How to Build Trust When Partnering with Parents in Youth Ministry

Start the school year with a healthy, thriving youth ministry...let's work together to make it happen! Check out GrowYourYouthMinistry.com for more info - or feel free to email us at MinistryCoachPodcast@gmail.com with any questions *** In this episode, we discuss two surprisingly powerful ways to earn real parent buy-in in your youth ministry and break down each one into multiple aspects of trust. 

We get practical about “early and often” communication: weekly parent emails, leader updates, an always-current website and calendar, social media that actually answers questions, and using a church app or targeted messages so the right families get the right info. We also talk about planning ahead like publishing camp dates far in advance, plus a simple test for your system: if parents are constantly texting basic questions, your other communication channels may not be clear or consistent yet.  If you want more volunteers, smoother events, stronger camp sign-ups, and fewer frustrated emails, this is the leadership muscle to build.

Then we shift to professionalism in youth ministry, not as a stiff corporate posture, but as maturity. We share how to create “no surprises” when incidents happen, and why owning mistakes quickly builds credibility. We also unpack the owner mindset: being prepared, starting and ending on time, handling conflict directly, and holding students accountable with kindness so parents see real leadership.

If you’ve ever felt the tension between being fun and being trusted, this conversation will help you lead both ways. Subscribe for weekly youth ministry coaching, share this with another youth pastor and leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review. What’s one change you can make this week to earn more trust with parents?

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You may also enjoy these episodes:

(#256) Best Practices for Emailing the Parents of your Youth Ministry Students

(#047) Youth Pastors and Parents - Best Communication Tips

(#057) Getting Parents Involved in Youth Ministry

(#025) Best Practices to Handle an Upset Parent

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We love hearing from you all and we do our best to provide powerful and insightful youth ministry content on a weekly basis to be that coach and mentor you may not have, but desperately need.
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Transcript

Welcome And The Trust Problem

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Today we're talking about two powerful ways to build trust with parents in your youth ministry.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome to the Ministry Coach Podcast, where we give you weekly tips and tactics to help you fast-track the growth and health of your youth ministry. If this is the first time we're meeting, my name is Jeff Lascola, and this is Kristen Lascola.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

And today we are talking about how to build a culture of trust in your youth ministry. And this episode is brought to you by Travis Seibert. Hello, Travis. Thank you. Travis is our Vista family pastor. And he was actually the first junior high pastor to hire me and give me a chance at junior high ministry. He was my boss for my first couple of years of youth ministry. And I'm very thankful to him standing on those shoulders of leadership and patience and grace when we were playing Foursquare in the middle of the workday. Why? Nobody knows painting our nails in the middle of a work day. Why? Trav was painting his nails too? Yeah. He was like Trav, silly goose. Uh going to Starbucks just in the middle of the day. That's probably fine. I bet you most people do that. But yeah, it begs the question working hard or hardly working for my first couple years of youth ministry. I would um I'm very thankful that Trav saw some potential there. Real potential that she's a hard worker. Just gotta give her time. Yeah, that's kind of what happens when you hire an 18-year-old, right? You know, they just do whatever. Uh, so Trav um is our family pastor now at our Vista campus, which is awesome. And we had a meeting the other day where he brought some really great content about how to build trust with parents in youth ministry. And I would say he is an absolute genius at this. He's been in youth ministry uh, I think like 30 years now, and has an incredible relationship with not only students, but I think where he really shines is parents and staff and event staff. Like Travis could get anyone to help him with anything, it's just because the kind of guy he is. And so he brought some stuff to our meeting and it just sparked some great discussion. We like ran out of time almost. So I might need to do this in two parts, but yeah, I just wanted to make sure we knew that this is from the genius mind of Travis. So uh, number one, you know, I think you know, what he was mentioning is what youth pastors think builds trust and what actually builds trust, you know, are two different things. And like I said a second ago, where Trav really shines is his relationship with adults. And the reason that's important is because adults are what make your youth ministry run. So being good with staff, volunteers, parents, other like event type staff, like they they have a large ministry, so he has a whole event staff for parking and safety and all of that. But the youth pastor being really good with those kinds of people is what builds the foundation of a healthy youth ministry. Because you really, if you're the kind of youth pastor that can only win over a student, you're going to never experience that like big wave of growth. Because two things students come and go, you know, they invite friends and you can have a swell, but it's not sustainable for you to like you can't carry the health and the relationship weight of your youth ministry by yourself. If you have other adults who are completely bought in, are all stars, rock stars, highly capable leaders, big capacity leaders, then you can build a ministry that can sustain that growth. You know what I mean? So Trav has just done a really good job at that, like building into the adults who build into the ministry. And all of that comes down to trust. It's not like, well, I did a great sermon. Okay, well, you can teach, but that can't sustain your ministry, or I did a really fun event, or I'm really cool and people like me. Those are all great things. It's just not sustainable for growth.

Communicate Early And Often

SPEAKER_02 4:30

So, number one, um, and this is pertaining mostly to parents, so how can parents, but I think it's very transferable to any adults who are helping support your ministry, is number one, communication. So much information gets lost in the gaps when people don't know what's going on. And then they start making assumptions. That was Trav's big point. If people like aren't communicated with, then they just start making assumptions of what is happening or what is going to happen, or maybe it's the same thing as last year. We'll just do the same thing. So you have to communicate early and often. I love sending out a parent email every Monday and a leader email every Monday. In addition to the leader email, we have like our Discord thread going. Discord is an app we use, and that's worked well for us because you can have a bunch of channels in there and it's free. So it's great. But with parents communicating early and often, especially with big deal stuff, like getting he was mentioning getting your summer camp dates out like a year ahead of time. Yes, if you're if you're 18, that sounds crazy. But when you're a parent and you have three or four kids and they all have different schedules, and you and your spouse get certain times off, or you know, you have to plan a family vacation and then you have to budget like 500 bucks for each camp, like early and often really matters. Um, the stakes get higher and higher. So I like I said, I love to send out my email to parents once a week. And we know parents don't always open their email, they don't always check their email, they could still miss things. So we have other methods of communication. Number one, our website. We have a dedicated website to our youth ministry. The trick with it is you have to make sure it's current and up to date. A parent emailed me the other day about a mistake they found on our calendar, and I was super embarrassed and utilizing social media for information as well. So, between all of those websites, emails, calendars, social media, our church actually just got a big makeover with its app. And the app is so smart that it can actually push information to people that would be interested in that information, meaning I'm not gonna get an advertisement necessarily for a high school event because I don't have a high schooler, but I would get an ad for a junior high event coming up. I would get an ad for my campus's baptisms. Um, and that information would be smart enough. We have somebody behind the scenes doing it. It's not like the app just guesses an algorithm, but they know how to select who receives what our student leadership application thing. When that goes out, it'll be just junior high parents that get it, not an empty nester couple. They'd be like, why do I need to know about a junior high student leadership application? So that is pretty cool. We can utilize the app um for that. And then if you're a smaller church, one thing I think is a really easy way to push information to parents is to have a hard copy calendar. And then if you do a pickup system, hand the parents that calendar when they come to pick up their kid or drop off their kid. If you have a touch point with parents, you and you don't have to do it every single week, but you know, maybe the first few weeks of the beginning of the season. Yeah. Here's our summer calendar.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

You do like a three, three-month calendar four times a year, right? Yeah. And then at the bottom, you have all the camp dates and things like that, things that are like plan ahead type stuff.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Um, not at the bottom of the calendar, but at the bottom of my emails, I always have a highlighted section camp dates for this next season. So I already have my winter camp 2027 dates on that. You know, it's because I sign a contract, I already know the date, so I can easily just keep that as a mainstay on the emails that just go out copy and pasted.

No Surprises When Things Go Wrong

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yeah, parents like with the trust factor now moving on to like say an incident happens, no surprises, right? So communicate to parents an incident that happens with their child, um, whether it's an injury, whether it was a bullying or drama situation, um, if their child was upset about something, even like a behavior issue. I don't always call a parent like if I have to move a kid for talking or something like that. But if it was a significant behavior issue and they had to have some type of discipline, sometimes it's nice to give the parents a heads up so that it's not like, well, Krista did this and kicked me out. It's like, well, hold on a minute. That's not exactly what happened.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

You're also able to get the probably the real story before the kid gives their story. Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Well, and you know, one thing I found that really builds trust with parents is like I had a kid get hurt by another kid. And the kid that did the hurting, you know, we were dealing with him, but the kid that got hurt was very upset and was like almost like hyperventilating. They were like all worked up and I mean they were physically fine. I think it was just scary. Yeah. And so I called the dad immediately and I said, Hey, I have so-and-so here. He's okay, he's really, you know, and I kind of walked him through what happened. He's sitting here with a leader right now, he's drinking some water. You can come pick him up if you want. He said he will stay, he just needs a minute. I just don't want you to pick up a frazzled kid and wonder what in the world happened. And the dad was like, Oh, thank you so much. Can I talk to him? Yeah, you know. So that's the thing is like what kind of child is that parent going to pick up? And are they just going to be left with questions? If you've if you're a parent and you've ever picked up your kid, and as soon as they get in the car, they start crying, you're like, what just happened at this place you were at? And then they start telling you the story. If an adult were to call you and say, I saw it happen, here's what you need to know, blah, blah, blah. You know, it just gives you some context of like, all right, somebody was looking out for my kids, somebody knew what happened. So, you know, communicate with parents, don't ignore them. You know, don't just say, Well, we handled it, you know. I know, and we've talked about this before, there are youth pastors that do see parents kind of as more of us versus them kind of thing. And um, I think the younger you are, the easier it is to fall into that mindset because it feels you're still holding on to a little of that parents just don't understand kind of vibe, which sometimes they don't. But however, parents are not the enemy. Parents are the point is to partner with these parents. They, this is their child. You're always trying to reconcile, not like, yeah, your mom, your mom is crazy, she doesn't understand. You know, it's more like we don't want to agree with them of like how terrible their parents are, but give them tools. Like I had a student not getting along with her dad, and instead of being like, Yeah, you're right, he is the worst, like you should, you know, use your phone anyways. He doesn't get it. I would just say, you know what? I think he really needs to know how you feel. Why don't you write him a letter and why don't you talk to him? And you know, I bet you he really loves you. You guys just aren't seeing eye to eye on some things. And, you know, we want there to be peace with our students and their parents. So we model that. Like, hey, you're upset. Let's call your mom. Like, I bet you she would have um, she would love to know, you know, that you're not okay. Like, let's always always defer to that, unless you know of some really like awful abuse situation going on. That's a whole other episode. But for the most part, I think we give parents the benefit of the doubt. Like, you're trying your best. Don't always believe what a kid says, you know.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

With going along with the kind of like that line of communication and facilitating that between parents and their own students, when you were saying that if something happened to the student, giving the parent that kind of heads up is a good thing in the sense that there's some students that might be like, I don't want to talk about it, and maybe wouldn't tell their parent, but maybe it's something that the parent should know. Right. So even if they got in the car, they already know this is what happened. And then when they ask their student, maybe they'll say, I don't want to talk about it, but at least you know instead of being like, Why is my kid crying? says they don't want to talk about it. Right. What happened? Right. Like that's the worst feeling when your son or daughter is like you could tell they're up visibly upset about something and you have no idea, have no clue to how to fix it.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

You know, and yeah, I think it's our job. Like, I like to sometimes we're like look at it as we are also a liaison between parents and students, you know. Like, like I've had a mom text me, hey, can you talk to my daughter about blah blah blah? I've tried to get through to her and she just ignores me. Like, I know you would agree on this. And I did. I agreed with what the mom was saying, but her daughter and her just had the kind of relationship that she wouldn't listen to her mom. She's like, you don't know anything, but if one of us were to say it, she'd be like, Oh, okay, maybe there is something to this kind of thing. So that all that to say, yeah, we're trying to partner. Yes, once in a while, it there is a parent who's just unsafe or something, and you can't reason with. I don't know about your context and your church, whatever. I feel like that is by far the statistic teeny tiny percent. Um, that doesn't seem to be the rule, but by far the exception. I can probably count on one hand, if that how many times that's happened to less than one hand. What is less than one hand?

SPEAKER_00 14:48

I can count on one finger.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

I can count on no hands. I don't even need a hand to count. Anyway, on one ear.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

There you go.

Reply Within 24 Hours

SPEAKER_02 15:00

I have one. Uh, anyways, moving on, continuing to build trust with parents is respond to calls and texts and emails and messages promptly, very promptly. I think promptly feels subjective to people. So let's make that a little tighter. I've mentioned on the podcast before. I say 24 hours is reasonable. Think about it this way if you are employed, maybe, maybe you're a volunteer. I'm proud of you for listening to this. If you are, if you're employed at a church and they pay you, think about who pays your salary. Tithers, who are the tithers, not the kids. They do not tithe, they cost us money. The parents, right? So I believe, and this is what we've been taught over and over and over and over again at our church is parents, you have no choice but to respond to them within 24 hours. Like, that is minimum. And if they have to go above your head to get a hold of you, bad luck. Like, hey, like, what if they had to reach out to your senior pastor? I've been trying to get a hold of Kristen, you know, for weeks. I have a question about camp and she's not getting through. Is there any like, oh my gosh, that is horrible. How to lose trust that is like immediate. And parents, I always like when I respond, they're like, oh my gosh, thank you so much for getting back to me. Because I think parents aren't used to being able to get a hold of a school, a coach, a you know, like you throw out communication to schools or teachers or whatever. And our school is great. I get responses from our teachers all the time, but I get the sense. Parents are not right, they're a little surprised when you get back to them, like, oh my gosh, thank you. This is so helpful.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

I've had responses come back so far after the time I originally sent it that I'm like, I don't even remember what this is for anymore. Totally. Like, unless there's some sort of reference, I'm like, I don't know. I guess it's fine now.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

Um, and I prioritize my communication. Like, I am like if it's parents, ASAP. If it's you know me, it's Jeff weeks and weeks. We'll see. But you know, it's like, okay, like you might be overwhelmed by the amount of communication you have to, because sometimes I feel that way. Oh my gosh, so many people are waiting for my response. But then I prioritize who's paying me, like the parents, like with their tithes, who pays my salary, whose trust is absolutely essential. It's staff and volunteers and parents and students, you know, are important as well. It's like getting back, though, is so important. I think at this stage in my life, one of my biggest pet peeves is ghosting.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

It's horrible.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

I get so angry because I don't know like what it does to me. I just feel so disrespected. I just don't feel like like, especially if it's someone you know, it's like just say yes or no. Like, ah, it drives me crazy. So I don't want to do that to parents.

Own Mistakes And Tell The Truth

SPEAKER_02 18:14

And then when mistakes on your part happen, own them, own them quickly and communicate quickly. So if you made a mistake, whether it was like a communication error or an event, or uh you gave someone false information by accident, if there was, if you're late, you know, getting out or arriving back after an event or something, you need to own those mistakes super quickly and apologize. You know, uh, we had a leadership thing I learned at our church once was own 100% of the 1% that's your fault. So if say you only made a tiny mistake, only 1% of this fiasco is your fault, then just own that 100% of the 1%. Right. Apologize profusely. Oh my gosh, this must have been such an inconvenience for you. I'm so sorry. Like, you know, this won't happen again. Please forgive me. How can I make this right? Whatever it takes. But yeah, own 100% of the 1% that helps build trust.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

And be honest, completely honest, because I've said on here multiple times, but like sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime. Right. There was a package that was supposed to be delivered a few weeks back, and I was in our house and I was at near a window, and I saw the delivery guy drive up. And I see him searching in his van for a while, and I thought when he gets it, I'll come out and greet him at the door or whatever. But I'm kind of just like watching him and he's looking all through the van, can't seem to find it, closes the van and drives away. And I'm thinking, what the heck? I get maybe 15 minutes later, 30 minutes later, an email that says delivery driver was unable to drop off the package due to road closures and delays. And I'm like, I think obviously what probably happened is it was supposed to be on the truck, it wasn't on the truck, mistakes happen, whatever. They ended up delivering it like six hours later. Fine. But in my mind, oh, you're a bunch of liars. Yeah. So I called them out. I said, the guy was in my driveway. There was no road, unless the road closure was, you know, the 10 feet of our driveway. I'm like, that did not happen.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

I left my cones out there. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Really sorry about that. So I'm like, just own it. I wouldn't have cared. You made a mistake. People make mistakes, tell the truth. It wasn't on the truck. They came back, delivered it. But trying to cover it up look like you're a liar. It was just bad form.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Yeah, it was. And that was just the delivery thing. Right. Imagine the church, you know. It's like uh, well, uh, there were the road closure. That's why we're late. No, you could just say, We are late. I'm so sorry. Everything took longer than I thought, and we should have left sooner. Right. Please forgive me. We'll be there in 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

You know, like don't act like I don't know, passing the blame to something or somebody else.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

You're in charge, so own it. And that's the thing with leadership, you know, when you're in charge, it's it's on you. Yeah, you gotta. And then lastly, on this communication one, uh, make it easy for parents to find answers.

Make Answers Easy To Find

SPEAKER_02 21:27

With this one, I think I've pushed you guys to do this before. Give your cell phone number out to parents. I think for me, we have a lot of students, and I've given them my number for years. Parents never have abused that, they just ask things that it's like, oh my gosh, I need an immediate answer, or wait, where are you? I can't find you guys, or if we have people that are more new to the area, like sometimes if we're at the beach, they're like, wait, I've never been down. Here, what part are you at? You know, it's just so nice if you can give parents your cell phone number so that they can find answers quickly. If they reach out to you again through email or whatever, respond quickly. But I feel like making things crystal clear, whether it's online or in your email, or when all else fails, they need to text you and ask you. And here's here's a good test. If you are constantly getting text messages from parents and you're like, Kristen, you're wrong. They blow me up. Here's what I would suggest. Your other communication methods aren't working. If they need to go to you constantly, that means your emails, A, are either non-existent or not clear. Your website is not up to date or accessible or nobody knows about it. Your social media is the same, you know, either they can't find it or you never post anything relevant on there or helpful. So if you feel like you're being bombarded and then makes you want to put up a boundary, I would say then like your other communication methods are falling through. You know what I mean? Because the text messages I get are usually something specific to that person that wouldn't have been included in an email. But it's never like, what time does youth group start again? It's like, you already know that, but it might be like, hey, can my daughter come early? We have an event. Is that okay? It's like, that's a reasonable text. But if it was always like, how much does it cost again? It'd be like, what you are you not getting my other stuff? So that could be a good gauge of what your information output is like and if it's hitting the spot with people or not.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

And when you're consistent on that stuff and and thorough, they are being trained basically to know every time I get an email, it has these, this information in it, you know, dates, times, all that stuff. So if I forget, I know I can go there first before like I don't know, I'm gonna have to email them. Clearly, they didn't send it.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Right. So he has a Trav has this little tagline where he says, confused people rarely become trusting people, which I'm like, yeah, that's so true. Like, you know, if you've ever shown up for something and it just is a fiasco and you're like, where's the line? Where do we check in? Where's you know, you're just like, who's running this place? And it just leaves kind of a bad like vibe where you're just like, uh, who, like, are these?

Professionalism Without Losing Fun

SPEAKER_02 24:36

And that kind of brings me to one that we don't talk about a lot is professionalism. So I feel like that's an oxymoron in youth ministry. Like, what? Like, there was this pastor who wrote a book literally called We Are Not Professionals or something like that. Um it was like a long time ago. I want to look that up for youth ministry? No, I think it was just people in ministry. Like, we're we're not like we're like missionaries, we're not like corporate CEOs or something. I don't know. Anyways, but professionalism builds trust. And I think, yeah, like most youth pastors, if they had to describe themselves, they wouldn't say professional. And if people had to describe you, they probably wouldn't say professional. However, in order to build trust, we do need a level of professionalism. So Trav was telling us, you know, many young youth pastors mistake being relatable with being irresponsible. Like you think in order to be fun or relatable, like you don't want to be like the adult in the room. You want to be like the fun guy, and you don't want to be the downer, right? And so youth pastors sometimes get like a bit of a reputation of being kind of irresponsible. And that is the fastest way to lose trust with parents because the truth is you can be fun without being immature. Like it is true, you can be a fun person and energetic and the life of the party without being completely an immature. Like, what are you, an adult or a kid, whatever? And I think that's hard in youth ministry. Like, to be honest, sometimes I feel like our maturity is stunted a little bit because of the environment we're in constantly. Because it is a value to be kind of like goofy and fun, and you're playing games all the time. Like, who goes to work and it's like it's my job to play Foursquare? Like, it's my job to play dodgeball.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

When you're 18, you were just doing your job, yes, even when the kids weren't there.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Thank you for being I needed practice because I had to beat them. I do, I love to to win, yeah, you know, still to this day. I compete, like really, so I feel like sometimes our maturity gets stunted a little bit because we are sleeping on the floor and throwing shaving cream at people. It's like, wait, how can I be a professional shaving cream thrower? But the idea is like we still maintain the professionalism of I'm the responsible adult in the room and I'm going to make really safe and good decisions for

Lead Like An Owner

SPEAKER_02 27:35

us. And one mindset that's super helpful, and this is helpful not just for us, but for the people that work with us and for us, is having like that owner mindset instead of an employee mindset. So the owner mindset is hey, like I am the leader in this room. I set the tone, I set the pace. Everything that happens in here is a direct reflection of me and my leadership. And I'm going to have to answer for it. An employee is a little bit more along for the ride. They kind of just do what someone else tells them to do, and then they clock out. But an owner knows my name is on this, my reputation is on this. There is a lot for me personally writing on this. It's not just like, I showed up. So that mindset for all of us, like I said, our leaders or volunteers is super important. And with that, the being super prepared and super organized in every single thing we do. We don't just, you know, it's so funny, kids will say, Where do you work? And it's like, here, you know, hope it shows that I didn't just show up, you know, and it's like, I don't know, what are we gonna do today, guys? So having that super organized mentality of we we need to appear and for real, look like we know what we're doing, you know, like this isn't my first rodeo. I know how to do this. I had a parent meeting for camp the other day, and I had handouts printed for all the parents with itinerary and phone numbers and addresses of all the places we were going to be. I explained to them how to have a super successful trip, and I explained to them, you know, what I've seen in the past and how their kid can have a really good trip and everything, like and then answering their questions, you know. I think some of them are trying to test how much I knew about this trip and, you know, just coming across professionals like, hey, like this is a company that's very reputable, and here's why, and here's how long we've worked with them and for like, you know, because we hire a rafting guide company. It's not just like we're gonna like raft this river and it's gonna be sweet. It's like, not here's the exact location where we'll be. Here's our relationship with this company. This is the kind of stuff parents want to know. Yeah, parents don't really care if you're fun. I had a mom the other day tell me her daughter was visiting another youth group, and she's like, she just said it wasn't as fun. And but I told her, church, that's not the number one priority. Fun is not the like to parents, they're like, I hope you have fun, but that's not my number one goal for you at church. Like, as youth pastors, it is. We're like, we want to have fun and do some awesome stuff for the kingdom. I love that. Parents, fun is not really the top of their list. They are like, are you safe? Do these people know what they're doing? Is this going to have an impact on your life spiritually and socially? And you know, whatever that parent's priority is. And so, yeah, the that building that trust for them to know, like, I'm prepared, I'm organized, I'm not just gonna show up and blow up. Wing it. Wing it.

Respect Time And Handle Conflict

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Be respectful of people's time. That's huge. Start on time, end on time. We've talked a lot about that before. Don't do things that are unnecessary just to do them. Everything you do should have purpose and be important. Like, make it count. I feel like sometimes I've seen youth pastors say, show up at this time, and all these parents are kind of standing around, like, what do we do now? And it's like, you just expected people to want to mingle. They don't know each other. Why would they want to mingle? They want to be here for your meeting or your event or your whatever and get it done. Parents got a lot to do. Handle conflict maturely. Conflict will happen. So, whether that's a conflict with a student or a parent, just handle that with the absolute maturity of step one is always you pursue that conflict. It's not like, oh, I'm just hiding out. Maybe this parent will email me, maybe they won't. But just say, hey, just wanted to reach out and see if we could have a conversation about what happened, blah, blah, blah. I would love to reconcile this or make it right or figure out how to move forward. You just have to be super mature when it comes to conflict. Be careful who you talk to about the conflict. Never ever talk to students about it. Like, guy, your mom was so mad. Like, what is happening? You know, you never ever want to be one of the students on this. You know, I had a student mom get really mad at me for something, and she like came in the junior high room and kind of yelled at the room. I think it was directed at me. I don't know. She was mad because she got hit with a ball or something. And as they do. Well, the kids were like throwing all these balls in the junior high room, and I think one hit her in the face. It was an accident.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

But she headshots count, Karen. Move along, sister, you're out.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

I blew my whistle and pointed at her. She got mad. I was like, rules are rules. Okay. No, she got really irritated, and this kid like yelled across the room that she was a Karen or something. I was like, oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Welcome to Youth Guru.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

And I I am like, I'm not gonna laugh. I'm not gonna laugh. I'm the mature adult in the room. And I went over, I asked her if she was okay, and I reprimanded that kid. I was like, hey, not kind, you know, but what did I want to do? I wanted to laugh, but I did not. I was mature, I was so mature. So, all that to say, like, you have to be the adult in the room. So it's hard sometimes. Um, speak positively about your church and your leadership. You know, that is more a professional thing. We don't vent to parents about all, well, yeah, we would have been here on time, but you know, my church like don't even give me a budget for a bus. So I had to have all these cars go and then blah, blah, blah. So just maintain professionalism the way you talk about your church and your leadership. You always need to complain up, not out. So if you do have an issue, complain up. You don't complain out to parents or leaders or anything like that. Be approachable, but maintain your proper authority. You don't want to be like so high mighty, like I am in charge, and you know, lose your humanity in there. But make it clear like I am in charge, but also like I'm here for you. I'm I'm approachable, I'm your friend, but not so much that you're willing to like kids will be like, come on, just let us like you love us, come on, you know, and that's really hard when students peer pressure you into like doing things where you're like, Yes, I love you guys. Like, that's hard for me sometimes because our own daughter is in my youth group, and that means all her friends. So it's like, am I her mom or am I your youth pastor? When you guys are talking during a sermon, when you're being disrespectful during worship, I have to go over there and be like, hey, knock it off, or like, guys, you need, but it's like weird, it's like, Annika's mom's mean. You know, it's like, well, I'm also, you know, it's like that balance when you want to be kids' friends and you want them to like you, but you also have to have a boundary of like, but your behavior's not okay. You do risk, like, ah, what if they don't like me? Well, who's in charge? Right. You have to stay in charge. And lastly, yeah, that's like that that tension of understanding when to be a friend and when to be a leader. You know, those are those that's hard for some youth pastors. It's like they only want to be a friend. And I think they almost find some personal validation, you know, with like all the kids like me, because I'm the cool leader. I'm not a regular leader, I'm a cool leader, right? And it's like, yeah, we want to be cool. We want them to like us. That's important. If they're like, ugh, here comes this drag again, this Karen. Yeah, that would be a bummer, but that can't be our number one priority when safety is at stake, when professionalism is at stake, when our culture is at stake. It's like, hey, I love you guys. You're I but I also have to hold you accountable. Like that is a really hard thing for some youth pastors. And then the culture gets out of hand, and then they wonder why is everyone so badly behaved, and then they like are running amok, the power dynamic changes. You know, students want a friend, but what do parents need? They need a leader, they need leadership and they need you to be a leader. That's what parents need. And so I parents have applauded me when I've held their kid accountable of like, thank you so much for calling him out. Like that was not okay. And I think they it they respect you when you're a very kind and fair leader. Like, you know, those are the best coaches, right? The best coaches like make you work hard, hold you accountable, make you do your best and rise to the occasion, but then they're for you, they love you, they pick you up when you fall. They're kind and tender and loving. And you know, that's like Jesus leadership, right? He he doesn't like wink at our sin, but he also picks us up when we fall and it's full of grace and mercy. So that's what parents are looking for.

Final Takeaway And Community Comment

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Travis said it really well, and we'll end here. He said the best youth pastors can jump into a dodgeball game and then immediately handle a difficult parent conversation with maturity. So it's like we're able to do both. Yes, I'm gonna be that fun youth pastor, energetic, playing, get in there with the kids, but then can put on my leader hat and lead with maturity and authority and have a good conversation with a parent.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Yeah. Thanks, Trav, for all those pearls of wisdom. And Travis. Thank you for being able to retain all that.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

And you never say thank you to me.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Yeah, right. At the end of the episode. Thank you, Kristen. Really appreciate it. Here is the community comment of the day. This comes from Josh Williams from the Beyond the Numbers podcast. You actually were on there a few weeks ago. Hello, Josh Williams.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

From Beyond the Numbers podcast. I remember.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

This was from the episode we did about um why some youth groups feel alive and some feel dead. He said, great topic. Took a bunch of notes. Creating that core is important for to helping change the culture of your youth ministry. Thanks. Well, thank you, Josh. Thanks for watching. Are you laughing at me because I couldn't read it?

SPEAKER_01 38:31

I was. And thank you, Jeff, for reading that so smoothly. Almost.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Thank you guys for watching and listening. And we'll see you next time.