Written by Have you ever had to wrestle with knowing when to cancel programming or even if you should? I’ve worked in a variety of church settings with different perspectives and rationales on this topic. Some advocated for never cancelling, some had specific parameters for when you should, and still others put the choice in ministry leaders’ hands.
Today, my desire is to provide you with some perspective for when you should cancel programming. Granted, this must align with your leadership’s guidance and perspective so this may not be as simple as just cancelling programming. It may entail multiple conversations with leadership prior to ever having to cancel. It may also mean trying to find a middle ground.
This post is simply meant to provide a framework for you and to help alleviate some of the guess work that goes along with cancelling. So when should you cancel programming?
When weather is a factor.
Depending where you live this may not be as big of a deal as it may be for others. Living in places that get snow, have hills, and are prone to drastic temperatures swings has left us having to cancel more than once. This isn’t because we are scared of snow, cold, ice, heavy rain and flooding. It’s because we are being intentional in keeping our students, families, and volunteers safe. If safe travel is an issue and if the weather is being uncooperative, it is best to cancel to keep everyone safe.
Lack of volunteers.
This is not to say that if you don’t have volunteers you can’t have programming. But if you don’t have enough to safely run programming and care well for your students, it may be necessary to suspend programming for that day.
When schools cancel classes and/or activities.
A great metric for cancelling is looking at what schools are doing. Did they close for weather? Was there an early dismissal? Are afternoon and evening activities happening? These are key metrics to help determine if you should cancel programming.
When there’s illness going around.
This is one that you need to keep an eye on because depending on the sickness it could spread quickly in your group. Many of us unfortunately learned this during 2020. But if there’s a stomach bug, the flu, Norovirus, Covid, or really any nasty bug it may be advantageous to cancel programming.
We have done this a few times because we had highly contagious bugs going around and rather than potentially add to the spread (and put our immunocompromised people at greater risk) we have opted to cancel.
Around holidays.
We cancel programming around Christmas and Easter because we know many families are extra busy, spending time with loved ones, and traveling. So from a programmatic standpoint it makes sense to cancel our gatherings. This also affords our volunteers and staff time to catch their breath and be with their loved ones on special days.
Culturally specific reasons.
We live and work in a tourist-heavy economy. This means typically during peak tourist season our locals tend to leave because tourists come in, which directly affects our ministry. Because of that we change how we do ministry in the summer months and suspend normal programming for the sake of summer programming.
You may have similar circumstances for spring break or Christmas break. Or maybe your community has different events and activities throughout each year that pull people away from ministry programming. That may be a reason to cancel.
At the end of the day, the safety and care of your people is paramount. You need to make a judgement call and know that in your heart it’s the best decision you could make. It may not always be the right one, but if you make it for the right reasons you have made the best decision possible.
kalosministry.net 