“How to Make the Salvation Conversation Personal to Kids and Parents” Notes

Theses are the notes from the YouLead Labs session led by Mike Clear at the Orange Conference 2019.

If you could go back in time and talk to your younger ministry self, what would you say to yourself? Or what would you change?

Mike would change what he thought about parents. He didn’t always believe the best in parents.

You don’t have to like all the parent in order for them to have more influence than you.

What happens at home is more important than what happens at Church. Why? Because kids spend the majority of their time at home!

You have 40 hours in a given year to say everything you want to say to a child about God, discipleship, generosity, etc. That isn’t a lot of time.

Parents have 3,000 hours of influence. A parent’s influence is GREATER than yours.

What if you shifted your attention away from what happens at Church to see how to partner with parents and resource them.

Every parents wants to be a good parent…regardless of their history. Are there exceptions…yet. But don’t let the exceptions dictate your ministry approach.

Every parent can do something more.

What if we think differently about our approach. How to shift and change and partner with parents so we can resource and equip parent so they can lead them into a relationship with Christ. God made them the spiritual leaders, not just the physical leaders of the house.

What should be the role of the leaders in my environment?

• Large Group –> Small Group. What is the role of the Large Group communicator? The role of a LG communicator is to present the gospel but not close the deal. He/She needs to set the Small Group Leader to win.
• Small Group –> Child. The SG Leader is to take what the LG communicator just share and help the child process the lesson…not reteach it.
• Small Group –> Parent. SG Leader informs parent of what is happening with child. This happened and invite them to be apart of it and talk about next steps.
• Parent –> Child.  Parent gets to process it with child.

As a parent you are investing in your child. Parents just want to be apart of the process of salvation.

Don’t miss an opportunity to bring parents and children together. Create an environment where you share the gospel message with a child and where the parent can hear it as well. Then give them resources and questions for parents to ask their kids. Then give them the prayer they can pray with their kids for acceptance of Christ. Kids will accept Christ and some parents will as well.

Your role is to preach the gospel. How you bring parents in to the process is really important.

Get resources to help you do this here.

What do you think?  How do you make the salvation conversation personal to kids and parents?  Share them below or on social media using #ymsidekick when you share.

Want to learn digital tools to expand your reach in ministry? Join the Digital Bootcamp Facebook Group!