colab
CoLab | Equipping Parents
A 5-week interactive cohort for leaders to disciple and empower parents in their congregations and communities.
October 21 - 01:00 PM EST
colab
Parents today are navigating unprecedented pressures—mental health, technology, finances and the demands of modern family life. Yet they remain the most influential spiritual leaders in their children’s lives.
The Equipping Parents CoLab is a guided, five-session learning experience for church leaders. Drawing on brand-new research from Barna’s biggest marriage and family study, you’ll gain tools to understand the parents in your community, close ministry gaps and develop a customized plan to better serve and equip them for discipleship at home.
Gain exclusive insights from Barna’s latest marriage and family research on parenting and discipleship
Assess the unique needs and challenges of parents in your church through real data
Collaborate with other leaders to share strategies and learn from diverse ministry contexts
Hear from leading experts in parenting, discipleship, and family ministry
Facilitate meaningful conversations with your team to spark vision and alignment
Identify clear, practical steps to engage and equip parents in your congregation
Reveal what the latest Barna research is teaching us about how churches can support the parents in their congregation
Engage in interactive sessions with polls, chat and breakouts
Receive research, tools and assessments to deploy in your church.
What to expect from a Barna CoLab
This is an engaging, interactive series of sessions that will equip you with all you need to grow your church’s small groups. Barna will bring the research, the assessment and the framework as you join other church leaders in learning. You’ll experience community and facilitated discussions, all while coming away with tools and a practical plan for growth.
Barna CoLab is a source for valuable information and resources from which to hone ministry efforts and effectiveness.
CoLab Attendee
Do it. It brings a different perspective and provides an opportunity to meet with others who are going through something similar. The CoLab confirmed some practical things we have been doing and revealed ways we could grow!
CoLab Attendee
CoLab equipped me with needed data and tools to share with leadership.
CoLab Attendee
Frequently Asked Questions
For Barna CoLab | Transformational Small Groups, the live, virtual, 90-minute gatherings will be on:
- October 21st, 2025
- October 28th, 2025
- November 4th, 2025
- November 11th, 2025
- November 18th, 2025
If you are unable to attend the live gathering, your team can still watch the recordings on demand in your online learning platform at a time that is convenient for you.
Each Barna CoLab offers five weeks of online training and collaboration through six live virtual gatherings (which are recorded and made available on-demand). Additionally, participants will be offered a free congregational assessment for each church to deploy, team activities and reflection guides, bonus content and the ability to interact with other participants through breakout groups and online discussion forums.
Yes! You are welcome to join Barna CoLab and will certainly still gain insights that can help you, but please keep in mind that our content will be crafted to primarily serve church leaders.
Yes, you can deploy the assessment. However, the assessment is pre-built, and many of the questions will ask respondents about their experiences with “their church,” so some insights might not be totally relevant to your context. You will be provided with a copy of the assessment questionnaire at the start of CoLab and can determine if it’s worth deploying for your context.
The Barna team has gone above and beyond to provide you with a suite of team activities to help you plan for and then take next steps in your ministry. Using our Barna insights-to-action framework, our team has built these guided activities specifically for your CoLab cohort. This is where we turn up the dials and get strategic as leaders. If you choose to invest time and energy in the team activities, you will leave CoLab with a concise list of testable, actionable ministry ideas. Again, this extra work is not mandatory but strongly encouraged if you want to walk away with a strategic action plan in place.
Each week of the Barna CoLab includes 90 minutes of live content—one 60-minute session, plus a 30-minute breakout. Barna recommends also allocating an additional hour each week for the assessment deployment, team activities and/or reflection guides. This additional work is optional but highly recommended.
As a part of CoLab, the Barna team has built a free and easy-to-use online assessment – designed just for you as a member of your particular cohort. Deploying this assessment to your congregation isn’t mandatory, but it’s definitely strongly recommended. In order to help you successfully do so, the Barna team is going to encourage you to launch the assessment to your people as soon as possible – ideally by week 3 of CoLab. After you’re signed up for the cohort, we will supply you with everything that you’ll need in order to participate, including email templates, the questionnaire in its entirety for your review and step-by-step guides to access and then deploy the assessment to your people.
If you or your team are unable to attend the live virtual gatherings, you can watch them on-demand. There will be some advantages to participating live (including Q&A with the Barna team and special guests, plus live breakout rooms). However, through the online course platform, you’ll still be able to interact and collaborate with others throughout the course of the program.
You can definitely add more participants from your team or church after your cohort launches for only $49/person (after you have reached the max number of your original purchase). Email us at colab@barna.org and we will help register additional participants.
Barna CoLabs are hosted on a password protected CoLab webpage. Apart from the assessment (which is hosted by our technology partner Gloo), everything will be found within our CoLab webpage – the live gatherings, on-demand recordings, discussion forums and course content. Upon purchasing a CoLab seat, you will receive an email to complete registration and receive your password to the webpage.
You’ll have access to everything in the course platform for your specific cohort for 30 days after the six-week program is complete.
We would prefer that only the people who register and pay to participate in the cohort have access to the videos and resources.
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