When the time comes to reflect on your children’s ministry and demonstrate its impact on kids’ lives, who do you thank? While your ministry plays a crucial role in supporting kids’ faith, it’s the involvement of families that truly maximizes your impact.
Collaboration between the church and home creates a broader environment where children not only hear spiritual lessons but also live them out daily. If your ministry wants to strengthen this church-home partnership, here are four steps to follow.
1. Establish Clear Communication Channels
Effective communication is the cornerstone of every partnership. To carry your ministry’s messages into the home, you must keep parents in the loop.
In addition to your usual outreach channels, you can use the following resources to connect with parents:
- Sunday take-home materials: Provide parents with tangible resources to reinforce recent church lessons by continuing the conversation at home. This could include lesson recaps, discussion questions, memory verses, or other reminders.
- Email newsletters: Summarize important information such as upcoming events, key lesson topics, and other essential ministry updates in an eye-catching email newsletter.
- Social media groups: Many parents are already on social media, making private groups across platforms like Facebook an easy way to share updates and foster community.
- Text message updates: For a quick and personal method of reaching parents, try engaging them through text. You can send automated texts to each parent in your contact list or send individual messages to parents as needed.
Keep parents’ communication preferences in mind when reaching out. For example, some families prefer to keep social media out of the home and apply that rule to parents as well. These families might prefer email newsletters instead.
2. Create Opportunities for Parental Involvement
Many parents are eager to get involved in their children’s spiritual growth—but they don’t know how. Your ministry can encourage their involvement by creating clear opportunities for them, such as:
- Volunteering in classrooms: Invite parents to assist in teaching lessons, serve as classroom helpers, or even substitute when your usual Sunday school teacher is absent. Direct involvement in Sunday school equips parents to reinforce lessons at home.
- Raising support for your ministry: Show parents how to support their children by supporting your ministry. For example, ask parents and their kids to write fundraising letters together that solicit the congregation’s support.
- Events for the whole family: Host engaging events for kids, their siblings, and their parents to bond over their spiritual learning. This could include family worship nights, special ministry events like vacation Bible school, or even community service projects.
Through these opportunities, your ministry can also pour into kids’ parents, providing spiritual encouragement and support where possible. Their deepened involvement allows you to get to know parents and their families more closely, which can further improve your collaboration with them.
3. Provide Resources for Home Discipleship
Once parents get home from church, it’s important that they feel well-equipped to continue faith-building. Practical resources your ministry might provide include:
- At-home activities: According to Wonder Ink’s guide to biblical curriculum, your Sunday school resources should provide at-home activities that families can complete together. For example, weekly devotionals or family discussion guides can show parents how to start important conversations and encourage kids to think critically about their faith.
- Recommended learning materials: Help parents find the right resources for their kids by recommending children’s Bibles, books, and other learning materials.
- Family-friendly, faith-based media: Animated Bible stories, interactive lessons, and games can be fun outlets to keep kids focused on faith-based topics outside of a dedicated time for learning. Encourage parents to check out reliable apps, such as the Bible App for Kids, with features like coloring pages, activity sheets, and videos.
Consider sharing these resources on an easy-to-find channel, such as your church’s or ministry’s website. If you apply for the Google Ad Grants for churches, you can even promote the page for free and ensure that your resources hub reaches as many parents as possible.
4. Encourage Two-Way Communication and Feedback
Although there’s plenty you can do to strengthen the church-home partnership in your ministry, this collaboration is a two-way street. Parents should feel heard and understood, whether they’re providing suggestions or voicing concerns.
You might ask for parents’ input or gather feedback indirectly through repeated interactions with them. For example, perhaps your ministry is still growing and needs to establish consistency in its lessons. You might ask for parents’ suggestions, or a parent might recommend a curriculum for small churches on their own accord! Either way, remaining open to their feedback is critical to a thriving partnership.
When directly asking for feedback, here are some easy ways to hear from parents:
- Surveys: Allow parents to share their feedback anonymously through simple surveys that can be completed at their convenience. Ask questions like, “What resources do you find most helpful in supporting your child’s spiritual development at home?”
- Parent meetings or roundtables: Create an interactive, face-to-face environment where parents can discuss concerns and share ideas. You can also use these meetings to present new ideas and gather parent feedback before implementing them.
- One-on-one conversations: If you’re close enough with parents, invite them to have coffee or lunch with one of your ministry’s leaders. Parents may feel more comfortable providing their feedback in this less formal setting, and it’s a great way to get to know them better!
No matter what feedback you receive, the best way to respond is with transparency. After all, parents are placing a lot of trust in your ministry when they allow you to teach their kids—it’s up to you to maintain your trustworthiness!
This can be especially important for touchy topics like finances. As Foundation Group explains, a clear view of your finances can instill confidence in congregants that you’re using your funding for good. Be prepared to show parents the numbers and respond openly to any questions.
Just as Romans 12 points out, each member of the body of Christ has different functions, but works together to further His kingdom. In the same way, parents and your ministry can work together in their different roles to create a supportive environment for kids’ spiritual growth.