How to have a Parent Information Meeting

For a few years now, I’ve been holding a parent information meeting at the beginning of the year.

I originally started the meeting to help boost camp attendance. The cost of camp is sometimes prohibitive, and by the time I was getting the information out to parents to sign up, they had already made their summer plans.

Over the years, the meeting has morphed into a vision casting and connection point for parents.

It’s one of the most valuable events I do all year.

Before I share 5 things to make your own meeting great, you can watch the last meeting I streamed live here, and you can download the calendar I gave to every parent here.

Without further ado, here are 5 things I do to make the Parent Information Meeting great.

1. Plan out the year

Starting in October, I begin putting together my calendar for the next year. This is where I begin dreaming and thinking about what I want to do to make the next year even better than the year before.

This is also the time I go back over my event evaluations and decide if I want to carry over events from the previous year. You can read about that process here. I make sure my entire year is penciled in before the church-wide calendar meeting and bring the plans to that meeting.

After clearing the conflicts and making sure that all ministries are working together, I take all of the events I’m doing in the next year and put them on a one-page calendar to give to parents. I give out the calendar at the meeting and make sure I have plenty of extras to give out to parents through Easter.

This year, I added my preaching calendar to the schedule as well. I learned last year from a parent survey that many parents didn’t think their kids were learning about Jesus or growing spiritually. I think this may be because they don’t know what we’re talking about throughout the year. I tell them every week through multiple channels, but they rarely see the big picture. Many parents this year have greatly appreciated this addition.

2. Cast vision

At the beginning of the year, everyone is thinking about the new plans and opportunities that the new year holds. This is a great time to let everyone know what your plans are for the year and to remind them of your mission and vision.

You can think of it like a State of the Union. I report salvations, baptisms, camp and VBS attendance and any other number that shows we are accomplishing our goals. Then I remind parents of our mission and vision and how they play a role in the process. This may be the only time you have most of your parents listening and wanting to hear from you, so don’t waste it.

3. Keep it short

I’ll admit, this one is difficult for me. My first few meetings were on Wednesday nights during church for an hour. And I talked the entire time. Later I moved it to after Sunday morning service and provided a meal. It was appreciated but kept the meeting to 60 minutes or longer(!).

In the last few years, I put the meeting after the last Sunday morning service, served only snacks and kept it to 30 minutes. As a plus, I’ve had more parents show up, but I’ve also had to cut down my information to the essentials.

Be careful not to make the meeting too short, however. The youth ministry at my church tried to have their own parent meeting and scheduled only 15 minutes for their meeting. Both the middle school and high school pastor said it was too short and they weren’t able to cover all the important information they wanted to talk about.

4. Offer connection points

It’s easy to think that in our information overloaded world that your parents don’t want one more thing to read, like, engage, follow, or watch. However, this is their kids’ spiritual education, and in my experience, many parents want to know what their kids are learning.

As part of my vision casting section of the meeting, I always give many ways for parents to connect with me as the children’s pastor and the children’s ministry as a whole. It’s up to them to decided how to connect with me, but at least they have all the ways they can connect. You can read how I communicate with them throughout the week here.

5. Watch their children

There’s one thing that can derail your meeting faster than an unexpected fire drill and that is kids in the room. They’ll be fidgety, play their video too loud for three seconds, or constantly bother their parents with questions.

We all love kids, but for this meeting, have them watched somewhere else. Out of earshot. Watching everyone’s kids allowed my parents to focus and not worry about what their little one is doing. I hired two teenage girls who already serve in my ministry to watch the kids during the meeting. They were happy to do it and they enjoyed getting a little cash after 45 minutes of watching kids.

Bonus: Go live 

Parents are busy and many of them have plans for after church and can’t make the meeting. To further complicate things, I have a Saturday night service, so asking those parents to come back in the middle of the day on their day off is difficult.

To help parents, I started going live on the kids Facebook page. I didn’t have many parents watch while it was live, but after the meeting was over, I had a ready-made video I could then share. I boosted the post for $10 and emailed parents the link to the meeting.

If I had not gone live, only 15 of my hundreds of parents would have come, and I would have counted the meeting as a total loss. But, because I made a live video and shared it, close to 30% of my parents have seen at least the first few minutes of the meeting.

If you’re worried about the tech or the expense of going live, don’t be. You can do it with an iPhone pointed at you during the meeting. For me, I used my iPad leaned against some books on a table about 5 feet away from me. It’s not polished or even great quality, but in today’s DIY video world, it doesn’t have to be. Just hit live on your phone and start talking. You’ll be surprised at how well it does.

Parents want to know what’s going on in your ministry. And if we want to partner with them, they need to know in what ways they can. If you take the time to plan and inform your parents, they will applaud you, and any time you can get applause is a win.

Have you done a parent information meeting? What did you do?