It’s Summer Time!!
Think Big!

I confess. There were a few summers when I was a pastor that I OK’d a summer vacation for the Sunday school. The argument, almost as old as dirt, was and still is that with so many vacations it is impossible to teach a quarterly session. After all, the quarterly session assumes that what was in the lesson last week will be both remembered and a helpful building block when teaching this week’s lesson. Almost as old, as excuses go, is that teachers, our precious volunteers, need a break.

So if your Sunday church school classes would become one-on-one tutoring sessions if three or four families miss a Sunday, a change of pace is in order. Don’t just stop!

Whatever you decide to do, do not think small. Think BIG. Think SPECIAL! Think exciting mission work! Think about capturing the excitement of our summer camps and conferences as soon as the attendees return from those inspired weeks away.

Who is going to camp this summer? This summer two national programs really add up. One of our national conference centers, Montreat, North Carolina, hosts more than one thousand youth each week for six weeks. The Youth Triennium hosts more than six thousand youth and youth leaders from across the country and around the world. That’s more than twelve thousand excited youth who will have spent 24/7 engaged in worship, study, and Christian fellowship. And that’s not counting youth at our 145 presbytery camps, and the participants on presbytery and congregation sponsored volunteer mission trips.

Think big about the curriculum resources you have at your fingertips. With the new second edition of the Children’s Mission Yearbook of Prayer & Study intertwined with the summer quarter of We Believe, single Sunday morning special sessions can be prepared and publicized as the special occasions they can be.

Special times during the summer weeks for special experiences can and do nurture our church family in big ways. Summer Sunday Specials will help you reach those during summer vacation who are sitting at home waiting to be a part of something big at church.

Contact information:
Phone (888) 728-7228, x5201
FAX (502) 569-5990
E-mail: ideas@pcusa.org