The summer slump

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:08

My name is Lee Stevenson, and I want to welcome you all to our unfiltered podcast where we're talking about church planning. Have real and raw conversations.

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:17

My co host here, I'm Danny Parmalee, and I oversee church planting for Converge Mid America.

Lee Stephenson: 00:00:24

And today we're going to, on our episode, we're going to talk a little bit.

Since it's summer, I thought it'd be appropriate for us to sit and talk a little bit about kind of that dreaded aspect that I think every church planter worries about, and that's the summer slump. And so let's talk a little bit about. Danny, you know what, what is your experience?

What could a planter honestly expect when it comes to summertime and how do you get through it? So let's take a little bit time. What's your personal experience of summer slump when it came to your early church planting days?

Danny Parmelee: 00:00:54

Yeah. So, Lee, did you pick this topic because your air, air conditioning went out and this is just a topic you want to talk about as it's swelt?

Lee Stephenson: 00:01:03

Yeah, I, I, I think that helps. And I think at the same time, in our church plant situation, it seems like every other Sunday our air conditioning goes out.

So it's fitting to the church planning story as well.

Danny Parmelee: 00:01:17

Yeah.

So I, obviously I'm having lots of conversations with the church planners that I'm coaching, and it's actually something that I've become a little bit more passionate about partly because of our experience.

I was warned about it that, you know, your numbers are going to go down, but, man, the reality hits and especially in those early days where people go out on vacation and you can lose 15 to 20 people, and if you only have 100 people, I mean, it just feels like the whole thing is gonna collapse in on you.

And the first years, I think I just got bitter because I didn't, I didn't take off and then I had the advice like, oh, well, you should just take off during the summers. So I did that for a year.

And what I realized is that attendance, while it is often down in the summer, it really is a prime time to strengthen and to grow the church. It just isn't. You're just not going to feel it and you're not going to see it on Sunday.

So for me was a mentality shift to say, okay, we can still grow as a church. We can still have great impact.

Especially where we were in the Midwest, it was like summer was a time to be out, meet neighbors, do fun, you know, outdoor activities, outreach, build connections and as new people came in, you saw them because you didn't have the flurry of all the regulars that were there so you could give some extra attention. And so I shifted my mentality and the. The phrase that I often use with, with my planters is plant in summer, harvest in fall.

So even though your numbers are down, everything that you're doing still matters. Don't just check out mentally. Take off the whole summer. Don't do anything.

But instead use your summer as a time of growth and kind of mentally kind of prepare yourself that when you get up on stage and you look out, it's probably going to be sparse and you just can't. You know, I was. I would always draw attention to it. So.

Lee Stephenson: 00:03:12

What was the overarching culture in the summertime in Milwaukee? Because I think oftentimes what happens in your community culturally gets reflected within the local church situation wherever you plant.

So talk to us a little bit about what do people do in Milwaukee during the summer months? And did they try to escape? Did they try to, you know, go to places and recreate? Did they go to the. The lake? What. What was kind of the. The game plan?

How did that interact?

Danny Parmelee: 00:03:42

Yeah, well, since we have about nine and a half months of winter, you hit it right on the head. And so it's just outdoors. If you had money and means, you did go to Northern Wisconsin at your cabin type of thing.

But even if you didn't have money being right on the lake, you would, you know, on Lake Michigan, you'd be at the beach. You do boating stuff that way. So. So it was.

It was just a lot of that also, even just culturally, that's almost the only time that you can have weddings. You can't have the January and February weddings.

It's just like, almost impossible sometimes because you could literally have your wedding canceled because of snow and ice and everything. So you have people that were gone for all those things, family reunions. I mean, it was. I mean, it's just.

You were outside, and even in those spring months, as soon as it started to get warm, there was no hesitation to skip church because you could go throw the Frisbee by the side of the lake, because it's like you had just been cooped up for so many months. So that's why. Why I said culture, like, people are outside, they just want to be outside.

Lee Stephenson: 00:04:50

Yeah, yeah, We. We had a similar. It was kind of the opposite effect.

In Arizona, that summer is so hot that everybody wanted to escape the valley there in Phoenix and go up to the mountains or make the six hour drive to California to try to escape the heat.

I mean, I, I remember our first summer, I heard the stat that In Phoenix, like July 4th week, 600,000 people typically left the city, you know, during that, that week. And I'm like, yeah, it felt like it, that went that way all the way through the, the summer.

I think there, there are some things that a planter can do to help offset the summer slump. And so let's take a moment and kind of talk through some of the. How do you game plan?

How do you maximize the summer so that honestly by the time the fall hits, you really don't lose too much momentum. And I think if you ride it right, the summer can actually be a place you build momentum and then when the fall hits, you just kind of continue.

I know one of the things that we found great success in, and I've, I've coached a number of guys around the nation with this as well, is as the summer is approaching, address it then. So take a couple weeks in May, for instance. The biggest hit I find is not necessarily always in attendance, but it's in giving.

Danny Parmelee: 00:06:09

Giving. Yeah.

Lee Stephenson: 00:06:10

And, and so if you can offset that, that's one of the reasons you have online giving is stand up front, address the congregation, you know, have this moment kind guys, I know you're all going to go on summer vacation. You should, you need a break, enjoy it, have time with the family.

This is a time for you personally set up the fact that you may be going away as well and, and it's good for you to have vacation time and you need time away with your family and so say, you know, as you go. And we are too, we're looking forward to it. Here's all I'd ask is summer is a time for us to build.

We're planning, we're building things for the fall. Don't forget about us. And here's two ways that you can keep us in your memory. Number one, pray for us this summer.

Pray for the leadership team, pray for our staff. Pray that we'll have great clarity as we're beginning to put pieces together for the fall. Second of all, don't forget about us and your giving.

And here's some practical ways that you can continue to give, just addressing those things up front a couple weeks before the summer actually hits. I found huge success when it came to people's giving, staying sustained through the summer.

Now you'll still dip a little bit, but it won't be as bad as it would be if you didn't address it.

Danny Parmelee: 00:07:21

Absolutely.

I think the other big thing is just understanding that your communication rhythms and patterns have to be adjusted as well just because people are so disconnected.

So when you usually rely on the consistency of coming every Sunday or well, maybe every other Sunday type of thing, and you're using the Sunday as your way to kind of like push information, you've got people that are gone. And then even thinking, okay, well, we usually just send out one email that's, you know, that's good.

People will understand X, Y and Z, whatever, trying to communicate.

Well, not so if they're on vacation, they just come back to, you know, 100 emails and they delete all of the ones that they know are just kind of, you know, information. And you're, you're kind of in that whole batch as well too.

So if there are very important things that need to be communicated, just thinking through the multiple channels that you, you know that you have to be able to do that.

And if you're not getting a certain response on something to know that the other thing is just figuring out how a planning ahead as far as volunteers. And again, this for me so much was adjusting my own expectation.

And the way that you said, it is great where pastors affirm and say, hey, it is summer or, or you know, you know, in, in your case, where it would be like the, maybe the winter swamp, so to speak.

Lee Stephenson: 00:08:37

Yeah.

Danny Parmelee: 00:08:38

And saying you, you should. This is such a positive thing. Here's how you can plan ahead. Don't all sudden, you know, the night before you leave.

Oh, by the way, I can't volunteer for the next two weeks and even though I'm the lead teacher in this classroom or I'm the, you know, the lead for, for this connections ministry, but plan ahead and even use it as a leadership development opportunity that while you step away, someone else can even be trained. So that's one of the like grow areas in the quote unquote slump times that you're giving opportunity to people who normally wouldn't.

Same with worship, all these different things. Plan ahead.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:11

Absolutely.

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:12

And also you're going to go, oh my goodness, like there's some people that actually step up during this time.

Lee Stephenson: 00:09:18

Yeah, it's a great time to think about development and how and who are we developing during that, that time period.

What did you guys, what kind of rhythm did you find worked well for you when it came to preaching schedule and running series and things of that sort during the summertime? Because I found it was sometimes because of people's inconsistent attendance, it was Hard to build week after week after week on the previous week.

So what did you find worked well for you in your situation?

Danny Parmelee: 00:09:47

Yeah, so our overall year rhythm is that we preach through books of the Bible from September through May. And then we clearly saw that June, July and August was a little bit more of a smorgasbord. And we didn't do, we didn't preach.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:05

The Bible during the summer.

Danny Parmelee: 00:10:06

It was basically just whatever hot movie was going on and give my review. No, I'm just kidding. But we would do things so for example like preaching through the core values of the church.

And so if you came on week one and it was, you know, authenticity or something and then, you know, week two was, you know, reliability of the Bible or the Bible being the bit you, it wouldn't matter if you missed the week before.

So exactly like you said, where it wasn't this expectation like hey, in order to really understand this series you're going to need three consistent weeks building upon each other where it was much more, you know, I, I guess you could go, yeah, topical and almost even individual topical to be able to do that.

Lee Stephenson: 00:10:50

So yeah, I think that's great. We always chose June as kind of a character building series is the way we describe it. It wasn't dependent on the week before.

I encourage guys and church planters as a whole to think through when you get to end of July, that's a good time to be spinning vision and talking about the fall and talking about get involved in a group and hey, this is where we want you to go once the fall hits. And then depending on where you're at in the country, as a church planner you want to think through the school calendar.

When does school going to get going back and try to connect the dots of your next. Maybe the fall launch big series kickoff right around the launch of school.

Danny Parmelee: 00:11:34

Yeah, for us it was very similar as we basically. Well, we waited until the football calendar came out to determine when our fall launch would be.

But as soon as that date was kind of set then we worked backwards from that. In about that month before it was very intentional about gearing everybody up and helping them to almost re engage into the rhythm of the church.

And okay, here's when you're going to invite your friends to fall on Cheers when new small groups are going to start.

Here's when the new sermon series and everything was kind of pointing towards that date which was kind of like the next bomb kind of thing in when, you know, when I would say the whole, you know, plant summer harvest and fall type of thing, then you would actually see the fruit of. Oh, my goodness, everyone came back at one time.

I guess we actually grew over the summer, even though it felt like this whole thing was, you know, headed to oblivion.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:24

Exactly. And that comes back to a great point. If you even hold your numbers consistently through the summer, you're actually growing.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:33

Yeah. You're probably. It's probably explosive growth. And when.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:36

Exactly.

Danny Parmelee: 00:12:37

We don't have any seats left for anybody.

Lee Stephenson: 00:12:39

Yeah.

So be encouraged, like, because when the fall hits, you're going to be overwhelmed and you're probably not going to have seats, which is every church planners dream to kind of be in that level. There are a whole lot more that we could say, I think, when it comes to the summer slump.

I think if I was to sum up from my perspective, some of the things that you said and that we saw work for us is just plan ahead, be ahead of the curve. Understand that this is a natural part of the rhythm of the year. This is why it's important to think through sermon series development ahead of time.

And so you can even begin to fill gaps when you want to be on vacation, some of those type of pieces. But you also want to be ahead of the game when it comes to the giving side of things. Thanks so much for being with us, y'all.

This is unfiltered, and we'll look forward to talking with you next time. Until then, keep it.