This morning I went to a seminar about dealing with parents in youth ministry. There were a few good quotes I pulled out of it. One of the things that was talked about was about understanding the expectations that parents have on the youth ministry. The 4 that he talked about were these:

1. Teen sitting service
2. Entertain their kid
3. Save their kid
4. Disciple their child

It was emphasized that it is important to REALLY communicate with parents what the ministry is all about so these false expectations can be defused.

Here is a stat that was shared.

“Youth workers have on average 40 hours of time to influence students.”
“Parents have over 3000 hours to influence their kid.”

Those stats really show how we should be spending our time by enabling parents to minister to their own kids!

In dealing with parents our prayer should be…

“God , give me thicker skin, and a softer heart.”

More quotes…

‘Dealing with families in ministry make us (youth pastors) more Godly.”

During the seminar I took time to just thank God for giving me the strength to do ministry and deal with parents for all this time. Sometimes I forget that He is sustaining me through all this.

I also felt like I need to be more proactive n getting involved in ministering to the families in our church and make myself more available to them.

In the first general session was good. The “Skit Guys” tore it up! They get better and better every time I see them. What they do for a living is really my dream being a drama guy. I would love to take my weekends and do drama like that. My prayer would be that God would bring another talented actor to make that sort of ministry possible.

Looking forward to the 2nd session tonight. Rumor is Mark Yaconelli and Doug Fields are going to brawl.