Let’s Talk Summer — Yeah I said Summer — Jan. 25, 2023

It has been a month since Christmas. You threw a fund New Years and/or Christmas party. Your kids are back to school. You are digging in for along winter’s nap, so what do you do now? Maybe you have a winter event or two planned, but that’s what is right in front of you, if you are working with students and their families, you know they make plans early, and so should you.

I learned this lesson the hard way. I was new in ministry and had only been married a few months when I planned a summer calendar in May, instead of January, and the only camp spot was the last camp of the year. After begging students and their parent to sacrifice a week that I was sure was going to change their lives for an eternity, I forgot to check with my new wife. First she did not have the time off from her job for that week — everyone else had asked for that week off and she couldn’t get it. Second the day we were going to leaver for camp, landed right on our first wedding anniversary. Third, because we had waited so long, 5 to 10 of our kids (group only consisted of 15 or 20 kids) were not going to be able to go because band camp was starting in the middle of that week. As you can see I was in a bad way because I didn’t plan ahead, and on top of all that, the camp we had to sign up for was going to be a 12 hour drive one way. I was in the dog house with my wife for the next couple of months, the parents were very concerned about the long drive and most likely wouldn’t have been okay with things had our adult leaders not given them some peace of mind, and my supervisor gave me a long lecture about planning ahead better. What I should have done was start planning right after Christmas for what was going to happen in the summer time.

The summer is a busy but pivotal time for youth ministry, but you already knew that. I mean the students are out of school and have a more flexible schedule, but they quickly fill it up with all sorts of activities from family vacation, to band/sports/choir camps, and hopefully a church camp. Which means if you want to get on their summer schedule you need to do it fast and early.

The hard part is that summer is “sooo far away…” It is almost 5 months away at this point. Your student’s taste will change 5 times or more depending on what influencer they follow and what the hottest Tik Tok trend might be at the time. So establishing a goal for the summer so the students can wrap their head around it is paramount. If they have an imagination for what the summer will be like you create anticipation that will transcend the trends. It’s just the same with band camp or soccer two-a-days, students will sacrifice their time an energy for those activities because they have an imagination for what will happen if they commit to a long hot summer. So that should be number one in planning your summer: Make sure you have a goal or vision set out in front of everyone. It. could be a summer of service, it could be building your tribe, it could be making an impact with one specific ministry, it could be helping students take their next step in faith, or any number of possibilities. Once they see it, getting them to sign up for things is as simple as reminding them that we are all trying to__________ (fill in the blank).

Step two in planning the summer should be laying out the calendar. You will need to do a little research here. Talk with parents, coaches, local teachers, students, and YOUR SPOUCE, to see where important dates overlap. For instance when worked in rural Indiana there were two things you didn’t compete with, Football season starting (so August was out) and the 4-H fair. That means my summer plans stopped at the last week of July. With family vacations and the like, we had to plan all of our major events in late May, June, and early July. Lay out the calendar, find out what is important, plan accordingly.

Step three is to connect with things that will help you disciple your students. Students have community on their ball teams and their campus groups, your goal should always include helping your students take another step in their faith. So as you set your goal — cast your vision — make sure you connect that goal with opportunities that help you disciple your students. I worked at one suburban church where I thought taking our students to a camp would help them. After talking with my students and the adult leaders I was convinced that our student’s discipleship would not be served by a camp or camp-like atmosphere. Instead our students loved music and going to concerts, so I found Cornerstone, a music festival put on by the Jesus People USA. We camped out, listened to shows, I even convinced them to go to workshops where they could hear a little bit more about who Jesus was to them, but most of all we had a lot of really great discussions with he students about them and how Jesus might be part of their everyday lives. We were able to meet the students where they were and help them take another step in their discipleship.

Step four is choosing the right things. Like I said above, when you find things that will help your students take steps of discipleship you invest your time there. The temptation will be to fill that calendar up to the brim with good stuff. As the old saying goes, “the enemy of the great is the good.” You can have too much good stuff. If that’s the case families and students will choose what they want, they won’t come to everything. That will leave you in the dumps and exhausted. So make the hard choices in January. Your local camp might be great, but CIY is better for your mental health and works better for your calendar. You may feel guilty for saying your can’t help at the local camp, but in the long run it will help you disciple your students better.

Step 4.5, we will call it, is do some marketing. Having fun with this might be a creative outlet for you and will definitely go a long way win capturing the student’s attention. Once you have a goal for the summer set, give it a theme or a brand or something fun and run with it. One year I took bottles of Tabasco and reworked the labels to have our summer calendar of events on it. We called it Hot Summer, gave out bottles of Tabasco to everyone, catching their attention and reminding them that we are going to have a fun summer. Two things here, this is only 4.5 because if you don’t have time, don’t waste time on this AND remember your students are marketed to death already, so if this seems like too much, then just shelve it for another time.

Step five is help the students and their leaders set their own goals for the summer. The closer you get to Easter the better with this one. Take some time in your regular meeting to tell the students about your summer plans and then talk to them about setting summer goals. Guide your adult leaders to not only set their own goals but help their students set goals based on the student ministry vision for the summer. This will go a long way in help create community and intentionality for the summer. Not only does this re-enforce your summer theme, but it empowers the students to own the ministry for themselves.

Lastly, make sure your rest properly. Summer can be a great and productive time for a Youth Minister but it can be exhausting as well. So make sure you take your days off religiously. With travel and camp that might be tough, but make sure you adjust them to rest your body and soul. Swimming at camp with kids is not rest, it’s work for you. Going to the beach during a mission trip is not rest it’s work for your, so make sure you take time off regularly. Remember how I started this post, I told you about my 1st anniversary and how I messed it up by scheduling our leave date on my actual anniversary? Don’t do that. Make sure you schedule time for your family and take a vacation, even if its after the season is over. I used to take the week of 4-H camp off in Indiana because all my students were busy and I coached football starting in August, so I took that week off. We went to the fair and visited kids some, but that was one night where my kids saw sheep, ate cotton candy, and we road the Farris Wheel and the rest of the week we went to the lake and rested.

Summer will be here before you know it. If you haven’t started yet, I’ll encourage you to start working on it right away. If you don’t all those dreams of capitalizing on the possibilities once summer gets here, will be gone, and you will be left wondering what happened. Happy planning.