You know the feeling. The feeling of stepping off the bus after an incredible week of camp.

Your mind is full of memories you want to keep for the rest of your life. The time you finally had the breakthrough with “that” kid. The time your room finally fell asleep. The time you paid the camp director to be on the winning team—not. You know the feeling.

But you also know the feeling when you walk into the office the following Monday and think What now? You spent the last 6 months recruiting leaders, convincing parents they could afford sending their kids to camp, and developing the strategy of how to take all these kids to camp.

What if you spent the time before camp to plan how camp can launch into the fall? What if you could capture the energy from camp to lead to the next big thing, the back-to-school push?

For most families, heading back to school will create a weekly rhythm that an unpredictable summer schedule didn’t allow. As a church, we’ve decided to do two things to capture this momentum and launch into the fall season “full steam ahead.”

1. Create Special Days to Drive Momentum

Take a look at the school calendars around you and schedule a Friend Day the weekend after school starts. Friend Days are big push weekends to drive kids to bring their friends to church.   Do big giveaways on these days to anyone who brings a friend. You could giveaway things all the way from Disney World tickets, to gift cards, to Toys R Us gifts. The sky’s the limit here. What we’ve found works best is having a small prize for everyone (a slap band, bouncy ball, piece of bubble gum, etc.) that fits well with the theme of your service. Salvation messages are a must on these days!

2. Use Special Days to Push Towards Something Greater

Special days, like Friend Days, are great times to point children towards the next step. For us, this is JBQ. We run JBQ year-round on Wednesday nights and love it. On Friend Days we encourage children to join a JBQ team and grow in their knowledge of the Bible. It doesn’t have to be JBQ, it could be your Wednesday night program. The point is to constantly point them towards the next thing.

In closing, back to school will be here before you know it, and if I could quote my grandpa, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” Use special days to drive momentum coming out of summer and use those days to point towards a greater goal.