What did you do for VBS this year? How did it turn out? Answer the survey questions below. I’ll use the results for my special VBS wrap up post later this summer. Plus, I’ll have a better idea which curriculum publishers most interest the readers here on the website. You’re welcome to leave additional comments at the bottom of this post.
If you’re not done with VBS, skip the first question and answer the other three. Then you can come back in a few weeks to finish the poll.
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We used the “Breaking Free Sports Camp” program for our VBS this year. For us it’s a good way to offer something that could appeal to unchurched kids. We tend to attract kids from other churches otherwise. Our goal recently has been to attract kids who don’t go to church. We had moderate success with that this year. We need to target the non-church crowd better last year and get our own people involved as well.
Next year our church will be looking for a program that will teach our children their American heritage as a Christian nation.
We broke away from traditional VBS this year. Our children are SO busy playing sports, some on more than one team or league, that we have sporadic attendance. Our parents are SO busy working and running these kids from game to game. We decided the last thing our kids needed was another activity to attend, and the last thing the parents needed was another obligation to either work or get them to and from.
We rented a church camp, and had our own weekend family camp, beginning on Friday night. We had games, activities, lessons, lots of free time for fishing and swimming and relaxing and exploring, finished up with worship on Sunday.
It was by FAR the best ministry we have ever done!!
We reused Fiesta by Group. The kids and adults loved it a few years ago so we did it again. We had alot of kids then and now.
We used Gospel Light for the 5th year. I am usually the Bible teacher, which I love. I think next year we will be developing our own and/or using Children Desiring God curriculum from John Piper’s church. While Gospel Light does a great job with the songs, crafts and overall theme, we consistently find the stories/Bible content rather weak. Many, many of their stories focus on “man” and what God can DO for us. Not a bad point but only one small part of the Bible. GOD is the hero of the Bible, not man. Each year we have to rewrite the Bible curriculum to focus more on God (and Jesus) VBS is not just for entertainment. We have a passion to give them a vision of who God is, why they need Jesus and give them a solid place to stand when difficulties come. The Bible is more than just a book to teach morals to children. We need to know who He is if we are to put our confidence in Him.
We found a VBS program through Puppet Productions called Sock Hop. It was a blast from the past. Leather jackets, poodle skirts, malt shop; the works. The music was primarily for puppets, but we were able to find our own and adjust it. Everyone had a wonderful time. Our themes were – God is., God is Spirit, God is Everywhere, God is love and God is Forgiveness. This was a super way to introduce unchurched children to who God is.
Hi!
We are a small church in Ahmedabad, India. Since we consist mostly of transferrable people, very few of the children stay more than a couple of years. the Sunday school is very popular with the young ones, but we need something more thought provoking for the teenagers. I myself am head of the Mothers union and help out with the sunday school when the regular teachers cant attend. The children like it so much they force their parents to attend church!! Any ideas to get parents involved and coming to church? Michael
Our church does not do a traditional classroom bible school. We call our VBS — FAM JAM (short for family jamboree). Our theme was Night at the Museum — God’s Word is Alive. Each night a bible character came out of a large Bible. It was amazing! At least 60 souls were won to Christ in the course of 3 days. Praise God!
This is my fourth year directing VBS. All four years I have enjoyed collecting ideas from many different places and putting together my own curiculum. I usually start with a Bible passage (for instance, this years sower and the seed passage) and pick a theme to match (fun on the farm) I enjoy finding crafts and games from a variety of sources (familyfun.com has some good ones) and piecing them together to get the point across. (making sure our hearts have good soil so God’s word can take root and grow!)
We develop our own theme every year. It is a fun way to use the talents of the people in our church (graphic artists, writers, etc) and to reach the kids in our community in a unique way.
We used “Boot Camp” by TruthQuest, had a great time, the kids learned and had fun. The curriculum was thorough and well done.
I’ve been seriously considering “Boot Camp” by TruthQuest, however we have teenages and adults who attend VBS every year, do you think it is possible to get them involved with this program. All programs thast I hasve looked at so far only go up to the 6 grade and we are one of many churches that still have teenages even seniors who still come to VBS.
This was the first we ever had VBS!! I remember how important it was to me as a child and want to give the same to our youth. It was a tremendous and SO MUCH FUN
We come up with our own VBS. We have three areas: 4th Grade and under is the BARN area, 5th & 6th Grade is SLIME CITY, and 7th & 8th Grade is MUDFEST! It is all held at a farm on the edge of town. Hundreds of kids show up for a VBS that is like no others. It is definately out of the box! It is like no other VBS I have ever been to or led. After two nights, over 70 kids have accepted Christ as Savior!!! Check it out at: http://www.crossroadsonline.tv!
We are currently holding VBS. ours is by word-of-mouth and the kids bringing their friends. This is our 2nd year doing it. Last year our theme was Gifts of the Spirit and this year we are doing the 10 Commandments. Each teacher develops their curriculum and crafts for their. Our parents provide the snacks. Everybody is having a great time. One of the real challenges is explaining them so that the younger ones can understand God’s commandments.
We are a small church therefore, we didn’t have enough people to assist in VBS. We tired this idea last year and it went well. Last year we had a christian entertainer for one day that did magic tricks and this year we will have an escape artist for two days. By the time summer is over the children in this area have been to the same VBS at several churches and are tired of it.
This year we also did a mini VBS on Monday nights. We used an old version of LifeWay’s Club VBS. I think we we’ll do this again next year.
We are using AIG’s Operation Space. We are a very small church with few young children/families. Last year we had 43 kids attend – many were family of the few children who are members of our church. We had hoped to build on that but this year only have 20. However, we are encouraged because many are new to our church with no family affiliation. We are in the heart of mormon country, so we are truly missionaries. We are grateful for whatever God chooses to give us.
We are using AIG’s Amazon expedition to kick off the new curriculum for the small semester in Sunday School. We are going to using the Beginnings curriculum for the SS program and Amazon was the best to kick that off. We are also going out of the norm for the VBS. Our parents are tired and we also do Awana, so we didn’t want to tax our parents and teachers any more than necessary, so we are having a five Sunday VBS. We will do one day of the VBS for five Sunday’s in a row in our normal Sunday School time. They will already be coming to church, so, it won’t be something extra for a lot of them.
We are also going to wait until after school starts and advertise at the two local elementary schools, on our reader board, in the local paper, and send home fliers with the kids at the schools. We are praying that God will fill the church to overflowing. What kid doesn’t want to learn about when dinasaurs were created? God Bless!
I voted that I am the director because our director does not do what a director should do and I have stepped up to fill the gap. I’m already taking steps to make sure that areas that were deficient will be improved next year.
We used a 3 day VBS program I found online on Jonah as the basis for our program. But I revamped it somewhat to better fill our needs. We used visuals from Oriental Trading, of all places. They now have 2 VBS programs available. There are several songs on Jonah from various places that we used. Our teens performed a puppet show each night to teach the Bible story from 3 different scripts that I combined to meet our needs.
I completely love the 3 day format with the low number of kids we have coming. I feel it is a better use of our money, and we still had the carnival the last night – a huge draw for kids.
I find this VBS survey to be a very encouraging piece of document. Please GO AHEAD AND WRITE THE ARTICLE ON IT! I would recommend this article to all who are involved in Children ministry and also to Bible School students whose call is to be involved in christian education and Evangelism. I am interested. God Bless you all.
Let me take a moment to express to all that will read this…VBS is an outreach ministry to children and families who might not otherwise be reached with the Gospel. Yes, it is to be fun and exciting let us not ever forget that it is V-BIBLE-S. To miss this important opportunity to reach others with the Gospel (which we as Christians are commanded to do) is a waste. I encourage you to always make the most of this precious ministry. The Lord will bless you for it!
For the past three years we have gone away for a weekend to the mountains (about an hours drive) to a YDI Lodge for our VBS. I usually write my own curriculum but this summer I used Mark Harpers Curriculum for Sunday School that was 5 lessons on the Power of Choice. It turned out great! the kids enjoyed the DVD’s and lessons along with the YDI Staff doing activities of a Zipline – high swing, wall climbing, campfire with smores, constructive games and wonderful meals.
I then did a three day VBS for the preschoolers, that I dare not take away for a weekend, at the church with a story book and theme of “God makes us all super heroes”.
VBS was awesome! I am the Children’s Church director at my church and this year VBS was appointed to me. Although we are a small church, I wanted to give the kids a big VBS without being too costly. With the hot summer weather & trying to stay cool, I chose the theme “Take the Plunge – Make a Splash w/ Jesus”. Pool and beach decorations were easy to find. The greatest reaction was from a 3 yr old little girl who walked into the sanctuary the first day and when she saw the decorations, her eyes lit up, she put her hands on her cheeks, smiled and said, “O my God. What did they do to my church?!”. Priceless!! The daily plan for the week included Praise and Worship, Bible lessons, arts & crafts, a snack and a recap of what they learned. The week ended with fun water activities and games! All the pictures that I had taken during the week, I made a DVD slideshow, and will present that this Sunday. It was a success and to hear kids say “this was my best VBS ever” made it all worth it! God gets all the Glory!
I am attending a new church and the first thing I noticed was that the lil ones (ages 2-3-4)were being left out of the VBS adventure, so on the first meeting I asked the pastor if I could have a class for this age. While the church had no curriculum planned for this age I was able to “create” my own. We had “Jesus’ great adventures by the sea”. I was able to decorate the entire room to look like a great big beach and I used the lessons,
1. Jesus calms the sea. 2. Simon’s big catch.3. Jesus makes a “happy meal” (the story of the loaves and fishes). 4. Jesus walks on the water. And of course the kids favorite #5 Jonah. I planned daily special activities for the kids such as “fishing” in a wading pool. A sand box with prizes to be dug up, lots of homemade playdough and wonderful games. I also created many cute snacks for the children including blue jello with gummy fish, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut out with a fish cookie cutter and lil boats made with apple wedges and cheese sails on a pretzel stick sat on a bit of cream cheese colored blue on a graham cracker. While we expected only 6 kids from our church in this age group I ended the week with a total of 22 kids. PRAISE GOD. Many of these children are unchurched and the parents were shocked at how much fun they had and now are looking forward to attending both Sunday school and Wednesday night services with us. What a great testimony for our little church.
We have a small country church. Our Baptist church and the 2 local Methodist churches go together and split the cost of the VBS. The VBS site is rotated each year. It works well for all of us.
This year we chose Standard’s Studio Go. It was easy to decorate and easy to direct. We had a great time. We used Standard’s site to register the kids. Also by doing so I was able to meet with other churches that are using the same theme. I was able to pass on props to help another small church. I also have a meeting next week to talk about using Studio Go for a bible study.
We even had adults saved during our service.
I am going to use the Teen curriculum for my Sunday school class. The teens had sports and work going on and could not make it to VBS.
We had a blast and our attendance increased even up to the last day. Our budget was only $300. Which we came close to meeting. I think we ended up under $400. One of the local churches that had the same theme before us had a budget of over $3000.
We used the curriculum by Great Commission publications. Tony, I appreciate the simplicity of your survey (I just filled out the SBDS survey from Lifeway).
SBDS is a nightmare and they only use it to market next year’s VBS. Corporate values + religious education = brilliant
For the last 3 years we’ve “done our own thing” for VBS. So many of the pre-packaged VBS programs seem to be for much larger churches with 10 or 15 kinds in each age group. We have a small church with 10 or 15 kids in the entire Sunday School. We never know how many kids will be at VBS. In addition to our own students, many kids from the two other churches in town and kids with no church join us. When we make our own VBS we can tailor the crafts to our kids and make sure that any supplies we buy can be used for Sunday School if there are left over supplies.
I’ve found the internet is a great place for VBS ideas. Two years ago we used DLTK’s F.R.O.G VBS as the base for our week’s activities and lessons. Last year I adapted DLTK’s 4 part Moses Sunday School lessons for 5 days of VBS.
This year I adapted Paul Essex’s “How do I get to Heaven” lessons to a train themed VBS. For next year (yes, I’m already thinking about it) we might do Essex’s “Armor of God” lesson as VBS. I think the boys would really like it.
For crafts, many of hte ideas came from the net, many from crafts remembered from the teachers’ days as VBS students. The supplies were from Walmart, Hobby Lobby, JoAnnes, Oriental Trading, the local True Value hardware store and our local lumber company (the materials from the lumber company were donated, next year we need to search for more folks to donate or discount materials). My 20-something son and I spent most of the summer picking up supplies, bit by bit. Some was paid for from the Sunday School funds, some was paid for by parishioners, some form the teachers’ pockets. But by buying bit by bit, as things were on sale, it didn’t seem like a lot was spent. Many of the supplies will also be used through out the year for Sunday School crafts.