Parents

Hey Parents. Welcome to URSM.

Parents! Thank you for stopping by! Our desire is to keep this site up to date as much as possible so you have “up to the date” information at your fingertips. Not only that, I hope that this can be a place for you to learn more about our youth ministry, be encouraged, and find much needed support as a parent of a teenager.

Parenting teenagers is often a thankless and lonely job, so here at URSM we want to be an “along side” ministry. While most of our ministry is geared toward equipping 7th – 12th graders to become life-long followers of Christ, we do want to be in ministry along side you, the parents, encouraging you, helping you, and equipping you in the same way.

Because we are committed to relational ministry, we as youth workers may see our relationships with our students as being the most important. We look for ways to establish relationships with new students. We develop strategies for introducing the gospel into those relationships. We commit ourselves to being consistent, authentic, humble, teachable, and available in our relationships with them. Ministry is all about finding a way into the hearts of student6s so they can see Jesus in us. We pray for them and carefully monitor their friendships. We rejoice with them in their successes and weep with them in their disasters. We become what sociologists call “significant adults” in their lives. There’s no question about it. We are important people to the students in our care! But we’re not the most important people.

Common sense and basic biology tell us that the students we work with must come from somewhere. We know there must be a parent or two out there!

“Parents are the key faith developers for their children – they can have either a positive or a negative impact on their child’s faith growth, but either way they’ll have the biggest impact.”
– (Ben Fruedenburg, The Family Friendly Church (Group, 1998), pg 77)

We can have strong faith-shaping ministries here at URSM, but if we’re not partnering with homes, we have a high risk of developing students with weak faith.

What we have realized around here is that there is a vital connection between youth ministry and the family. Having a family-friendly youth ministry strengthens our entire church. URSM is not about “us” and “them” when we think about “students” and “parents.”

For you, the parent, we want to be informative, available, and encouraging. We have parent meetings that are designed to connect you with other parents, occasional seminars, and resources available that may help you along the way parenting a teenager. We are available to meet with you, listen, offer counsel, pray, and encourage you.

We would love to share with you more about URSM and the opportunities that are here for both you and your student. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Again, thank you for stopping by and check this section of our website regularly – information specifically for you can be found here.