Parent Communication & Development System
The next system you should create is Parent Development & Communication.
If you’re not too familiar with the Orange Strategy, a huge component of it is the strategy of partnering with parents. A ministry will have around 40 hours of influence a year with the average student. Parents have around 3000 hours a year. It’s not that our 40 hours don’t count, but our influence is far greater when we partner with parents. If I need to convince you of that, let’s talk later. For now, let’s all assume we agree.
If we agree, then we also need to be sure that we’re creating systems that not only inform parents about what we’re doing when we’re doing it & why we’re doing it, but we need to be creating systems that help parents better understand their spiritual role in the life of their kids & equip them to live that out.
Let’s start with the lowest hanging fruit - communicating with parents. One of the absolute EASIEST ways for you to build trust with your parents is to communicate clearly, concisely & consistently. You’re going to see some mirroring between this system & the communication with your leaders, but here are a few things I suggest you think about.
Weekly Email Newsletters
Every week on the same day at the same time, your parents should be getting an email from your ministry. I even suggest the email subjects be something simple like Youth News & then the date because most people don’t read emails when they get them, right? They read them when they need them. So make it easily searchable.
It should be predictable when it comes & it should be predictable in its content. The focus of these are information & should follow a similar format as your leader email. These should be really light on text & link to other pages if you want to go any deeper.
The first section should be about what is coming up that Sunday. Maybe a graphic of the series, the bottom line of the week, a good question for the ride home & a link to the parent cue (a resource that comes with XP3 curriculum).
The second section should be about what is coming up in the next couple of months. Again, not a great place for you to put all the text about your winter retreat, but just link to your online registration & give a few details.
The last section is for resources. Blogs, podcasts, articles, videos. These are short, easily consumable resources that are either inspiring or equip them to be better parents. Parent Cue has some great stuff for this! Maybe there’s an additional section that makes sense in your context, but those 3 were a sweet spot in my experience.
Facebook Group or GroupMe
In the same way you have a closed Facebook group or GroupMe for your leaders, think about having one for your parents. This group is less about merely communicating information, that’s what the emails & your website are for. This is more conversational. Post articles, memes, GIFS, ask parents to share stories, ask parenting questions & try to get some conversations going.
You’ll be lucky to ever connect with all of your parents in person, but your chances are much higher to do that digitally.
Text Reminders
Use a texting service like Remind to allow parents to opt into text updates. Don’t abuse the power, just use it sporadically for important updates, deadlines & maybe to prompt them with good questions after programs or events.
Those are some SUPER easy ways to communicate with parents. Now let’s talk about some components of the systems you could create to help develop parents.
Face 2 Face meetings
First, for an in-depth look at my thoughts on parent meetings, head here.
You should be having face-to-face meetings with parents every year. In fact, you should be doing it more than once a year. The best rhythm I’ve found was to do 3 per year:
First Sunday everyone was back in school in the fall.
First Sunday everyone was back in school after Christmas.
Last Sunday everyone was still in school before summer break.
If you’re like me, for too long your parent meetings were just live versions of your weekly emails. In other words, they were boring & unnecessary. Eventually, our team decided that there were really 4 things we wanted to do during these meetings…
Connect parents to their student’s small group leaders.
Cast vision of why we do what we do.
Equip them with a specific principle or value.
Remind parents how they can stay informed with details.
Keep these meetings at an hour or less & try to tie it into a time when they’re already likely to be around.
Resource Them
In addition to your articles, blogs, podcasts, etc on the email & Facebook pages, offer some key books to parents as gifts or at discounted rates. There are some LIFE CHANGING books for parents out there. A few that I’d recommend - not just because I work for Orange, but I’ve used them in ministry & seen what that can do for a family - are Parenting Beyond your Capacity & the Phase Guides.
I know some churches even create parent resource centers where they have multiple resources available to parents that might have to do with what they’re talking about that week or that are just great resources/books in general for them. You can literally just google “church parent resource wall” & get 53.5 million hits.
Classes, Seminars
Along those lines, sometimes it fits to offer a deep dive into something. Maybe you bring in an outside speaker to talk about teenagers & technology on a Saturday night. Maybe you do a class on Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings on a book. Do your best not to create competing systems for other things going on, but there are plenty of times where those might be a great fit.
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