Quick Tip: Work Within Your Ministry’s Seasons

How does your youth group function year round? Does your calendar primarily look the same month in and month out? Are there rest periods or seasons where ministry slows? Is your attendance the same throughout the year?

As we approach the end of the school year, our student ministry at our church shifts its programming model to a more laidback style because we live in and serve a tourist town. What that means for us is lower attendance during the summer due to locals retreating on trips and vacations as tourists come in.

And you may ask yourself, “What about the tourists, don’t you want to have something for them as well?” The truth of the matter is that for all the tourists who visit Hershey, Pennsylvania, very few are looking for a church to attend on a Sunday or youth programming on a Wednesday evening.

It isn’t that we don’t care, it’s that we shift our model to address the realities of our community and best minister to our people when they are present. We host monthly large group gatherings that are highly relational and community focused. We intentionally encourage small groups to gather and share life together. Our staff team is highly visible and building relationships on Sundays.

The truth of the matter is this: each of the communities we serve in have ministry seasons and they all will look different. If your students are around the entire year, you may continue with programming straight through. If summer is a down time, you may switch up how programming looks. If you take trips during spring break, then your programming will look different.

For each of us, we need to look at the communities we serve and ask how our ministry is and should be functioning. We also need to consider other aspects like our volunteers and protecting seasons of rest and refreshment. There are additional pieces like thinking through the taxing role that running full programming yearlong will take on your facilities team. And there are many other questions we can ask depending on what out context looks like.

What we need to consider is how our ministry looks throughout the year, and what programming looks like in each season. When we step back and take an honest assessment, it allows us the opportunity to consider new and exciting ways of facilitating our ministries to best care for and reach all the students we are serving.