I still remember my first VBS, then called Daily Vacation Bible School or DVBS. It was Camp Courageous from the late 90s and the theme song went like this:
Camp Courageous, incredible fun
Camp Courageous, where we follow God’s Son
Camp Courageous is the place to be
So come on, friends, to Camp Courageous with me!
That was the first VBS I ever attended and weirdly enough, I don’t remember the first VBS I ever directed, which should have been in 2003. I found this awesome list of past VBS themes from different publishers! I went through the list, but sadly none of the earlier themes resonated with my memory.
Over the years, we’ve done VBS in pretty much the same way (large group and rotations) with a few changes here and there. We’ve done it in backyards, multiple backyards at the same time, in the mornings, in the afternoons, and once in the winter for five consecutive Sundays instead of one week in the summer. These changes were done out of necessity like availability of homes, the church, or volunteers.
For the most part, VBS was great. We switched between growth and plateau, but participation was high regardless of how many kids attended or how many volunteers we had. Then the decline started. I believe it was because our church was going through many changes and tumultuous times that included minor splits, and it affected our families and my volunteers.
It was hard in the midst of it, and looking back, I wish I had been much more intentional in stepping back and assessing what was going on. By the time I had done that, it was around the same time Orange came into my life.
God has been putting a restless conviction in me. I knew something had to change, but I wasn’t sure what direction to go to. That’s when I found Think Orange by Reggie Joiner in a list of books required for licensure for children’s pastors. It piqued my interest so I read it.
The switch to a Family VBS
Family Ministry was where God was leading me, and I jumped into learning more about it and how it could work for our church. One of the things I wanted to do right away was incorporate the idea of family events in what we were already doing. That’s when we switched our VBS to include the entire family. We wanted to use VBS as a way for the church and the parents to partner together in leading children to Christ.
That first year was awesome. Our attendance and participation spiked. We did 2 big changes: We did a 3-day VBS and added a family devotion rotation station. We went with a 3-Day VBS because it was the first year we were asking parents to attend VBS. We wanted to ease them into it. The next year was a 5-day VBS and we increased attendance.
On a side note: I wrote both VBS and working on making it available to you. The 5-day VBS was an Incredibles theme and when the sequel came out, I was devastated to find that all my files were in my no-longer working laptop! Not giving up though!
We started with large group intro and songs before dividing into the Bible lessons by age. Our families with children in different age groups usually stayed with the younger child. Then we went into rotation stations: crafts, games, snacks, family devotion. We ended in large group for a short wrap-up.
The family devotion station was a time when parents can lead their children in a short family devotion that relates to the lesson or theme. We set up different chairs circled in groups set apart from each other. Each family gets an manila envelope that has the family devotion in it. The devotion is scripted that prompted the parent on what to say and ask. Any child that did not have parents in attendance were “adopted” into another family, usually with their friends.
The parents loved being able to lead their children in a devotion time, making crafts, singing songs, and playing games with them. Family VBS was just as fun for the parents as it was for the kids. We loved seeing families get to know Jesus together.
This worked for a few years until a few years ago when I saw another decline. I was now more intentional with stepping back and assessing, especially with our transition into family ministry. This time, the decline was for different reasons than before, and I started to look for different ways to do Family VBS. I’ll share with you what I found and what we did in the next post in this Family VBS series.
