• Target Aud—Home Schoolers
#8. Focus on Home Schoolers
I think every Children’s Pastor must align himself with these home schooling families, not just give lip service, but by actively showing support to those parents committed to influencing their own children. To ignore them is to miss a great opportunity to work with really committed parents who want to raise the bar for Christian education.
It has been my experience that this growing Home-School constituency can be a great asset to your children’s ministry, but partnering with them is required. You cannot ignore them, or you will not enjoy their support. Showing you care will pay dividends.
Here are my Seven Tips on How to Sharpen Your Focus on Home-School Families.
1. Determine how many families in your church are doing Home Schooling. Begin creating a database for those kids and families, unless you can segment them in the database you have.
2. Ask Home School families in your church to come together so you can begin to show support, encouragement and your assistance to their teaching efforts. Hopefully, you will begin to explore with them just how your church can help. It is my suggestion that you have two meetings a year, one each semester.
3. Consider being available as a guest Bible speaker for these kids at the local Home School support group and/or Home School Co-ops.
4. Offer the church facilities to host Home School functions and/or periodic events to show support.
5. Volunteer to teach a class, workshop or a specialized seminar for kids on the Bible or another subject that you are qualified to teach.
6. Join the search for resources that help enable parents to do the best possible job of influencing their own children.
7. Stay connected with Home School kids, you may have an opportunity to mentor or provide a reference for their future higher education.
Sharpening the Focus This is a series that will attempt to help you deal with some of the issues you face in relating to various constituents in your children’s ministry. This is eighth in the series. Look for the others under Target Audiences on the home page.
One Response to “• Target Aud—Home Schoolers”
March 23rd, 2011 at 9:57 am
For the first time, I have home-schooled students in my children’s ministry classes. And I have to admit that I didn’t even think about ways that I could work with their parents to encourage a Christian education. So I have to give you a very big “thank you” for this blog post! I’ve already contacted my home-schooled kids’ parents and am looking forward to meeting with them soon.
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