What We’re Learning: Pop-Up Conversations With Parents
What’s it like for parents to raise children today, especially if a growing relationship with God is important to them? And what can ministry leaders do to help?
These are the two questions we’re trying to help the ministry leaders explore in our 4th–Soil ParentingProject, supported by the Lilly Endowment. We’re asking these questions because we know that parentsmatter MOST in the formation of their kids’ vibrant faith in Jesus Christ. It’s tempting to slip into judging “the state of parenting” today, but our goal is to help ministry leaders pursue parents in their congregation with life-giving curiosity.
So, as we listen together with the church project teams in our 4S journey, here are a few things we’re noticing in parents…
- “Parents love to talk about their kids.” This is the mantra of one of our amazing Vibrant Faith Coaches, Denise Utter—who, by the way, is leading a MasterClass on September 4 and 11 called Reinvigorating Family Life In Your Congregation. Have you noticed this, too? If you want to make new inroads into your relationships with parents, find easy onramps for them to tell stories about their kids. This insight is a great gift for establishing deep and significant relationships with busy parents.
- Parents feel overwhelmed by the challenges of raising kids today. We could pull out lots of statistics here, but you know all the realities that they are up against as well as we do. Screens and guns and school pressures. And, of course, the rising cost of living, a scarcity of community support providers, and record levels of anxiety in children. Parents need tangible help from their church—and not just with family devotions. They are facing a host of complex issues as they raise their children. And churches that help equip them to face those challenges will have open pathways to supporting their relationship with Jesus.
- Parents care about their Christian faith, and that their children have faith. We are hearing this from lots of parents. It may not look the same as it did in previous generations, but many parents still believe deeply in the God who created them and gave them the gift of their children. It could be that our programs and expectations for attendance may be getting in the way of their ability to share a lively faith in Jesus with their kids. Maybe we need to be more curious about the challenges and opportunities involved in raising children in the faith, from their current perspective.
- Parents are lonely. Every conversation that our 4S churches have started with parents has resulted in overwhelming gratitude from parents that someone is listening to them and cares about them, and their children. They don’t have the natural pathways or social infrastructures around them that helped previous generations of parents to share both their pain and their joys as parents. They need intentional pursuit and persistent curiosity.
- For all of us, CALLINGS help us claim our purpose in the slog of daily life. Finally, one of our Vibrant Faith insights is that helping parents to claim parenting as a calling, a direct extension of their life with God, adds important dimensions to the process of raising children.
Because of these insights, we’ve just launched our latest 4th–Soil Parenting experiment in our project churches—it’s called Pop-Up Conversations. This resource is designed to connect with parents in the midst of their everyday realities, NOT necessarily on the church’s schedule. Each Pop-Up Conversation targets a primary “pain point” for parents with a guided, hour-long conversation that kicks off with a short video “onramp,” helping “tee up” that session’s pain point.
Like a “pop-up restaurant,” Pop-Up Conversations are designed to be used flexibly, without a lot of lead-up or advance notice. A church can just put the word out through its communication conduits about a “pop-up” date and time, or simply invite a few parents to join them online or at a coffee shop. This is an opportunity for parents to connect around high-interest topics, online or in-person, in small gatherings.
Each Pop-Up Conversation taps into parents’ very real struggles with their kids and provides perspective and guided conversation that funnels them toward a deeper understanding of their calling as parents. The goal is to get them talking with conversation partners, all directed at helping them claim God’s presence, action, and calling in the midst of whatever challenges they are facing.
We’ve created our first set Pop–Ups with these topics:
- My Kid and Anxiety
- My Kid Is Always On Their Phone
- My Kid is Struggling with Friendship
- My Kid is Unfocused and Unmotivated
We developed these Pop-Up Conversations to help our churches connect more deeply with parents, and (more important) help parents connect more deeply with each other. While these conversations are created to be led like a small-group session, we anticipate our churches will use them in a wide variety of settings. We hope our churches can see the direct line between what they are hearing from parents, and how they can help them live out their calling in more intentional ways. We’ll let you know how it goes!
Make This the Year!
Make this the year that you and your church partners lean into FAMILYING the Faith. When you consider how to engage your parents, our strategies need to land comfortably in their everyday rhythms. They need spiritual prompting that fits their relational ecosystem. And they need Scriptural connections that are the MOST meaningful and resonant for them in the moment. We describe this as FAMILYING the Faith. It’s also the name of our new podcast—check it out HERE. And check out, below, two targeted resources we’ve developed to help you live out this vital aspect of ministry—Practical Tools for Raising Faithful Kids and the Familying the Faith kit.
Dr. Nancy Going serves as the Director of Research & Resource Development for Vibrant Faith. Nancy lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband Art, an Anglican priest, and they have launched two new families from their children.
If you liked this article, check out the following resources that help parents become the primary influencers of their children’s faith: 
Practical Tools for Raising Faithful Kids Familying the Faith.