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tagged: Baptist Life, Church, Church Life, Discipleship, Geoff Baggett, Missional, Missions, Student Ministry, Vacation Bible School, VBSSouthern Baptist VBS … Time to "Break the Mold?"
Posted by Geoff Baggett in Baptist Life
I’ll never forget that day.
It was late-June in 2003. Our one-year-old church was hosting its second-ever Vacation Bible School. A team of youth and adults from a sister church in Tennessee came to help us. Being the pastor, I was the “MC” of the event.
I cannot remember the theme … though something jungle-ish does come to mind. We were, of course, using LifeWay’s wonderful VBS curriculum that was designed specifically for Southern Baptist churches. Anyhow … as I welcomed the beautiful, lively children into the space that we had rented for the week-long extravaganza, one of the little angels looked into my eyes and spoke words that cut to the very depths of my heart. He said:
“I’ve already done this Bible School twice already.”
I asked him, “Whatever do you mean.” Then he proceeded to tell me the Bible stories and memory verses from each of the five days. Sure enough, the little tyke had (obviously) attended two other SBC churches in our small town and had completed the five-day curriculum. His command of the material and the memory verses was impressive.
I almost offered him a teaching position in the kindergarten class …
This event led me to do a bit of research. As best I could tell, every single SBC church in our town that hosted a VBS used the LifeWay curriculum.
I decided right then and there that we had to do something different. We had to BE different. We had to do better than simply doing the same thing that every other church was doing. Surely, the kids deserved something better than that.
Since 2006 we have been using Gospel Light’s VBS curriculum, and we have even been adapting that to fit our specific use and personality as a church. There is only one other church in town (FUMC) that uses the same material. So we’re able to make it fresh. We don’t have to worry about our presentation being something “warmed over” that the kids have already experienced.
Another thing we did was change the approach to our VBS offering. We used to simply take up a daily offering and send it off to the Cooperative Program. The kids didn’t really respond. We took up maybe $100 a week.
In 2006 we focused upon Haiti because of a local Haitian partnership involving several local churches (both SBC and non-SBC … in fact, a local Methodist pastor leads teams there every year). We cast the vision before our kids to give toward providing benches for a church in Haiti that had no seats. Their response was incredible! They provided the cash to outfit two churches with brand new pew benches!
Last year we cast the vision for our church’s Peru Partnership. We customized our missions lessons into Peru lessons, complete with authentic food each day. We promised that every penny given would be used in Peru in 2008 by one of our teams. Our little VBS (about 100 kids) responded with an offering over $650! We used that cash to pay for all of the medications used by our veterinary team in February. This summer we will show them pictures of their missions dollars at work. We have yet to identify a “cause” for our 2008 offering, but I know that our kids will respond generously.
So those are the “customized” changes that we have made to our local church VBS.
Does your church do a VBS? What do you like the most about VBS? Have you made any changes to your strategy in the past few years? What curriculum does your church use? Have you been pleased with products from other companies (besides LifeWay)?
How have you sought to “break the mold” when it comes to your Vacation Bible School ministry?
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Good post! We moved our VBS to Sunday mornings during the summer. We found that by the time we did ours, normal VBS had become a babysitting service through the week and, like you, the kids knew what was coming next.
Doing it on Sunday mornings enabled us to use SS and Kids Zone (children’s church) as the time and the current staff as VBS staff. We don’t have the numbers but we have reached families with this appraoch because they bring their kids and stay for Bible study and church sometimes, but more often, they come for the adult service and they pick up their kids. At the end of every day, we bring the kids back in to the service and they sing a song and we have some fun with them.
I love VBS! We use and love the Lifeway material. (I don’t hear the kind of story you shared here in IL.) We do make “Family night” really big- on Sunday night- and we do the musical. Parents and relative who have never been to church will come to watch their child in the musical. (We had just over 1,200 in VBS last year counting our workers and we had about that many adults come to family night- most of them not from our church.) I do a brief message on family and faith. During the week we send flyers home with the kids explaining SS and inviting them. VBS is one of our most effective ministries. doug munton
Geoff:
Since it is nearly 50 miles to the nearest church using the Lifeway VBS materials we don’t have the problem that you have (although we have used some of Gospel Light’s materials for other things and found it works well). I’m also not sure, but I don’t think any other church in town is doing VBS. Our problem, being a small church is getting workers during the day. Our other problem is that our building is rented and only available to us on Tue, Thur, and Sun.
What we have done is to move our VBS to the park in the evenings. We make “classrooms” by painting appliance boxes and standing them up with fence posts. The front side, facing the street, will have a scene from that year’s theme and the backside is decorated by the teachers. One of the guys brings in a large tent used for hunting camp (will hold up to 20 kids on tables) for a craft tent. We project videos on the side of a building and play games in the open area. It works out well. We will usually peak out at about 35 kids. On Friday night we end with a massive water balloon fight. (We will use about 1000 balloons. This is a “tradition” we started 5 years ago that the kids look forward to).
A couple of nearby churches (nearby is a relative term) from our association partner together for VBS. These three churches are spread over 120 miles. They meet “in the middle” at a park in the mountains. They bus in everybody and spend the day doing VBS type stuff. I think they do this for 3 days. Last year several of our youth helped with that VBS (It is about 110 miles to that park).
Keith
Geoff,
Lifeway has an alternative VBS material. We always use that for the same reason that yall use Gospel Light. We always have our VBS later than most of the churches in our area, so we use the alternative.
We still have daytime VBS, and we put our Sr. Adults and Youth to work bigtime in it. We stress that the offering is going to help the missionaries, and the children give really good to the offering. Of course, it helps that we contest between the boys and the girls to seee who can bring the most money!
David
Thanks for the info, guys …
I’m always excited to hear about creativity in our SBC ministries.
Sorry I haven’t been available to comment and keep the conversation going. My daughter was in an accident on Saturday, and I have been caught up in the world of insurance, adjusters, etc…
She’s fine, but the Bug is a total loss.