Parent Meeting Script

This month’s blog is a parent meeting script that you can adapt and use the next time you meet with parents of teenagers to encourage them. Feel free to use this script as a guide to prepare a meaningful talk to help them understand the importance of passing down faith!

In Masillon, Ohio, a town of 30,000 people, the president of the booster club visits every male baby born in the city and delivers them a small football with the logo of the High School Football team on it. He says to the new mom, “On behalf of Masillon High School we wanted to congratulate you on your new Tiger, and we look forward to the day that he plays for our football team”

That little baby is wearing diapers the size of my elbow and he is already being recruited to play football. What is that?

That is a high school football program that decided to be strategic. It might be why they have won 22 state championships.

There is something powerful when you step back and you make a plan to do things on purpose.

Since parenting is one of the most important things you and I will ever do, we should probably be strategic in parenting.

So what’s the goal of parenting for us?

Deuteronomy 6 says that our goal is to teach our children to love God and learn his Ways

Let me read it to you.

“Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

There are 3 Things I want to draw from this passage.

This passage teaches that PARENTS are to be the primary spiritual leaders in the life of a teenager.

I am not at all trying to undermine the role of your student ministry. There is so much to be said about what your teenager experiences at church. They develop positive relationships with Christian adults outside of their home and they enjoy Christian fellowship with believers that are their age and facing similar struggles in life. Your student ministry does a wonderful job creating memorable experiences and a steady stream of truth from the Scriptures for them to learn… BUT still there is no one as important as YOU.

Your voice is the loudest. So your student ministry, who loves your teenager very much, understands that the best shot they have of making the gospel of Christ stick is if they equip you to teach it.

You are the spiritual rock stars, not their youth leader at church

The home is the center of spiritual activity and what is done at the church supports what is happening at home.

The second truth from this passage in Deuteronomy is that learning to love God and His ways should be the regular rhythm of your home. How do you break out of the cycle of your faith just being on the day you worship? You strategically build faith into the everyday life of your family.

Every time you celebrate something. Every time you bring out the cameras to take pictures or you plan a party, begin to think of how you can infuse your faith into that moment.

Look for ways to infuse faith into the adolescent journey by helping you as a parent have the most important conversations that parents are sometimes tempted to skip.

It helps you talk to your teenager about the things that matter in life.

Finally, This passage in Deuteronomy teaches parents to pass down faith using symbols and ceremonies. When he says tie them as symbols to your hands and foreheads, and write them on the doorframes of your houses, God is teaching us how to connect with our children.

Two of the best ways to teach faith is through symbols that your teenager can touch and feel and to give experiences that they will remember.

The God who made their brains and hearts to learn a certain way is suggesting that we pass down faith through concrete objects and significant experience.

God is drawing for us a blueprint on how to pass down faith, through symbols and ceremonies.

You can’t read God’s Story in the Bible without seeing God calling His people to pass down His Story from generation to generation. God thinks generationally and so should we.

Maybe tonight you should see yourself for what you are.

You are a spiritual patriarch or matriarch for the next 3-4 generations. Your influence will be felt for the next 3-4 generations.

So what you do today, matters.

So today, my hope is that you will be strategic and creative in your home.

The bottom line is this. You have an opportunity to give to your teenager a solid foundation of faith. I pray that you accept the help of your student ministry to get you started.