Taking Parents to the Next Level

Some parents are eager and ready to learn and grow. They want more than the basic things the church offers. You can equip and even disciple these parents by giving them plenty of other resources and opportunities to develop their parenting.

The following growing list is designed to stimulate your ministry to parents. As you develop ways to help these parents, please send us an email and we'll add your ideas to this list to help other leaders as well.

1 • Raise your expectations for these parents. Sometimes, in order to meet the needs of the general population, those who want more are left wanting. Create a new level of expectation and in return, give them more. Karl Bastian at Village Church of Barrington, IL has VIP parents, Very Intentional Parents. To this group he gives more resources, invites them into the Sunday School to participate with their kids, and asks for reports and ideas to pass on to others.

2 • Provide quarterly parenting events. These might be one evening, a Saturday, or 2-3 consecutive weekday evenings for parent training. Present these to your special group of parents and invite other parents to attend also. Rely on your committed parents as discussion group leaders or ask them for additional feedback in the sessions.

3 • Create a blog, email loop, or idea forum where parents can report success stories, things that work, and share resources and suggestions with each other.

4 • Provide a prayer loop or support group to assist parents as they face specific challenges with their children.

5 • Host a parenting fellowship activity where parents can talk about their kids and brainstorm informally about solutions. These events help parents with renewed energy to hang in there and keep doing the hard work of
parenting.

6 • Have a "parenting book of the month club" where parents can look at a helpful resource, place a group order and then receive it in a week or so.

7 • As you have success equipping parents, please tell us what worked and we'll add new ideas to this list. Send them to parent@biblicalparenting.org.