Summer Outreach! Mid-Week Ministry!

I've been talking about the opportunities you currently provide . . . such as Sunday school and VBS . . . and how they relate to your Summer ministry. Today we will consider another thing you are probably already doing and some questions to help you "re-focus" it to be a truly effective Summer outreach . . . mid-week ministry.

Most churches have a mid-week ministry, but many of them experience limited "success" with this outreach. Let's take a moment to consider this and then look at mid-week ministry as well as what it could look like in the Summer. Again, the first thing you need to do in regards to your mid-week ministry is determine what your goals and vision are for this ministry - think about these questions . . . 

• Why do you have a mid-week ministry? 
• Who are you primarily gearing your mid-week ministry for? 
• Are you primarily focusing on reaching out to your community or do you want to use your mid-week ministry to equip Christian children? 
• When your mid-week ministry ends each school year, what do you want to have accomplished? 
• How do you measure success in your mid-week ministry? 
• Can the people in your church tell "why" you have mid-week ministry?  
• Do the people in your church support your mid-week ministry and are they willing to be involved in it? 

These are important questions to consider when evaluating your mid-week ministry. It is also important to know how your answers "look" in regards to Summer mid-week ministry. Many churches do not offer their mid-week ministry in the summer . . . if this is true for your church, what will you offer in place of it? Nothing? I hope this isn't your answer. Just consider the following -

• Most children are not in school in the summer, so your mid-week ministry has great potential to become something church and community children look forward to each week!
• Mid-week ministry is the perfect "place" to offer a VBS-type program! This would bring great enthusiasm and could potentially be a huge "draw" to community children! You could modify and "tweak" the curriculum to fit an hour and a half - so one "day's lesson" would work for two mid-week lessons.
• If community children were attending your mid-week VBS all summer, you could use it as an opportunity to offer parenting classes or just open a "cafe" and strategically involve adults in your church as people who just engage and talk with parents over a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea or lemonade while their children are  engaged in the program.
• This could also be the ideal setting to offer an inter-generational opportunity where families learn together, play together, serve together and just enjoy the opportunity to come together!