One main reason I love youth ministry is simply that I love working with students. After 24 years in youth ministry, including 20 years at my present church, I still love hanging out with youth. In fact, I recently have felt a sense of revival in my passion to do good old-fashioned, old-school relational ministry. In particular, this past fall, I have been more intentional about visiting students at various school activities: football games, band competitions, volleyball and tennis matches, school plays, orchestra nights, art exhibitions, soccer games, cross-country meets…Name an activity students participate in, and I probably have been to one. I love seeing our students in these settings, and I know students genuinely love it when a significant adult is there to affirm and acknowledge them.

I’m often asked if I am the parent of the teens I visit. I neither presume nor want to take the place of their parents. That is why I’m glad when their parents also are at an event I am attending. Despite that, I am thrilled when I see parents attending their kids’ events. Honestly, though, it also makes me a little tense, because working with parents is probably the most difficult element of my youth ministry journey. Sometimes I think I have hated it.

A few years back, I was reading an article in which a noted youth ministry leader shared a story about being yelled at after returning from a mission trip. He noted that as this one parent approached him, he was expecting some praise for a job well done. Instead, he was torn apart. I completely related to that story. I’d been there, and hearing that one of my heroes also had been there made me feel a little better about my growing hesitation toward working with parents.

When parents tell me they won’t be at church with their teen for the next five weeks due to soccer tournaments, I feel frustrated. When they complain about their own teenagers not attending youth group and then don’t let them come to church because they have too much homework, I feel irritated. Parents who call or text me constantly—and blame me if their teenagers aren’t spiritual enough—make me angry.

Yet when I see these parents, I am reminded they are sinners the same as me and are struggle to raise their teens. They’re not perfect, and I’m not either. Working with parents is the youth minister’s calling. This important fact was affirmed for me again in a recent Huffington Post article¹, which noted research that highlights that the holy grail for helping youth remain religiously active as young adults is parents. Hence, youth ministry must minister to the whole family, which includes parents, so that as we do, we can enable them to love and minister to their youth.

I also am reminded of this truth in Ephesians 6:1-4, where Paul tells children to obey their parents, but in the same breath admonishes fathers not to provoke their children in anger but to bring them up in the instruction of the Lord. Paul’s words remind me the great and high calling of ministering to students also means we are called to minister to parents.

It is difficult for me to work with parents, but do I actually hate it? No, because it is so important for our youth, because it is my calling as a youth worker. Personally, my confession as a youth worker comes in light of my confession as a parent of three teens now. I am a sinner and need help raising my teens. I am thankful for those in youth ministry who minister to my heart and help me on my parenting journey.

¹http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-briggs/the-no-1-reason-teens-kee_b_6067838.html

Danny Kwon is a speaker/trainer for The Youth Cartel and Fuller Youth Institute and completed his Ph.D. on the topic of innovation in the local church. He loves sports; eating; making people laugh; his wife, Monica, a family and marriage counselor and professor. He’s parent/youth pastor of their three teenagers. His new book A Youth Worker’s Field Guide to Parents: Understanding Parents of Teenagers comes out in January (The Youth Cartel).