This weekend is Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer. So, are you planning a summer slowdown? Most churches across America assume summer will be a slow time. Many make changes that ensure that assumption comes to pass. Whether it’s dropping back from two services to one, or eliminating a Saturday evening service, or changing the regular service time to an earlier hour in order to give people an opportunity to get the most out of their Sundays, or shutting down children’s programming or youth programming, each of those actions ensures a slowdown.
Here’s a suggestion that will help you continue to reach as many people as possible. It’s important to remember many people move during the summer months, and may be looking for a church. If yours seems to be “shut down” for the summer, they might look elsewhere. So, the suggestion is: reduce your meeting schedule during the summer, but keep your services and programs going. We all need a little “down time” during the course of a year, and while summer makes sense as one of those times, the more we can keep things “normal” for the folks who come on the weekends, the less likely we will be to face a summer slowdown.
Yes, members of our church families will go on vacation this summer, but most of them won’t be gone for more than a couple of weeks. Yes, some folks go to camp or the beach every week, but it’s a minority. The reality is if the people know the church is “open” for the summer, they’re far more likely to be there, than if we give them signs that we’re not expecting them to be there. At New Life we’re giving folks a summer opportunity we’re calling New Life University or NLU. It’s a classroom style experience, that will run for ten weeks during June through August. While that may sound like a bad time to hold such a course, nearly 10% of our people have signed up to participate. I will be teaching the course, and have already outlined the course, so it will only be a matter of the actual hour and a half in class time each week that will be added to my schedule.
So what are you doing this summer to show your church family you’re open for their participation? Are you doing anything special? We’re having our second annual Fireworks Night on the 3rd of July . We held our first one last year on July 3, as part of our 15th anniversary celebration, and found out the community loved the idea. We realized that while there’s a good bit of volunteer time needed on the day of the event, since we outsource the fireworks, it’s a relatively simple event to host, and it has a high, positive impact in the community. You may not be able to do something like that, but you’d be surprised the goodwill you can generate with a brief, concentrated event that welcomes the community.
My point is simply to help all of us consider how we can maximize the impact of summer rather than defaulting to the summer slowdown.
Here’s to leading better, by being strategic about the upcoming summer–not just today, but from now through August!