Children’s & Student Ministry Q of the Month: Parenting Classes
Now being the Family MInistry Pastor at New Life Christian Church, I am becoming more and more aware of the partnership we, the Church,
need to have with families and parents. I have Orange to thank for that.
With that in mind, do you offer any kind of parenting class for the parents of the children and/or youth in your program? If so, why do you do them and which ones are the necessity to have and have been very beneficial for parents and the church?
Post a comment so we can all benefit.
We too are following God's leadership to begin thinking orange. We are going to try our first Parent thing in May. We don't know if it will work or not. We will try a quarterly potluck luncheon with a half-hour time where they will hear from me and will discuss a topic. The first thing I want to accomplish will be to get parents on the same page as their kids' small group material topics (a refrigerator letter) for the upcoming quarter (June/July/August). This is to benefit the Deuteronomy 6 idea of talking about God-stuff during normal routines. Hopefully it will generate synergy for all of us to be teaching the same ideas to the young people.
The second thing will be to introduce a topic they are dealing with in real life, offer a short biblical perspective, split into groups for discussion, ending with prayer. I think we'll try "texting" as the first meeting's topic.
One other topic on my agenda which happens every year is a parent meeting where I explain precisely what we will teach during our 4-lesson sex and dating youth study. They come with questions for me, but also receive advice (not from me but from an expert in a book) about making sure their student doesn't learn about the birds and bees on the bus but from mom and dad.
This sounds great Tucker. I like how you are going to try the potluck luncheon. I think the more parents are clued into what we are covering the more supportive they will be of what we are doing and get on board. I'd be very interested to see how that potluck goes – great idea (people like to come to something where they will be getting some sort food)
We began Orange in September (First Look, 252 Basics and XP3) along with that we offered a group on Sunday mornings during the traditional Sunday School hour for "Orange Parents". Many of our parents had not attended during the Sunday School hour since they graduated from high school. We began with Reggie and Carey's book "Parenting Beyond Your Capacity" (PBYC) and utilized the online videos with our discussion. It was a great success. We have now moved on to other video/book studies and are experiencing a new wave of Christian formation among our parents. Note: we also offered PBYC on Wednesday evenings for those who are engaged in leadership on Sunday mornings.
Our group was so "into" PBYC, that they are now purchasing copies of the book and gifting them to members of the congregation and community at the birth of a new child with a handwritten note inside the front cover inviting them to come and be a part of Orange Parents.
NOTE TO Reggie and Carey – Could you do another book SOON?????
We use an adjusted form of Take it Home Events (www.faithathome.com). We do classes that are shared experiences with parents and children together. Here is our class line up: http://www.connectatgrace.org/takeithome
Jane and Jonathon, thanks so much for the comments. I am definitely going to have to look into both of those options.