Foundational Summer Priorities

Summer is rapidly approaching. Typically, for youth ministries, this means summer camps, mission trips, pool parties, etc.

Am I missing something?

It’s never easy to plan summer ministry. Family vacations and sports camps take teenagers away for weeks at a time. This shouldn’t keep you from planning weekly venues where you can connect with kids, but it should prompt you to think about where your time is best spent.

Summer can be a prime time to accomplish 3 Foundational Ministry Practices:

One-on-one Time with Students
Summer often provides the freedom in student’s calendars to just “hang out.” Use this opportunity to “hang out” with them. Let every one of your volunteers know that this is priority-one for the summer. This can be a time where your whole team of adults can invite teenagers to connect in settings that are both fun and provoke face-to-face conversation. Isn’t you atat ministry is all about?

Recruiting Adult Volunteers
Conducting ministry with Young People takes a team approach. If you do not have other adult volunteers helping you, then that should be your top priority this summer. It’s a simple fact: it would be much easier to put adult mentors in one-on-one situations with teenagers if you actually had more adult mentors. Summer is a great time to recruit workers for the harvest (Matthew 9: 37,38). How? Simple. Just give them a taste of ministry. Invite potential adult volunteers to accompany you as you make one-on-one connections with your Young People. Once they get a taste of what all is involved you’d be surprised how easy it is to get them to commit to a year of working with you.

Gathering Student Leaders
As you are spending time with your students during the summer, keep an eye open for the students that   are ready to use their gifts and do ministry. This will probably be a small group, may be even 1 or 2 students that you identify, but that is okay. Not everyone is called to be a leader and to do ministry. While we might offer opportunities for all students to serve, identifying student leaders who will take seriously the responsibility of leadership is something very different. If we look to the example of Jesus we can see this time and time again. Serving helps people temporarily. Ministry allows God to work through us and make a difference for eternity.

So… You’re Going on a Mission Trip This Summer

One of the key spiritual growth engines in a youth ministry is helping students serve-and one of the great ways to get a concentrated burst in that area is to take your students on our short-term mission trip. I led lots of different trips over the years and I’ve learned a few things that I’d like to pass on.

Crawl, Walk, and Run - If possible, design your missions opportunities into 3 steps for students at various spiritual commitment levels. Do a local mission opportunity (Food Drive-one afternoon, easy, free). A long weekend/extended school break trip (4 days, higher cost, some travel). A global trip (international travel, 11 days, very high cost). Doing these incremental steps gives various students and parents options as to how committed both financially and timewise they are to mission opportunities.

Work the Cost for Leaders into the Cost per Student-A common question is what do you do about leaders cost, especially when budgets are tight-if you’re fortunate to have access to one in the first place. Several churches that I’m aware of work the leaders cost into the price of the missions trip, team or event. We don’t like asking our volunteers to pay to minister alongside students on a big event like a missions trip, because they are probably already taking hard earned vacation time. That’s just one philosophy… Yours may very.

Don’t Get Lost in Fundraising - Speaking of money, aggressively plan the price for the trip so that you don’t take the joy out of the trip by getting lost in fundraising help. It would be better to take a trip that cost less rather than getting stuck with a huge bill that can only be satisfied by 432 car washes and bake sales. Finding creative ways to fund raise will help take a lot of the burden off of taking a big trip. (Fundraising is a blog article in and of itself)

Bring the Family - If you have a family and it is appropriate I highly encourage you to incorporate your family on your mission trip. While your kids may be too young for the trip, they can learn a lot by watching other students in missions. Plus, it gives you some good family time together and an experience that could change your family’s life forever.

These are just a few of the things that I’ve learned, what would you add to this list?

The Importance of Summer Young People's Ministry

Summer can be one of the most influential seasons in ministry—here’s why I love it and why your summer activities matter so much.

Plan things to be ultra-relational.
Summer activities are an excuse to hang out with students. Take advantage of that opportunity. Dial down the program and work hard to create space for conversations and real life to be exposed. You might be surprised how the barriers come down when it isn’t over-programmed. Keep a journal and at the end of summer it will be exciting to see how God worked.

Make sure you make some “me” time.
This is really important! If you’re not careful, you could plan out every waking minute of the summer and end up burned out by August. You have to set a priority and limit for yourself. You need any kind of ministry, there is always one more person to help, one more event to plan, or one more phone call to make. Don’t make this mistake; usually youth workers make it once and learn from it.

Embrace the change of pace.
When things change, people pay more attention. When you shake things up over the summer you’ve got a chance to be creative in your teaching style, or give guest speakers a new voice to your students (and we don’t mean expensive guest speakers…we mean student leaders, the dad with a cool testimony, etc.). Don’t let the summer be the same old thing—time to experiment!

Summer activities build momentum for the kickoff of the school year.
A great summer makes for a great fall—work hard to invest in your people this summer and the returns will last until Christmas.

(I got some these ideas from a weekly e-mail that I get about youth and young adult ministry)

Planning A Great Summer Calendar

Here are a few great tips to have a great summer youth ministry program.

Plan Ahead - Here’s some good news right up front: If you’re thinking about summer now, you’re in good shape. Next year, start even earlier! If you plan in advance, even in broad strokes, it will greatly improve the chances of your summer’s big ideas becoming a reality. Resist the false belief that waiting until the pressure is on makes you better—it doesn’t; it just makes you more frantic.

Change Things Up - Get out of the school year rhythms and programs and shake things up. Always have youth group inside? What about taking it "under the stars." Always have small group? Change it up and go with midweek Bible study. Some are allowed to try some new things and experiment in the short term effectively. If it doesn't work out, you don't have to keep doing it. You might even stumble onto something that will make your youth ministry even better.

Free is Always Better - Summer events can get very expensive. Try to find as many free or low-cost activities and programs that you can. Your parents will love you for it.

Focus on Central Event - Summer is a great opportunity to do a big event and get excitement for the fall. Summer music festivals, a weeklong camp are great examples of this.

If it Worked, Use it Again - If you did something in previous summers that was a hit, then bring it back. When I was in the local church my students loved going to this one Christian music festival. So every year we kept it on the schedule.

Borrow from Everyone Else - Why reinvent the wheel? Scour the Internet for youth ministry blogs, game ideas, tips and anything else you can find and use it. Ask members of your congregation about their favorite memories of things they did during the summer as a student, you might be able to re-create it.

Don't Forget Your Family - We had youth and young adult ministry spend a good bit of time in the summer running from one activity to the next. Take care of yourself and make time for your family. There is always one more ministry thing you can do, however, if you don't set boundaries you'll burn out and hurt the one’s you love the most.

Start Planning Your Back-to-School Event - I know this is supposed to be about summer calendaring, but if you don't make a plan now for the fall kickoff, your summer and winter may just swallow it whole. You don't have to plan every little detail, but you need to start getting an idea of what you want to do and make the necessary preparation in advance.

Maximize Relationships - Your students are out of school. If you spend your entire summer running yourself ragged, you're gonna miss that sweet one-on-one time that you can only get during the summer. Find a safe way that you can hang out with your students. Go out for ice cream or invite them to help with your planning. Don't miss this opportunity to form relationships that will pay big dividends later on.