Regardless of the challenge voiced in the old adage or the symptoms of the summer season, let's explore some basic questions. What is the importance of year-round Christian education? How can congregations create successful summer church school and offer dynamic educational ministry while dealing with seasonal needs? Are there creative ideas for Christian education that will uniquely serve a congregation's desire to learn and grow in faith each day?
  
A case for Christian education year-round can be made in many ways.

Lynn Shultz, director of the Sierra Mission Partnership Resource Center, recently used a powerful visual during her "Stepping Stones of Faith" workshop at the Western Regions Association of Presbyterian Church Educators and the Association of United Church Educators event. Shultz displayed a bowl of 168 plastic golf balls, representing the hours in each week. After removing one golf ball to portray the average hour for Christian education most people experience each week, she challenged participants to consider the 167 hours remaining.

Her point was to challenge the primary educators of children, parents and guardians, to expand opportunities for Christian nurture in the home and not rely on the church as the sole provider of religious education.      
         
When faced with deciding whether to continue or not continue Christian education throughout the summer months, it may be helpful to take this example one step further. If 12 to 13 hours of Christian education are not offered, a significant number of valuable opportunities for spiritual growth are sacrificed.

Most Christians will agree that the body of Christ longs to embrace lifelong learning, regardless of the time or season. Benefits of summer education can be as simple as providing more relaxed contexts for learners to be fully present with one another around an issue, or as powerful as exploring a new model for Sunday mornings, such as weekly intergenerational education.

If a church regularly decides not to meet for education during the season of green, growing things, it may mean missing a variety of opportunities to look at God's creation and biblical themes through another lens. There is richness in summer Christian educational experiences for all ages, just as there is richness in the season.

Creative tools and ideas are available for congregations to provide dynamic educational ministry each summer in the midst of seasonal needs. Churches offering education through the summer months quickly discover that all Christian education does not necessarily take place on Sunday morning.

Vacation Bible School (VBS) has long been a tradition for summer Christian education. In fact, some say that a one-week or two-week Bible school experience for several hours each day, or a weekly Bible school night, offers more continuity and impact than a month of Sundays.

Ideas for quality summer Christian education are endless. When planning for your summer educational ministry, ask the following questions. What is unique about the season? How can we do things we do not normally have the opportunity to do? Where is God calling us to grow and learn this summer?

Maybe your congregation will lift up the growing season as the essential asset for summer education. Why not create an all-church garden project with the produce going to a community shelter or food pantry? Biblical studies to coincide with the summer's weekly garden chores might focus on Scriptures about growth, the fruits of the Spirit, or stories with seeds or farm images such as the "Parable of the Sower."

When asking what you can do in summer that you do not normally do, remember to think outside. Offer church school on the lawn under the trees, borrow a tent for the season and call your summer program a "summer camp meeting," or meet each week at a member's home for a backyard house church.

The case for exciting Christian education in the summer is very powerful. The story goes that, one Sunday, a church asked each deacon and elder to share his or her experience of faith in worship. Each testimony was different. The officers came to a more mature, searching faith at various ages or by personal circumstances, but one theme became very clear. Most of these adults recounted a summer camp, Vacation Bible School, or a unique summer Christian education experience that made an impact on their spiritual formation.

Christian education in the summer. Why not? How? When? And where? The opportunities for growth in Christian faith and knowledge are as boundless as the summer season.

Candace C. Hill is the associate for Christian Education/POINT (Presbyterians Organized in Nurture and Teaching), Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), www.pcusa.org.