Partnering With Parents In Youth Ministry

This weekend at Hearts At Home, I had someone approach me with a few questions about how life, marriage and youth ministry are going. She then asked me the following question, "I feel like God has laid it on my heart to lead a bible study with the youth about purity but don't want to overstep my bounds with our youth pastor. However, I don't feel like he's doing a great job talking about that. What do I do?"

This was an awesome question and I felt like it would be great to also respond here on my blog. My first response was "Great"! Its important to respond when you feel like God has laid something on your heart.

Secondly, I think its very important, especially for parents, to talk to your youth pastor when you feel like something should be happening but isn't. 9 times out of 10 the youth pastor has a desire to address the need but doesn't have the time, energy or man power. Its very important to come alongside the youth pastor as well. Doing it on your own without having a conversation first could lead to more problems than you realize.

We had a situation happen several years ago very similar to this, except the parent never talked to us about it. They just forged ahead, but only invited certain girls out of our youth group. It turned into an exclusive bible study with several hurt feelings of those who weren't invited. This parent had no idea we were having to deal with the problems being left in this bible study's wake. Also, had we known ahead of time, we could have directed the parent to a better bible study on such a touchy subject. One that we knew the content and agreed 100%.

Had this parent approached us, we would have said "YES! Please! We would love your help! Lets partner in this together." The intentions were good, but the way it happened could have been done differently.

This is my encouragement to you, whether its youth ministry or any ministry...Partner with your pastor instead of forging in your own direction because you see a need that isn't being met in the way you think it should be. Check out my post "I am a Lego".