With only one hour, what could go wrong? Famous last words. All joking aside, there were a lot of things that went right AND wrong. Here they are in list form. I’m including wins and fails specific to our 2018 Family VBS, which may be not be relevant to Family VBS in general.
1 Hour VBS Wins
- Multi-generation attendance and participation. We had all ages attend the event and participate (instead of only watching from the sidelines).
- Less use of ministry budget. We didn’t have rotation stations, so we bought less materials. We would have used even less of our budget if we didn’t include Family Bags. The Family Bags contained a family devotion and a small craft or object lesson. There was one Family Bag everyday. I included this in lieu of the craft station because our kids LOVE crafts and knew they would miss it. It’s a compromise to help the transition into the one-hour schedule.
- Small team friendly. We didn’t need a lot of volunteers to pull it off.
- Time friendly. Most families and volunteers were able to give the one hour. It wasn’t a strain on their busy schedules.
- Catchy theme. We did a Disney theme. I took six Disney movies to relate the Bible lessons. It was a 5-day VBS, but one day had two Disney movies. We dressed up as the characters from the movies and sang their songs (along with children praise and worship songs. Our decorations were also awesome (thanks to my decoration leader). We won’t always have a Disney theme, but it’s good to remember to choose a theme that appeals to different age-groups.
1 Hour VBS Fails
(and the lessons to go with them)
- Age-based participation drop. Since we’re all together doing the same activities, different age groups were interested in different activities. There was a drop in participation from certain age-groups throughout the one hour. For example, the preschool and young elementary kids loved the songs and dancing. The preteens and teens, not so much. Lesson learned: Interest levels will always be different. Shorten activities to keep the energy up, and enlist the help of different ministries to engage different ages.
- Video component fail. Our biggest fail was our video component. I wanted to make videos in the style of the “I Am Second” videos from YouTube. My volunteer in charge of it couldn’t deliver, and I couldn’t jump in to do them because I was hospitalized for a week! Lesson learned: give extra time to execute your plans, especially anything that requires extra work or different work (work that you don’t normally do).
- Lack of rehearsal. There were moments on confusion and panic, and that’s never a good thing up on stage. My team and I needed more rehearsals to run through the whole thing, dialogue and songs both, like a stage production. Lesson learned: Rehearse like it’s a stage production. Run through lines and songs.
There were two things that I was concerned about that don’t fit in either win or fail category.
- Relationship building. With one-hour, I thought we’d miss out on building a relationship with the families, but this wasn’t the case! With a Disney theme, we were taking pictures left and right with the kids and took that time to build rapport with them and their parents. We also encouraged everyone to take pictures with our set and decorations. Then, we had a few snacks available at the end, which helped relationships build not just between us and the families, but between different families as well. It sounds like a win, but I feel like we could do this better.
- Effective communication of the Bible lesson. Without a Bible lesson time like before, this was a big concern. I wanted everyone to “get it” because Disney wasn’t the point. Our theme was Changed by Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). We drove home the point through the songs and Bible story presentation, but I think it could have gone way better than it did, especially the Bible story presentation.
The wins and the fails definitely give me ideas for our next one-hour Family VBS. I hope they will help you as well. In the next post, I will share more about our Disney theme one-hour Family VBS.
