Summer Outreach Ideas
Getting kids to participate
Summer is around the corner. Many churches report difficulty keeping attendance up over the summer, let alone having effective outreach opportunities.
Below are some ideas of ways you can program your summer to encourage participation and opportunities to share the gospel.
- Water Wars: Consider using the midweek service time to divide kids into teams for water wars. Give those who bring friends an upper hand with additional water balloons or filling station stops for their water weapons.
- Great Weight Challenge: Divide the children into two or more teams. Invite the teams to bring canned goods for a food pantry or change for missions. Give the teams a week or two to collect their donations. Then weigh each team’s donation and recognize the winning team. If you don’t want to ask kids or their families for donations, let the teams run a relay race to see who can gather the most weight in three minutes. You may let the kids fill backpacks with rocks, or use buckets, cups, and water.
- Sports Outreach: Outreach Magazine has awarded MEGA Sports Camp the title of Children’s Outreach of the Year four times. This outreach is designed to offer inspiration for a 5-day week of camp, or the material can be divided up to fit ten 90-minute sessions over the course of the summer. Kids love coming and being active over the summer. MEGA Sports Camp is a beautiful blend of sports, mentoring, and the gospel. Everything a coordinator need is included in the starter kit.
- Field Trips: Encourage kids to bring a friend or to have perfect attendance. As an incentive consider offering a field trip during the midweek service or on a weekend. The field trip doesn’t have to be difficult. It can be a trip to a local ice cream shop or other fun local activity.
Don’t wait for Easter to pass before considering what your summer outreach will look like. Be creative, and find ways to encourage attendance and bring in those who need the hope of Jesus Christ.
How have you increased participation your summer outreach ideas.
