Vacation Bible School Archives - Page 3 of 8

May 21, 2014

It’s Time to Reimagine VBS Follow-up

With the first days of Vacation Bible School just around the corner it’s time – actually past time – to start making plans to continue the connections begun with unchurched families during VBS.

You might assume I’m referring to follow-up (an action or series of actions), and on some level you would be correct. But continuing the connection is much more than an action. It’s a philosophy of why we conduct VBS in the first place. It’s a change from believing VBS is an end in itself, to believing VBS is just the beginning – the launch pad for future evangelistic opportunities.

Simply put, approximately 300,000 unchurched individuals attend VBS each year. During VBS we have a great opportunity to share the Gospel, resulting in approximately 80,000 professions of faith. This is a phenomenal number for one week of ministry, but what might the number of professions of faith be if we truly became intentional about building on the relationships (continuing the connections) begun during the week?

Each of the 300,000 unchurched individuals are connected to family members who did not attend VBS, yet we have their names and contact information on the registration form. When parents and other siblings are added in, we have discovered 1,000,000 (that’s one million) unchurched individuals who are at least interested enough in a relationship with a church to allow the kids to attend VBS.

Continued connections are required to reach the 1,000,000 and to disciple the 80,000 making professions of faith. This is bigger than a postcard or even a single home visit. What is required here is the mindset that says our work is not done until every person discovered through VBS is connected with the Gospel and connected with the church. We know that more people become active in the life of a church through relationships than for any other reason. VBS is not a relationship, but it is the catalyst for relationships.

Actions are required, but more importantly relationships are required. It’s time to start making plans – not for follow-up actions but for relationships!

Jerry Wooley is The VBS GUY!! He serves as the Vacation Bible School Specialist for LifeWay. Don’t expect to talk with Jerry for too long without him asking you about VBS. Jerry loves the local church and serves in various roles (including VBS teacher extraordinaire) at Inglewood Baptist Church.

CentriKid, Vacation Bible School

May 9, 2014

How Are You Promoting Your Summer Activities?

By Jeremy Echols

What are you doing to help kids get excited about this summer? With VBS and camps fast approaching, many churches are in full-swing sharing their promotion materials to make sure parents know the dates and kids are signed up. How will you draw kids in from your community to be a part of camp or VBS this year?

Check out this highway billboard for a church’s Agency D3 VBS.

One CentriKid church used an old-school Atari that goes along with the 8-bit video game theme “Reset: God Redeems!” to help kids get excited about signing up for camp. We’ve seen customized signs, great costumes, and other exciting ideas in the past.

Show off your promotion strategies for camp and VBS by posting a photo on the CentriKid or VBS Facebook page. We would love to see all the different ways that churches are promoting camp and VBS.

Summer ministry is going to be great!

Jeremy Echols (@coachechols) leads the @centrikid team, finds new camp locations, plans training, and lots of other projects. He met his wife Emily working camp, and their daughter #BabyMadison was born in 2011.

Training, Vacation Bible School

April 21, 2014

Are You Reaching Unchurched Kids through VBS?

By Jeffrey Reed

Why did Jesus come? He tells us in Luke 19:10. It’s pretty clear. Jesus came to “seek and save the lost.”

If we are his representatives here on Earth, then our purpose is to help Him fulfill that goal. He commissions us in Matthew 28:16-20 to do just that.

Is your purpose for VBS clear? Check out a brief history of VBS: About LifeWay Vacation Bible School.

I was a “lost” kid. I didn’t give my life to Christ until I was 17. Were churches “seeking” me out? Did churches really want to be used by God to “save” me? I walked across the lawns of three or four churches almost every day. I’m pretty sure that they did VBS. I rarely felt invited.

They were probably great “in-reach” events for those churches. There is definitely a value in that. Building community is important.

However, as the season of VBS approaches, don’t forget THE purpose. Don’t forget that there are lost, un-churched kids walking across your property almost every day. Sure, they are usually a “handful.” Sure, their parents might even use the different VBSs in your community as childcare. But those kids still need the hope that only Christ can give. Don’t punish kids because of bad parents.

Go and SEEK them out. INVITE them in. CHANGE their hearts and lives forever. Be Jesus to them.

Jeffrey Reed serves as the Director of Kids Ministry for LifeWay. He came to LifeWay with a wide variety of ministry experiences including worship leader, director of children’s ministry, and executive leadership in several growing congregations. Jeffrey’s posts will give your heart and brain a workout, just like the fitness Boot Camp he leads in the mornings for LifeWay employees. Jeffrey and his wife Katherine have four kids.

Vacation Bible School

April 3, 2014

Why You Should Plan Your 2014 VBS Now (in 7 Easy Steps)

By Jerry Wooley

It’s the season for fall break, fall festivals, and fall holidays. But it’s also the time you should begin planning for your 2014 Vacation Bible School. The earlier you plan, the better your experience will be.

Some of you have already gotten your VBS catalog. These seven tips will help you keep it simple and make your VBS planning a complication-free experience. The last thing you want causing frustration is an event as fun and life-changing as Vacation Bible School.

1. Set up a meeting with your pastor.

Ask him to share his heart for the purpose and potential of VBS. Use this opportunity to get on the same page and align your vision and goals with your pastor’s.

2. Make sure VBS dates are on the church calendar now.

Find a week that does not compete with other ministries. Be ready with a couple of good dates that can work, in case someone else has already booked your first choice. Nail down the date on the church calendar and begin publicizing your VBS dates to the congregation now.

3. Enlist a co-director or small leadership team.

There is tremendous energy in dreaming, planning, and dividing responsibility with another person who has a shared passion.

4. Create a calendar of bite-sized chunks of work that needs to be accomplished over the next nine months.

Begin with your VBS dates and work your way backwards. It’s amazing what you can accomplished by breaking the work to be done into small parts. It keeps the workload from getting overwhelming and reduces the stress on everyone involved.

5. Enlist key leaders early.

Get division or age-group team leaders and others on board as early as you can. Then make them responsible for enlisting their own teams. Be sure to give a clear list of responsibilities and expectations before enlisting any workers.

6. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate!

Lack of communication – with church staff, congregation, and VBS volunteers – is one of the biggest culprits of complication and stress. Make sure everyone is constantly informed of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of your VBS.

7. Get the VBS resources you need to plan – now.

Have you heard about the new VBS Jump Start Kit? It’s a new resource that contains everything you need to begin planning and promoting for VBS 2014 — the Administrative Guide for Directors, Decorating Made Easy, music, posters, and more. Watch a video about how it can help you at Lifeway.com/vbs.

Vacation Bible School

April 1, 2014

Making Continued Connections through VBS

By Jerry Wooley

Many times “VBS follow-up” is relegated to a postcard sent the week after VBS thanking kids for attending. Once mailed, we can joyfully check “follow-up” off of our to-do list and close the books on another successful year of VBS.

The problem is not the postcard – kids love to receive mail – but the reality that for far too many of us a postcard is both the beginning and end of our follow-up efforts. For this reason LifeWay’s VBS team has begun changing the term — and hopefully the mindset — from follow-up (a one-time action) to continued connections or continuing the connection (an on-going relationship).

Collectively, each year VBS allows us to discover and connect with over one million unchurched kids, teens, and adults. Statistics reveal that 10 percent of everyone registering for VBS represents an unchurched family. They come to us initiating a connection — bringing with them everything we need to continue and grow the connection (names, ages, contact information). Yet, the same statistics show we continue the connection beyond VBS with only about a third of the unchurched.

For too long we have made VBS “the event” of the summer. Connecting with millions of people but making a lasting impact with only a small percentage. To turn these numbers around we must change the way we think about VBS. Instead of VBS being “the event,” it must become in our minds the prelude to the “real event” — which is continuing the connections created as a result of VBS.

By changing our way of thinking, the success of VBS is not measured by the number of people enrolled during the week, but by the number of previously unchurched families connected a year later.

Continuing the connection must be intentional. It must be planned for and pursued with the same intensity and attention to detail as the week of VBS.

Jerry Wooley The VBS GUY!! He serves as the Vacation Bible School Specialist for LifeWay. Don’t expect to talk with Jerry for too long without him asking you about VBS. In addition to VBS Jerry serves at his local church in various roles (including leading the 4th & 5th Grade Life Group and Party Pastor) at Creekside Fellowship north of Nashville.

Vacation Bible School

April 1, 2014

To Theme or Not to Theme (VBS) — That is the Question!

By Jeffrey Reed

I hear this conversation pop up at kids conferences. “I love this year’s Vacation Bible School theme.” “We pick our VBS based on how cool the theme is!” “We don’t use a themed Vacation Bible School, we just take our kids through the Bible.” These are common comments. The final answer is up to every kids leader, but I’ve noticed that many kids ministry leaders pick their VBS based on the theme.

Before I go into the topic I want to emphasize that the theme should be secondary to the content. Please, please, please consider the essence of what that VBS proposes to accomplish. Is it evangelistic in nature? Is Jesus at the center? Does it wisely unpack God’s Word? Answer “yes” to those questions and then we can move on to the theme.

Why Do We Do VBS?

First of all, according to Barna, it is still the #1 evangelistic tool in children’s ministry. We also know that it has potential to bring families into the church, though that goal is often under-strategized VBS has a rich history as well.

Why is a VBS Theme Important?

Because of the two reasons listed above. A great theme will make kids more interested in attending. Furthermore, a good theme will make parents interested in bringing their kids. A good theme that’s kid-friendly might also help them to see that God’s Word is absolutely relevant to their lives. That’s critical.

Generally speaking, a theme aimed at preschoolers might not be appealing to kids in 3rd-grade and up. A theme that appeals to older kids, while it might not seem over-the-heads of the younger ones, will at least keep the older kids engaged, which, as many kids ministry leaders know, is critical in keeping all kids engaged. The old adage goes, “If you lose the older kids, you’ve lost them all.”

Jesus “themed” most of His parables in the context of his audience. He took them to another place and time as he told stories that framed up and contextualized God’s bigger story. VBS gives us the opportunity to put a “theme” to God’s story in a context to which kids can connect and better understand.

Events, Training, Vacation Bible School

March 14, 2014

March Madness for a Kids Minister

By Jeff Land

In the world of college basketball, an end-of-the-season NCAA tournament creates “March Madness” among fans each spring. Sixty-eight teams are split into brackets and play until they are each eliminated until it is down to the Final Four. (Please note: I really only know this information because (1) I Googled it and (2) one year, my beloved MSU Bulldogs went to the tournament!)

For kids ministry leaders, March represents its own madness as we begin planning for huge summer and fall events.

I recently put out a call on my Facebook page for kids ministry leaders to let me know what their major events were for the year. The answers weren’t surprising:

VBS
Summer Camp
Fall Festival
Easter Eggstravaganza

Imagine the four events above in your own “ministry brackets.” Which event would end up being the winner? Which event would drop out the first? Why? Sometimes I wonder if God isn’t going to ask me why I spent so much time on things that didn’t really matter and why I didn’t spend enough time on things that did.

I think that all events work together to bring a holistic approach to your kids ministry. Sometimes, though, in the midst of planning an awesome event, we forget what the end goal is. Do you have a clear goal for what each event will accomplish? Do you know why you are doing the event or is it just something that has always been done? Please know, I’m not saying quit doing events, just don’t lose site of the goal!

Here is a process that I went through a few years ago when I recognized I had lost sight of my end goal for VBS. I was all set to teach preteens. I had spent hours decorating our room and making it themed out just right. On the first day of VBS, we had so many preteens come that we had to change rooms and left all of our decorations behind. And you know what, not one of the 40+ preteens asked where the decorations were. I had spent far too much time getting the walls ready and not nearly enough time getting my heart ready. Again, decorating for VBS isn’t bad, but is our goal just to have the most “tricked out” VBS or to have the most spiritually-changing week of a child’s life?

I wonder how it would change our perspective if we reversed our brackets and started with the goal and worked our way backwards.

Jeff Land loves Life! That’s pretty great, because his job here at LifeWay is the Team Leader for Bible Studies for Life: Kids. Jeff loves his life which is so blessed by his amazing wife, Abbey, and their four sons, Reed, Nash, Will, and Tuck. A natural encourager and fun-lover, look for Jeff’s posts about teacher appreciation and game ideas. When not serving at work, Jeff serves 2nd graders at his church, First Baptist Church, Joelton, TN.

Vacation Bible School

March 7, 2014

Vacation Bible School for Preschoolers

By Jerry Vogel

Without a doubt, God has designed preschoolers to be discoverers, detectives, investigators and explorers. They are constantly on the move and on the “search.” These traits make LifeWay’s VBS 2014 Agency D3: Discover. Decide. Defend. a perfect fit for preschoolers.

Preschoolers will be all over the “discover” aspect of Vacation Bible School. It’s almost as if it was designed just for them — and you know what? It was!

In all five sessions of Agency D3 preschoolers will be looking for answers to these questions:

Is Jesus really God’s Son?
Was Jesus just an ordinary man?
Did God have a plan for Jesus to die on the cross?
Did Jesus really come back to life to become the Saviour of the world?
What should I do with all of this evidence about Jesus that I have “discovered?”

Each session of VBS is filled with fun, challenging activities of looking for evidence. Interspersed throughout great times of Bible learning and play, cool music will be a part of the preschoolers’ day. And of course, any great VBS, will offer creative snacks, games with lots of movement and even a learning time about missions and how important it is to tell our family and friends about Jesus.

Check out Agency D3: Discover. Decide. Defend. You’ll be glad you did!

Jerry Vogel serves as a Childhood Ministry Specialist in LifeWay Church Resources. He is married to Janie and has four children and twelve grand kids. Jerry is a member of Brentwood Baptist Church and teaches preschoolers there. He is committed to enriching the lives of those who teach kids as well as making eternal investments in the lives of children.

Vacation Bible School

February 26, 2014

Spring Break VBS?

By Jeffrey Reed

Have you ever considered the possibility of a spring break VBS? My family and I don’t always “get away” for spring break. I’ve noticed that seems to be a growing trend for families during that time. The church is responding by stepping into that space and providing a meaningful experience for those families that are sticking around for the break — Vacation Bible School!

You might be thinking of the weeks of prep that most VBS events require, but it doesn’t have to be that difficult. For example, LifeWay’s VBS has pre-printed full wall scenes and other decorations that allow you to decorate a room in a few minutes. The lessons are easy to follow and the music and videos are higher than any quality I’ve seen in kids ministry.

In many cases, you can get the volunteers you need when you consider that high school students who are well led, can be great leaders to kids. (You just need to “book them” in advance.) You might consider that helping with a spring-break VBS might be their mission trip.

What is your church providing for your families over spring break? Can you better serve those single-parents who can’t take a week off from work and don’t have a place for child-care? Consider a spring break VBS!

Encouragement, Vacation Bible School

February 19, 2014

VBS: That Won’t Work at My Church

By Bethany Brown

This common phrase is one I’ve come to love — “That won’t work at my church because …” On the VBS team here at LifeWay, one of the things continually stressed is how important it is to consider multiple viewpoints when editing curriculum for churches. In a brainstorming planning session, there are people representing several types of churches from a church plant in a gym to a small country church to a large city church — and everything in between.

When we hear, “That won’t work at my church because …” it inspires us to try our best to imagine how material will be used and how we can set leaders up for success in their VBS ministry.

It’s also very encouraging to hear how you use LifeWay’s VBS, but make it your own by adjusting it to your church’s needs. Here are some ways we’ve heard that churches are tailoring VBS to their own community:

A church serving full meals, instead of using snacks, because there are kids in their community who don’t get enough to eat during the summer.

For churches that don’t have enough adult workers, some are doing a Student VBS during Spring Break, or a Disciple Now weekend, in order to train their youth to help with the kids’ VBS later that summer.

Taking VBS or Backyard Kids Club on mission during Spring Break or during the summer and paring it down to simplify it for an international trip.

Rather than having a central VBS, one church is doing only Backyard Kids Clubs at various homes in the community because it wants to touch more unchurched people.

There are literally as many different ways of using VBS curriculum as there are churches using it. And we love seeing and hearing about everyone’s creativity in ministry!

How do you adjust VBS to fit your church community or “think outside the box” to use VBS to reach wider and further? We’d love to hear your comments!

Bethany Brown is a Production Editor for the LifeWay Church Resources VBS Team. She is a member of Hermitage Hills Baptist Church where she works with preteens and Backyard Kids Club. Bethany has seen kids ministry in many different cultures growing up in East Africa as a missionary kid. She loves helping kids learn how much they are loved and valued by God.

It’s Time to Reimagine VBS Follow-up

How Are You Promoting Your Summer Activities?

Are You Reaching Unchurched Kids through VBS?

Why You Should Plan Your 2014 VBS Now (in 7 Easy Steps)

Making Continued Connections through VBS

To Theme or Not to Theme (VBS) — That is the Question!

March Madness for a Kids Minister

Vacation Bible School for Preschoolers

Spring Break VBS?

VBS: That Won’t Work at My Church

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