You know the disappointment of planning a parenting event for your ministry and having few, if any, parents bothering to attend. You watch as the parents in your church sit on the spiritual sidelines of their teenagers. You feel the frustration as parents respond to the cultural tides their teens face with fear, anger, and resentment. The easy path for you is to step in and become the disciple-maker of the teenagers in your church. The most rewarding path, however, is to find a way to inspire parents to do it. But how do you do that? Our session together will give you the tools you need to equip, encourage, and empower the parents (grandparents and guardians) of the teenagers in your church. And learning how to leverage these tools will help you to leave a legacy of impact that will last long after you are gone.

I once heard it said that when you get to the end of your time in ministry, you want the people who know you the best to love and respect you the most. How are you doing with that? If our spouse and our kids are our first and most important ministry, are we honoring the Lord with our time and our attention to them? In this one-session Masterclass, I want to give you ten tips to consider that can help you to do great ministry while being a great spouse and a great parent.

Technology is one of the most frustrating and confusing issues parents in your church are trying to navigate regarding their teenagers. They spend countless days and nights feeling overwhelmed, under-equipped, and completely outmanned when it comes to knowing how to respond to screens. This MYM Live Online Training Event is not the typical “technology is evil, so let’s run from it and teach parents to do the same.“ Instead, technology and parenting expert Brian Housman is here to provide you, as a youth ministry leader, with some practical steps and prudent boundaries regarding technology so that you can educate and equip the parents in your church on leading and loving their students through setting healthy boundaries with screens without using shame or blame.

No matter the size of your ministry. No matter how long you’ve been there or what type of church you participate in, chances are, you’ve had experiences with parents who may be a little bit more “needy” than other families in your ministry. These are the families who are a little more opinionated or maybe more willing to share their opinions with you (and everyone else) more than the rest. We’re talking about the families whose emails you leave unread just a little bit longer because, honestly, you’re not totally sure how to respond. The families that call your phone you may send them to voicemail because you want to hear what they have to say before you answer or call back. It’s the family that on a Sunday after service, you’re standing in the lobby, and you see somebody walk into you, and you go, “Ohh man, that’s so and so, and I’m not sure I’m ready to have this conversation.” We all have families in our ministry who we just struggle with, right? We don’t hate them. We don’t dislike them. However, at the end of the day, they just make life a little bit more difficult for you, and we want to know how to navigate, how to engage, and how to care for these families really well because God has entrusted us with that task. God has placed those families in our church, so we don’t just want tactics or tips and tricks to figure out how to avoid these families or just pass them off to someone else. We want to be pastors. In fact, God has invited us into this as pastors, and we have a responsibility and, hopefully, a desire to care well for the people that God has placed in our ministry context. So, in this single-session Masterclass, Josh talks about difficult parents and five things to consider when choosing to pastor them well.