On registration day at the boarding high school Michigan Lutheran Seminary, I would always meet with the parents. The veterans usually looked relaxed. The first timers almost always looked scared. I would tell them, “You know your child better than we do. But we know teenagers better than you do. If we work together, we should make a pretty good team.” I lost track of the number of parents who remarked at how that insight calmed their nerves.

When it comes to teaching members of a family, we pastors do well to identify our family partners. We can partner with a believing spouse to teach an unbelieving spouse. We can partner with a parent to teach children. If the children of a family are our first points of contact, we can partner with them to teach the other members of the family, whether children or adults.

We probably don’t have to be told that if we partner with one family member in teaching another, we will soon join that family’s communication dynamic. That’s a valuable place for us to be. As shepherds, we can guide whole families to the Word of the Lord, and that Word will not return to him empty, but will accomplish what he desires and achieve the purpose for which he sent it.

My background is high school administration, and over the years I’ve seen how increased contact with parents of high school students can achieve some good things. Steve Constantino, a former principal, tracked the documented trends over four years at one high school as a result of increased communication with parents. Some results:

• Parent satisfaction rose from 34 percent to 59 percent.
• Teacher satisfaction rose from 39 percent to 76 percent.
• The average standardized test score rose 61 points, with an 18 percent reduction in disparity between minority and non-minority students.
• The dropout rate fell from 11 percent to 3 percent.

We are looking for other fruits of faith. Our contact with families in a teaching context can go beyond social pleasantries. It can go beyond choosing a Bible passage to text. When we think of our pastoral contact in terms of proper application of law and gospel, we can model and encourage a life of repentance and forgiveness.

Opportunities abound. My wife, a pre-K teacher, remarks that some days she feels like she spends almost as much time outside of the classroom advising parents on Christian parenting issues by text, phone call, and e-mail, as she does inside the classroom teaching her students. We can partner with other called workers in our congregation to provide valuable spiritual guidance.

When we consider teaching the whole family, especially fathers, we know the blessings that can result. A survey from three years ago noted that only 6 percent of kids are churched as adults when neither of their parents attended worship. The percentage goes up to 15 percent when only mother attended, 55 percent when only father attended, and 72 percent when both parents attended. It used to be said that a home-going pastor made for a church-going congregation. Although we meet our people more often outside their homes now, it is still documentable that our teaching contact with them makes a difference in their church attendance. It may also make a difference in other parts of their lives.

The father of a student on the campus of Luther Prep waved me over. He said, “You changed my life! Do you remember me?” I did not remember him. It turned out that he had attended a course I taught on law and gospel for the Congregational Assistant Program. That course has a lot of practical examples for child raising. The man said, “Before that course, I was floundering in my parenting. Your teaching that day cleared up a lot of things for me. In fact, I credit those law and gospel insights for my son being at LPS today. Thank you.”

Our teaching labor in the Lord is not in vain.