I have been wondering a lot lately about parent ministry as a part of youth ministry. Typically youth pastors spend a bulk of their time with students but very little time with parents. But in all honesty we typically spend no more than 5 hours max a week with any given student (that may even be a high estimate). Parents hopefully spend more time than that with their students. Maybe we should be spending as much time if not more on parent or multigenerational ministry as we do on youth ministry.
I like the idea of including parents in any way appropriate in our youth ministries. Having them drive or serve or whatever else makes them present to their youth and takes some responsibility off of other leaders. I also like the idea of education parents in meaningful ways. Last fall we held a class for parents and students where we discussed today's youth culture - we used Walt Mueller's Youth Culture 101 as our guide. We had some good discussions with parents and youth together about the realities of today's culture. We hope to do more joint educational experiences together in the future.
Sounds like a good way to make some money for a group - but it doesn't fit with my "philosophy" of fund raising (maybe not the right choice of word, but I can't think of anything else at the moment)! I dislike fundraising at all but it seems to be a necesary evil in youth ministry in general. We try to make all of our fund raisers directly benefit the church as well as our youth ministries. We want our congregation to grow together in fellowship and faith and we try to use our fund raisers to accomplish those goals - especially the fellowship part. We do a talent show and dessert night (Immanuel's Got Talent minus the judges), a soup supper and service auction, dinner before our annual congregational meeting, and a dinner for widows and widowers in conjunction with our deacons. Our goal is for each of these events to contribute to the fellowship and community development of our church body first, and to raise money for our students second.
That being said, there are good titles in the list and getting more of them into the hands of our members isn't a bad thing. In fact, we just bought a case of Kevin Adam's book on the Psalms for our congregation. Should have signed up for this fund raiser before we ordered those!
Posted in: Parents Involved in Youth Ministry
I have been wondering a lot lately about parent ministry as a part of youth ministry. Typically youth pastors spend a bulk of their time with students but very little time with parents. But in all honesty we typically spend no more than 5 hours max a week with any given student (that may even be a high estimate). Parents hopefully spend more time than that with their students. Maybe we should be spending as much time if not more on parent or multigenerational ministry as we do on youth ministry.
I like the idea of including parents in any way appropriate in our youth ministries. Having them drive or serve or whatever else makes them present to their youth and takes some responsibility off of other leaders. I also like the idea of education parents in meaningful ways. Last fall we held a class for parents and students where we discussed today's youth culture - we used Walt Mueller's Youth Culture 101 as our guide. We had some good discussions with parents and youth together about the realities of today's culture. We hope to do more joint educational experiences together in the future.
Posted in: A "Reformed" Fund Raising Idea
Sounds like a good way to make some money for a group - but it doesn't fit with my "philosophy" of fund raising (maybe not the right choice of word, but I can't think of anything else at the moment)! I dislike fundraising at all but it seems to be a necesary evil in youth ministry in general. We try to make all of our fund raisers directly benefit the church as well as our youth ministries. We want our congregation to grow together in fellowship and faith and we try to use our fund raisers to accomplish those goals - especially the fellowship part. We do a talent show and dessert night (Immanuel's Got Talent minus the judges), a soup supper and service auction, dinner before our annual congregational meeting, and a dinner for widows and widowers in conjunction with our deacons. Our goal is for each of these events to contribute to the fellowship and community development of our church body first, and to raise money for our students second.
That being said, there are good titles in the list and getting more of them into the hands of our members isn't a bad thing. In fact, we just bought a case of Kevin Adam's book on the Psalms for our congregation. Should have signed up for this fund raiser before we ordered those!