It’s summer time so what are you going to do? If you haven’t already done so, I would encourage you to change things up in your youth ministry during the summer. I have to start by saying that these ideas are geared more for the northern half of the U.S. where it’s cold during the school year. I would like to hear from youth ministries in the south to see what they do differently.

Here are some things to do differently:

1. Have a different set of volunteers for the summer. Give your current volunteers a break; they deserve it. Volunteers that have helped you all year need time to relax and get charged up because they will most likely (cross fingers and pray) will help again in the fall.
2. Lighten up your schedule. Have youth group only once or twice a month. Let’s face it, summer can be just as grueling as the school year with camps and mission trips going on. Having a light schedule is nice because then you can focus on your camp/s and or mission trip, not burn yourself or other volunteers out, and you can take the summer to focus on what you what to accomplish during the school year.
3. Take advantage of being outside. If you live in the northen half of the country you know that once it starts getting cold, outside stuff really doesn’t happen much besides broomball and skiing. Hold your youth meetings outside. You could have them at parks, lakes, people’s homes with big yards. The students want to be outside anyways, so use that to minister to them.
4. Go camping with your students. Here’s a great way to spend some time with your students and enjoy the out doors. I would also recommend that you take a small group camping. Don’t offer it to everyone, but rather select some students that you don’t know very well and say, “Let’s go camping”.
5. Go camping with your volunteer staff. What a great way to get to know each other and strengthen your team. Have specific things to do with them. I would encourage a ropes course or something of that nature to get you to work together. Have times of testimony, vision, and prayer around the campfire. It can be a great experience – you may even break out in a round of, “kum by ya” – just jokin, but not really:)

If anyone has some cool summer programming ideas, I would love to hear them; especially those folks down south – luv yall!

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