Many small groups and Sunday school classes (or whatever your church calls groups of eight to 12 people) take a break for the summer. So how do you stay connected to a community of Christians during the time off? After all, it’s not like our need for relational support in our faith takes a summer vacation. With those thoughts in mind, here are some creative ideas to intentionally stay involved with a group of fellow Christians this summer.
A weekly gathering with your other friends. Small groups are great places to meet new people and to be in community with people you might not otherwise hang out with. But if your group’s on hiatus, why not hang out with some friends not in your group? Pick an activity to do together once a week and let the natural conversations flow.
Family dinner. Find a group of people who would be interested in once a week or every other week dinner. You can rotate who’s in charge and who brings what. But have a great time enjoying a communal home-cooked meal, and then take some time to pray for one another after you eat.
Read a book with people. Pick a book to go through with some of your friends from church (or some of your friends who go to other churches—chances are, their small groups are on break, too). Take the opportunity to read something you’ve been wanting to read but haven’t found the time. Being in a group will be a good motive to finish.
Celebrate some feast days. Whether you’re aware of it or not, there’s pretty much a feast every day celebrating some hero of the faith or event in Christianity. So you have plenty of reasons to throw a party! Pick a few of your favorite stories of faith—remember the story of Doubting Thomas on his feast day (July 3) or marvel at the Transfiguration (Aug. 6). Whatever you decide on, invite a bunch of people over to actually celebrate huge events in Church history.
Get out. It can be hard to get out and about and serve when you’re trying to intentionally meet around work and school schedules on one specific evening per week. So take the opportunity of more free nights to gather up a regular group of people to go serve somewhere. You can go any day of the week and decide as a group what you’d like to do.
