Now that summer is almost over you have probably noticed that your numbers have dropped.  The temptaion I think for many including myself is to not put as much prep time into developing messages and creating our programs, but that is not the best idea.  I have noticed over my years in Student Ministry that summers gives us an excellent time to reconnect with our faithful students - the ones who actually show up during the summer.

These students are who we depend on to invite their friends and participate in discussion.  We need to use the slowness of summer to re-establish bonds of friendship with these students. But how do we do that?  It looks different for everyone.  We need to look at our own strengths and the personalities of our faithful students.  We just had a wonderful time lately playing "Killer" for an hour.  No there was not any spiritual growth that took place, but there was a sense that, "Hey we had a small group of people and we still had fun."

If you are a full time Student Pastor, you will most definitely enjoy using your day during the week to do this type of thing.  You can call and text several of your students for a quick game of basketball at the gym, or organize a trip to the mall just to hang out.  But most of us are part time and bi-vocational Student Pastors and we don't have a summer time let up, so it is good to use this time in our weekly meetings to build this faithful group of students up.