Most Pastors dread the “Summer Slump”. Typically, this is when giving and attendance fluctuate the most in a given year.
Yet here’s what I have learned over the last 10 years:
1. Summer is not as bad as people make it out to be
2. You don’t have to take as big of an attendance hit (I’ll talk about in depth later)
3. With planning, you can eliminate the giving slump (More on that later)
4. The key to maximizing the Summer is understanding the trends of the Summer
The basic trends of Summer are that people generally go out of town the first 2 weeks after school lets out and the 2 weeks before school comes back in session.
So here’s my recommendation to you:
1. Don’t fight the calendar. If you do, I promise you’ll lose.
2. Plan to take some time off from preaching over the Summer. Go on vacation. Do some guest speaking. invest in your up and coming teachers as they fill the pulpit for you.
3. Plan “Mini-Easters” on certain Sunday that will bring new people and stabilize your attendance.
I talk about how to do all of this in my resource, “How to Make Every Sunday Like Easter”. You can pick it up by clicking here. It outlines 14 ways to make every Sunday as powerful as Easter Sunday.