Do these statements sound familiar? “These parents never volunteer.” “Our parents keep complaining that they don’t get enough information, but I email them every week!” “What am I—a baby-sitting service?”

Now that I’ve sat on the other side of youth ministry—the parent side—for almost 15 years, I’m seeing parents from a totally different perspective. With my kids grown and out of the house (well, mostly), I see how desperately I needed help from their youth leaders. Here’s why:

I was tired. Most parents of teenagers are exhausted. They’re logging more hours at work, bouncing between obligations, sometimes caring for aging parents, and juggling the exploding time time-bombs called teenagers. It isn’t that they don’t want their kids involved in youth ministry; they just can’t keep all the balls in the air. (If anyone should understand that feeling, it’s youth pastors, right?)

I wanted help. I longed for someone who could make my parenting job a little easier. I wanted my kids to spend time with godly adults, but I didn’t have the time or energy to force them to attend youth group. I wanted them to want to go.

Recently, I sent an e-mail to parents of all the kids we hadn’t seen in the previous three months. I was overwhelmed by the response. Parents poured out their hearts and expressed their gratitude, and —some pleaded for help in re-engaging their kids.
 

I felt like a failure. We weren’t having meals together regularly enough. We weren’t having family devotions consistently. We were mad at our kids more than we wanted to be.

Expecting perfection in parents is as short-sighted and misdirected as parents expecting perfection from us. If we hope to receive grace from parents, it starts with extending grace to them.

When most of us think of parent ministry, we think programmatically—parenting classes, family retreats, cross-generational activities. But keeping parents on board with our youth ministry begins much more subtly. It begins, simply enough, by communicating relentlessly that we’re on their team.

By learning parents’ names, noticing when their kids have been missing, and responding to criticism with non-anxious grace, we communicate that we’re one of the few people who are consistently for them.

Maybe we can reset the default button from complaint to support, viewing parents as partners rather than as threats. Then we’ll begin to accomplish the kinds of things we can do only together.