One of the biggest things we wanted to focus this year in our ministry was partnering with parents. We are trying something new this year that we never have really tried yet but I am very excited to see how it works. Over the past few months I have been putting together and formatting a curriculum our team wrote for all of our small groups and we wanted to try and figure out how we can get parents in on it. Now this is something that is being rolled out this month so we don’t really know how it’s going to do but I thought I would share some key things we are trying to connect parents with what is going on in our small groups this year.

Parent Gathering

  • Before we officially launch our small groups, we do a Meet N Greet (If you want more info on Meet N Greet click HERE). At this Meet n Greet we did a parent gathering where we can give our hearts behind small groups and how we want to partner with parents while their students are in small groups this year. The turn out was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. We shared our hearts, we shared our curriculum with them and we allowed any questions regarding small groups.

Parent Curriculum Newsletter

  • One of the key things we want to do as a ministry is keep the conversations that happen at small groups happening at home. We are going to be sending out a parent news letter once a month giving them a a short paragraph of what their student will be studying each week and 2-5 questions they as parents can ask their student during the week to hopefully stark some great conversation between parents and students in the home. Our goal with this is so our leaders are not the only ones talking about spiritual things with our students but hopefully parents will be as well.

Personable Touch

  • Josh gave his cell phone number to all the parents who attended the gathering. It’s his goal to have a very small church, personal feel when it comes to parents and communication. Parents were blown away. We made the goal to make sure we will get back within 24 hours of any phone call or email a parent sends. Our team is up for this challenge but we want to make sure parents know that if there is something they need to talk to us about or a concern that they will be heard and not lost in the crowd. I feel this promise to them gave a ton of them great comfort and confidence in us to support us in what we are trying to provide for their students.

I know these do not seem that big, at least they didn’t to me, but I felt the love from parents with some of these simple steps when it comes to partnering with them within small groups.

I know there are some great ideas when it comes to ministry and parents and I would love to hear some great ideas on how you partner with parents that you wouldn’t mind sharing with us!