A Neighborhood Revolution
Is your VBS just a yearly ritual or is it a real outreach tour de force?

By John Hillman - Outreach Magazine

It began in the late 19th century: Mrs. Walker Aylette Hawes of New York City’s Epiphany Baptist Church noticed an increasing number of immigrant children on the streets of the city’s East Side. So she rented the only space available - a saloon—to run her Everyday Bible School for six weeks during the summer. The program, structured around music, Bible stories, Scripture memorization, games, crafts, drawing and cooking, drew neighborhood kids and their families who had never before stepped foot in a church or opened a Bible.

Vacation Bible School as we know it today began as an outreach in a saloon to foreign-born, unchurched, impoverished children. And as children brought the Gospel home, its impact reached beyond the kids Hawes cared for to their families, and eventually to other families living on the city’s East Side.

Today the institution that Hawes initiated looks dramatically different in most of the 180,000 U.S. churches that host a VBS each year. The program is still the same, but often churches find themselves recruiting volunteers and hosting time-intensive VBS - attracting the same kids who are in Sunday school and children’s church every Sunday - instead of local children and families who don’t yet know Jesus.

What does your church’s Vacation Bible School look like? Could you call it an outreach, or has it become ingrown? If it’s the latter, consider this: A 2004 Barna Research Group study surveyed 992 professing Christians, and of that group, 43% hadmade their commitment to Christ prior to their 13th birthday.

 Moreover, studies show that VBS can be an effective evangelistic tool. In 2002, LifeWay, the Southern Baptist educational division, reported a total VBS enrollment of just over 3.2 million with almost 110,000 of those kids making decisions to accept Christ as their Savior.

How can you transform an annual summertime ritual at your church into a neighborhood revolution? Perhaps one of the first and greatest factors in hosting an outreach-oriented VBS lies in the question: Who isn’t coming? With the number of blended families, working parents and unchurched adults increasing, it’s likely that the children in those families aren’t coming to your VBS. How can you bring them along?

Traditional methods of attracting attention, including notices in local newspapers, neighborhood yard signs and fliers passed out at kid-related places like parks, pediatricians’ offices or even schools (be sure to obtain permission) still remain effective. However, more novel approaches such as partnering with daycare centers or unusual promotions can increase both VBS awareness and attendance in your community.

Crescent Park Baptist Church (crescentpark.org) in Odessa, Texas, offers a traditional five-day, morning Vacation Bible School, but its ranks swell to more than 300 kids through its partnership with the city’s three YMCAs. The union formed naturally since Odessa’s Central YMCA sits directly across from the church. The arrangement between the church and the YMCA has worked well, Crescent’s Children’s Minister Carrie Green says, adding that the church’s VBS now sees unchurched kids. The vast majority of parents whose children attend summer programs at the Y welcome the association with VBS, and few opt for a nonreligious alternative.

Similarly, other churches are marketing their VBS as summer daycamps. A 2003 United Way/University of Georgia study examining the childcare needs of two-parent and single-parent families with school-aged children indicates that 67% of all parents need some form of summer care for their children. And while this concept of VBS as daycare does have its critics, it is one way churches can connect with, and meet the needs of, unchurched families.

“There’s a definite gap in child care for school-aged kids, and we wish churches would step in and fill that gap,” Carrie Budd, a United Way director says. “But unbeknownst to them, they already may be doing it.”

Crosswinds Community Church (sanmarcossda.org) in San Marcos, CA, recognized the need and the opportunity. Last year, the church sent 10,000 fliers to kids via local schools which read, “Day Camp: Your kids will be on summer break for six weeks. Let us entertain them a week for FREE!”

The phone rang off the hook from 6AM until midnight for days, says Crosswinds’ Children’s Director Cheree Howe. The 200 VBS slots filled up almost instantly - with only 40 of the kids from the church itself. As a result, 151 of the participating kids received Christ and eight new families now attend the church.

While VBS has traditionally been a daytime offering, more churches are moving to an evening format—and they’re finding that an after-5PM timeslot affords more opportunities for reaching out to both unchurched kids and their families, as well as other advantages, including availability of more volunteers specifically men, increased parent involvement, higher energy levels among children, and cooler temperatures.

The idea of switching from a daytime to an evening format makes sense, says Natalie Underwood, VBS coordinator at First Baptist Church (tytyfbc.com) in Ty Ty, GA, one of the 14 Southern Baptist churches around Albany, GA, that made the shift in 2003.

“We simply have to do VBS at night,” she says. “It takes so many people to run children, youth and adult programs at the same time. Last year, we enrolled 320 people with about 220 of them children.”

To attract both unchurched children and parents to its evening VBS, Jackson, NJ’s United Methodist Church (jacksonumc.org) erected a large tent - donated by a local party rental service - beside the church building. Underneath the enormous canopy, church volunteers served dinner to both children and parents before each evening’s activities.

The event drew 20% more unchurched kids than in previous years,” says Kelly Gallagher, Jackson’s VBS director. “The tent turned VBS into more of a family event,” she says. “It created a family-friendly atmosphere where both parents and children could come together to worship God.”

Just as the promotional efforts and formats for today’s VBS outreach have undergone a strategic makeover, VBS programming - what children see and hear when they get there - also requires a new approach. For many, gone are the days of Popsicle stick crosses and flannel graph drama. Today’s children have grown up in a tech-savvy, interactive world and consequently require the same type of activity to retain their attention.

“We all have to be much more creative,” Sandy Dlugas, director of youth and music at Brook Hollow Christian Church (brookhollowcc.org) in Abilene, TX, told the Abilene Reporter-News in June 2004.

Last year, the church created a Jerusalem marketplace where children interacted with booth keepers. A field trip to a nearby sheep ranch re-created a trip to “Bethlehem.” “It’s all very interactive,” Dlugas added.

When First Christian Church (fccnapa.org) of Napa, CA, used Group Publishing’s “SCUBA” (Super Cool Undersea Bible Adventure) in 2003, VBS director Karen Hollabaugh floated a life raft in the church’s baptistery. Blue and white balloons hung from the entryway to create an underwater atmosphere, and various sea creatures taught biblical truths every evening.

“I wanted to add a scuba diver in the baptistery, but I couldn’t make it work,” Hollabaugh says. “In VBS curriculum, I look for something that’s simple and can be adapted if necessary, and where the focus is on Jesus.”

For many years, Faith Living Church (faithlivingchurch.com) in Plantsville, CT, program was like most churches - very small and geared toward church kids. But the senior pastor had a heart to make VBS something much more than that, explains Executive Pastor Judah Thomas. The change came one year when instead of doing the crafts included with the curriculum, Faith Living decided to build an actual castle - or actually have the kids build it, Thomas says. “We doubled our attendance to 175, and that fired us up for the next year.”

That year, the church used the curriculum theme, “Hooked on Jesus,” but opted to write all of the lessons themselves. On its one-acre plot, the church erected eight standup swimming pools and stocked them with trout. Excited kids fished all week and kept whatever they caught. By the end of the next year, Faith Living’s VBS drew 400 kids, most of which were from the community.

The years that followed saw a mining camp with water troughs, a medieval training obstacle course, Sherwood Forest, an Indiana Jones-style archaeological dig and a spy adventure. By 2003, Faith Living was drawing 900 kids to its VBS - almost double the number of the church’s adults - and had changed the name from Vacation Bible School to “Vacation Bible Adventure” because, Thomas says, a lot of kids that the church hopes to attract hate school.

“We live in a spiritually cold environment,” Thomas says, “but we knew that if we reached the kids in our community we would eventually reach their families. We’re a church of about 500 adults on only one acre of land (one church, two houses and a small lawn), so we’re proof that it doesn’t take a mega-church to be creative to reach kids. I think what we’ve done with our VBS can be replicated anywhere if people are seriously desiring to reach the lost.”

At Trinity Lutheran Church (trinityhicksville.org) in Hicksville (Long Island), NY, the church’s two-week VBS is revolutionizing the lives of the 200 kids who come and their families in a region of the country where attending church is often not on the agenda. “More of the children in our Vacation Bible School are from the community than our church,” says Lynn Walbeck, Trinity’s volunteer coordinator. “Some of them don’t have any religion.

Through the music and the Bible stories, they start learning about Jesus and making friends at church. And we’ve seen the impact on their parents. The kids go home singing and teach the parents what they’ve learned. The families start coming because of the children. They see a program with 60 or 70 volunteers, and then a youth program for older kids, and it picks up from there.”

Even when VBS is simply reaching the children it’s designed for, the impact is eternal and revolutionary. Sandra McAteer, director of children’s ministry at Tulsa, OK’s Asbury United Methodist Church (asburytulsa.org), recalls one sixth-grade girl who walked more than a mile to take part in the 800-participant VBS closing ceremonies.

“Her mom didn’t care a thing about it,” she remembers. “A lot of times, we’re just reaching the children. But it’s planting a seed, and they’re encouraging their moms and dads to attend church. We know that sooner or later we’ll see them, too.”

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