Summer is right around the corner, so it’s time to start planning your church’s CYF summer programming. It can be a daunting task, so here are some creative ideas on how to make planning fun and share the workload.

It’s that time of year again—summer planning season! As schedules for families and parents get busier, it often puts pressure on CYF workers to plan summer events earlier and earlier. Summer planning can often be a monumental task, but there are a few ways to help make it easier. 

Summer Planning Retreats 

Plan-It retreats are growing in popularity. These are retreats designed for CYF workers from different churches and ministries to gather and plan together for their various ministry sites. The time is spent together sharing ideas about what you have done in your context with others and then working collaboratively to come up with plans for your individual ministry sites inspired by and in conversation with others doing similar ministry! These retreats are sometimes held at retreat centers and camps, so see if there is one in your area. If not, you could create your own with other CYF workers in your area! 

Another option is to work collaboratively with other churches or ministry sites in your area. Gone are the days when each church in a community had a fully realized program—many churches have had to downsize or pare down their summer offerings. Teaming up with other local churches can be a great way to share resources and move past the idea of competing with one another to working toward a common goal of creating fun, safe, and shared environments for kids, youth, and their families to learn about God and each other. This can also be a great way to build ecumenical and even inter-religious relationships, depending on your context. 

Summer Dreaming

Finally, something I have regularly done at my own ministry sites is have a dream day in late winter or early spring. I gather key volunteers, families, youth, and others together for a half day of Bible study followed by creative envisioning for the future. The conversation is intentionally focused on dreaming—the sky is the limit—about what a CYF program at the congregation or ministry site could look like without worrying about resources, what has been done in the past, or the logistics. Those conversations happen in follow-up meetings or within your CYF ministry team.

The purpose of this meeting is to inspire energy, think about possibilities, and be creative. It is amazing what ideas people can bring forward when not in a scarcity mindset that so many of us often find ourselves falling into when in ministry. Once we have some big dreams and energy among the group, it can be exciting to discover what might be tangible now that we have allowed ourselves to dream big! 

Summer Mission Trips and Service Projects

A popular option for middle and high school students is to go on a mission or service trip over the summer. There are a lot of companies that specialize in mission trips, from YouthWorks to Experience Mission. However, if you are looking for something different, there are many options. For disaster relief, such as the recent wildfires in California or the hurricane in North Carolina, check out your denomination’s disaster relief agency (examples include Lutheran World Relief, United Methodist Committee on Relief, and Catholic Relief Services. These organizations frequently partner with local congregations and often are open to working with youth groups in service work. 

There are always local ways to serve your immediate community as well. Everything from soup kitchens, Habitat for Humanity, and shelters for the unhoused typically welcome groups to volunteer. Another option is an environmental service project. If you have river basins, watersheds, lakes, forests, parks, and highways in your region, there are environmental agencies that host clean-ups, conservation efforts, and more that you can partner with. All these options can provide real, tangible, and lasting relief to your local community and be impactful for your youth. 

Family Programming 

Vacation Bible School is a frequent staple of many church ministry programs. Some twists on the theme you may consider are: 

• make it an intergenerational family event, encouraging parents and other adults to participate by offering programming that can reach all ages (this typically works best for evening or weekend VBS)
• partner with other area congregations to do a joint program 
• have smaller, day-long mini-VBS events spaced throughout the summer instead of focusing on only one week. 

Since this time of year is popular for families to go on vacation, I also try to offer some hybrid or online programming for families that they can participate in, even when on the go, such as reading a weekly story over video-conferencing software, having online fundraisers like a silent auction, or offering Bible studies that are hybrid so people can participate even when out of town. 

There are many creative ways to plan out the summer and these are just a few ideas to help get your summer planning started. 

Peace and all good,

Pace Warfield

About the Writer:

Pace C. Warfield (they/them) is a doctoral candidate at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA where their research interests include Reformation history and queer theological anthropology. In addition to their studies, Pace has worked in children, youth, and family ministries for over fifteen years at various congregations throughout the country. Pace has previously written blog posts for We Talk, We Listen, the diversity blog of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, on mental health and the holidays called “Waiting for Snow” and a Lutheran approach to LGBTQIA+ systematic theology called “The Queer Ground.” They are the creator and cohost of the podcast Horror Nerds at Church which examines the theology of horror films. They live in Minneapolis, Minnesota with their partner and two dogs.

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