I’m throwing this one out to my readers. I want to find out what you do.

When coming to a new church you usually inherit a lot of stuff. You also inherit volunteer schedules and routines. At Gateway I inherited one things I really like and one thing I don’t like too much. First of all, a majority of our volunteers serve every week. That’s just awesome. The thing I don’t like so much is that traditionally a large number of these volunteers would take the summer months off and a recruiting push would be done in May called “Summer Serve.” The idea was that a new team is recruited to serve for the summer while most of the regulars took time off. The advantage was that many of those who signed up for Summer Serve would stick with it into the next year. The disadvantage, you’ve got a whole new team to train and enlist in ministry.

Have any of your guys experienced this? I can tell you that I don’t love it. I’m all for giving my volunteers some time off. I’ll give them time off whenever they need it. However, I don’t see letting all my team off for 2-3 months all at the same time. I understand the “why,” but I don’t love it.

So, this Spring we didn’t do it… kinda. Well, I actually got her too late to do an official Summer Serve push. The announcement I made last Sunday was where we would normally do a Summer Serve push (about a month late though), but instead I made it about serving on a permanent basis.

Have any of you experienced Summer Serve? Was it a really successful thing or a necessary evil?