This summer marked my 13th Summer at Saddleback, and in less than one week it will officially be “in the books”. A few things that have stuck out:
- Our Summer series, “The Lab”, has been one of our best in a long, long time. Because we typically teach in 3-week blocks, our 10-week summer series usually begin to feel too long around week 4! But this year seemed to work well. I think it was the combination of really good content mixed with fun programming ideas. Most of the fun programming ideas came from some of our younger, college aged leaders who really stepped up made some great stuff happen.
- Summer camp remains a mystery to me. It’s too expensive and our attendance is dropping every year. But it’s also a highlight of every summer! I’m becoming more and more convinced that we need to find a non-traditional way to give students a “camp” experience that is cost effective.
- It seems like the more activities we cram into our summer calendar, the worse the attendance is. I wonder if there is some universal law or formula at play that goes something like: there are only X number of students who will participate in events, and they will only participate in X number of events that cost somewhere between X and X amount of money. For sure, there are some students who come to just about everything, but most don’t….so why do we constantly feel the need to cram our summer calendars full of activities?
- The more we give ministry away, the better it becomes! This year we handed off larger chunks of our ministry to volunteers and summer interns than ever before and the results were tremendous. The only downside to this that I can find is that giving ministry away seems to create more activity which adds to the dilemma I mentioned above.
If you take a few minutes to reflect on your summer, share them with the rest of us.