Let’s talk Youth Group Calendar for a minute. Are there certain Sundays of the year that you have lower attendance? Certain Sundays that fall on holidays? Certain Sundays where a larger cultural/community event might conflict with your regularly scheduled programming?

Of course there is. I learned early on in ministry that it made more sense to NOT have our “regularly scheduled meeting” on certain Sundays:
-New Year’s Eve/Day
-MLK Weekend
-Super Bowl Sunday
-Easter Sunday
-Mother’s Day/Father’s Day
-Fourth of July weekend
-Labor Day Weekend
-Christmas Eve/Day

Some might add:
-any Sunday where your youth get off from school that Monday.
-the Sundays where there is an awards ceremony, like the Oscars.
-the Sundays where there is a community parade, festival, or awareness event (like the Crop Walk?)

Some may totally disagree with this list and have already checked me off their list of people to trust. But, these are the main Sundays that I learned were likely affected by family gatherings or other traditions, and it would be in everyone’s interest to not do our regularly scheduled meeting.

Sometimes this meant to not meet at all. Sometimes, it meant looking at an alternative.
Maybe we would host a lunch fundraiser for a non-profit. Maybe we would participate as a group in the community festival/parade. Maybe we would have our own party to celebrate the sporting/arts event. Maybe we would meet at a different time of day or go offsite to do something together.

Calendaring Alternatives.

I used to love it when there was a scheduling conflict with our regular meeting because it invited curiosity and imagination into the calendaring process. It opened our minds to what else we could do. It invited us to consider what God might be calling us to do differently. Yes!

On this MLK Day, 2024, I remember fondly one of the churches I served and how they calendared differently around this day of remembering the life, ministry, and dream of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For many years now, it is this church’s tradition to host a Day of Service. Children, youth, and adults of all ages gather for worship in the morning to center their hearts and minds around MLK’s vision and Jesus’ call to actively love our neighbors. They then dispersed into the city (and always had projects on-site) to perform acts of service. It was a beautiful expression of love and remembrance that hundreds of people participated in each year.

I missed this for many years after I left that church, until last year – it dawned on me that my youth/church could do something. Our local hunger ministry, a Community Kitchen, closed on MLK day so its staff could have a day off. So our church fellowship hall became the Community Kitchen for the day. It was a simple thing, but a beautiful thing, to involve children, youth, and adults in service. Many of them had the day off from school or work, and they could’ve chosen to do other things – but, inspired by MLK’s dream and our call to loving service to our neighbors, they chose to do something to make the world a better place.

Alternative Calendaring.

When you look at your calendar, whether it is for ministry or personal life – where does it make sense for you to do something different than your regularly scheduled programming? What family/community traditions could you be part of in a more intentional way; instead of looking at these things as a scheduling conflict, what if you embraced the disruption as an invitation to imagine collaboration or a new way of celebrating/remembering? How might God be calling you to do something different; to make the world a better place, to show love to your neighbors?

I invite you, as you plan out your year, to consider certain days of each month where you intentionally *calendar alternatives – do something different; something kind; something selfless; something that challenges the systems of complacency and inspires others to do the same.

May it be so.