Want to get parents more involved in your student ministry or at least help them be included in the experiences their teens have in your ministry?? Northview Baptist Church in Lewisville, Texas may have found a way to do just that. During their recent DiscipleNow they tweeted out updates about what was happening during the weekend. It was a blow by blow explanation of just about everything that happened during the weekend including the crazy games being played, the worship songs we sang, and even snippets of my messages – all in real time! They had done this from their camp last summer and the parents told me it was awesome to be able to keep up with what was happening with their kids while they were away and made it easier to get them to share their experience when they got home.

Northview just used twitter for this but I think it would be a great idea to use your student ministry fan page for updates as well since most parents are on facebook anyway and you wouldn’t have to convince them to join twitter to participate.

As a parent of teenagers myself, it drives me nuts how hard it is to get two words out of my kids about their experiences in the student ministry. Tweeting out what is happening would give us parents some specific information to ask about and hopefully better engage our kids when they get home. I’d love it if I could ask them what they thought about the message on the Prodigal Son on Tuesday night or the mud pit relays on Thursday afternoon instead of being limited to just asking, “how was camp?” I really hope our Student Pastor is reading this! hint, hint…. hahaha

God Bless Y’all – Runks