to prepare & prompt the small group leaders, but after a few trial runs, many got the idea and started running with it.
3. Equip & inspire.
Bring the parents back together & take some time to equip & inspire them. Plan 15-20 minutes for this. This could be something you talk through or this could be someone else. A few ideas on what this time of equipping & inspiring could look like…
a Parenting Beyond your Capacity principle.
a Playing for Keeps principle.
Phase related content
Training on how to best use Parent Cue
Technology
Social Media
Mental Health
Again, this doesn’t even have to be you! Maybe this is a counselor you bring in, your Sr Pastor, etc.
4. Remind them how to stay informed
To wrap things up, spend the final few minutes quickly reminding parents of ALL the ways they could stay connected with us on a regular basis. In order for your parent meetings to achieve what only they can achieve, you have to make sure your communication throughout the rest of the year is solid & consistent. In a nutshell, here’s what that looked like for us…
weekly parent emails
Parents would sign up for this on their own on our church's website. Wherever they sign up to subscribe to them, make sure it’s an easy URL to go to & a simple process. We used Mail Chimp, but there are a bunch of companies out there that do this. We’d encourage you to use one that can give you stats like open rates & clicks. Thanks to that research, we learned that Thursdays at 3:30 pm got us our best responses.
Here are the 3 key components we included in each of these emails…
THIS WEEK. This section would have the graphic of the current series, a link to the series parent cue, the week’s bottom line, verse & a good question for conversation after that week's service.
COMING UP. This section would have information & links regarding any events, trips or important upcoming announcements we wanted parents to know about.
WEEKLY RESOURCE. This section would include a resource of some sort designed to equip and/or inspire a parent. Maybe an article, a podcast, a blog link or one of the amazing resources from weekly (link goweekly.com). If you don’t know what weekly is, you need to check it out.
Pro tip: Keep the text light on these. If there’s a lot you need to say, don’t. Just make it short & sweet, then link it to other pages like your retreat registration or information page on your website. Many of the parents will open this on their phones & if they see a full screen of text...they’re out (just like you are when it happens to you). So, design the email & create the content accordingly.
subscribe to group texts
After we reminded them about how the email is the consistent way to stay informed on what is going on & coming up in our ministry, we encouraged them to subscribe to our text updates. We used remind.com & explained to them the kind of texts they’d be receiving if they subscribed.
We mainly used this mode of communication for things like event sign-up reminders, urgent messages, etc. We’d send 1-3 texts a month in hopes to not overwhelm parents. I have heard of some groups using this resource to send out a conversation question to parents about 5 minutes before their youth service is over in an attempt to cue the parents for the ride home too.
parent facebook group
Your students might not be on Facebook, but their parents probably are. A closed ‘parents only’ facebook group is a great way to share articles, resources & get immediate feedback from parents. It’s also a great space to help create community & support among the parents themselves. Don’t just use it to push your agenda though. It’s not just another vehicle to post the email & your announcements. Use it to share stories & drive conversation/engagement.
our student social media channels
To end everything, we inform them about all of the student-focused social media platforms & handles we use. It wouldn’t hurt here to cast a little vision about why you do that & how your parents following them can be beneficial too.
Wherever you are when it comes to parent meetings, I hope there’s something in my experience that helps you take yours to the next level to be a little more effective & efficient.
