What Every Youth Pastor Wants Parents to Know!

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Tom Powidski

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 5/19/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, hi again, friends, and welcome to Stand in the Gap today. I’m Jamie Mitchell, Director of Church Culture at the American Pastors Network. If you attend an evangelical church, you have more than about 150 attenders or members, the likelihood is that your church has a youth pastor. Now, I can tell you that has not always been the case. I grew up in church during my teenage years in 1970s and I can remember our first youth pastor, his name was Bob Cohen. I remember what a big deal it was, all the discussions and church business meetings that took place as we decided whether or not the church needed or wanted to spend the money for a youth pastor. I found out later that our church was very unique. Now, the statistics are slim, but I was able to find some data on this issue. About 10 to 15% of churches in the 1970s had a youth pastor compared to nearly 80% of evangelical churches today.

The study found that the rise in churches securing a professional youth worker was primarily because of the rise of adolescence as a ministry focus and churches seeing as teenagers being a distinct group of people to disciples, plus the influence of parachurch ministries like Youth for Christ and Young Life. It was a strategic church growth movement issue in the 70s to 90s where getting a specialty person on staff like children or youth or worship was a means for attracting new people. And really the biggest issue was the cultural pressures of the 1970s. It was the hippie generation where things like schools, sports, the music, all of that were focused on teenagers and we were battling for their soul. And so the phenomenon was born, a youth pastor and overall the impact has been quite positive and has made a big difference. Here are some concrete numbers.

59% of young people who grow up in an evangelical church that walk away from their faith or have some major struggle have indicated that 70% of those will come back to the Lord and come back to their church and stay said fast because of their relationship with a youth worker. Twice as many Christian teenagers read their Bible because of their youth worker or youth pastor and twice are likely to attend church as an adult because they’ve had that discipling relationship with the youth pastor. I could keep going. Youth pastors have had a major impact in the church, but there is a downside and it’s this, that parental involvement with teens life have slid in some respects. Sadly, when a church has a youth pastor, parents abdicate their spiritual responsibility and they kind of leave it up to the youth pastor to figure out how to work with their kids.

Well, we want to investigate that issue today. We think that both youth pastors and youth workers and parents need to be working together. And to help me is a long time friend and a longtime youth pastor, Tom Powidksi. He’s been ministering to teenagers for over 40 years. And matter of fact, he’s been ministering to young people so long that he now has his teenage grandchildren in his youth group. And together we want to look at this question. What do youth pastors wish their students, parents understood? Tom, welcome back to Stand of the Gap.

Tom Powidski:

Jamie, it’s great to be with you again and I’m looking forward to this.

Jamie Mitchell:

Tom, you heard my introduction. This relationship between youth pastor and parents is a unique one early on. Parents obviously had the upper hand understanding about their kids and knowing what students needed spiritually. Yet over time, youth pastors because of the volume of kids that they reach and touch and their focus is discipling young people. They’ve developed a stronger understanding in some respects. However, parents still are parents and are the ultimate spiritual authority. Tom, from your 40 plus years in youth ministry, what changes have you seen regarding parents of teens and how they have interacted with youth pastors?

Tom Powidski:

Jamie, this question was not an easy question. I wrestled with this for the past few weeks after you gave this to me and I really thought, I thought God on it. And in my conclusion, and I think a lot of the youth pastors may have different conclusions to this, but my conclusion is that I feel like parents are busier than ever. They’re more distracted from their relationship with God and their own children. And then I started testing that theory. You need to look into it a little bit. And so I started talking to a number of parents. I was with a number of parents this weekend at graduation ceremonies for their kids and I was amazed without giving them a hint of where I was going with this, every parent I talked to gave me the answer that I had originally came to, which was amazing to me.

And that is basically, they were all saying I struggle with the balance of I could work more, I can make more money, I could make my business larger, I could do all these things. And it’s almost like what Solomon said, like all is vanity, all is meaningless. And they said, “Hey, these things, they’re not bad things. I could justify them.” But they all shared how they wrestle with this balance of church, family, work, and what is most important. And I have some really great parents and they come out on a good side of that. But I really feel like what I’m seeing though is more parents are more distracted than ever. And Jamie, that’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? That we have more technology to help us with things than ever before and yet we’re busier. Do you see that too?

Jamie Mitchell:

You know, Tom, it’s really interesting is that the relationship between youth pastor and parents is not so much about that relationship, but what generally is happening in the culture and the world today and that is that we just fill our days up and our life with so much stuff and we want to do more and take on more and have more, yet the priority of the parents should be the focal point of their kids. They have their kids for about 18 years and then they’re out the door and if a lot of those important years are chewed up doing a lot of other stuff, it’s going to take away from the impact on their kids. And I think probably part of that is they say, “Hey, I have a youth pastor, he’s taking care of my kids spiritually. I then will have time to do more stuff.” Isn’t that the temptation?

Tom Powidski:

Yes. And I saw an article when I was like thinking through this, it said approximately 70% of US parents feel overwhelmed by the responsibilities resulting in high levels of exhaustion and anxiety. And it’s also what happens when I see happen when this happens is those parents are the ones that probably have the least amount of contact with me where the ones who are really engaged with their students spiritually, they’re the ones like pestering me, wanting to talk to me, want to know what’s going on with their kids, what I see and the other parents are just so distracted. I have almost no contact with them. They don’t seek me out. They don’t say much when I’m around them. The squeaky wheel gets the oil like, “Let me know where you see your kid. Talk to me. I need those conversations and it really helps us youth leaders and my team to know what to address, what to talk to the kids

Jamie Mitchell:

About.

Tom Powidski:

” So we

Jamie Mitchell:

Need

Tom Powidski:

That.

Jamie Mitchell:

Hey, listen, call any parent of teenager and you will find that they are busy. Well, we’re going to find out a little bit more about what youth pastors wish their parents who are part of the youth group need to know. Don’t go anywhere. Well, welcome back today. Tom Powidski, a 40 year veteran of youth ministry is my guest and we’re addressing the issue what every youth pastor wished his parents knew and understood. Tom, as we were preparing for this program, we kind of threw around some ideas and we came up with about nine or 10 different things that we wish parents would know. We’re not going to touch on all of them, but a few. So here we go. Here is the first one. A youth pastor wants his parents to know that they are the primary spiritual influence and not the youth pastor. Now that might sound obvious.

So why was that your number one?

Tom Powidski:

Well, something happened to me a few years ago, Jamie, that made me realize how important the parents are. For a while, I mean almost 30 years as a youth pastor, I had thought that I wanted to reach every student. I was a goalie in a sport in high school and if we won a game five one, I was having nightmares about the one goal that went in, even though we won. I had that same feeling with my students as a youth pastor is like, if one kid is struggling, it bothers you. So I had this one youth group. It was probably the largest youth group I ever had. We were probably running 140, 150 kids a week, probably effecting about 200 kids every month, but something was not right with my high school group. They were really, really struggling and it was just killing me.

I was dying. I was a youth pastor. You want these kids and they seem like they’re not getting it. So I was talking to one of my students who was a senior. He was a sharp kid. He goes, “Tom, stop it. Stop blaming yourself.” I’m like, “Well, what do you mean?” He goes, “Tom, I’m at the homes of these parents every weekend. It’s the parents. It’s not you. Tell me what’s going on. ” He said, “Tom, the parties these parents are having, they’re like frat parties.” And these parents show up for church every week, but their social life was just they were getting drunk every weekend, the families were a mess. Most of these students, when they got to college, they just crashed and burned and I was bugged, man. It hurt my pride, Jamie, because I’m like, you get that savior complex in ministry sometimes where you just feel like you can reach everyone no matter what the situation was, but I could not grab those kids.

Most of those parents ended up divorced. The families were a mess. Many of those kids never came back to Christ. I got a number of them to come back to Christ after college, which was really fun to see some of them turn around. And then my youth group transitioned and I had a group that was just wonderful. But after that last lesson of seeing what the parents’ influence was, I realized these parents are amazing and my youth group was totally different. And so they were engaged in their kids’ lives. They were not just going to church, their hearts were broken before God themselves and the power and the influence in their kids was absolutely amazing and outstanding and kind of fun to see. So much as my pride hurts is that I want to reach every student. It dawned on me just how valuable the parents are in the home and you as a pastor, I’m sure you’ve seen this too.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. Tom, the fact of the matter is the relationship with a youth pastor should be the cherry on top of the cake. It shouldn’t be the cake. The parents need to take the responsibility of shepherding their kid. We see the same thing a lot of times with parents’ view of education. They turn it over to the teacher or they turn it over to the school or they turn it over to the coach and once they abdicate that spiritual role, that spiritual authority, the kid begins to drift no matter what inputs and what kind of extras they may have. At the end of the day, the spiritual mark that matters in a kid’s life is the parent. And I know as a youth pastor, you believe that, but so many times you’re making up for what’s lacking in the home and it’s a painful reality, isn’t it, Thomas?

You look at the kids and as you’re stating your desire to wanting to see so much more in your kids and knowing that some of the issues in the home are just so far beyond even what you and the youth ministry could do. So the first thing the youth pastor should be both promoting and making sure their parents know is what we do or what a youth pastor does should be secondary to what the parents are doing in their home. Tom, there’s a second question that kind of goes along with this and I want you to speak to this issue. Another thing that youth pastors want their parents to know is that your teens spiritual struggles are normal, but they need guidance. Now being a part of a teenager, I know this because I was one, I made plenty of mistakes and there were probably a lot of things I did that my parents didn’t know.

They would have horrified them and it’s kind of easy to get in trouble as a teenager. Why do you feel parents need to be reminded of this?

Tom Powidski:

Well, I think parents forget what it was like to be a teenager themselves. I tell people one of the reasons I can stay effective in youth ministry is that I’ve never left the mindset of what I was when I became a Christian. I became a Christian going into ninth grade and I remember so many things. I remember so many of my struggles. I remember so many things I was going through and I think parents forget what it was like to go through those struggles, what it was like to be a teenager and then they put expectations on their kids that are kind of unrealistic because they want them to seek God, they want them to follow God and things like that and they kind of lose touch with them. Jamie, there’s a verse that I came across. I just really meditated a lot on it my first year as a youth pastor and it opened my eyes to know how to touch kids, students.

And it’s in one Corinthians chapter 10:13 and it seems like, why does this help you come? Well, this is amazing. It says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so you can endure it. ” I think a lot of parents, if you do that verse, we tend to focus on that last part of it, but when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out. So come on, man up, find a way out. But the first part of that verse, Jamie, is the thing that has so influenced my relationship with students. It has so changed the way I do ministry and I’ve never forgotten it and I use this all the time.

It says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common command kind.” And what that meant for me was this, Jamie, the things that I went through as a youth, the struggles I had, the self image issues I had, the wanting to succeed, the temptations and the struggles with all kinds of sin areas of my life, even as a motivated Christian, I was so excited about God. I ate everything up I could eat up about God. I read every book I get my hands on when I first became a Christian because I was so hungry. It was like, if this is true, it changes everything. But what I realized though is the kids I have today are struggling with the same things I struggled with. So parents, the attitudes, the actions, the way you were in high school, in middle school, in college are going to be the same things your son or daughter are going to struggle with as they’re going through life.

And that is a tool in our tool test, Jamie, that is so powerful. It’s so important because if we understand that, we can speak into their lives. So when our kids feel like we don’t relate to their struggles, we don’t relate to their problems. We lose credibility as parents. They think we’re living in some kind of alternate universe because we’ve kind of forgot what it was like to be living in that time period where your hormones are just out of check and your desires are out of check and you’re just battling with everything in your life and a lot of times parents look at that and have the attitude of, “Come on, grow up.” And you will mature out a lot of those things, but right then and there as a teenager, those things dominate you and we need to speak into those things. We need to remember what it was like.

And sometimes we’re embarrassed to even go back in our mind. I know a lot of parents go like,

Jamie Mitchell:

“Oh,

Tom Powidski:

I never want to go back to that period of my life.” Well, I get that. I mean, it’s a hard period of life. It’s hard to get control of your desires and the temptations that are there and the lust of the heart and things like that. And then through that process battling through things like lust, as a young man, I mean, I wanted to seek God as much as anyone. I was so in love with God. Lust was just always in front of me. It was just like the endless battle and you get control of it for a period of time and then you fall back into it. And you’re like, “Lord, what is wrong with you? ” But the lessons you can learn from these things are so valuable so important.

Jamie Mitchell:

Before we end here, I need to jump in, Tom, and just say this, that what you’re saying though is ultimately parents should not panic. Once you hear your kid is going through a struggle, you can’t panic. They go through these difficulties. Well, when we get back, a couple more insights of understanding of what parents need to hear from a youth pastor. Don’t go anywhere, stay with us. Well, thank you for staying with us. If you are just joining with us, we’re discussing the relationship between youth pastors and parents. It would seem that they should be on the same page, but that’s not always the case. Tom Powitzke is my guest and we’re highlighting a few things youth pastors wish parents knew and understood. Tom, I mentioned that we had a whole list and as we were getting prepared for this and there are a few that we’re not diving into.

Let me just quickly give those. Consistency in the home matters more than programming at the church. Attendance communicates priority. Don’t wait until your students’ issues are out of control, seek help early and don’t minimize problems. Your students respond to relationships and familiarity. Make me and our youth workers part of your family’s life. All of these are good things, but there is one I want you to address and I think this is an important one. Here’s something that youth pastors wish parents knew. Your student spiritual life will have a longer lasting effect than any sports team or even what college they attend. Now, Tom, this is getting to where the rubber meets the road. This is the real life tension I hear from parents all the time. Why is this important for parents to understand?

Tom Powidski:

Jamie, as long as I’ve been a youth pastor, this has been an issue and I often have students that the parents prioritize the sports above anything else and what happens is that with a lot of students is they start to miss a lot of meetings. They’re involved in sports all the time and a lot of times like my high school group meets on Sunday nights. There’s rarely sports on Sunday nights, but they may have sports Saturday and into Sunday with tournaments and things like this and they could be at youth group that night, but they’re like tired and they give the parents an excuse and parents are just so easy to say, “Hey, it’s okay. I understand.” And they don’t push them towards the spiritual things. Now I understand the sport thing, Jamie. I was a second Team All American, a sophomore in high school.

I was first Team All America in my junior and senior year of high school. Sports were a huge part of my life. I had college scholarships. My high school team played about 60 games against colleges a year and won most of them. Sports was huge for me and the team I was on. We were ranked number three in the nation. We were a powerhouse for our sport. But for me, I was a new Christian and so my relationship with Christ and the youth group were such a priority for me. I had to be there. And so I was there every chance I had, no matter what. If I was running right from home, I got home late or something and I’d run the youth group. I’d get there late if I had to. I was there. But a lot of our students, I mean, they don’t have that kind of passion for Christ yet.

Christ has not like won their hearts over yet. And so they’ll make any excuse. And then what happens I see, Jamie, is so many often our kids then start to lose a little bit of relationship with their friends at youth group. Their friends on their sport teams dominate their lives. And so now once that relationship thing starts to like fizzle out a little bit, they don’t feel as connected, they don’t want to be there. And so they stop coming and almost every teen that I see that stops investing in their youth programs and they can contend church a lot of times, but they’re just … I see the kids in church. They’re sleeping practically and it’s really great when they can pay attention, but so many of our kids don’t. And so this is a huge issue. So if the kid is not motivated themselves, man, I’m asking parents, you need to make this a priority.

You get this, Jamie?

Jamie Mitchell:

Tom, the issue a lot of times is that the parent doesn’t want to quote unquote disappoint their kid. Their kid wants to participate or wants to do that. They want that a part of their life. They’re not necessarily tremendously motivated by spiritual things yet. And so the parent doesn’t want to disappoint the kid and so they give in. But the other thing I’ve seen is this false belief by parents believing that if they excel in a sport or if they excel in other extracurricular activity that in some way it will give them a leg up for college or these kinds of things and they just forget that God is in control of all these things. I think we see the same thing a lot of times with even dating that parents will give on the issue of dating saved young people and allow their kids to date unsaved people, unsaved friends because they think, “Well, it’s no big deal or what are they going to do?

I don’t want them not to have a boyfriend, girlfriend.” And they stop trusting God where this is the big issue that’s behind this question is that it helps parents understand that here’s an opportunity for you to teach your kid how to trust God. Tom, one last one and it’s this, and again, it seems obvious a youth pastor wants their parents to know that heart transformation matters more than behavioral management. Unpack that a little bit and why do parents need to grasp this?

Tom Powidski:

Well, one of the saddest stories I ever heard, Jamie, and I’ll never forget it, is I had a dad who after his son, even in high school, totally said he doesn’t believe in God. He came to me and he said, “Tom, you should have heard his prayers like pre-middle school. You should have heard him pray.” His heart was in such a great spot and he assumed his son was okay and I rarely ever saw this student at a middle school meeting when he was in middle school. I never saw him in a high school meeting. And yet in high school, in ninth grade, he started, he was the president of his FCA group, but he was having no input into his own life and what parents need to understand is their kids can fall so quickly. It’s scary. I mean, in today’s world, the temptations are out there and then they feel the guilt and they believe the lie of Satan that you cannot come back to God and things like that.

But I view people this way, Jamie.

I don’t trust someone’s faith that they really have faith in Jesus Christ until that faith has been tested and sometimes that faith has to be tested with fire and a lot of times that will come in high school. I want it to happen in high school. God tests our faith all the time. He uses it to show us sometimes where we’re weak and sometimes we trip over ourselves, sometimes we follow ourselves and we fall into sin and we need that. We need that experience to realize where we’re weak. Well, sometimes it’s also revealing where our heart truly is and sometimes until our students are tested, we don’t know where their heart is. And this is why the statistics on kids falling away from Jesus and colleges through the roof. It’s scary how large it is. I experienced this early on, the first guy I ever led to Jesus Christ, I was in ninth grade, he was a senior and he was so excited about God.

He went to college that next year, he was witnessing the people on his college campus all the time. It was really exciting to see his life, but about two, three years after that, he was in a competition with two other guys in my youth group that had come out of my youth group to see who could have sex with the most girls that summer. And you go like, “What happened?” When his faith got tested, it just fell apart. Last time I saw a picture of him, someone sent a picture of me, of him to me. It was a monkshot that he’s probably still in prison because he was molesting little kids. And so the parable of the soils, the four soils is so true. We’ll think our kids have the heart because that seed started to grow. It looked good, but the worries, the temptations, the pressures of the world just took that student over and so we can’t stop and assume that our kids are okay.

And I see that a lot of parents do that because they see something good and we say two of those seeds grew up really fast, they took off and then the things of the world came in and then the question is, where was their heart in the first place? And some of our

Jamie Mitchell:

Kids

Tom Powidski:

Colleagues-

Jamie Mitchell:

You know Tom, the issue too is that parents really want their kids to toe the line and if they’re behaving correctly deep down a parent says, “Oh, this is good. They’re doing what I want them to do. ” But that doesn’t necessarily, as you make the point, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the heart is where it needs to be. They can conform, they can obey, they can do those things, but it really is getting, and I guess the key here is a parent understanding that they need to, as you put it, test the kids’ faith, force them to make the decision, force them to communicate what they are believing or what they’re thinking and not just take their behavior as a reality because they could fake their way through even their teenage years going all the way off to college and you think to yourself, well, they’ve been complying, they’ve been doing what I asked them to do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their heart is in the right place.

You probably have seen that over and over again with parents making that mistake.

Tom Powidski:

Well, kids learned how to play their parents, Jamie. Come up. It’s in nature, okay? We know how to sometimes know how to Brown knows the teacher. Some of our kids know the right things to say in front of their parents and sometimes even the kids that seem the most polite, cordial, their heart’s not there. And heart is a really hard thing to see until it’s tested, you don’t know.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, when we finish up in this last segment, I want Tom to talk about what are the strategic things we can do in churches to unite parents with youth pastors. Don’t go anywhere as we finish up this very important stand of the gap. Well, this has been so helpful today. I know parents and pastors, even church members who don’t have young people in their home anymore have been greatly equipped and encouraged by today’s discussion of how to get the home and the church on the same page. Tom Powitzke, a veteran of youth ministry has been our guest and we’ve been sharing what every youth pastor wished their parents knew. Tom, youth pastors need parents and parents need youth pastors. In the time that we have left, I want to discuss how to harness both home and church to impact kids. Tom, could you give maybe four or five ideas that we can discuss that every church needs to think through whether they have a paid professional youth pastor or they are solely volunteer driven, what could be done to unite the home and the church together so we could maximize the spiritual impact on students today?

Tom Powidski:

Well, Jamie, one of the things that I would like parents to try to do with their students, with their kids and our students is to talk to their kids, especially about what the message was on Sunday morning or what they heard at youth group. Deuteronomy six: seven says this and it’s talking about God’s commands. Impress them on your children, talk about them when you sit at home when you walk along the road or for us driving along the road, when you lie down, when you get up. I was speaking to a middle school parent this Saturday at a graduation party and he told me when he puts his son to bed, he’ll just either sit by the bed or lie on the bed with his son and ask him questions about youth group. And he says, his son will talk about youth group. And it’s reinforcing the things his son learned and his dad’s hearing what we’re teaching and so it’s connecting the family, it’s connecting them to what we’re teaching.

And he says, “We have the best discussions after youth group.” That’s one. The other one is churches need to have the attitude of we can’t lose our kids. And Jamie, one of the reasons I became a youth pastor was I was brought up in a church that did almost nothing for me. I didn’t know the gospel. I was walking away from God, I was walking away from the church, I went through communion, I went through a confirmation program when I was younger. It meant nothing to me and they lost me and I was so angry at that, that when I became a Christian, I became committed to youth ministry and I’m still in it because we can’t lose our kids. I need families. I need churches to have that mentality. We need to invest in our kids. Our church, we probably had the worst youth facility ever when I first got to this church I’m at now and I’ve been here for 22 years now and we have one of the coolest places now.

It’s not just to have a cool place that they built for us, but the place is a tool to minister to kids. It provides opportunity for us to reach kids. So the churches need to invest. The other thing I learned as a youth pastor is I need to expose my students to better teaching. When I was in high school, some of the college kids in my church would take me to see Josh McDowell anytime he was in town. Well now I’m exposing my kids to Sean McDowell, Josh’s son who is an amazing communicator of truth. And so we go to conferences where Sean is speaking all the time. We need to expose our kids to the best teaching to their level of understanding that we can. So I’m attempting to do that. And the last thing I want to encourage churches to do and families to do is one of the hard things for parents, Jamie, is when they send their kids to college and it’s a real eye opening experience for a parent when you first send your first child to college.

They’re gone. They are out of your home. You have no more control of what’s going on and you’re hoping as Proverbs 22 said, “Train up a child in the way they should go. ” And even after they are old, they will not depart from it. And that’s why I think we still see some kids fall in college and then come back to God that shows that their heart ended up in the right spot, but we still lose too many kids in college and so I’m asking churches to think through this, asking parents to think through this. I started doing this about six years ago. I send about anywhere from three to four contacts, sometimes just a text message to all my college students. I have extra time in the office. I have this list right in front of me. It’s on a card with all the names and I just text them.

“Hey, how you doing? Are you involved in a fellowship group? What’s going on? How’s your walk with God? “Just ask them questions. Jamie, that little thing that I’m doing has changed the statistics of the amount of kids that are following Christ in college from what I used to have in such a dramatic fashion and it dawned on me like churches, parents. We need to make this a priority even when our kids are away to have some kind of a contact, just a contact from the youth pastor or a leader that invested in their life or someone in the church that cares about them and makes them have to think about God. And when they think about God, their hearts get stirred and so many of them commit. I’m doing a wedding this summer of a girl who literally, I’ve seen her once in probably six, seven years, but I contact her still on the phone just to see how she’s doing and now she lives in Washington DC.

I’m doing her wedding this summer and it’s just the coolest thing because she would call me sometimes at 11 o’clock at night when she was in college saying,” Hey, I’m really struggling with something. Can you talk? “And we talked for 45 minutes or something like that. But if she didn’t have anyone to talk to, where would she go for those thoughts? And so as a church, we really need to find ways to reach out to our college students. I mean, it’s nice to send care packages and stuff, but we need to speak Jesus, need to speak life into them while they’re even at college. So these are just some of the thoughts, some of the things that I go through and I’ve been thinking about a lot that can make a huge difference in our kids’ lives. You understand that?

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. Tom, as I was listening to you but also thinking to myself, one of the things that we can really do to help with this parent, young person, youth pastor connection is that we’ve created such a silo with youth ministry that the kid goes off to youth ministry and then they’re separated from their parents, but there needs to be times, not all the time, but there needs to be times that we do stage some interaction with parent and student and from the youth ministry, the church side of things we are cultivating, encouraging that or igniting that. I’m teaching this summer at my church, I’m teaching a class on the truth project and I’ve told the high school families, high school parents that if you want your kid to be in my class, you have to attend with them so that the parent and the student are going to be in my class together hearing the same information, cultivating that biblical worldview.

We could do the same thing with mission trips. We don’t have to do it all the time, but there has to be times where churches are intentional to make sure that the parent and kid is together. I remember as we closed one illustration that will forever change me, Gordon McDonald told the story that when his kids started driving, he took them out on the road, one on some highway near Boston and he told the kid,” Pull over. “He pulled them over on the side of the road and on the edge of the road, he said,” Your car just got a flat. Go change the tire. “He said,” Dad, my tire started flat. “He goes,” No, I want you to do that right now as if it happened. “And the parent trained the kid. We can’t be the only one training our kids spiritually and leaving it up to youth pastors.

We’ve got to help and assist parents. Tom, this has been great. Thank you so much for sharing your heart, your experience. As I’ve said, we need parents to be successful at the task that’s been given to them and that is to raise their kids. Thank you again for being with us. At the end of the day, we’ve got to all work together to save this next generation. Until tomorrow when we’ll once again provide biblical insights, you live and lead with courage. See you in 23 hours.