6 Things You Can do While Your Students are Gone

Do Number 1 for certain and then pick a couple more.

 1.  REST....do some things good for you!  If you are married, spend some extra time with your wife or husband.  If you have children, do something fun with them. If you are single, do something with a friend that is NOT a college student.

2.  Clean up your ministry social media.  By clean up, I mostly mean update it.  I am always surprised when I click on some ministry's web page or Facebook page and the most recent listing on it is about their start of school events....REALLY?  I have even seen some from last spring. Come on, clean that up.  You can always just put your weekly schedule up there for people to see.  One other clean up I would suggest is to see, if everything on there is something you feel ok about parents or pastors seeing when they go to find out about your ministry.  I was asked by some parents recently about a ministry.  I went to their website and saw one of the posts asked the question, "Do you fold your toilet paper or wad it?"  Is that really what you want people's first impression to be of your ministry?

3.  Do thank you notes or personal contacts.  Are there campus administrators or janitors or administrative aids that have been helpful to you and your ministry?  Let them know that you appreciate it by a note, a personal visit or even some sort of thank you gift.

4.  Send an update or summary of the semester to financial supporters.  It can be a "Dear Friends" letter that goes to those who have provided financial support that tells them some of the good things that happened this semester.  You can personalize it by writing a quick P.S. at the bottom.

5.  Send an end of the year update to all alumni.  This could be the same as your "Friends" letter.  Remember, older people have a hard time reading things on red paper even though that is a favorite Christmas letter color.  If you do alumni news, ask for their alumni update.  Always, always enclose a return envelope.

6.  Take a personal prayer and thinking one day retreat.  Go somewhere away from home and work and just be still and quiet all day.  It will drive you crazy the first half of the day, but maybe by the second half you will begin to clear the clutter.  Try it.

Could your college ministry be reaching more students?  Check out, Reaching MORE College Students:  Next Level College Ministry, amazon.com/dp/B0BMW8NPMN.