075: 3 Steps To Turn The Summer Volunteer Slump Into A Season To Remember

075: 3 Steps To Turn The Summer Volunteer Slump Into A Season To Remember

Laurie Acker 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Acker. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.

Laurie Acker 0:15
Hey, welcome back to the small church ministry podcast. Have I got an episode for you today? This topic came up in our Facebook community last week, and I could not wait to address it. We started talking about the summer volunteer slump, which it seems as though most small churches actually have. You know what that’s like, summer starts and all of a sudden, some of your main volunteers are Mia, or people are just kind of coming and going in just a different type of a rhythm. What you’re going to walk away with today from this episode are three clear steps to your best summer ever at church in your small church. So I just want you to think about this for just a second. What if I told you, there’s actually nothing wrong with a summer volunteer slump, like that, it’s actually a good thing. What of having a slump in the summertime was actually an incredible opportunity to do something amazing. Instead of being something that’s kind of deflating, because I want to tell you, I really believe it is. So think about summer, summer vacation, like who doesn’t love summer? Looking forward to it as kids, we dream of summer break, a break from the grind. And even after school, when we get our first jobs, and we’re on our career paths, we just can’t wait until we can plan a vacation, which usually best time is summer, because of the sunshine. In summertime, it’s the best time to go to the beach, if you happen to live by one. Or how about if you’re out in the Midwest, just a pontoon boat hanging out on that lake, laying in the sun. There’s just something about a summer vibe, that’s a little more laid back. And it really is a break from everything you’re used to stressing and striving around like this is summer. So what would happen in our church, if instead of dreading lower attendance and core volunteers missing their dates to serve, and even maybe even knowing about that lower financial giving? Like, what if we actually embraced this season, as something really special, and something to look forward to. So let’s just talk about seasons for a second spring, summer, winter fall, like who set this whole thing up anyway? Yeah, it was God. It was our amazing Creator God, who set up seasons, to look different, to feel different, to experience his creation differently. And it’s not just about the Earth and the planet. It’s also our lives. Like, think about typical seasons in our lives, we have childhood. And there’s something so free and beautiful about childhood, we’re not worried about the stresses and the pressure of life. And there’s also a lot of challenges in childhood, like not having our freedom, right, and having people tell us what to do and get on getting all those lectures even. And we move on into young adulthood. And again, in every season, you can think about these beautiful special joys and experiences that only happen during different ages and different stages, whether it’s our early careers, or maybe a young love, or a frustrating love or building a family are finding that community of friends that is so special, even working into phases and seasons of heavy service or really tough work. And again, embracing the joys along with the challenges into retirement, even into our older seasons in life there. There are joys and there are stresses, but every single season is full, and unique and different. And we can go through those seasons very differently to we can go through dreading and be grudging and complaining and whining in any season. And we also can embrace that good stuff and those unique special joys at the very same time. But as you think about seasons, like they’re all different. And I believe this is on purpose and God given. So why in the church? Did we look at the summer season and say, Oh, it’s different people aren’t as committed. They’re not showing up. Maybe that is a God given gift. Like if this is like hitting you wrong, and you’re like, No way I just want you to take a breath and just think about
Laurie Acker 4:47
it. Could it be a God given season?
Laurie Acker 4:53
When I lived in Minneapolis, it was so interesting and so different. Because when summer came I couldn’t believe it. I grew up in the Midwest where it would snow and melt and snow and melt and summers were full of rain and sunshine and a lot cooler than it is out here in Arizona. But when I lived in Minneapolis, when that snowfall the year I moved to Minneapolis, we got 31 inches of snow on Halloween. And I do not believe I saw the grass until May like the snow never melted. There’s a lot of seasonal depression out in that part of the country. But when summer came, it was amazing and so different. Like it was almost like this cloud. Well,
Laurie Acker 5:37
I mean, literally physically, the cloud did lift like it was almost the only sunshiny time in in Minnesota.
Laurie Acker 5:43
But people went outside they skip to work, like rollerblading. Yeah, this was way back in the I guess it was probably early 90s. I was rollerblading around Lake Calhoun, in downtown Minneapolis. And I could not believe how many people I saw that I knew were like skipping work. Because in the Midwest, it just wasn’t quite like that. Like you had good days in the fall and bad days in the fall and good winter days and bad winter days. And here in Minnesota, I summer was celebrated in such a full way. And it was really beautiful. It was like so cool. There was a time I lived up further north in Minnesota in a little town called Cloquet. And I remember there was this really special restaurant, I believe it was mostly ice cream. But they closed for a big part of the year like they only open for a few months. And they rocked that season. Like that restaurant was full, out the door, waiting lines, everything. And when fall came the restaurant closed, like four months. And again, this was different for me. I wasn’t used to this type of seasonal businesses. But nobody else around me even blinked an eye. It was just a different rhythm. Nobody whined about it when the restaurant closed down, and I believe the owners actually, like took off the entire season like on vacations or lived different places. But people in the area they like recognize it as a season. And it was so exciting in the spring when this particular restaurant opened right back up like people anticipated it. They couldn’t wait for this restaurant to open back up. So do you see this different season, this different rhythm of seasons, the restaurant closed down, and it opened back up. And it was exciting. It wasn’t depressing. When we think about God creating seasons, could we just have a different kind of season in the summer, like with that in mind as a church, not just dreading the challenges, but recognizing and celebrating some goodness, too. Now, I’m not at all. I’m not at all suggesting that the church closes down in the summer. But I am suggesting maybe it would look a little bit different. If you have been struggling with summer slumps on a regular basis. If this is part of your church culture, you are not alone. Again, as I mentioned, this was a huge issue that was brought up in our Facebook community last week, and we had some good conversation around it. So how do we deal with this summer volunteer slump? I want to switch that question to this. How could we embrace a summer season in small churches? How could we embrace it? I’m going to give you three different tips just to create a different summer this year. Because honestly, this summer could be the perfect God led opportunity to experience something brand new from him. Something that reawakened something in your church or even in your heart, personally, I just want to take God’s word as it is. And let’s just assume for a minute that he’s actually still working, even when volunteers don’t show up, or when the service has less people coming in the summer. Like let’s assume that God is actually doing something new and something good. Even right now. Even if you know, you’re headed into a summer volunteer slump. So let me give you three tips. The first one is this, anticipate this. Now what I mean by this is anticipate that there’s going to be a volunteer slump, that you’re going to have less volunteers available, that you’re going to have less people even showing up when they say they’re going to because more things will interrupt what happens when we anticipate it. And why anticipate it because here’s the thing. This is not shocking. It’s not unusual. It’s probably not surprising at all. Big as this has been the rhythm of your church for some time, it is for most churches. So if you know it’s not shocking or unusual or surprising, like let’s accept it, this isn’t new. This happens every year, there’s nothing to panic about. And honestly, a wave of frustration that starts going around the globe about less volunteers, like, I don’t believe that’s from God. But it’s true with less volunteers, we can’t run the programs the same. Or maybe in your church, one person or one family feels they have to step up and do more. And maybe that person is you probably is, you feel like you have to fill in for all these people not showing up to keep everything running. But let’s just take a step back. As if this is shocking, like, you know, it’s going to happen. So anticipate it. Because if you know what’s going to happen, there is so much good stuff to do to prepare to do things different to respond to it. It’s kind of like this. For me, I’m not in love with cooking or meal planning. making dinner and eating dinner kind of interrupts my my schedule, right? But if every time dinner rolls around, and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, dinner again, I can’t believe this. I hate this. When am I going to eat? Why do I have to eat? Why did God create my body to have to stop all these crazy things I’m doing and have to eat? Why is this happening over and over again? Like, can you imagine if I did that? Now, I definitely could do that. I could create a lot of drama over things like this every single evening, evening, if I wanted to. I could whine and wail and bemoan the fact that God created my body to actually need food and need rest. Or I could accept it and anticipate it and be like, Yeah, I need to eat. So how can we do this? Well anticipate it just know it’s coming. The second thing I want to throw out to you is to change your mindset. As much as I could whine about needing to cook, or meal planning or the price of groceries or even I could whine about the fact that God has no idea about how much time I would have if I didn’t have to waste time eating right? If like I could do that I could whine about all those things. Or I could change my mindset. I could call them the drama. And not only that, I could look to solution. Because as long as we’re focused on frustration, and annoyance, and oh my gosh, this is happening. We’re short volunteers. Do you know that your brain actually was shut down on solutions? God has given us this ability and ability to choose and to find solutions. It’s actually quite an amazing human thing. Because my dog doesn’t have this. He can pot his dish all day long. But in my house, he really doesn’t have a whole lot of choices. He needs a way to we put the food down. Okay, but this is not so with us. This is not so with humans. God has created us to find solutions to find goodness, and to be creative. So I’d like to suggest that there’s one mindset that we need, like it is required is to quit blaming everyone else for our frustrations, our feelings, and our own choices. Because honestly, that’s usually where this is going. When we say we have a volunteer slump. These volunteers aren’t showing up. We don’t have enough volunteers in the summer. But here’s the thing that is blaming everyone else. But honestly, most of our frustrations, our fears, our disappointments, our depressions, they’re from the inside of us. Now it’s easier to blame everybody else. Like we hear it all the time I do it myself, right? They’re not committed. No one’s showing up. They say they’re going to come but they don’t like what good does that do? But I just want you to consider this for a moment. Is your happiness really determined by everyone else? Could we find our own happiness? Is your fulfillment, determined by the choice of others because how fatalistic is that let’s get a little more spiritual. And say this is your sense of peace and joy, really determined by other people? Because I don’t believe that’s biblical. If regular volunteers are on vacation, does that mean that you need to be frustrated or that you need to do things that are beyond your capacity? Because it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that you do not have to step in and fill every spot. We’re going to talk about some creative solutions and how church really can go on beautifully. But I really believe this is a huge mindset shift. To know that It is possible to have the peace of God and joy and fulfillment in ministry, even if every single other volunteer around you like bales. Now, this is how I know it’s possible. Because I see people living this every day,
Laurie Acker 15:17
I get to interact with people in small churches truly from all over the globe. And I see it all. But I want to tell you, the people who are excited about their small churches, and about what God is doing in their midst, there’s one thing they have in common, and it is not numbers. It is not the size of attendance, it is not the size of their church, it is not the size of their programs, it is not the size of their budgets. Do you know what it is? They like live on a different plane with Jesus spiritually, emotionally, they are looking for what God is doing everywhere they go, and in everything they do. Their joy, their fulfillment is not based on what other people are doing around them. They really just live to join God in what he’s doing. These real life, people in small churches, with the same woes and struggles and challenges of every other small church, who have still have less consistent attendance in summer, still have less volunteers, they still have the same inability to run the programs they used to run. But they’re different because they’re experiencing joy and hope, even when things maybe other people would say are terrible. They’re embracing what is happening, instead of what isn’t. Because as much as we look at what isn’t happening, who’s not showing up and who’s not coming, there is still something very real, that is happening in our midst all the time. Because that’s the God we serve these people, these people who experienced joy and hope when other people are not in the same kind of challenges. They pivot, the pivot with the season, they go with God, they don’t hold on to everything functioning exactly the same all year long. And they also don’t see it as a bad thing. When something changes, or something doesn’t show up the way it used to. They don’t see it as a bad thing, they may see it as a new thing. But before I go much further on this train of thought, please hear me, I am not suggesting that you claim something that is not true or is not there. I am not suggesting that you claim joy when you are frustrated. Because I really hate this. I’m gonna say this theology that’s out there, that we’re just going to speak joy over things when we are sad, and we’re not going to talk about sadness or pain or struggle, because I’m not like that. And I don’t believe that’s biblical. I believe the range of emotions that God gave us as humans is throughout Scripture. That is why the psalms are full of sorrow, and anger, and sadness and joy. Because God gave us this full range of emotions to experience. So if it feels sad, like except that this this sadness, feel sad, if you’re experiencing some anger, yet experienced that anger, experienced disappointment, explore it, be curious about it, invite God into it. However, what I also want to throw out there is we get to choose how we’re going to show up and function in the midst of it all. I choose how long I want to sit with that disappointment. I choose how I respond to that disappointment. I can respond crabby and defeated. But I also can choose to respond, moving towards solution and hope. This podcast right now is a day late. And I want to say this is the first of 75 podcasts that almost didn’t come out this week. Maggie and I looked at each other yesterday and said, Yeah, this has been a rough weekend for our family. There was a fall in emergency room visit a day, you know, with doctors and specialists visits that I did not anticipate at all that I didn’t have room for. I had to make some really hard choices. Even with my church ministry. I had to back out of a commitment, a big commitment that I had made in a new place where I am. I had to deal with emotions from many people on the outside some who were very, very angry with me very close to me in my life who were very angry with me. I was functioning in crisis mode, holding on to sanity doing this well weighing decisions compartmentalizing things, phone calls, roles, all sorts of stuff. And I also cried a lot. But back to the point. I was experiencing a whole lot of emotions. And yesterday I woke up and I knew I could just sit and cry all day like I knew I had that option. I could cry All day, I could call off everything I was going to do. But here’s the thing, I stopped and I asked myself, I literally asked myself this question out loud. I stopped, and I said, How do I want to show up today? Like, who do I want to be today? What do I really want this to look like? I’m telling you, I could have gone either way. And I knew it would have been okay, either way, too. But here’s what went through my mind. I want to be emotionally honest, if people asked me how my weekends been, I want to tell them, I’m really at a point in my life where I want you to know the whole me, the vulnerable parts, the capable parts, the confident parts, the failure parts, I want you to know how much I feel and how much I love people. This is a big side of me. I don’t need to be superwoman all the time. But I’m going to tell you what else I decided yesterday, is I decided I really did not want to be the person who needed to cry all day, because I didn’t need to cry all day I could have. I wanted to be a person who finds solutions and who is resilient. I want it to be somebody who rose to the challenge, even in the midst of hard stuff. Because I really want that. And I want to make a difference. And I want to have great relationships. And I want to be a conqueror. And I want to be able to function through this hard time. And I also want to feel my emotions. So what does this have to do with summer, volunteer slumps? Here’s the thing, it might be tough, it might be disappointing, it might be depressing. You might be angry at certain people when they don’t show up, or really starting to compare yourself and your level of commitment to others. But this is what I want to say, in the midst of feeling that in tough situations, with lots of outside things happening that we have no control over, we still do get to choose how we show up. We get to choose how we respond and how we function, I get to choose that and so to you. So a volunteer slump does not have to depress you discourage you endlessly or cause you ongoing stress. You can feel all the fields and still choose to embrace the goodness of that season. It’s so important to remember that you have a choice. This is so true. This is God given free will we get to choose we get to do we get to act less volunteers does not mean you need to do more, I promise you it does not. There is nothing that says you need to fill in all the gaps, or you need to run all the programs, or your programs need to run in the same way either. Because just as a little reminder, what do you call a church that doesn’t have a Live worship band at church? And what do you call a church that doesn’t have a Sunday school program, a church, the family of God. So here’s that thing about the summer volunteer slump, it actually could be a good thing. This is the mindset shift. You can choose this, this could be a good thing, a season for something different. A season for something better, maybe not permanent, but a season. And if it’s a good thing, by the way, there’s no one to blame. There’s no shame on those volunteers. There’s no Shame on those people who prioritize their vacations. There’s no need to compare yourself to them. Because it’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. If it’s a good thing, there’s no blame to go around, because we’re going to celebrate it. And by the way, this summer does not need to be like last summer, or any other summer, it doesn’t need to be slumpy at all. It could be set apart special. A season that’s different because it is a set apart season. And this leads us to point three, which you’re going to love because we’re going to get a little bit practical here. We’re going to talk about planning for the summer volunteer slump. So you anticipated it, you knew it was coming. The second point was changing your mindset embracing this as a good thing. This can be a very good thing. And number three is to plan for it. We’re going to plan for the volunteer slump. Now here are the facts, there’s less volunteers and your attendance is probably less consistent. Those are facts don’t have to be good or bad. Don’t have to be judgey don’t have to be joyful doesn’t have to be sad. Those are just simple facts, straight up facts, no emotions, less volunteers less consistent attendance. So what are we going to do with that?
Laurie Acker 24:20
This actually could be a refreshing season. Less volunteers and less attendance that doesn’t need to mean less impact, or less fun or less ministry joy. It could mean refreshing with more space built in more margin, more calm, more purpose. So let’s plan for it. Okay, as we step into planning for it, if you are in the middle of your summer and you’re like it is too late to plan for it. I’m already here I just want to tell you first off, it is not too late. You could be smack dab in the middle of summer or toward the end of summer and still pivot. We love to talk about pivots in the small church Academy and if you have not checked About the academy, please do so we’ll leave a link in the show notes. It’s where so much transformation takes place. But in the small church Academy, we love talking about pivots. Because we can make a plan all we want and I love plans. But we also need to be ready to pivot. Because everything doesn’t happen how we plan unexpected come up just like me. And you know, my family stuff this past weekend like I never got a plan that there’s a quote that the great fighter Muhammad Ali said he would say this, he’d say, Float like a butterfly sting like a bee. And although I don’t want to relate the second half of that, quote to church ministry, I do want to talk about the first part Float like a butterfly. Because here’s the thing about butterflies. It is so easy for butterflies to change directions. Did you know that like, feel free to Google this later. But if you look at the way their bodies are made, if they’re, if their little body wiggles just a tiny little bit, their wings, like change the total trajectory of where they’re flying, they pivot very, very quickly. They’re just I’m like moving using my hand right now. It’s so funny, because I know you can’t see me. But I’m like, move my hand like a butterfly. And it pivots. It turns really quick. The word agile or agility comes to mind. When Muhammad Ali said, Float like a butterfly, like what do you think he was talking about? He wasn’t talking about being delicate, like a butterfly, he was talking about being agile, being able to pivot really quickly. And I think this is such a great thing when you’re following Jesus. And especially when you’re involved in or leading ministry, this huge skill in being able to keep in step with the Spirit to pivot quickly and easily to not be so firmly stuck in our plans, that we can’t make a quick adjustment. And by the way, this is also one of the best, most valuable things about small churches is that we are agile, there is not as much red tape there is there are not as many layers, as there are in a large church, it is very hard to pivot things quickly in a large church, small church, not so much. We can pivot very, very quickly. So if you are in the middle of summer, this, you’re not left out of this, we’re gonna plan for a great summer. Even if you’re pivoting for the last couple of weeks for the last couple months, you don’t have to plan really far ahead, you can pivot at any time. But here’s the thing about summer, this is how I want you to think about planning for it. Summer is a great time for three things, relationships, vision, and also for rest. If you prioritize relationships in the summer, and by the way, you can do this with or without programs. Your fall is going to feel so different. If you just prioritize relationships. If you’re a paid staff or your ministry leader and you devote a certain number of hours to ministry every week, think about connecting with people like putting that at the top of your priority list. Taking somebody out for coffee, or even meeting in a very small group for breakfast, literally just connecting with people with no agendas, no studies, do you know that this is what Jesus did? It is not less ministry, to spend unplanned time with people were actually a bit misguided when we equate programs with ministry. And we do this a lot. What’s your ministry like? And we start rattling off what programs we do. But the value of any program actually only lies in relational connection. There’s no intrinsic value in a program. Those programs are only valuable if they lead to transformation, which is always bound in relationships. So why don’t we just eliminate the middleman for the summer, the middleman being programs like let’s just skip the programs and just go right to relationships. If one on one conversations aren’t your strong suit, what an amazing time to learn the skill to practice it, to try out great questions to try out listening better to learn how do you know how many people would be blessed by someone who is listening? Instead of talking? Do you realize how impactful listening is as a ministry? Like we’ve got to quit thinking we got to speak better and lead better and facilitate better. If we’re going to do better ministry. We need to learn to listen better. So maybe the summer maybe that’ll be a little different. If you are using programs to build relationships, totally great. But in the summer, you’re short volunteers. Why don’t you do things differently? Let’s talk about a summer pivot for programming. Think about programming that’s easy and no fuss and leads directly to great relationships. There’s a few programming tips for the summer and you should come up with your own creative ideas, things that work for you, but let me just give you a few things just to get those creative juices going. First off, please quit running programs for no people. If People aren’t coming, like quit trying to run them. This only leads to frustration. If it’s not successful in the summer, try something else. Here’s the best way to try something else is to actually embrace the phrase, let’s just try this. Let’s run an experiment. If you’re in charge of a ministry team, or you’re the pastor, like, use that phrase, let’s try this. Let’s run an experiment. Because you know what happens when we experiment with things? Wait, we don’t have a lot of expectations. We’re not sure how it’s gonna come. And that takes off the whole pressure of failure, or doing it right. Just run some experiments, try some things, take some risks, be creative, have fun. With your programming in the summer, just try things. Do more things together on purpose. Intergenerational, different ministries mixing together, church family celebrations, intergenerational service projects, summer is a great time to combine efforts and combine people in creative ways. Like take different ministry teams and put them together a women’s event, maybe invite the youth to decorate for your women’s party and maybe swap roles. Have the women decorate for the youth summer pool party or something. Children’s events, how about bring the Men’s Ministry in for the summer to run the children’s events to run the programs. I promise you if you don’t usually have men running the programs for children’s event, it’s gonna look different it might be even be an experiment on its own right. But do special summer things, things that only happen in the summer. Now, when I say do special summer things, you may have just had some little things go off in your mind like little alarm bells going off. We don’t we don’t have the time. We don’t have the effort. I’m not saying bigger. I’m also not saying lesser. I’m saying Special. Special things don’t need to be expensive or fussy. One of my favorite experiences I had with my mom when I was a kid I still remember it is when she took me to Helen Huxley’s ice cream parlor on a special ice cream date. I promise you, my mom did many things. For me. That took more time and more effort and more money, throwing a birthday party, you know, saving up for some special things that we did. But this ice cream date it still stands out is one of my favorite memories with my mom. So special things don’t need to be expensive or fussy. They can be very easy. They can be no prep, they can be no fail, get togethers, like a Breakfast Club, for the youth, once a month, put a date on the calendar and somebody open their homes, invite kids to come and make pancakes together. And by the way, pancakes and eggs are really cheap. I promise you if somebody in your church who would open their homes, and if two kids show up or one, and you have one adult there who is just amazing and loves that kid, it’s going to be great. You don’t need 12 kids to show up or 20 or 40 or even half a dozen. A breakfast club can be super successful with just a few. What about a book club for women in the summer? A fun book, this does not need to be a study. I read a fiction book a few years ago, I believe it was called the prayer box. I’ll try to drop a link in the show notes if I’m able to. It was a really great fiction easy read book that I enjoyed. That led me to think about Jesus in a new way. But it wasn’t deep or philosophical. I didn’t have to do a study. That’s a great way to run a book club for women. And if they don’t, if they don’t read the book, they still can come. That’s easy. No prep, no fail get together. What about replacing Sunday morning Sunday school with a waffle breakfast family style for everyone in church. Now, if this just went through your head that you’re going to have to have a crew to set up and do the breakfast. No, I’m actually saying the opposite. Somebody brings the ingredients and you cook together. People come together, set people up. Some people can make the waffles and some people can mix the eggs. Some people can cut the fruit, do it together as a family.
Laurie Acker 34:17
Another great thing to do to make summer special is with leadership teams. Thinking of developing volunteers in a new way and building in a lot of dreaming and visioning. So maybe less training like in our I don’t know when the typical way you think of training and more dreaming and visioning. It doesn’t have to be formal meetings. Maybe there’s a book you’re reading maybe you start a special pop up Facebook community. Maybe you just get together and write seven year letters or write them on your own and come back and share them. If you don’t know what a seven year letter is. Please join the Academy. We all do this early on we write a seven year letter of our visions and dreams for the future. Sure, you may want to show up live with, with people on your teams and in your ministry areas. It could be a conversation that happens over zoom. It could be even an email thread that happens but with your whether you have an established leadership team, or you’re even just looking at looping and new people into a ministry area, dreaming and visioning in the summer, instead of heavy things, like training on policies or putting together mission statements dreaming and visioning, can be so beautiful in the summer, especially when you also have a focus on rest in the summer. Remember, I told you three things that are beautiful in the summer relationships, rest and visioning. And the more rest you build into your lifestyle and your rhythm, and it can be so beautiful in the summer when we back off some of our regular programming, when we release the pressure and the stress, which is perfect timing, because everybody’s not showing up anyway. And to take that rest and allow God to give us new visions and dreams, and to be able to tap into that it’s so beautiful. Like, can you envision any one of these things I just mentioned working in your church book clubs, breakfast clubs, Sunday morning waffle time. Easy no prep events, leadership visioning. Coming together just to share dreams with no pressure. Can you envision any of these working in your ministry area or your church? Because which one is it? Instead of letting summer be a time to get frustrated or bogged down or negative? Or doing that thing with guilt and shame for people not coming? Could you maybe just experiment with this like let’s just try it just embrace this summer or this season? As a relational dreaming back to Jesus time to do this on purpose, not as a Plan B, because less people are coming but on purpose, because it’s a different season. Can you take the time to focus on relationships, to focus on rest again, look at this season, as a resting up and like Rhian invigorating for fall. Because we were never meant to be on a continual grind that maintains the same status quo, the same energy levels all year long, or all are lifelong. God did not create the world like this. He did not create people like this. Remember what we talked about at the beginning about seasons. Maybe this summer, is going to be a focus on vision for the next season. As you incorporate more rest. And watch your vision grow. If you are a paid staff ministry leader, or you are just wanting to invest in growth and impact and make a difference as a relational giant or a ministry Guru in your church, impacting your community, what would that be? You may also want to devote more time to personal development, to learning ministry skills, relational skills. It is a fabulous time by the way to join the small church Academy. We often have had people join in the summer because they’re taking some sabbatical time. They’re taking some time away from the regular grind of ministry. And they’re investing in deeper growth for themselves so they can make a more incredible impact in ministry. Check out the small church network and academy please, we’re going to put a link in the show notes. If you just go to small church ministry.com/network You’re going to see a lot of information there. And why this might be a perfect fit for you. But how is all this for kicking? The summer volunteers slumped to the curb? Like can we just do it? Instead of going into this down slumping kind of road? let’s reclaim summer for our small churches as a special set apart season. A season of relationships a season of rest, a season of vision. No more feeling deflated. But actually increasing excitement and motivation. Looking ahead with vision, does that sound good to you? If you want even more motivation in your church, share this podcast episode, copy the link posted in your church, Facebook community, send it out in an email, blast. Whatever you need to do, just just do an experiment. Like let’s just try this. Share it with somebody in your church or a few people and let me know how it goes. Let me know what they say. Let me know about your conversation. I would love to know because I’m going to tell you right now whoever’s listening to this podcast right now live In the summer of 2023, we can totally lead the way into the best ministry summer ever. I promise, we’re gonna watch it happen. And speaking of the best summer ever next week, I really hope you’ll join our anniversary fun. As we celebrate our third year anniversary of the small church ministry organization, we are going to celebrate with special invites, discounts, prizes, interviews, and even a few future reveals. And not only are we going to celebrate with purpose, but if you are a member of the small church network, you’re also going to receive a special recorded workshop on how to host celebrations that lead to impact and change and transformation in your own church. And in your specific ministry area. Like too often we throw annual celebrations or, you know, even Christmas celebrations are seasonal parties. And while they’re fun and relational, they can be so much more. Because celebrations aren’t just meant to celebrate the past, they should lead to growth and future impact. At least if I’m going to put my time into something, there is always going to be future impact. And I believe that is very much like our God. So come celebrate with us next week, but also grab onto the shared momentum that is spreading like a huge wave all across the planet. Small churches getting energized new momentum, deeper growth, increased impact, because we are proving right and left and every which way that your impact does not need to be limited by the size of your church, in fact, oftentimes small, least even greater impact because small church ministry is not less and this was modeled by Jesus Himself. Small church ministry is not less, but it is very different. So please share this episode with a friend or with your entire church. And join us next week in The celebration The week of June 11. I think it’s through the 16th watch Facebook and Instagram for updates, links and coupon codes and invites to the interviews and all sorts of special things. You are not going to want to miss it. All right. We will talk to you very very soon. Until next week. Be alive