The Summer Slump | Vacations, VBS, and Vanishing Volunteers

Summer Church Attendance

You know it's summer when your youth pastor starts doing mental math every Wednesday night, trying to figure out why attendance dropped from 75 kids to, like, 12. And somehow those 12 kids are all the ones whose parents make them come no matter what—the homeschooled kids who wear polo shirts tucked into khakis and know every verse to "How Great Thou Art" by heart.

Welcome to what churches across America like to call "the summer slump," which sounds way more official than "everyone decided the lake is more important than Jesus for three months straight."

The Great Vanishing Act

Let me paint you a picture. School lets out, and suddenly church attendance starts looking like a game of musical chairs where half the chairs just walked away. We're talking about what the Bible Bros Podcast guys call "the VVV's of summer"—Vacations, VBS, and Vanishing volunteers. Though honestly, that third V could just as easily stand for "Very convenient excuses."

It's fascinating how creative people get with their summer church avoidance. You've got your classic "we're traveling" folks, which is legitimate until you realize their "travel" is to the lake that's literally 10 minutes from the church. Then there are the parents who suddenly discover their kid is the next Derek Jeter and has to play in every single baseball tournament within a three-state radius. Funny how little Timmy wasn't quite so athletically gifted during the winter worship services.

But here's what really gets me—and this is straight from the mouths of youth pastors who've seen it all—sometimes people will say they can't make it to church because of their kid's tournament, but they'll "watch online instead." Then Sunday comes around, and you can literally see on Facebook that they're not online either. The church streaming platform has a participant list, Karen. We can see you're not there. You're probably at Cracker Barrel talking about how the sermon "just hits different" when you're eating biscuits and gravy.

Mission Trips: The Good, The Bad, and The Zip Lines

Now, not every reason for missing church is bogus. Take mission trips, for instance. Some churches do these incredible, life-changing experiences where you're actually ministering 24/7. The guys on the podcast talked about trips to Peru where they were doing street theater, going door to door, buying out entire bakeries to give away free bread while telling people about the Bread of Life. That's the real deal right there.

But then you've got the other kind of mission trips—the ones that sound more like summer camp with a sprinkle of Jesus dust on top. "Yeah, we're gonna do VBS for two hours, then we're going zip-lining. Tomorrow we'll have a Bible study, then it's go-kart time!"

Look, I'm not saying fun is bad. But somewhere along the way, "mission trip" started meaning "vacation with a tax write-off." When your mission trip itinerary looks like a Disney World FastPass schedule, maybe we need to have a conversation about priorities.

The funniest part is how these things have evolved over the years. Used to be, mission trips meant sleeping on the floor in buildings with dead rats, outdoor showers with those solar water bags hanging in the sun, and PVC pipe plumbing that may or may not actually work. Now it's like, "We're staying at the Hampton Inn because the kids need their rest for tomorrow's ministry... and jet skiing."

The Lake People Phenomenon

Can we talk about lake people for a second? Because if your church is anywhere near a body of water larger than a puddle, you know exactly what I'm talking about. These are the folks who treat their boat like it's their church pew from June through August.

One of the podcast hosts actually became a Christian because of lake people, in the most backward way possible. His friend invited him to the lake, he said he had to go to church first, and the guy was like, "Well, that sounds la