223: What If Summer Is Exactly What Your Ministry Needs

What if the thing we keep trying to push through… is actually the thing we need? 

Summer changes the rhythm of everything - attendance, energy, schedules - and instead of fighting it, we might be invited to work with it. 

Not as a setback, but as a shift. This isn’t about lowering the bar; it’s about leading differently. 

• Why summer always feels “off” (and why that’s not failure)
• The pressure to keep everything running the same
• Letting go of school-year expectations
• What it looks like to lead the season you’re actually in

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Transcript

Laurie Graham  0:01 
Hey, welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast, where we help volunteers and ministry leaders experience less stress, more joy and greater impact as we share strategies that actually do work in smaller churches. I'm your host. Laurie Graham, let's dive in.

Laurie Graham  0:22 
Hey, hey, welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. We just wrapped up a whole series all about volunteers, what we're doing wrong, where we're over complicating things, where we're putting a lot of pressure that doesn't need to be there. And honestly, this, today's conversation, feels like the perfect next one to have, because we're getting close to heading into summer, and if you've been in ministry for more than about five minutes, you know that everything starts feeling a little bit off, especially in small churches. 

Attendance shifts. Schedules get weird. Half your people might disappear at any given time, and there's this pressure or this question that creeps in, like, what are we doing wrong? Why isn't this working? What should we be doing differently? And today, I want to zoom out a little bit and not just talk about summer ministry, but about seasons. Because what if the very thing we're trying to push through and work harder at, is actually something we're supposed to work with or respond to, maybe in an easier way. 

So let's talk for a second just about seasons. There are seasons in everything except oftentimes churches like we expect, seasons in nature, right? Winter, spring, summer, fall. It's normal that a lot of things shift. Our weather shifts. What's happening with plants shift. We don't argue with it. We don't panic when the leaves fall off the trees. Do you know where I'm going here? We don't say something is wrong with this tree. Now, if you are in a place without seasons, I'm assuming you've seen TV or social media, because I grew up in a place with seasons, a lot of seasons, and then I moved to the desert, and there weren't so many seasons. But even if you are not in a climate where leaves fall off trees, I know that you know what I'm talking about, because even in the desert, there are seasons, different things bloom at different times, different things go dormant, and again, we don't say to a tree whose leaves are falling off, something's wrong with this tree. We just go, oh, it's fall, or we're headed into winter. 

But let's shift back to the church context. We expect everything to feel like spring all the time. Do you know what I mean? Like we expect growth and energy and full rooms and consistency and volunteers showing up exactly the same all year long. And when it doesn't feel like this, we get this nagging feeling in our gut that there must be something wrong. We expect seasons everywhere, even in our life, whether there's babies at home, or we're taking care of aging parents, or we are aging ourselves, or we're headed into retirement, or maybe we're starting out with a new household. We expect seasons even in our personal lives, except in the church, different seasons does not mean that something is broken, and a shift in a rhythm is not the sign of failure. Can we take that into our ministry areas? 

Okay, so let's talk about what actually happens in seasons, because this part, when I learned a lot of this, I actually started thinking about ministry very differently. Now, maybe you're sciencey, maybe you're nerdy, maybe you're not. Maybe you know a lot more than I do. I'm just going to drop a few things that I know about seasons, because every season actually has a job. We typically think of spring as growth and summer as activity and movement. 

Did you know that fall is preparation? It's not just headed into the death of winter, and winter actually has a job. It's called rest and restoration. And here's what's interesting. The most important work that happens is usually the invisible work. It's not when people are coming in to get baptized, it's important. It's important. But oftentimes the most important work is not the visible parts. And I want to say that's true in nature, it's true in humans, it's true in our spiritual lives. It's true in work. It's true in growth. Not every season looks productive, and it's not meant to look productive. Different seasons produce different kinds of outcomes. Visible growth is not the only kind of growth. Just because you can't see growth, it doesn't mean nothing is happening.

Laurie Graham  5:13 
Now we'll get into summer in just a minute, and as we talk about ministry, but I'm betting you're going to have different ideas already, like kind of popping in your brain. Because just as I'm talking about our seasons on this planet, which, by the way, God created the season of something that looks dormant or looks like things are dying, that was created by God, and it wasn't bad, it's good. 

Now this is where it gets really interesting, because what's happening underneath the surface is actually a bit wild. Okay, now, I went down a little rabbit hole on this, and I've learned about different things about seasons in the past, but I actually found a few more things that I didn't know about, and now I can't stop thinking about them. Do you ever have that happen where something pops in your brain and now you can't unsee it, right? So trees don't just lose their leaves and fall. Trees actually pull nutrients, like nitrogen, back into their roots and trunks before the leaves drop, they're storing it for later. So trees aren't losing resources. They're actually pulling them back in to save them for the next season. Is that not bizarre? There are actually seeds that literally do not grow unless they have gone through a cold season first. Did you know this? So this is one of those things that I did not know. There are seeds that won't grow unless they've gone through a cold season, so no winter actually means no growth for them. 

So there's things that only grow because of the cold, not in spite of it. And here's another fun one, which I've learned at different levels throughout my life. But when things look dead on the surface, like in nature, there is a whole system underground that is breaking things down and releasing nutrients back into the soil. So sometimes we think of like, decaying matter, like we know that it feeds the ground, okay, like, like, a lot of times we have that in our mind, but it's literally releasing nutrients back into the soil. 

Decay is what feeds the next season. And again, I want just to keep in mind God created seasons. And I also believe that in many churches, churches that I've been a part of, churches that we've been helping over the last five years, in our small church culture here, it's like we want to fight the season that God has created for growth. Oftentimes, what looks like nothing is actually something really, really important. When we pull back or reserve our resources, we're not just reserving them and hoarding them. We're preparing for the next thing. There's growth that happens only in seasons that don't look productive, and we are not that different. 

Before we talk about churches, I just want to talk about us as humans. We like to think we can go full speed all the time, but that is not how we are wired. Have you ever taken a vacation from work? If you like your job, especially, and when you come back, you feel more creative, you feel more ready. So why do we push through all the time our brains and our bodies, our human brains, our human bodies, our human spirits are actually created for cycles. 

Constant output leads to burnout. It leads to less creativity. It leads to emotional fatigue. And I will also say constant input does the same. We need times and seasons of rest, and not just weekly, like with the Sabbath, like I know some of you listening like, you're very committed to the weekly Sabbath, to taking one day off a week that literally recharges. And by the way, I know most of us are not, but it's more than this. It's we need seasons. We are not built to live in a constant state of springtime. We don't grow from constant output. It actually breaks us down. We grow from cycles,

Laurie Graham  9:53 
but oftentimes in the church, we try to override that. Now, if you are in a. Church that that practices liturgical seasons, or maybe you really do invest in Advent and Lent, please step back from that. That's not the seasons I'm talking about. I personally think those are amazing. I think they can be a lot of renewal and creativity. 

But I really want to talk about times in ministry where things seem to flatten out like summer. Okay? What we tend to do in ministry is we try to make everything even all year, like we have an outreach event every quarter. We have discipleship all year long. We have these things that just keep running all the time. Many churches do Sunday School straight through the summer. And I know some of our churches do not, okay. But when we try to keep everything running the same, even attendance, when we try to avoid a dip or like, we swell in attendance at Christmas or Easter, and then we're like, why aren't they all still here? That's part of a cycle that's okay. 

When we try to make summer act like it's the school year, we're not leaning into seasons. We're resisting them. We're fighting them. And then we wonder why we're exhausted. I've talked to so many people that at the end of of the Christmas season, like many, many core people who are volunteers in churches, push through Christmas and they know they're going to be exhausted in January. 

Now that's a little bit of a season, okay? Like, it's a little bit of some of that is okay, but some of that is like, why are we doing that? Why are we exhausting ourselves? We can have a fun, active season and also not feel exhausted at the end, when we realize it as a season, and we can lean into it and say, Oh, this feels like spring, and after that is summer, and after that comes fall, and after that comes winter. Like, what would that look like if we actually leaned into the seasons that we were in? 

And by the way, I'm talking about effectiveness and productivity and seeing the impact that I believe we were created to have the impact of what summer could look like when attendance is lower, when families are traveling, when our volunteers may be taking different vacations, and again, not just summer. What happens over Christmas break? What happens over spring breaks? What happens in our life seasons when maybe we're getting a little older, or we need some rest, or we just have a shift in the way that our energy levels are coming out. 

And by the way, I don't think this means if you're feeling maybe like enlightened or convicted about the way that you run your own personal life, or your family life, or your church ministry, or how you've been serving in the church. I don't even think we need a full overhaul. I don't think we even need a new strategy, necessarily. I think we need some awareness. I think we need some freedom. I think we need grace for other people in their seasons. And as far as the church works like, if we think about a year long with the church, a January to January or September to September, if that's kind of what your church year looks like, I think we just need some really simple shifts, a new way of looking things, new conversations to have. And by the way, if we're like, just a few minutes into this podcast, maybe halfway through, but if you're already like, wow, I haven't thought about it this way, the best way to utilize this podcast and get the most impact from it is to share it with somebody, to bring a friend into this discussion, have them listen to the podcast and talk about it. 

Talk about what's been happening in your church up to this point, what's been happening in your life up to this point. Have you pushed through seasons? Have you leaned into them? Do you agree with the fact that God created seasons on this planet, and maybe He created us for seasons too? Have the discussion. Bring the conversation in. I've received a few emails this past month with people actually writing in and saying, Hey, I have this specific thing happening in my church. I need your advice, and my heart always goes out because I want to help people, but you all, there's no way me or anyone can speak into what's specifically happening in your church, with your people, with your seasons,

Laurie Graham  14:53 
with the relationships happening with specific dynamics, and give you the specific strategy. I often answer those emails with a little bit of this is the value. This is the priority that could be in this situation. 

If you ever do want more coaching or conversation around something specific that you're going through, please join us in the Small Church Network. We have a really affordable paid membership. By the way, I wasn't going to talk about this right now, but I'm throwing it out there because a lot of people don't know it. We actually have three group coaching calls a month that you're invited to. We have a monthly masterclass. We have a Q and A. We have conversations that happen inside this small network of people in well, people in small churches who just want more they want more growth, they want more conversation, they want more encouragement, they want more skills, they want to go deeper in their own leadership. So if you want more of that, join us. 

But what I'm saying is you can create this in your own church. Take this conversation back to your church. Talk with others about what they see, what they're feeling, what might be next, what might work might what might be practical in your specific situation, because we're talking principles, but I do want to go into just a few things that we have found work really well in smaller spaces, not to limit your effectiveness or limit the ministry, but to lean into a season. 

So all those things that happen underground, that prepare us for the next season, all those things that lead to deeper growth, keep happening without our exhaustion or without pushing against resisting something that actually leads to better fruit. So let me just go over a couple things that we've seen. So school year expectations. So I know our friends down in Australia have summer at a different time than we do. So whenever your school year ends, whenever that big break is. I know some people in your communities have more like year-round school, but there's usually a bigger break that as a culture, even if your church has more older people in it, you know less school age children or no school age children, there still is a rhythm of when people take vacations or tend to miss church more often, and let's stop the judgment of you are not committed to God, or you're not committed enough to church if you're not coming every single week, all year long, life happens. 

We have life. We have seasons, we have times of refreshment, we have times of joy, and we're celebrating maybe with seasons and things that are happening out of state with our other families, or in other region, like there's things that happen. So letting go of like school year expectations being all year long. Can we just say summer is not the time to measure consistency or to create more demands? So that's one thing I would say, is let go of those spring and summer time expectations that everything happens the same all year long. That doesn't have to be. Another thing I want to mention is to simplify what you're doing sometime during the year again, as we're moving into summer now, this is my favorite time to do it. 

It works in the culture that I'm in in the school year type of feel that most of our states have, here in the US, simplify what you're doing in the summer. Have fewer moving parts. It doesn't mean to stop everything. Got an email from somebody who had just registered for the conference, and she actually said that, I feel like, you know, we stop everything in our church over the summer, and I feel like you're missing opportunities. And I would say, yes, you are. If you stop everything, I think summer is a great time for deeper relationships, for less moving parts, but for some repeatable rhythms. I remember in one church in the summertime, we

Laurie Graham  18:56 
stopped a lot of Women's Ministry things, but we added a book club that was just a once a month book club, just for the summer, we had a book with a really cool theme, and you just read the book or not and come and join us, and it created a deeper, richer relational time with less expectations. But I'm going to tell you, growth did not stop that summer. It was just different. So think about simplifying what you're doing in the summer, few moving parts, but some repeatable rhythms that keep the connection going. Simple doesn't mean that we care less. It means we're actually embracing a season of a different kind of growth. 

Another thing I would mention giving it a shot is shift what you're measuring, instead of measuring attendance this summer, maybe measure connection. Measure connecting with people you haven't connected with before, maybe out in the community. And I don't just mean getting them to come to something. I mean actually, where are you forming a relationship where you didn't have one before? Consider measuring less programs and more presence. Where are we showing up for each other, individually, in a small group, one on one? If you're used to measuring attendance or having a weekly program, why not say I'm going to visit with someone from my congregation or from my ministry or in my youth group, just each week, I'm just going to meet with one person at a coffee shop, maybe on the phone, maybe over Zoom if they are unable to get out. It's a different season. So let's have some different wins. 

Another thing I'll suggest is work with real life, not against it. If your families are traveling. How can you stay connected to families who travel? One of my favorite things I did when I was involved in Youth Ministry for a long time is writing Agape Mail. We would write mail to kids going on mission trips or or camps, and each day, they'd get to open a piece of mail from somebody in the congregation. Why not send a little love note with a family who's traveling before they leave? Say, Hey, open this up midway, especially if they're road tripping. Let's have some mercy there, right? Why not? Why not work with real life? Sports are not the enemy. 

Oh my gosh, I think we're talking about that next week on the podcast. Let's just do it fully. That is actually a topic. It's one of the titles and one of the sessions and one of the focuses. We're talking about our upcoming Kid Min and Youth Ministry Conference, if you haven't heard of that, at the end of April, if you're listening live, when this comes out on April 25. We're having a four hour little mini conference talking about summer ministry specific for Kid Min and Youth, and one of the things we are hitting is this, this, I don't know. I will say this, this prejudice we have for sports. Or like a prejudice is not the right word. We just many churches feel like sports are the enemies. People are picking sports over God. Sports over, do you know how much ministry can happen in the sports setting. What would happen if we showed up on the field instead of complaining about families who are involved in sports? What would happen if we cheered people on or watched the scores and sent a letter out to that youth, a little note saying, Hey, you did so great, or Hey, I heard about your game. You're still awesome, right? What if we acknowledged it and leaned into it? I personally think Jesus would be on the field. He wouldn't be complaining about it anyway. Let's move on also with working with real life, like when schedules change, let's not resist it. 

Let's, like say, how can we show up with a change in schedule? And the other thing I'm going to mention, just as a possible shift, something to consider as we're headed into summer, is giving your team permission to breathe, lightening the load if you're on a worship team, can we just do something a little different in the summer, when we know a lot of people are gone, can you pull back and do acoustic for a month? Can you have a guest worship leader come in? Can you have a Sunday Worship service without music or with maybe playing some more like just meditative Christian worship, on, on, you know, just over Spotify at the beginning and just asking people just to sit just for this 10 minutes today, as a different kind of day, we gave our worship team, or our musicians a day off. We just want to ask you to sit and close your eyes, grab a piece of paper or the journals we put at the end of the pew and just have some time with God. I'm going to tell you right now, the world doesn't need more noise, and neither do the people who are coming to our churches, pulling back, being a little meditative, a little more connect with Jesus on your own today, instead of our band or our hymns for this one Sunday,

Laurie Graham  23:44 
that's just an example with worship. Give your team permission to breathe. Give your pastor a little bit of time to breathe. Have a couple congregation-led Sundays if your pastor has not had time off in a while, consider a full, full load sabbatical. That's also for another, another time, but giving your team permission to breathe, lightening the load, sharing responsibility differently or not at all, if we have snacks every Sunday, maybe for a month we don't, or maybe for that month, the youth bring the snacks on a Sunday. We can shift things. 

We can be creative. We can make things different for a season. So when we lean into seasons, this doesn't mean lowering the bar. It doesn't mean stopping everything. It just means stop requiring it to look the same. I'm just going to tell you, this is a big shift for many ministry areas, for many churches, for many church cultures. If your church culture is used to pushing through or used to stopping in summertime, bring this discussion of let's talk about it. 

And again, this is a big part of what we're leaning into for upcoming Kid Min and Youth Ministry Conference this month, not how to fix summer, but how to lean into it and even lead it as the season it actually is. I wanted to do this podcast episode because this isn't just about Kid Min and Youth. It's about worship. It's about Pastoral Ministry. It's about Stephen's Ministry, if you're part of that. We're not talking about stopping anything. We're talking about doing it a little differently in a season. It's about worship, ministry, it's about outreach, it's about prayer, it's about watching what God does in different seasons that might look different. Again, not stopping. 

We are not going to stop helping people. We are not going to stop serving. We are not going to stop growing and leaning into Jesus. We're not going to stop showing up consistently for people in our own lives, but we are going to live in seasons as God created them and teach other people to do this as well. Summer is not a problem to solve. It's a season to embrace, and just like every single other part of life, when we stop fighting the season we are in. Again, personal lives, spring, summer, winter, fall, natural seasons. When we stop fighting the seasons we're in and start working within them and embracing the gifts and the purpose of them, things have a potential to get a whole lot lighter. Again, life is not always easy, but we can do hard things in easier way. That's a quote from Bill Galtier. 

All right. Thanks for hanging out with me today. If this episode made you pause for a second or shift how you're thinking about summer or ministry, would you take a minute and leave a review of the podcast? I encourage you all to leave reviews, not because I need any gold stars, because I don't, but because leaving a review actually helps more small church volunteers and ministry leaders find this kind of encouragement, because it's not really out there anywhere else. 

We love small churches. We know exactly the impact that small churches are having all over the planet. We believe Small Church Ministry is very Jesus-style ministry, and Jesus left a huge impact. I know there are a lot of people out there carrying a lot not just you people who haven't even heard of this podcast, and we want to encourage as many people as we can. All right, I will talk to you again next week, if you have not yet grabbed a free ticket to the Small Church Kid Min and Youth Ministry Conference. The link is in the show notes. You can go to smallchurchsummits.com. To get more info, and please pass that along to others in your church who care about kids and youth. If you do not have a youth program right now or a children's ministry because there's no kids, this conference is still for your church,

Laurie Graham  28:36 
because we talk about that, because we are in small churches, we get it. We know what it's like, and we're here for you. That's why we're here. So all right, we'll talk again next week, until then, be a light.