It’s hard to believe that November is here.

It seems like just yesterday we were helping new students move into their new home on campus and kicking-off ministry efforts on a number of fronts — and now we’re beginning to think about the upcoming holiday season and the end of the term.

November can be a tricky month. We’ve made it through the beginning of the school year madness, and we’re able to pause long enough to catch our breath… but there’s a danger we must ready ourselves for.

Almost instinctively, as the calendar page turns to November, students will tend to slip into a ‘survival mode’ of sorts — peeling back their involvements to a bare minimum and only doing what absolutely needs to be done — and it’s imperative that we do NOT follow suit.

If we don’t want November to be a ‘throwaway’ month on campus, we’d better be strategic in how we plan to utilize this month.

So here are a few ideas I have towards making November great:

• Community-building or social events – November is NOT typically the time to launch any new ministry endeavors.  It can be, however, a great time to provide some low/no commitment kinds of social events that can introduce students to us and our  ministry, gather and encourage our current students, and provide some much-needed stress relief for students who are starting to find themselves under the weight of deadlines and pressures of the end of the term.
• Prepare your staff and student leaders – it’s important to raise the awareness of some of the potential pitfalls and mentalities connected to the month of November.  Making sure our staff, and student leaders, are all on the same page — prepared to thrive during this month, and not just survive — is key to setting up our spring semester to be a good one!
• A personal and/or staff retreat – November can be a great time to slip off campus for a day or two of uninterrupted time with God.  You might be surprised by how refreshing something like this will be for you (and your team) right now.  If you oversee a team, encourage them to take some time away for this.
• A Thanksgiving feast – consider hosting a special Thanksgiving feast on campus, or inviting students who don’t have plans to head back home — or to a friends, over to your place to be a part of a family feast and holiday celebration.
• Christmas gathering – in preparation for the end of the term, and/or the Christmas holiday, consider hosting a Christmas gathering sometime between the Thanksgiving holiday and the end of the term.  We all know how scattered the end of the term can be, so we may not want to wait too long after the Thanksgiving holiday before having this event for our students.
• Preparations for the spring – NOW is the time to finalize plans for the spring term, that way our holiday break can be just that — a break!
• Map out your holiday break – not to rule out the possibility of spontaneity, but so that we might make the best use of our upcoming holiday (Christmas) break, it’s best if we can map out — to some degree — what we’d like to do, as well as what we NEED to do.  This is another time that has the potential to ‘slip away’ if we’re not intentional with our plans.

SO, that’s what I’m thinking about for this month… what about you?