Have you ever given serious thought to not having youth camp? Most haven’t. It is a conversation that we had at one point in my career and considered pulling it from the summer schedule. After much thought and intense conversation, we continued having an annual youth camp.

Here are a few of the things we learned in the process:

Before you get too far into the summer, take a moment to pray, dream, and journal. If you review this weekly, you will experience additional joy in a very busy season.

In the scope of a Youth Ministry calendar year, we tend to sprint during the summer when the stakes are the lowest. It is hardest to reach students when they are scattered. If you can’t adjust your expectations, then you may run out of energy and resources during the summer and miss the best opportunity you have to reach students—the Fall.

Now more than ever it is time to experiment in your ministry. If you have been preoccupied with getting back to business as usual, then give yourself a much-needed break.

Ministry is in a rebuilding/rethinking process and it may take several attempts to find a new course for your ministry. Be prepared to focus and be persistent. Take notes and when you start to get traction then learn to scale your ministry to the next level.

This summer will be full of surprises. Unlike other summers - excluding 2020 - there will be opportunities for enrichment for you and your students that you never dreamed possible.

To that end, consider the following five ideas for enriching your summer:

You are ready to go for Senior Sunday except for maybe a few details, some errands, and of course, the annoying last-minute text wondering if it is too late to turn in information.

So, I hesitate to be an interruption to your well-oiled machine, but I’ve been thinking about something that I wanted to bounce off of you.

The best time to plant an oak tree was 10 years ago, the next best time…………………..today!

Senior Sunday has the potential to be one of the high moments in our student ministries but often it just isn’t. I’ll be the first to admit that each year I fight the tendency to say, “Who is this kid?” or
“Where have they been?” and leave it at that rather than enjoying their class legacy.

Do you have students with leadership potential and you’re just not sure how to train them? Or maybe you have a student leadership team, and you’re looking to give a couple of kids an opportunity to take the next step in leadership? What if you could roll leadership development into your overall camp experience?