At summer day camp, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to make every minute of the day effective and fun for our campers. Here are three strategies we use for camp that you can apply to a Sunday service to make it even better.
1) Keep It Moving!
Change up your activities and segments every few minutes during the service. There's nothing worse than a segment that goes too long. Your lesson planning and programming for Sunday services should be responsive to the ages and attention spans of your students. Keep your segments short. Transition between different levels of activity by having active and inactive segments. An active segment could be a game, hands-on activity, or a praise song with motions. An inactive segment is a skit, object lesson, offering teaching, or anything where students aren't directly involved. Mix the order of these segments so students don't sit as spectators for too long.
2) Don't Confuse Structure with Sameness
Having a basic structure for your services is a good way to help students understand what's expected of them. However, having a structure doesn't mean you have to do each segment in the same order every week. Try mixing up the schedule so your students don't get into a stale rhythm with your services. Try doing praise and worship last one week. Shake things up by having a large group game to start the service. Change it up to keep it fresh.
3) Find Every Way To Add Fun
Make every part of your service, from check-in to pick-up, more fun. No child has ever left a service saying "I don't want to go back there because it was TOO MUCH fun!" Constantly analyze what parts of your service could be more fun. Inject it into everything you do, and you'll find that students are more engaged and remember more of what is being taught.
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