sbc IMPACT!

Southern Baptist VBS … Time to “Break the Mold?”

May 6th, 2008 by Geoff Baggett
Posted in Baptist Life, Church, Church Life, Discipleship, Geoff Baggett, Missional, Missions, Student Ministry |

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?