This year the church were I serve decided to do something it had never done before by branching out and doing Group’s VBS, Rome: Paul and the Underground Church. For years my church has done Lifeway’s VBS. In fact, preparation became so predictable that at times we were just going through the motions. After looking at different formats I stumbled across Rome. I decided to go ahead and order the sample pack and as I read through the material I became more and more impressed. By January my team decided that we would gamble and try something different. Being that we are a 200-year old church, different does not always equal success. However, I am proud to announce that Rome was more than a success. For the remainder of this post I am going to critique the good and the bad of Rome.
What Went Right:
1. The Marketplace: The Marketplace was by far the kids’ favorite part. We located the Marketplace in our fellowship hall and it consisted of 8-9 tents of different crafts where shopkeepers helped the kids make various objects. The kids were given three gold coins each day to spend. Each craft cost one gold coin as did their snack. Throw in the fact that the shopkeepers were in character as well as a daily drama and the marketplace was a huge hit. It will be very tough to ever go back to a simple “crafts station” for a future VBS. The marketplace became the center of Rome and was a huge hit.
2. Interactive Drama: The children absolutely loved this. Every day the kids visited Paul while he was under house-arrest and chained to a Roman guard named Brutus. Each day they got to see the transformation that Brutus underwent as he was at first very anti-Christian but eventually decided to follow Jesus on Friday. One of the main reasons that he decided to do so was because the kids did not help Paul escape when Brutus fell asleep on Wednesday. This enabled the kids to feel like they made a difference in Brutus’ life.
When the children left Paul’s house they then went to the Underground Church. The kids had to get on their hands and knees and literally crawl through a tunnel that led to the “cave” where the church was meeting. Everyday they would give the church members a message from Paul. They loved being able to take part in this way.
In the marketplace each shopkeeper was in character and not all were Christians. Some were Jewish, atheists, curious about Jesus, polytheists, etc. We found that the children who were already Christians were zealously witnessing to the shopkeepers. In fact, many of them had to finally accept Christ during the week so that the kids would leave them alone. One girl prayed with her shopkeepers, “Dear Lord, please forgive these women for their sins…” What an amazing testimony!
Also, the daily drama with various characters was highly effective.
3. Age-integrated – Group suggested putting preschoolers in “family groups” right along with older kids. I knew this would not work at our church. So, preschoolers were put in their own individual classes and they saw Paul every day (but not the Underground Church) and they went up to the marketplace for half the normal time. For the most part having grades 1-5 in the same family groups helped because we were able to keep families and friends/guests together.
4. Evangelistic Effectiveness: Let’s not forget the real reason we do VBS: so that kids will be saved. We had 25 preschoolers make a decision to follow Jesus as I gave a talk during our morning worship service. I feel that the curriculum was wonderful in setting up a time for decisions. It was amazing to see older kids speaking with their teachers and literally crying tears of joy over their new life. One girl said as she wept, “I am so happy over what Jesus has done for me.” That’s what it’s all about.
What Went Wrong:
1. The Marketplace: We realized that by Tuesday we were going to run out of crafts. Because Rome is designed to work on a 2-hour schedule (we had extrapolated to 3-hours) 50 minutes in the Marketplace became too long of a time slot for the curriculum provided. A kid could easily spend two gold coins on two crafts and the other on a snack and still have 10-15 minutes to kill. We started introducing new crafts every day so that there would always be something fresh and different and so that we would not run out of things to do. Fortunately I had a great craft leader and great helpers who were able to think on the fly.
2. Interactive Drama – When in character it is sometimes hard to effectively discipline children. For instance, the kids really didn’t like the Roman guards. Some even tried to hit them. One of our guards had to really use his shield! Also, as Paul, sometimes it was awkward for me to call a kid down who was misbehaving as I was trying to do my lines, etc.
During the daily drama scenes in the marketplace that use Roman guards we found that the children really didn’t like the guards. On Friday when the guards shut the Christian woman’s marketplace down some kids cried and others yelled and literally chased the guards out of the room. It’s a fine line between reality and make-believe and some kids are still trying to figure out where that line is.
3. Age-integrated – Because this is an age-integrated program there is virtually no preschool curriculum. This is a huge area of weakness with this VBS. I understand partly why Group does it but I imagine that the main reason is to save money on publishing guides, etc. If we do this style of VBS again I will personally use old VBS preschool curriculum as a guide and tailor the current year’s VBS to that. We tried to do this a little bit this year, which helped, but there was a lot of downtime for preschoolers. One thing about Lifeway – there is never downtime. They pack their curriculum so tight on purpose for that reason.
4. Evangelistic Effectiveness: Group does not really build in a spot to bring “the talk.” Therefore, I chose Thursday to speak since that day’s point was “God’s love saves us.” Therefore, we had to bypass most of the scripted Worship time for that morning.
Overall, this VBS was wonderful. Many people who have been at this church for many many years said that this year’s VBS was the best that they’d ever seen. What a compliment! I think most of our people are already geared up to do Egypt: Joseph’s Journey from Prison to Palace next year. It looks like I may have no choice in what we do. Our crafts leader said she’s already thinking of ideas for decorating. On a scale of 1-10 I would give this entire VBS an 8.5. There are a few kinks that can be worked out and if that happens next year I believe we will have close to a 10.
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We also did Rome. We have been doing the Holy Land series for about three years.
I love that it is so different and not like any other program. This year, we had several churches come take a peek at our Rome.
We mix our preschool with our older children. We only allow 4 preschoolers or less with each group. We also have opened up our nursery to allow the youngest of our families time and space away to grow on their own. The preschoolers start with us during our meet and greet (families meeting in a common area) and then during Extollo. One by one, they are brought to the nursery. They had their own little group. Some stayed and enjoyed the rest of the day with their tribe familes.
Since doing Holy Land, we have incorporated 10 crafts into our market place. The first year, however, was a huge learning curve, I was at the store almost daily trying to find something inexpensive and new. The 2nd year, I ordered enough, this year, we reused prior crafts from our rotation sunday school, beads and used aluminum foil for the carvings, we found cheaper ways to do the same crafts. We do have our crafts broke down to day 1, 2 and day 3-5. Day 5 is a day that they can make what ever they didn’t get to make before.
Our kitchen (food market) was located in a different area this time. Each day we used hotdog papers and put on different cheeses, raisens or dates, grapes, pita chips, sausage for this year. Using the papers, we had very little thrown away compared to the bread from previous years.
We had a lot of teens working this year. They totally enjoyed playing the parts. They taught, sang, was our underground church family, played a huge role in the marketplace and they did it with a joy of serving ‘tude.
For us, our hugest hit was Paul. My husband played Paul and one of my teen leaders played Brutus. The kids witnessed to Brutus and prayed for him daily. Paul shared much of the book of Romans with the children. In ours, Brutus (went on vacation the 4th and 5th day) on the 4th day was talking to Caesar about letting Paul go. The kids prayed that Paul would be released. They did tell Paul that he needed to be quieter about talking about Jesus so he wouldn’t be in trouble, Paul said, I am sorry, we can’t because Jesus loves us so much and wants us to share the Good News with others. Some of the groups even prayed with Brutus to accept Jesus as his Forever Friend.
We always do a closing night to show parents what we have done and the songs that we have sung. This year, the children signed a gown for Paul and presented it to him. Paul let them know that Brutus was able to free him for a while and the kids cheered so loud!
We run two VBS together, one Sunday – Thursday PM and one M-F AM, we have about 65-90 children in each along with plenty of volunteers.
We can’t wait to pack our bags for Egypt!