One of the easiest ways to empower parents is to simply give them one or two resources every week that are super practical in nature and easily actionable.
And with technology, parents don’t even have to physically be at church on Sunday to be able to receive such resources (of course we want them to be at church every Sunday, but I digress).
I admit this sounds great on its face, but the reality is Kids and Family ministry is busy, really busy maybe even super really busy sometimes.
And while it’s no problem putting together a parenting email here and there, doing it over time and on a weekly basis can be overwhelming on top of the many other things we have to do with a payoff that is difficult to measure.
Rarely will a parent hit reply or come up to you on Sunday and say, “I just want to thank you so much for the email you send every week. It’s made me a better parent in so many ways and has helped me be a better spiritual discipler of my kids.” (If that is your experience, I, for one, am very much jealous.)
But if a weekly email is something you could put together in less than 15 minutes and still have quality content, wouldn’t it be worth it?
Here’s how you can do that (the 15-minute email with good content) in three steps:
Step 1: Find a Content Engine
Find content from another ministry that focuses on helping parents, so you don’t have to come up with your own stuff every week (or ever, unless that’s your thing).
The best website for amazing parenting articles that are updated weekly which I have found is: www.theparentcue.org
I haven’t been able to find any other website specifically geared toward parenting with content that is as well written, relevant and consistent (so if you know of other resources, please, please, please let me know!).
I also love this because I personally get to grow as a parent reading through two to three short articles every week as I decide which one would be best for the families at our church.
Step 2: Reuse What You Use on Sunday
Whatever you give parents on Sunday, put it into the email in a digital format.
The curriculum we use provides a four-day family devotional with the lesson every week, so we attach it as a PDF.
This way if parents leave the physical copy at the church or on the floor of the car, or if a family misses a Sunday, they still have something to use as a discipleship tool during the week (and if you ask them about it, they can never say they lost it).
As a side note, we include the article in its entirety, whereas many strategies involve sharing just a portion and linking to a website.
We do this because we know that there is a very small percentage of parents who will click through to read the whole thing, so we keep it all in one place.
Step 3: Create a Template
Find an email service where you can create a reusable template, so you can just plug and play every week.
We use MailChimp because it’s super simple to make great looking emails, you can schedule emails to send whenever you want, and it’s free.
Aaaaaaaaaand, that’s a wrap folks.
Best of all, once you create an email template, this really becomes only a two-step process.
Below you’ll find a screenshot of what the email looks like that we send to parents.
As you can see, we have a graphic of our church’s mission statement with a simple introduction that ties into it.
Then we have a clickable Family Devo icon with a description below.
And finally, an article from The Parent Cue, making sure to give credit to them (the images in the actual email are better resoluton).
Here’s the MailChimp template we use if you want it: https://us2.admin.mailchimp.com/templates/share?id=6796930_cb7e2f9d16817d2710e6_us2
I hope this was helpful to you!
This article originally appeared here.
