Back in 2009, several years into my youth ministry career, I started to feel frustrated. In fact, I started to wonder whether my ministry had any efficacy at all. Few of my spiritually engaged high school students continued attending church or campus ministries during college.
I emailed a mentor who bluntly said, “There is a direct correlation between your impact on parents and the efficacy of your youth discipleship efforts.” I had heard in my first year that there’s no such thing as youth ministry—only youth and family ministry. Now I was starting to witness that reality.
I knew that I had to start investing in parents alongside ministering to teenagers, but I felt totally inadequate to do so successfully. Even worse, at that time, few resources existed to give me concrete direction. In some ways, I had to pave my own path with the help of the Lord and leaning on concepts from Scripture.
My guess is that you have felt a similar impulse, desire, and pressure to partner with parents and also a similar level of anxiety or insecurity. Fortunately, there are more resources today than fifteen years ago. In fact, Rooted has created a family ministry training cohort intended to enable a children’s or youth minister to start or lead a family ministry in his or her local church.
Below I share five reasons why training for family ministry can radically improve the ministry of any youth or children’s pastor.
1. Family ministry training will give you more confidence in equipping parents.
I really liked the parents in my church. They made me feel so loved and supported. But I’m not going to lie, the idea of leading them spiritually intimated me. When I started out, I was 15-20 years younger than they were. I didn’t have children and had been married for approximately 10 minutes.
Something interesting happened, though. A 22-year-old intern of mine decided to do a seminar for parents about how to protect your child from pornography by utilizing parental controls and internet filters. The intern and the 23-year-old girls’ youth minister packed the house and ruled the night. The parents listened to every word they said, regarded them as experts, and left raving about how helpful the seminar was. I started to see that a young youth minister can positively impact parents without saying a word about parenting.
Family ministry training teaches youth and children’s pastors how to leverage their gifts, knowledge, and other resources to spiritually impact parents. Having done family ministry as part of youth ministry for more than a decade, I can assure you that you’ll be stunned at what a difference a young church worker can make just by utilizing content, video training courses, and wise church members. Your ability to teach, willingness to listen and pray, and knowledge of the lives of teenagers provide the assets to spiritually impact parents.
2. Family ministry training will make your ministry far more effective.
Plenty of research will validate this conclusion, but I started to see the positive fruit of family ministry after several years of investment. The students I began to received as a youth pastor were more mature than those entering our ministry previously. I started to feel as if my discipleship ministry at church was supplementing what was happening spiritually at home. Not only did I see more students engaging in ministry in college, for the first time I saw my former students taking part in ministry leadership on their campuses. I had the benefit of 19 years at the same church to observe the transformation materialize in my local church ministry.
Getting family ministry training can enable you to direct your efforts in the most effective manner. It will enable you to focus on high impact practices in family ministry that will translate into more efficacious youth discipleship.
3. Family ministry training will make your job more meaningful and enjoyable.
I love teenagers. I really enjoy hanging out and having fun with them. And I like hearing about their lives. Simultaneously, I also need adult conversations in my workday. If nothing else, my work life became more enjoyable as I had more meaningful interaction with adults because I now ministered to both parents and teenagers.
I’ve heard many youth pastors and children’s ministers express a sense of isolation in their job. In both areas of ministry, most of the conversations are one-sided. When we work primarily with students, we cannot appropriately share much about our own lives, whereas in family ministry I have found there to be a great deal of mutual benefit. While I spiritually invest in parents, I often lean on them as mentors in my own life. Receiving family ministry training can add this layer of relational vibrancy to your work life.
4. Family ministry training provides a path toward a longer, more fruitful season in your church.
Many children’s and youth pastors come to a point where they wonder, “What is next?” You’re older. You’ve been doing youth ministry for three, five, or maybe even ten years and feel like there’s a next step in the progress. Adding family ministry to your toolkit and church responsibility can create the next iteration of your ministry career.
My church formally added family ministry to my job description nine years into my time there. This move provided a new season and new runway for another decade. It also enabled me to, “have my ministry cake and eat it too.” I really liked youth ministry and didn’t want to quit, but I also wanted to be more engaged in adult ministry.
Receiving family ministry training can provide a vision for the next season of your ministry career—without requiring that you move churches or leave youth ministry.
5. Family ministry training could make your job more sustainable financially.
I hate to appeal to financial gain, but in reality, many people who are passionate about ministering to children or teenagers need to leave the work due to financial demands. They simply cannot make enough money to support themselves or their families. Graduates of Rooted’s family ministry training cohort receive a certificate that validates that they have done the reading and thinking in order to effectively add family ministry to their job responsibilities.
As your older friend (I’m 45), let me advocate for you here by saying that you should get paid more if you are bringing new value to your church. I know that many churches have limited resources. Simultaneously, some congregations justify underpaying youth ministers.
Certainly, getting trained does not guarantee an increase in salary. Still, I would suggest that you can discuss the possibility of a pay increase if you do the training and add this new aspect of ministry to your church.
Adding family ministry to my youth job changed my vocation. I can only imagine how much easier it would have been if I had a formal training opportunity to assist me in that change. Obviously, taking such a step may feel overwhelming for some. It may poke at all of your perceived inadequacies. Take heart: the sufficiency of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit can enable you to enter into this powerful new aspect of your ministry.
If you would like to learn more about the Rooted Family Ministry training cohort, please contact Rooted’s director of ministry development, Isaiah Marshall, at Isaiah@rootedministry.com.
