It’s hard not to look at this week (Holy Week) as a break, in fact, it shouldn’t be looked as a break because there are things planned (RISE our Good Friday worship in the Theater, 7pm April 2nd), but we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled student programming (Uprising, Resurrection and Ascent). After this shift in schedule we will head back for a four week series (Faith Underground) followed by our last series of the year on Sex and Dating…then we take an eleven week break until the fall. Right now things run like a school year…we’re trying to break that. I mentioned in a recent post that we’ll take on ventures like Church at Chipotle, but it’s really only a start.
The problem that needs to be solved is to create a year round ministry for students that doesn’t burn out leaders…it is possible because I’ve seen other churches do it well, but we aren’t there yet. I’ll admit, originally I didn’t want a year round ministry because I liked the idea of “summers off” but I’m not a teacher, this isn’t a Sunday school, and we aren’t going to make an impact in a student’s life if we aren’t consistent. But as we trim down our summer break or rework how we do summer it’s important to look at the other breaks we have taken. Right now the staff takes a break between Christmas and New Years, so I won’t mess with that but days the student ministry has taken off that probably should be evaluated are the Sunday after Thanksgiving and Super Bowl Sunday. I’m not sure if I want to mess with Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day.
It’s important to be strategic about breaks, you don’t want to go too long and you don’t want to burn out, in order to go the distance you just need to make sure your ministers are loved on, supported and that your systems can sustain the long haul. Right now we’ll just take it one day at a time.