Preparing For The Next Year

At ym360 everything we do falls under one of these four categories:

• Bible Study Resources
• Training
• Community, and
• Networking

When we say "networking," what we mean is shining a spotlight on other ministers or ministries doing awesome stuff. And so from time to time, we'll use this space to link to a great post on another youth ministry blog out there.

Today is one of those times.

seventy8 Productions is one of our favorite sites. The work that Jeremy Smith and friends do over there is awesome. Their content frequently shows up on Flashback Friday, our weekly review of the top youth ministry links on the web.

We wanted to link to an article by Jeremy that ran this morning on seventy8 Prod. It's short and sweet (our favorite kind), but also very timely. It's a quick look at what you need to be doing to use your Summer down-time wisely!

If you like the excerpt below, head over to the full article and read the rest.

Preparing For Next Year, by Jeremy Smith via seventy8 Productions

The summer time is the perfect time to hang out with teens because they can be less busy than when they are in school and they are desperate to get out of the house and hang out with their friends. But this is also the time that you need to be thinking about next school year. We need to be prepared and for some of you, the summer is the time you plan either your whole next school year or the whole next fiscal year. This means that you need to have planning time as well as specific times that you are communicating with key people in your ministry: volunteers, parents, and the vocal students. Here are three things that you need to do for effective summer communication as you plan for next year.

• Volunteers: Unless you are the luckiest youth worker in the world, you need more volunteers for next year and the summer time is the perfect time to find new ones. Have you put an announcement on Facebook or in the church morning announcements? You need to be spreading the word about the need, interviewing people, doing background checks, and eventually getting them plugged in. At the same time, you do not want to lose the ones that you have simply because you were neglectful of them. Send frequent prayer requests, Scripture, upcoming events, and reminders about training via email, phone, or social media.

To read the rest of the article on seventy8 Productions, click here.