You sit up all night worrying about what their complaints will be.  As you prepare for the day you are trying to make sure that what you will be presenting make sense and that the parents are not going to walk away wondering what in the world you are doing leading their children.  You stress and worry about every little piece only to have three parents show up.  Frustration sets in.  You begin to feel like they don’t care what you are doing.  You personal value begins to shrink as you clean up and head out for the day.

Have you ever had those feelings?  I know for me that parents meeting scared me more than elder’s meetings early on in my ministry.  They were my judge and jurry in a lot of ways and I often did not know what to do with them.  However, as I have been in ministry for a longer period of time I have found great value in gathering with parents and sharing about the ministry and their students.

However, the meetings have often still been a waste of time.  The information shared is often in print and can be read, I am giving them nothing new and generally just don’t pour a lot into the meetings.  This past Sunday we had one of these meetings where we invited our parents in for a “Party” instead of a meeting.  This brought a lot of anticipation to our parents.  We set the meeting up much different than I had in the past and it went incredibly well.  Here is the schedule:

Arrival – we had set-up a candy bar.  They were able to come in and get a cup and fill it with assorted candies that we had on the table around a pinata for decoration.  This was my administrative assistants idea and it was incredible.  The parents loved it!

Games – we wanted to get them mingling together.  So we played rock, paper, scissors and the winner recieved a gift card to a resteraunt for $25.  We also gave out another one of these later in the evening.

Conversation questions – we had created several questions to go with the theme for the evening.  They gather in groups of 6 – 8 and each one would answer the question and then move to create a new group and answer another question.  It was a great time for them to connect with our topic for the evening and to hear what other parents where dealing with.

Ministry update – we offered a quick ministry update and shared somethings that we were changing in the future.  Offered a time of question and answer.

Desert – yes, we had more than a candy bar on it’s way.  We offered rootbeer floats.

Teaching  – one of the greatest challenges that parents are dealing with today is the whole social networking concept.  So, we took some time to share with them why it was important for their student, how they can be a part of it and that they should have an open access and interest in what is happening in their childs life.  Quick question and answer time followed.

It was a great meeting and our parents walked away very pleased with what had happened and interested in our ministry.