Season 2 Episode 17: How to Thrive in Summer

Welcome to the Small Town Church Podcast, the weekly podcast where we discuss all aspects of being in a small-town church. Whether you are a member, on staff, or have just begun attending a church in a small town, this is the podcast for you. 

In this week's episode, we are discussing how to thrive during the summer months. We talk about things like low attendance, various camps, how to encourage members who are traveling, and more!

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Transcript

Zach Leonard 0:08

Welcome to the Small Town Church Podcast, the weekly podcast where we discuss all aspects of being in a small town church. Whether you are a member, on staff, or have just begun attending a church in a small town, this is the podcast for you. Welcome back to the Small Town Church Podcast. It is good to be back. Sorry about last week. We um we batch recorded some episodes and um really and truly thought we had one in the shoot. Um we thought that we had done enough to cover us through May 25th, and then we both got very busy and uh a whole lot of life happened. Um there was VBS and we housed a missionary family, uh the Warfords, um, who were preparing to go to Ireland. We housed them for a week, and everything just it kind of all went crazy. And our church bought some uh cupcakes from Brad, and we stood on the front porch and for a second and said, Hey, do we have episodes? And neither one of us could remember. And by the time I got home and checked, it was too late for us to do anything with it. So last week's little um faux paw, if you will, is uh it was kind of a one-off, but we are back and better than ever and uh ready to kind of finish out the last few episodes of season two. Um Brad, as always, is my co-host and he is with me. Brad Borgren, how are we doing today?

Brad Borggren 1:31

I'm doing good. I just want to say that that you didn't buy cupcakes from me, but from my wife. That's fair. I did, that's true. Um and they were delicious. Um you don't want cupcakes from me. Uh but we did stand on the porch.

Zach Leonard 1:44

We did right. Um, yeah, we kind of came power sliding in in the church van and grabbed them and ran because we were running late. But um, yeah, if if you ever find yourself in the Big Spring area um and need cupcakes, my goodness, um I don't really know what kind of magic that woman works with uh um with cupcakes and cakes, but they're delicious, and I keep looking for reasons for my church to buy them. Um and uh I really like actually on a side note, I really like on her website how there's it gives all the reasons as to why you need cupcakes, and one of the reasons is I just like cake, and I'm like, yes, right there. That I need to fill that tab one day. Just you know what? I'm just in the mood for some cupcakes. So that is not what we're talking about on today's episode, although I could probably fill 30 minutes with my love for cake. Um so today we're actually talking about summer. Um in a small town or in a small church, summer can be a weird thing. Um, it's one of those things where you may have low attendance, you've got summer camps, you've got VBS, you've got all these different things going on. And in a weird way, when school breaks, sometimes you have this weird motion where you've got this really busy season and you've also got this portion where the church is really low in attendance if you already have a small uh congregation to begin with. So uh Brad, I'm gonna kick it over to you. Why don't you kind of talk about the dynamic of your church during the summer? Um, if there's any change, any ebbs and flows, and just kind of how what you do to combat that and and if just kind of what is all is involved regarding summer at Salem Baptist Church.

Brad Borggren 3:22

Yeah, I I think in in some ways, summer has been different every year that we've been here. Um course we came during COVID, and that seems like it's been 20 years ago now, praise the Lord. Right. Um but every summer has kind of been different, you know, the last uh the last couple of years. Uh, because we don't have an established student ministry or children's ministry, uh we've kind of flirted with it a little bit and and had some things going for seasons, but it never really never really blossomed to the point where we like, okay, we've got enough, we've got enough of our own students to really warrant going to camp. Uh and so what we've done in the past, the really the past two years, uh, was we partnered up with another local church and we went to uh just a local camp, circle six, uh here in West Texas. Uh and and that worked pretty well. Um this year, it wasn't anything to do with the church that we went with, but more of just kind of the dynamics of the camp. The camp's kind of been through a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty, and we're like, well, let's just kind of put pause on that. And so this year we're sending our daughter, uh, she's actually leaving Monday uh to go with uh First Baptist Church, Big Spring. Uh they're doing centrifuge. And so this year is gonna look a little different. Uh again, we still don't have uh a children's ministry or a student ministry of our own. And so um but as our as our kids are getting older, uh just kind of looking looking to partner with other churches. And and again, Zach, you know, I just wish the timing would have worked better. I would have loved to go on with you guys.

Zach Leonard 5:03

I agree, that would have been fun.

Brad Borggren 5:06

But it I don't know. Yeah, if we didn't have dogs, it really kind of comes down to we we don't want to board our dogs for like a month straight. That seems kind of cool. And so, um, but anyway, talking about camp and summer. Uh, and so that's kind of that's what we've done at Salem um for the past few years, uh, is is looking to we don't and it's kind of that Southern Baptist mentality, right? That we can always do more together. Like, hey, we don't have enough. Um, we we can't fully fund a missionary on our own, but we can fund 5,000 through the cooperative program.

Zach Leonard 5:45

Sure.

Brad Borggren 5:45

Uh we don't have enough students on our own to go to camp. Uh, you know, I bet there's a church in your association or in your area that you could partner with and say, hey, what if we all just come together and and and do camp together? That's a great idea. And I think that we've really saw some benefits from that we uh over the last couple years and and and expect good things uh this year with our daughter. Um and then on the other side, you know, the the church as a as a whole, we we are within spitting distance of Riadosa, and so you can be in Riadosa in about three hours, and so uh historically that's taken a decent chunk of our people, as uh several of them are in horse racing. Uh and it's if it's a hundred degrees in Big Spring, it's probably 85 in Riadosa. So if you're a retired farmer, rancher, you know, I don't blame you at all for heading to the mountains. Uh and so that from from Memorial Day to Labor Day uh is is kind of taking a hit on our attendance. This year's different in the sense that Riadosa has closed their their racetrack entirely. And so uh we're kind of in that, well, let's just see what summer 2026 looks like at Salem. And so uh we may have more of a consistent attendance uh the way we do year-round. Uh, or you know, people may find something other to do, or they may still go to Riadosa just because it's 15 degrees cooler. Right. So um and really pretty and it is really pretty throughout the year, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, heck, I would it wouldn't take me, it wouldn't take a lot of arm twisting for me to go there uh either. And so we're we're kind of in that, let's just kind of see what happens. Um one consistent thing that I've done over the past, I think, three summers is just preach through the psalms. Uh obviously not all of them, but I call it summer Sundays in the Psalms, and just uh take a break and take a batch of psalms that fit together in theme or in location in the book, uh, and just kind of preach through that. And so this Sunday I'm starting the songs of ascent, um, from Psalm 120 to 134, and not gonna do all of them, but just you know, how can we as believers, uh, you know, we're we are in a sense pilgrims moving toward the promised land, and as we how can we just make sure that we continue to step upward in our relationship with Christ? And so um, while summer brings a lot of change and and every summer at Salem has been a little different, uh, I feel like, hey, we can we can praise, we can worship, we can pray together, uh, we can dig into God's word and see how we can continue to uh to become more like Christ and make disciples of Christ. And so um Yeah, kind of in that new season of seeing what 2026 brings, but at the end of the day, we're gonna gather together, we're gonna worship together, uh, and we're gonna we're gonna stay focused on God's word.

Zach Leonard 8:47

Amen. I love that. And so kind of to your point, um, one, I did not know that Riadosa Downs had closed. That's they've been open forever. That's wild.

Brad Borggren 8:56

Um Yeah, they had a lot of fires and within the last few years, and I think they just got to the point where they uh even last year, I think they and I'll I'll butcher it, but of all the races, they dropped down to one type of horse or one type of race. Um, and now they've just completely closed it.

Zach Leonard 9:19

That that is a wildly um specific s aside for us. Um if you if you don't live anywhere near West Texas or Riadosa, you may think, why are these idiots talking about this for as long as they are? Um but that uh that area of Riadosa, that was kind of a big thing for them. But again, changing uh subject and going back to uh to what we're talking about. This apparently I'm a I'm in a rambling mode today, but I love how you you say, regardless of who is coming, we're going to um we're going to meet and we're going to praise God together and we're going to spend time in worship. I think that's important for us to remember as pastors is that we are called to do the work no matter the number that's come through the door. And yes, we want to go outside the doors and we want to reach others and we want to we want to raise the numbers in our church, not for the sake of raising numbers, but because we are called to bring people into the fold by by God's grace and by God's providence, he has chosen to use us in evangelism. And so, yes, we are called to do that, but I read a book in, I know this is shocking because I'm, you know, in seminary that I'm reading books, but that's all I do these days. But uh a few a couple of semesters back, I read a book by John Piper called Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. And if you've never read it, I highly suggest you do, because it talks to this a little bit. The idea is we are not a business. I mean, yes, there are business aspects. There are, you know, uh taxes to be handled, and there are insurance policies, and there are, you know, if you are renting the building that you're in, there's payments and you got to keep the lights on, and there are business aspects to it, but the actual portion of ministry, it's not metrics. It's not, you know, one of the things we do at that well, we go to a the last three years we've gone to a very large summer camp. Um, and it's largely because the youth pastor before me did it, and one of the things that I had to learn when I got into this ro this position is which things that the youth did were the past youth pastor, and which things were things the church had done forever that they didn't want to give up. Um, you know, so there were things that I thought were these I hate to use the term golden calf, but you know what I mean? Like not something they idolized, but something that they had been doing forever. It was something that was ingrained in the church. When I turned come to find out it was something that was started two years ago by the last youth pastor, and they didn't really care one way or the other whether or not it continued. And so that's one of the things that I had to learn. I thought that that camp was something that this church had done for what come to find out that it's it's not. It was something the past youth pastor had done. But one of the things I digress, one of the things that that that church camp does that really kind of honestly bothers me is they actually do the big blanket altar call, like everybody come up and get all emotional, and then they talk, they they spit numbers at you each morning. How many people came up, how many people checked this box on the card, how many people did, and it was all these metrics like they're trying to justify themselves. And that's always frustrated me because while we hear the numbers that came to the Lord in Acts, I I don't think that was for metrics' sakes. It was look at what God was doing in this moment, these masses came to to the Lord by God's hand through the work of Peter or who, you know, whichever whoever was speaking at the time. God used that to draw people unto himself. And it wasn't like, hey, look, it was 3,000 people. We need to continue counting metrics. That's not what it was. And so um we need to understand that in our ministry as well. Yes, you need people in the pews. Uh I mean, you're not gonna have a church if you don't do that, but at the same time, you you need to understand that there are that people do have family to visit, or if they're retired, they may have um places that they have you know, if they if they've been blessed financially, they may have a summer home somewhere. I think for us, it needs to be messaging. And what I mean by that is we need to be pushing for people to be in church on a Sunday morning, even if it's not our church. I think that's um the important thing. And so encourage your congregation to travel to see if the God has blessed them financially and they're able to do that, encourage that, but maybe also encourage your congregation to, you know, hey, find a church. Hey, can I help you find a biblically sound church that you guys can go to on Sunday while you're there? Because it continues the habit. One of the things before that was and it you I haven't really gone into my backstory in this podcast, and nobody really probably wants to hear that, but I there was a span of time where I was not a Christian, but I was lying and saying that I was. Um, and so you know, I had everybody feel fooled, really. And one of the things that was I found very easy to get out of the habit of is getting out of bed on Sunday morning and going to church. Like it's an easy, easy habit to get out of. Um I found that I liked my bed and I enjoyed um you know sleeping in it, and so there was a time where it was not hard for me to say, well, we'll just go next week, and then next week turned into next week and so on and so forth. And so we really want to continue because we're fed when we're in the body of believers, we want to continue to push our congregation to attend church even if they're traveling. And yes, some of that is so that they continue to to attend when they're back home, but I think if we have the right mindset of we need to be in the fellowship of believers, we need to be in church and not be so um I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, not have so many self-worth issues that we care if it's our church or not at the time. Um you don't want to just tell I'm I I think of and I'm about to I'm about to take you on a wild trip here. If you've ever seen the old black and white movie, um Miracle on Thirty Fourth Street, um have you really never seen have you seen Miracle on Thirty Fourth Street?

Brad Borggren 16:01

I I don't know, I don't think so. I've seen parts of it.

Zach Leonard 16:04

Um so there's this there's this scene where the the Santa Claus character starts telling parents, oh well Macy's doesn't have this toy, but this store over here does. And it it shocks the the uh the people that work there with him, and they go to reprimand the the Santa for doing it until a mom comes up and says, I can't believe that you'd be willing to send me to another store. I, you know, I I'm going you've earned my business because you're willing to to make sure I find what I need, not um not sell me something that I don't need just to so that I uh I buy at Macy's. And that the mindset should really kind of be the same for us pastorally. We need people in church even if it's not our own. And so we need to really push people when they're traveling to say, hey, have you thought about where you're going to church? Can I help you find the church? And just be blunt about it, you know, say, hey, I know you're going to the lake, you know, I know there may not be a church around. So if there's not, we have a live stream. Like, you know, I I'll be in, I'm not gonna check in on you, like I'm not gonna text you, say, hey, are you listening to the live stream? But have you, you know, have you have you thought about what you're gonna do to worship with your family? You know, and talk with the men, especially of families. Hey, how are you leading your your family? What plans do you have? That's part of discipling. It's okay to have those conversations, it's not big brother, it's more we want to make sure you're spiritually fed, and it's very easy to have lake life and church life, and somehow they don't overlap. Um, we actually just recently returned from my in-laws. My father-in-law holds a fishing tournament for the the grandkids every single year. And there's between my wife and her siblings, well, I mean, I guess I'm involved in my family part of it, but between my wife and her siblings, there are 16 grandchildren. And so 16 grandchildren, we all get together, they fish for 24 hours straight. And there's prizes for the people who, you know, catch the most fish. It's out on Lake Brownwood. It's it's a good weekend. You know, the kids just love it. They uh there's lots of mountain dew and sugar to go around, and everybody stays up late and they fish, and it's you know, it's a good time. But this past time, we stayed up after it was over and spent it was probably 45 minutes at the most. Um, my my father-in-law um is a really, really good guitar player. Um, he sang, played a couple of of song of worship songs, a couple of hymns. We sang them together, um, and then I gave we we called it a sermonette because we everyone was up for 24 hours, and you know, no one would have wanted to sit through a 40-minute sermon. But I I gave a quick lesson about one of my favorite um stories, um, one of my favorite events in the Bible, and um we worshiped together as a family before everybody went to bed because they'd been up for 24 hours, but that was planned out. And originally we had talked about actually going to church, and we started to realize if we had taken our children to church after they had been up for 24 hours, we would have dealt with either attitude issues or them just falling asleep in the pew. And so we decided to kind of work within that and actually still have a service. And I don't think it's a bad idea for us as pastors to have those blunt conversations with um our congregations. Hey, I hear you're going to the lake, that sounds like a lot of fun. What have you thought about doing in regards to worshiping with your family while you're there? Um, and and don't let them give you a cop-out answer. Oh, yeah, well, we'll do no, no, like what are you doing? Like, what are you gonna study? What your spiritual health matters to me, and tell them that. You know, I I legitimately care about your spiritual health, and I want to make sure that you're worshiping. Um, and they'll come to realize that you care about them deeply. Um, real quickly before I kind of kick it back over to you, um, talking in regards to camps, something that I've actually been wrestling with is American churches so often are very insular. Um, they they want to do things by themselves. Um, I I run into it pretty regularly at in with the local churches. Um, which you know, we actually have two or three other denominational local churches with us. And um, we do fifth quarters, which if you're not from West Texas and you don't know what a fifth quarter is, basically uh it's pretty common for West Texas football. I think other sports may do it too, but for West Texas football, churches will host what's called a fifth quarter, which I realize that mathematically doesn't make sense. But basically the idea is you have four quarters in football and then you have a big party, basically. You invite kids over to the church and you have snacks and games, and there's a short message, you have music playing, and it's just a it's basically a fun time for the kids to do something family friendly after the game because they're all hyped up after the big win or angry because of the loss or you know, whatever. But we we the local churches host fifth quarters. Well, our church has been blessed with a gym. Um, and for whatever reason, I keep saying, hey, I'll put your logos up on the screen, y'all come host in our gym so you have the space, and the local churches just aren't interested in doing that because they're very insular. And that's always I've always struggled with that because I'm all I mean, I guess it's a an army thing, one team, one fight sort of thing. But like it's a that's my mindset towards it. And I've actually thought about instead of taking my church group to just a camp, I've thought about reaching out to local churches and saying, Hey, what if we like went to Circle Six or we went to someplace Rio Dosa and we rented out a space or something wherever it may be, and we actually Hosted our own camp. And I realize we don't, you know, it's hard to do the climbing walls and the water slides and the all that stuff, but it may be a time of real spiritual growth with your kids. So if you have a church that does not have a youth group, like much like Brad doesn't, um, maybe that's something to think about is getting together with multiple churches and putting something together. I know lots of churches in the reformed camp will do their own camp, like in the reformed denominations. Um that's kind of a a pretty big thing, is they'll do their own camps. And so, you know, something to think about in that regard. Um, Brad, I have rambled for much too long. Um, let me kick it back over to you and you can kind of give me your your kind of final thoughts as we as we kind of start to swing down this episode a little bit.

Brad Borggren 22:50

Yeah, no, I think you uh you pretty much covered it, and and I don't have a a ton else to say. I I do agree that yeah, that we can do more together, that there are opportunities, uh, whether it's sending your kids with another church or actually going with another church. I think there's uh there's benefits or you know, I like the idea, you know, almost like a a combo of a D now slash camp together. Yeah, you may not have you may not have the best band or or the most yeah, all the all the games and activities that that draw things. But at the end of the day, people at camp, uh at least when I remember being a student pastor and being at camp as a as a student, um the things that kind of lasted and the things that our students were talking about, you know, it it wasn't the climbing wall and the pool time, you know, it was it was being together, being in a different environment, uh and and really ideally hopefully how how the Lord works. And so I think that's that's what's gonna endure. As you as you pointed out, that's what we're called to, regardless of whether uh we're in the pews, at the lake, at camp. Yeah, it it's all about worship.

Zach Leonard 24:15

Amen. That's good. Well, as we close out this episode, um this is going to be a a shorter episode, um, but summer's kind of that, you know, there's there's a lot going on, and at the same time, sometimes it feels like there's uh not a lot of people around sometimes if you're in a smaller church, but that's okay. Our idea is to plod, you know, and we we want to we want to put one step in front of the other at all times and remember that our job as overseers is to lead people well, and that's gonna look different as as there's ebbs and flows to the year. Well, as we close out this episode, we want to thank you for your your listenership, as always. Um again, sorry about last week. Um that was an oversight on our part, but um we uh we appreciate your listenership. We uh we've had a lot of fun doing this. Um and as we as we close out this episode and start to close out season two over the next we've got two more episodes after this one, um, but we want to we want to continue to remind you we are still in prayer about what season three looks like um and and what uh kind of where the podcast is going from here. We we kind of said from the outset on season one that we are going to continue to do this um as long as the Lord continues to give us things to talk about. Um we we're not at all in it for money, we're not in it to make a name for ourselves, and quite in fact, quite the opposite. Um, we feel that this is an underutilized um area, or not an underutilized, an under-talked about, an under-serviced area, and we want to have conversations uh regarding small town churches. And so if you think of that there is a good direction, um, if if you think that there is something that we haven't covered that you think would um we could talk about in season three, um shoot us an email. Um send us a if you know us, send us a text. Um there actually is a texting feature on our podcast um pages. You can send us a text and we we'll get it. Um you can leave a comment. It's shocking the different the amount of ways that you can reach us um in in in 2026 um just by clicking a few buttons on our hosting site. So there are all these different ways. We do have a Facebook page group. Um, I think it's a page. Um I I don't I'm gonna be honest with you, as technologically, technologically savvy as I am, I don't understand Facebook. Um and um but you're there are ways to contact us there. Um basically we just we want to be able to serve you guys if God sees fit to keep this going. So let us know if if there are things that we haven't covered yet that you would like us to talk about, um, and we'll be in prayer about that as we uh we look forward to season three. So again, thank you for your listenership. Thank you for um tuning in each week. We really do appreciate it. We we have a lot of have had a lot of fun over these last two seasons doing this, and uh, and we look forward to closing out season two and and looking forward to the future. Um as always, if you have any questions or anything, feel free to email us at thesmalltownpod at gmail.com. And until next week, we this has been the Small Town Church Podcast. Have a great week. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Small Town Church Podcast. We pray that you have found this episode useful. If this episode has blessed you in some way, please share with someone else who might benefit from it. If you would like to partner with us, leave us a review so the algorithm can share this podcast with other people. If you have a question, please email it to thesmalltownpod at gmail.com and we will do our best to answer it either in a later episode or in the QA episode at the end of the season. Also, if we can partner with you in prayer in any way, email us so that we may have the honor of joining you in that prayer. Until next time, we pray you delight in God's mercies, which are new every morning, and remember to stay faithful to your small town church.