Blog | 3 Tips for Making Your Students’ Parents Your Best Advocates

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As a youth pastor, building relationships with parents is just as essential as building relationships with your youth. Parents play a huge role in the spiritual development of your students, so it’s important to develop trust and respect so you and parents can make an impact together.

There’s always room to improve engagement, and these tips offer actionable ways to improve communications and develop relationships that last:

Communicate Early and Often

Communication is the number one thing. You can’t always rely on youth to relay important information that’s announced in person at youth group. Find a communication medium that works for the majority of your parents, or, better yet, communicate the same information on a variety of channels.

The church website, email, social media, and messaging apps (like GroupME or What’sAPP) are all great ways to share important information on events, dates, and ministry highlights. Make it a precedent that all important information can always be found in a central hub, be it the website, a FaceBook group, or whatever works best for your community.

There is no such thing as too much communication, so if there’s a mission trip, a retreat, or social hang coming up that you want parents to know about, start talking about it weeks (if not months) prior to the actual event and hit on it every week. More than just information about dates and locations, be sure to cast vision for the purpose and importance of event and include need-to-know info like directions, packing lists, and what their kids can expect.

Build Real Relationships With Parents

Communication becomes easier when you have real relationships with parents. Of course, just like you can’t individually mentor every student, you can’t be besties with each of their parents, either. However, little efforts can go a long way when it comes to building trust and familiarity.

Consider hosting semi-regular parents events where you gather together and cast a vision for the ministry. This lets parent’s begin to get to know you, hear face-to-face about big events down the line, and feel actively involved.

You can also get to know parents as their peers by joining a small group, joining church activities like a softball team, attending men or women’s ministry events, mingling before services, or even inviting them to hang out outside of church activities.

Include Parents In Your Ministry

Don’t be afraid to involve parents in your ministry. Even if you don’t feel comfortable enlisting parents as youth leaders (not every student will be comfortable with their parents leading their small group), you can still involve them in other parts of the youth group. Whether you need chaperones for an excursion, snacks every week, or even a prayer team, when you invite parents to be a part of serving the youth, they’ll get to see your heart, what kind of change is happening in their kid’s lives, and feel like a real partner in the spiritual development of their children.

Parent’s are important assets to your ministry. When you invest in developing relationships, communicating like a champ, and inviting them to participate in real ways, you’ll start to see a real difference and witness your ministry transform in ways you never even expected. You can do this!