For most churches, June is the month for their annual vacation Bible school. I’d like to hear your best tips for VBS. Leave your best Bible school ideas in the comment section below.
- What does your church do that really seems to work?
- How do you save time or money?
- What do you do to make VBS an event to remember?
- What are some fresh ideas for Bible school?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Robin Jefferson 06.29.08 at 6:53 pm
We using the book and film Facing Your / The Giant as our theme. The workbook was a major resource. Additionally, we our young adult and adult classes viewed the film and held a discussion. Finally, the last day, we held a balloon release with message inside — the giants in our lives! Weeks later we recieved letters of response from persons that found our messages worldwide!
Amity Alicea 07.01.08 at 12:27 pm
We had difficulty finding skit actors this year, so our youth group is taking on the project of creating and videotaping the skits that will be shown each night. This gives the high-school age kids an opportunity to get involved and serve, as well as meeting a need and solving a problem.
Amity Aliceas last blog post..VBS 2008
Trish O. 07.15.08 at 2:45 pm
When I began a new job this year as a Director of Religious Education in a Catholic parish, I felt that my situation was different from many churches. VBS in general was not really designed with our denomination in mind, and in fact many local churches using the canned programs are deliberately “targeting” our children because they consider them “unsaved.” Even a lot of packages sold as “Catholic” are really modified versions of something that was designed from a Protestant perspective.
For us, the Bible is of course very important, but is understood within the context of Tradition as a whole. The program at my parish also is not intended primarily as outreach to unchurched families, but as an enrichment for children already being raised in the Catholic faith. I wasn’t sure that a commercial curriculum designed from a “sola scriptura” point of view for the purposes of outreach could be made appropriate for our kids.
I decided to re-define our summer children’s program, and I designed one from scratch. I gave it a different name with the word “Catholic” in the title, and broadened the focus from Bible stories alone to a specific aspect of Catholic life, with Bible passages used as illustrations. This year, the focus was on the seasons of the liturgical year, with a different season every day. Each Bible story was one that they would hear at Catholic liturgy during that season.
The kids had fun, and I came away feeling it was much more consistent than the canned programs with what we try to teach our children all year. It sure was a lot of work, but I intend to keep doing homegrown programs for the foreseeable future. I recommend to any VBS director, whatever your denomination, to take seriously the option of a “do it yourself” program. If you feel for whatever reason that the available packages do not quite meet your needs, see if you can do better!
Tammy W. 07.30.08 at 7:50 pm
I have helped with VBS for several years in different churches in different capacities. I was disappointed with the way things were done the last couple years at our current church, and have become much more involved as a result.
I wrote our whole VBS program this year. I am a former Elementary school teacher who has also taught HS English, and am now a stay-at-home mom. I felt like the Lord was prompting me to do this, and it was definitely a challenge! We saved well over $300 and were able to ear mark that money for our first Friday night carnival.
We tried a new concept this year. Each class had crafts for two days and games for two days for longer periods of time. The fifth day was our carnival - complete with carnival food, bounce house, carnival games, prizes, candy, and a dunk tank (modified).
Our craft this year was a CD Clock. I found a site that sells clock works for about $2 each if you buy 50 or more. We used old CDs and painted and decorated them. The children were amazed that they were taking home a craft that was so “cool”; it actually worked!, and I was happy my son brought home a craft that wasn’t going to end up in the trash. I used a small supplemental craft I found at Oriental Trading for the smaller children when they finished decorating their clocks.
I planned out great games this year, as opposed to getting out a box of balls and other sports equipment and letting the kids run wild.
We simplified the snacks and the kids loved them just as much as the elaborate ones in the past. Any leftovers were saved for the carnival.
We used some kids’ music that I collected from different sources.
My husband took pictures all week and we had our slide show Sunday night for the closing program. We pulled out the cotton candy machine and popcorn machine and made more goodies after church for everyone.
I was able to go off on vacation afterwards with the knowledge that we had 6 children who made professions of faith as a result of all our hard work. I have a couple months to convince my husband that I can do it again!
Tony Kummer 07.30.08 at 9:11 pm
@Robin Jefferson: Using the movie as the VBS theme sounds like a very creative idea. I’m surprised I haven’t hear of more churches trying that direction.
@Amity Alicea: I love to hear about getting the youth involved in VBS. I can still remember helping with VBS when I was a teenage. Looking back, it was one experience that God use to eventually get me serving in children’s minister as an adult.
@ Trish O.: I’m glad you came by and shared your experience. It sounds like you’ve made the best of the situation and created something that was very meaningful for your church.
@Tammy W.: Thanks for sharing your awesome comments. I really like the way you got involved to help make VBS better for the kids. It sounds like you tried some creative changes to the schedule and saw some great results. Thanks for the tips.