THE SCHEDULE:
8:30 to 12:30 on a Saturday morning.
THE COST TO PARENTS:
It was free. Free training, booklet, childcare, light refreshments and coffee for adults, and a pizza lunch for the kids.
THE GOAL:
Communicate, cast vision, and gain ownership on 3 core values:
- Parenting is Communal. We can't do this alone at the church or at home. We need one another and we need to mutually own a vision. Specifically that we are "Inviting a Generation to Understand, Own, and Live out a life changing faith in Jesus."
- As a parent, I am my kids biggest influence. So leverage it by meeting one on one with your child regularly and face to face. Read more about this here.
- We are raising a generation of autonomous, Jesus-following adults. So we're trying to work ourselves out of a job. To this end we split up the groups into parents of infant through 4th grade and a second group of 5th-12th grade and talked specifically and practically about how we do that both at home and at church.
THE TRUTH ABOUT OUR IMPACT AT CHURCH:
We really really can't do this alone. We need God's help, a parent's help, and ultimately we need the child or young adult's help.


DOWNLOADS:
If you missed the seminar day and would like to take the time to listen to each of the sessions and the final age specific breakouts, you can find them all on this website here for free. If you'd like to use he handout that we gave to follow along or read up about how to contact us or how you might serve in our Generation's Ministry, you can download that pdf document here.
Brian, thanks so much for all this! It's been incredibly beneficial to read what you've been doing, and I plan on stealing quite a bit for our next parent gathering in the fall. You the man.
ReplyDeletesweet Joel. Glad I could help.... even just a little. Steal away.
ReplyDeleteHi Brian, thanks for posting this. It's got me thinking about how we begin to engage parents in the varied youth work we do here in the UK.
ReplyDeleteWe recently held our first "Parents Evening" and we plan to build on it. I like some of your ideas here, so thanks again for giving me something tangible to work on! :)
wow jon. the UK huh? guess this really is the world wide web :) thanks for the comment. So glad you were encouraged.
ReplyDeleteThanks Brian, I just linked to your post from my blog so maybe you'll get some more visitors from the UK! :)
ReplyDelete