Have you ‘google tested’ your youth ministry?

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A few months back I was invited to speak on pioneering youth work projects in a small city. Before I got there, I did what I call ‘the switched on parent test’. I googled a bunch of words and phrases a parent might do when moving to a new area to find stuff on for their kids.

In this particular city, the best any church or faith based project did in response to my search terms was page six of google’s results.

Now that google uses far more accurate location-driven alorithms, we’re not fighting the global web of information quite as hard. With this in mind, search engine optimisation (or SEO) is no longer a mind-boggling pit of despair! Just having clear, consistent information on websites and social media is enough for your work to show up in local searches.

So does it?

I challenge you – right this minute – to ‘google test’ your project. Don’t google the name or building of your project; instead do some cold searches that a parent might do when moving to your area.

So, for instance – using say, Blackpool, as the example – try (with your own town) each version of:

  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] clubs in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] work in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] projects in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] organisations in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] hang outs in Blackpool
  • [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] sports clubs in Blackpool
  • Things to do for [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] in Blackpool
  • Where can I send my [Youth / children’s / young people’s / teenage / teenager / school aged / kid’s] in Blackpool

etc.

Does your church or youth project feature on the first two search results pages? If not, it’s time to make some changes! Here’s just few things you can do:

Make sure you have web presence. This might mean a website or blog, but almost certainly (for parents) it means a Facebook page or group. Make sure that all your sites and accounts point back to each other.

Utilise other web presence. Submit your information to the council, school online bulletins, local ‘what’s on’ social media groups, and of course church websites.

Update regularly, or at least consistently. Google knows how to pick up on sites that don’t have activity, and they shift them down the rankings. Make sure you are adding regular updates; ideally weekly. At very least, try and do updates at the same time each time (eg. lunchtime on a Friday every fortnight).

Share, share, share! Have your friends, followers, and team regularly share your updates, or tag you in on their own. Keep conversations moving, and always respond to comments (even if it’s just ‘thank you’).

Stay safe. Make sure you’re aware of best safeguarding practices around young people online, and have the correct permissions to share photos/videos of young people.

Keep your eye out. The google test can also find places where people are already talking about you, but you didn’t know. Maybe there are complaints, questions, or reviews on forums or sharing sites. I once discovered we had a tripadvisor site this way! Engage with these spaces, and point them back to yours.

Caveat – it’s not the only way!

Of course google isn’t the only way to tell parents about what you’ve got going on, and none of this really speaks to telling the young people themselves. However, why not make the best of every opportunity?

A switched on parent who is moving to a new area – or have kids about to start secondary school – are going to be searching for ways to connect their children with organisations and groups. Let’s at least be part of the menu they’re selecting from!

 

Photo by Agnieszka Boeske on Unsplash

Are Parents The Best Mentors?

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Marginalise parents in youth ministry at your peril. They are the linchpin to effective, long term discipleship, and the primary Biblical institution for passing on the truth of the Gospel to young people. They are not, however, the only part of effective youth work. They are not peers or pastors for instance. They are not replacements to group discipleship programs, or evangelistic meetings.

So are they mentors?

What Is A Mentor?

At it’s core, a mentoring relationship is between an older, wiser, more experienced person who has cultivated a relationship of trust and positive-behaviour modelling to a younger, developing person.

More specifically, mentors need to have a degree of detachment, neutrality and independence from the person being mentored. This gives them not only increased objectivity, but also the security of not making themselves a hyper-dependent God replacement.

There is also peer support, where we are continually encouraged to build one another up, but I’m unsure you could really count this strictly as ‘mentoring.’

Can Parents Do This?

Logically you could argue that they can, and sometimes do. That said, my instinct and experience tells me that parents have too much at stake, or are too personally invested to have that required objectivity. Their children are their own flesh, and their hopes or expectations for their children can all too easily bleed through.

Parents are integral to the life of a young person. This means they are often a topic that needs to be discussed with a mentor in ways that couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t be done directly with a parent. Not for secrecy, but again for objectivity. This is the same reason that therapists don’t treat their own family.

Parents also have a long term organic journey will their children that predates and will probably outlast the mentor. They grow with their children as parents and people, and the relationship turns in several directions as they both develop. This isn’t always stable and has it’s own sets of rules, norms and variable conditions that might not be helpful or secure in a mentoring relationship.

Finally, in today’s church climate, you cannot guarantee that the parent will have the Christian background or values needed to speak that Deuteronomy 6 truth into their children’s lives.

Who Are Our Biblical Models?

Moses was mentored by his Father-In-Law, Jethro, and Ruth by her Mother-In-Law, Naomi – but these are probably the closest parent-child mentoring relationships we see. These are very particular cases without the pre-existing childhood relationships in place.

There was also Moses and Joshua, Elisha and Elijah, Eli and Samuel, Barnabas and Paul, Paul and Timothy, Elisabeth and Mary, and Jesus with Peter, James and John.

Should Parents Do It?

There is certainly a lot of mentoring that parents can (and should) do. They are commanded to teach truth, walk with, listen to, not exasperate, and to condition their children to walk with God. They should be the first people to introduce a young person to Jesus and should always be an open, safe place to share openly with. Should.

It takes a community to raise a Child though, and a body of Christ to develop a healthy church member. The wisest parents I know understand this and they get that they cannot be all things. They realise that having a mentor for their child is not a snub or a replacement, but a healthy partnership that supplements and develops levels of accountability for parents.

How Should The Parent and Mentor Relationships Compliment Each Other?

Although not always possible, the mentor and parent should form some kind of relationship. This is important for safeguarding reasons if nothing else!

This partnership sows seeds of trust and develops the organic clarity that’s needed to distinguish the two relationships. It’s not the parent’s job to pry into the things being discussed (outside basic appropriateness and safety), and it’s not the mentor’s job (ever, ever, ever!) to replace the parent. *Note: This is still true for lone-parent, adopted, divorced, orphaned or unchurched. You are not the parent.

So mentors: Respect the parents. Don’t badmouth them or chip away at their foundation. Offer then support and be a supplement, not a replacement.

Parents: Invite the mentor over for dinner occasionally. Say thank you and show that you respect them and are grateful. Pray for them, and don’t assume they are doing your job for you.

Church: Implement mentoring programs within carefully constructed safeguarding policies. Preach often and share clearly on mentoring relationships in the Bible, and the importance of being one body, looking after each other.

Youth Workers: Don’t necessarily assume that you should be the mentor. Especially if you have a youth club of more than three teenagers! I will write soon on how to develop a mentoring program – but for now, check out the excellent XL mentoring program here – which you can fund through the Cinnamon Network.

When the ‘Father-Heart Of God’ doesn’t work.

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I was talking to a classroom of teenagers last week about having parents for part of an explanation of the eternal nature of God. There was a young girl sat on the front row who jerked suddenly, and then glared at me through genuine tears for the next twenty minutes.

The ‘Good Father’ Myth

Parents are not always there and when they are, they are not always good. We cannot simply assume that young people have any real concept of a loving family. This has followed our evangelism for quite a long time now, so we assume everyone has some concept of what a ‘good father’ is. It has permeated our worship and still forms the cornerstone of much of our teaching.

The degradation of society, however, just doesn’t back this myth up. 42% of UK marriages end in divorce, almost half of those affect children under the age of 16, and the vast majority of child abuse happens within the family unit. Not everyone knows what a ‘good father’ looks like.

God is Father and He has a true, good Father’s heart towards us. We cannot assume, however, that everyone will understand exactly what that means. The Father metaphor in lots of cases can conjure images of imperfection, brokenness or even neglect and abuse – in some cases it simply leaves confusion or absence. In other scenarios, like what happened in my classroom, it can invoke real, deep pain and propagate ill will towards God.

Incredibly, fatherhood then becomes an obstacle, a stumbling block to a young person falling in love with God.
So what should we do?

How do we respond to this and redeem the image of Fatherhood? Here are two gentle suggestions:

First, rather than talking simply about ‘fatherhood’, we should make sure that we share which specific traits we are talking about: Warmth, protection, compassion, strength, solidity, and leadership. You can actually talk faithfully about the Fatherhood of God by sharing what it means specifically, and you don’t necessarily need to use the word ‘Father’ each and every time – and you shouldn’t assume using the word on its own will mean young people automatically know which traits you’re referring to.

Second, develop a philosophy that makes God the original form or ideal of what Father means. God is the highest reality of Father, which means He sets the tone for what it really is. Don’t say ‘God loves you like a Father,’ instead say ‘God is the ultimate Father, and He loves you.’ This gentle change of orientation stops us making God in the image of our own broken fathers and creates a new category that He fully inhabits.

A new language for an old truth.

My good friend Mark and his wife just had a baby and she is a little knock out! She won’t fall asleep, however, unless she is in physical contact with one of her parents. Mark spends hours sat with this little life sleeping soundly on his belly. Her parents are her safe place, a secure and protected zone of absolutely love and compassion. That’s what good fatherhood does!

Fatherhood can be a beautiful thing – and with God is certainly, always is! However, if we trip up on the first hurdle and can’t get past the word, then we’ll never get to the heart.

We need to speak to this culture about the truth of God as a Father – a truth that breaks chains and dismantles spirals of self-destruction. Our language needs to be basic and specific, and should show a real awareness of the problems many young people have with fatherhood as a concept.

In the way we teach, the songs we sing, the metaphors we use, and stories we tell, we need to reach beyond just the word ‘father’ and really capture the reality behind it.

It is, after all, more important to communicate the real truth than to use the ‘correct’ words.

Working With (or Without) Parents

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Last night we ran a training session on working with – and without – parents in youth ministry. Here are some cliff notes…

We first explored the history of youth work theories over the last four decades and noticed that parents work was a conspicuously absent element. Of those books and models that do mention parents work, it is often as an aside or necessary inconvenience.

This left us wondering how youth work has contributed to some of the ‘it’s just awkward to have parents and teenagers in the same room’ culture that is often the norm.

To contrast this, and to look for an ‘ideal’, we explored some Biblical passages that explicitly talk about parents in what we would see as ‘young peoples work’ in the Bible. Here is a simplified view of our findings:

  • Deut. 1:1-7 – It’s the parents job to saturate their children in God’s teaching.
  • Gen. 22:1-19 – It’s the parents job to lead their children in worship.
  • 1 Sam:1:10-20; 24-28 – It’s the parents job to pray for their children and partner with the church leaders.
  • Prov. 1:1-9 – It’s the parents job to teach and develop maturity in their children for specific life needs (check out Prov. 16, 18, 22, 24 & 31 for examples).

This looks a lot like youth work right? Those include many of the central aims and values of youth strategies. It might be missing ‘mission/evangelism’ but a deeper dig into both Deuteronomy and Proverbs would have added that element too.

So when you consider that our youth work strategies are found in the Bible surrounding parents, and then consider that the missing element from our youth work programs is often intentional parents work, you might agree that we have a fundamental problem developing!

Parents are simply essential to healthy youth ministry and working them into pivotal parts of your youth work strategy should be non-negotiable.
So How Do We Do It?

We recognised that just stopping everything and starting again isn’t always a sensible or viable option! 😛 So instead we looked at some incremental ideas that would start to develop parents work – and cultivate a healthier culture of parents ideology – within our projects.

We used ‘The Gospel Coalition’ article on moving parents from ‘absent’ to ‘equipped’ – this is well worth checking out.

Here are 5 ideas that come from Jody Livingston’s brilliant blog and podcast ‘The Longer Haul.’ I’ve simplified them somewhat below – but you can (and should!) read the whole article here.

Communicate! – Often and clearly.

Recruit! – Parents make great leaders and have experience, wisdom and insight that we don’t.
Retreat! – Plan events, retreats and getaways to serve and train parents. I’d also add ‘look-in nights’ to this when parents can see what you do with their kids.
Prayer! – Form a team of praying parents. They care and know about their kids more than we do.
Advice! – Form another team of parents to advise and speak into your ministry.

For good measure I added 4 more ideas:

All-Age! – Develop a culture of inclusive and quality all-age worship.
Talk! – Often with your young peeps about parents and their roles.
Meet! – Pickup & drop off points of contact before and after sessions.
Don’t! – Create standoff teaching / cultures where you set yourself up as better/wiser/more trustworthy than parents.

What About Working Without Parents?

The tragic reality is that this ideal doesn’t always work. Parents are not always around, and when they are – they are not always helpful.

We considered the ‘cultural landscape’ that our teenagers are growing up in, and specifically these statistics (the first two from the 2012-13 Office of National Statistics and 2011 Census Data, also ONS):

42% of all marriages in the UK end in divorce.
Almost half of those effect children under the age of 16.
Every national statistic has Established UK Christianity in decline.

When you take these three component parts together, it’s clear that we can’t expect stable, symmetrical Christian homes for many of the young people we work with.

Parents simply may not be around physically, emotionally or physically – or in some cases ‘parent’ means brother, uncle, grandmother, two mothers or an institution of some kind. It’s just not as cut and dry as the ideal (above) would carve out for us.
5 Types of ‘Unhelpful’ Parents

We considered together 5 kinds of ‘unhelpful’ parents, and brainstormed how we can work with them and thier young people. I’ve only given a basic skeleton of this here, and limited it to two points per parent type, so you might want to spend some time thinking about these with your own teams too!

Caveat: What this doesn’t give are examples of how to teach / train unhelpful parents. Up until the mid 1940s, parents would learn much of their parenting skills from 1. their own parents living in the same house and 2. the church as a whole. Suggesting parenting classes can now come across very offensively – but it is worth developing in your church culture. I can’t teach them credibly (I have no kids!), but I would happily get in someone like ‘Care For The Family’ who do brilliant work!

1. The Absent Parent

Parents can be ‘absent’ for lots of reasons. They may be in single-parent setups, emotionally detached, psychically out of the picture (or at the pub). Sometimes for very good reasons a parent can appear absent – such as working to support their family. A little bit more complicated would be the parent who has one child with additional needs that requires more attention – leaving them somewhat ‘absent’ on balance from their other children.

Mentoring – Big Brother / Big Sister setups from America can be amazing! Looking for older team or church members to spend time with young people to help them develop around some sense of a parent figure can be very helpful. Remember boundaries and safe practices!
Support With Group Culture – this is more about helping the whole culture of your youth group take care of each other. Everything you do in your project presents values, make sure you are steering these in inclusive and supportive directions.

2. The Hostile Parent

Parents could be hostile towards you personally, hostile towards the idea of faith, or hostile to other young people. Hostility often comes from panic and insecurity.

Communication – It’s important to make sure a hostile parent has all the info clearly and upfront to help appease their concerns. It may also be worth a face-to-face meeting over coffee to create some more solid layers of relationship and credibility.
Clear Lines Of Respect Drawn – You will need to stand firmly on your values, and also not tip your hat to a young person dishonouring their awkwardly hostile parent. Set the right example.

3. The Apathetic Parent

On on side of the coin they could be apathetic towards what you’re doing; not caring what goes on, or what time their kids are home. On the other side they could be apathetic directly towards their child, meaning they give few boundaries, inconsistent praise and a general lack of direction.

Permissions & Followup – Apathy aside you cannot slide on your safeugarding policies, and (unfortunately for them) you will need a clearer lead from an apathetic parent to make sure you’re covered. This might mean getting on the phone or knocking on their door. Creating relationship should be worth the extra effort but, as always, remember to keep safe boundaries.
Reward & Share Culture – Make sure that you are regularly acknowledging and praising your young people for doing well. A well executed phone-call to an apathetic parent about how well their child is doing can start to reframe that parent-child-church relationship.

4. The Gossiping Parent

My least favourite – so much so it’s worth a short story: Once upon a time a parent believed that the reason I wasn’t letting her daughter play in the youth worship band was because I was sexist. She believed this enough to tell a few other parents, a few leaders and even a few of my young people. When I finally heard this and confronted her, I let her know that the real reason I wasn’t letting her daughter play in the worship band was because she didn’t want to play int he worship band. Perhaps if she talked more to her daughter rather than about her she would have learned this.

Guard Your Communication Consistently – My other hard-learned piece of experience is that parents who are easier to talk to can also sometimes be a little loose tongued. If you find youself sharing more than you usually would with a parent, it’s possible that other people do to, meaning they are a bulging vat of information that should be help in confidence. That’s a lot of temptation, and unfortunately sometimes open ears means loose tongues. Youth leaders like people to talk to – find a mentor/pastor rather than parent.

Control The Information Flow – Make sure you are in control of the information about your programs Communicate clearly, constantly and consistently to keep things transparent.

Confrontation & Conflict Resolution – It is important to nip these gossiping tails in the bud. Confrontation is necessary – done well through a clear (and sometimes mediated) Conflict Resolution Strategy. In March next year we will be having a training session on Conflict Resolution led by an expert in the field. Let us know if you’d like to come!

In the meantime, if you have an issue which requires conflict resolution – we are happy to offer free Skype advice or coaching. Get in touch if you’d like to take advantage of this!

5. The Abusive Parent

I want to gently bring this up last. One of the most common forms of abusive parent within the church is the ‘Spiritually’ abusive parent – which is also one of the hardest to prosecute. I once had to spend an evening with a young person after his parents and youth leaders tried to exorcise demons out of him!

Know Your Procedures – All I really want to say here is know your policy and procedures and make sure your team is trained. Knowing how to handle disclosures, objective note taking and procedural response within your safeguarding structure is very important.
Support In Partnership – Make sure you know (again, within your context and structures) what partner organisations you can work with (Childline, Social Services etc.). As much as I want church to handle everything, we do need and should ask for help.

Interested in Training?

YouthWorkHacks is passionate about training. We offer safeguarding training, youth program MOTs, First Aid and Skype coaching. We also provide free monthly training in North Wales. Please check out our training page and get in touch if we could help you!