| Summer Recreation
Patti Mitschke (a Church Volunteer Central member)
Summer, with it’s slower pace and freer schedules, can be a time to try new ideas, experiment with something out of the ordinary, and take a vacation from the same old routine. Here are some fun ideas for summer ministry. Friday nights in summer mean video rentals! Why not use this opportunity to reach out to the community in a fun and unique way? Have volunteers offer a free bag of freshly popped popcorn to video store patrons as they leave. Be sure to get permission from the store’s owner or manager first, and only give out popcorn as people leave to avoid making a mess in their store. Print up labels with information about the church and attach them to the popcorn bags. Surprise your faithful volunteers with a special car wash one Sunday. Select a group of dedicated volunteers such as Sunday school teachers. Mark off several parking places in the lot (with access to an outside faucet) and recruit several people to help wash the cars while the teachers are inside teaching! Why not get the whole congregation involved in a series of summer family nights? Invite entire families to attend several evenings of intergenerational programs. Invite them to volunteer as families to be responsible for various aspects of the evening. For example, have a couple of families bring snacks, other families run games, still others take care of music and singing, and so on. Help beat the summer heat by giving away free, ice-cold, bottled water. Have water bottle insulators made with your church’s contact information. Ask several volunteers to ice down a case of bottled water at home and bring the case (in a rolling cooler) to the distribution point. Pick a place that’s sure to have lots of foot traffic. One idea is your town’s annual 4th of July parade. Challenge your small groups to incorporate a service aspect into their meetings for the summer. One women’s Bible study met for a weekly gathering at the local library. After an hour of study, they moved outside to the nearby playground and pulled weeds, picked up trash, and generally cleaned up the area. Whatever volunteer activities you explore, your digital camera is your best friend! People love to see themselves, and seeing people serve is a great way to motivate others to get involved. Include pictures of volunteers in your weekly announcement video loop, or create posters with an assortment of pictures and place them where they’ll be seen by as many people as possible. Patti Mitschke and her husband Ken are mission planters at Word of Life Fellowship in Schertz, Texas. Patti is also on the support staff for Concordia Lutheran Church in San Antonio, Texas, and is serving on the Mass Events Design Team for the National Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Youth Gathering taking place in Orlando, Florida, this summer. Copyright © Group Publishing, Inc. 2004 Excerpted from Patti’s new article in Church Volunteer Central’s Idea Depot. For details behind these ideas, plus several more you can try, read the full article here. Now that you have learned from another member, please help the rest of us by sharing one of your own successes, failures, tips or "learning opportunities" with the rest of us? |
