vacation from God...

For too many years, I have been connected to churches that seem to scale down activities and ministries and connection times in the summer because the majority of people disappeared from the "body".  Is this true in your church setting?  It's the 11th commandment that got cut from the stone tablet... thou shall not attend church/worship in the summer and thou shall not have any dynamic ministries happen while people are away!

What's happened in our churches?  In the first youth ministry I was part of as a volunteer and intern, we had a different philosophy of ministry than most of our church family... summer was the time to connect with students, and we met them every week at some event or program, either at the church building or "on location"!  Some weeks, we had a senior high event, a junior high event and a weekend event; we were serious about building relationships with our kids.  We had a summer theme, outfitted with t-shirts for the summer and a summer "handbook" with the details of what would be happening over the summer months while the kids were home from school.  We had a wildly active and popular youth group; we had a close knit group and a group that went on an adventure with God at every turn!

What will you do with your youth ministry and the students in that ministry this summer?  There is still time to decided to keep the "open" sign lit and ramp up the schedule to "fun through connection"!  Think of the kind of impact and influence you could have with your kids by connecting with some or all of them 1x per week over the summer... 1000 Sunday school lessons on 1000 sleepy Sunday mornings will never compete!  For starters, steal this idea... this one is a proven idea that has stood the test of time!

We called it "Follow the Sunset"... we would meet at the church around 6:30pm and pile in the van/vans. We would drive to a local park with a great view of the landscape; sometime the drives were a bit further... we would take the various outdoor games along (we had a game bag filled with the necessary tools)  We take a snack and bring some water and play in the park and watch the sun set in the west (choose your park carefully)  As the sun set, we spent some time discussing a theme for the evening and some scripture to accompany the theme, and then we would close in worship and or prayer depending on if we had a guitar player that night.  This worked, and we kept changing it week after week... sometimes we would stop for ice cream and other times we would stop by to help a "neighbor", but we always ended the night with the Son!  Don't settle for taking a vacation from God this summer... stay open for business and watch what the Son does to you, your kids and your ministry!  Be blessed!