Churches Can Grow In The Summer

Don't buy the lie that the summer slump prohibits churches from growing. I'll be honest, a couple years ago I believed that. When June approached I pretty much packed it up until September (October, more like) when people returned from vacations. I had always learned that church growth is most likely to occur when natural times of momentum were in play i.e. the school schedule in September, and resolution time of January.

Can I let you in on a secret that I've been learning? Church growth occurs when you are reaching out to your community. Here are some things that we experienced just this Sunday to illustrate ways your church can grow in the summer:

1. Small Groups. Have small groups in your church filled with people that like to be together, then encourage them to invite friends to the group meetings that are fun and meet every couple weeks. We had a guest on Sunday that had been invited to the picnic group, attended last Thursday and was at Severn River Church for the first time Sunday.
2. New Movers Postcards. We use a service that mails an initial postcard invitation to new movers in our community. We then send a matching second postcard within the month to our new neighbors inviting them again. Then we mail postcard invitations to outreach services that we're having throughout the summer. People are moving into your community this summer, and some of them are looking for a church to become part of. Sunday we had two different guests that had received mailers.
   
3. Outreach Services. We host an outreach service once a month in the summer called God In The Great Outdoors. It gives our people a reason to keep inviting even during the summer months. My observation is that not only do we have guests attend on the special day, but we have a residual effect that takes place on subsequent weeks. BTW, GITGO is a low intensity event. because we basically just do our normal service in an outdoor setting. This summer we had a guest show up that had been invited a year prior. I'm looking forward to Sunday because I know we'll have guests. We've been inviting people to church.
4. Neighborhood Outreaches. We have really started focusing on local neighborhood outreach. In our case we take a jumbo inflatable movie screen and show movies, provide games, and sell concessions. Sunday we had a family as our guests because we met in a local neighborhood.
   

Now the numbers of people week to week may not reflect growth because there is a lot of travel, but we're not building the number of butts in the seats, we're building the Kingdom of God. Pastor, if you'll keep your foot on the accelerator of outreach, you'll reach new people this summer.

--Ben