In this week's Message About Purpose and Strategy, I want to challenge our resignation to what appears to be the inevitability of the summer slump. In other words, I'm wondering why we expect, allow and accept erosion at Dayspring when the sun shines. You might explain that we expect less people to attend when the weather turns good because it has always been this way. And you might say that we allow and accept the lower level of involvement because we can't do anything else. The talk around seems to suggest that we lay down and play dead, accepting the fact that half of our congregation gets very casual about corporate worship in the summer. I've heard people say things like this, "Well, here we go. Attendance is low on Memorial Day and it's going to stay like this until September. It's been like this every year. Check the numbers and you'll see. And it's the same at other churches in Oregon as well." Even if this is the case, I don't want resignation to lull us into ambivalence. Let's not let what has been predict and dictate what will be. Let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to be here in worship as many weekends in the summer as I am in any other season. I'm going to stimulate attendance by reaching out with encouragement to people I haven't seen for a while. And, when attendance is down, I'm going to remain passionate and preach to 600 people the same way that I would to 900. Maybe most important, I'm going to concentrate on ministering to those who are here and not get pre-occupied on those who aren't. The full chairs matter more than the empty ones. But the people occupying chairs should be prayerful and passionate about what it takes to reach people who could be in those yet-unoccupied chairs. What can you do as we try to beat the summer slump together?