5 Simple Activities That Carry Discipleship Through Summer Without Requiring a Plan

I don’t know about your family, but I always had big plans for the summer. When I was homeschooling, the summer was going to be filled with adventure, Bible memory, and culture. When I was teaching, I finally had some real time with family without grading papers, and we were going to make the best of it.

By the end of June most of those summer intentions have quietly disappeared into tired overwhelm. Granted, part of that was not understanding my mixed-needs family. Life just felt too hard, and we went into survival mode and limited our ambitions to a few meaningful family trips. It was still awesome, but much less than I had hoped for.

Maybe for you the Bible reading plan lasted two weeks. The family devotional got skipped during the beach trip and never restarted. Money got tight and energy ran low for the adventures you planned.

The good ideas that felt achievable in May feel like pressure by July.

I know I say it all the time, but this isn’t failure or lack of discipline as much as it is a mismatch between our energy and our ideal plans. Plus, summer doesn’t need a full-on, jam-packed plan so much as it needs a few anchor points — small, low-effort habits that carry discipleship through the chaos without requiring everyone to perform consistently with energy and resolve they don’t have.

Here are five that work for mixed-needs families specifically — meaning they’re flexible enough for the hard days and meaningful enough for the good ones.

1. The one-question dinner. Not a devotional. Not a discussion guide. Just one question, asked at dinner, that has no wrong answer: “Where did you see something beautiful today?” or “What’s something hard you’re glad you did?” Questions like these train children to notice God’s presence in ordinary life without anyone having to announce that’s what you’re doing.

Quick note: If you haven’t joined my mailing list to get our newsletter “All Wired In,” you can do that here, and you’ll receive table talk prompts as well as a vetted list of well over 100 books to start your children’s library. Plus, you can check out Discipleship Decks here that are specifically for starting meaingful and fun conversations at the dinner table.

2. Worship in the car. Select music that lifts the room and brings our focus to God’s attributes (examples: Phil Wickham’s “What An Awesome God” or City Alight’s “The Lord Is By My Side” or any of their songs or who can resist “Lemonade” by Forrest Frank — easy to sing for kids and very meaningful). When a song prompts something, say it out loud. “This song always reminds me that God is bigger than whatever we’re worried about.” That’s discipleship.

3. The repair ritual. When something goes wrong — and it will — make repair a family practice, not just a parental correction. “We hurt each other and we fix it” is a theology of reconciliation your children will carry into every relationship they ever have.

4. Nature as a prompt. You don’t need a curriculum for this. You need to stop and say “look at that.” Awe is one of the most underused discipleship tools available to parents. A child who learns to be stopped by beauty is a child who is learning something true about who made it. (Replay Phil Wickham’s “What An Awesome God” here.)

5. The honest debrief. At the end of a hard day, or a hard trip, or a hard visit with family — talk about it. Not to process your feelings at your children, but to model what it looks like to bring the real stuff to God. “That was harder than I expected. I kept asking God to help me be patient, and I didn’t always manage it. But I’m going to try again tomorrow.” That is some of the most powerful theology a child will ever hear or see.

None of these require a quiet house, a cooperative child, or a summer that’s going according to plan. They just require a parent who’s paying attention. You already are. Keep going.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16, ESV)