Leadership

How does your church connect with your community during the summer?

When I thought about that, I looked to churches in my southern Minnesota city of some 25,000 for specific examples of summer outreach. I discovered four ways of connecting—via food, entertainment, evangelism and service.

One of my earliest music-related memories is lying on my parents’ orange couch listening to reel-to-reel tapes of Broadway musicals. We didn’t own a large selection of recordings, but we had The Sound of Music, several Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and The Music Man, my favorite. I loved the jolly songs and the story of the inept little band that magically turned into a huge, marvelous marching band, complete with 76 trombones. It wasn’t the love story that I cared about; it was the band.

For families today, life is busier than ever. There are play dates to keep, story hours to attend, sporting events to get to, school work to complete and much more. Throw in tech time and seemingly few moments remain for just quiet time. The busyness of work, schedules, commitments and daily life overwhelms.

Worship is powerful, but sometimes we need a catalyst to help us get into the right frame of heart and mind for worship, something to help us turn our thoughts toward God.

Worship Bulletins help us do just that. They beckon us to seek the Lord. They invite us to meditate on His Word. They remind us of the price God paid for us through Jesus.

Welcoming these differing abilities and trying to connect with each student brought its challenges for me as a teacher. I tried right at the beginning of each year to find out what individual students liked and what they thought they were good at. It helped me to know the students better and to plan for learning.

As I read just the first few pages, I realized her idea about journaling, shared by many of her colleagues, has a clear, specific, meaningful purpose: to connect with God. Here’s How Deborah says it: