Are these isolated occurrences or the beginning of a new trend? Several years ago, leading churches like Fellowship Church and Saddleback church ditched VBS as we knew it. Their replacements? Shiney new events like Adventure Week and Summer Spectacular! They’re still pretty much VBS, just with a fresh and new approach.
I’m curious. Are there many others in your area doing this? We did. For many years I used LifeWay’s VBS curriculum as I loved the great themes. Then one year there was a theme where I wasn’t wild about the name… so I tweaked it. Now we still used the theme, curriculum and everything else, we just had a slightly differnt name. It helped a little since down our road it seemed that every church was doing the same theme, our stuck out a little more. I did this for a few years until I relocated.
At my new church I was feeling brave, so I decided to ditch the name VBS. I know, this may be your church’s “sacred cow.” I think my grandma did VBS… she’d be horrified to know that I wasn’t doing it. Actually, there are definite pros and cons to changing the name. The pros are that many people in your community know VBS, they understand it and it takes nothing to explain what it is. It’s an iconic event that nearly promotes itself. However, the cons are that many people may associate your VBS with whatever bad experience they may have had at church. Some of those who are truly lost certainly won’t understand what V.B.S. means and when you spell it out, Vacation Bible School isn’t exactly zingy!
So, like I said… I ditched VBS and created Venture Quest. Sounds fun, huh? Yeah, it is! For the first two years of doing Venture Quest, we just used LifeWay curriculum and tweaked the name again. Even after just two years, we only occasionally catch people calling it VBS as most know it only as Venture Quest. This year; however, we abandoned the VBS curriculum. We’re taking curriculum from other sources, piecing it together to make it work for Venture Quest.
So, I’m curious. Are others in your area reinventing VBS? Have you reinvented your VBS and if so, what is it called?
June 7th, 2007 at 4:46 am
Hey Kenny,
My new church Keystone, we ditched it, but of course they never really had a VBS or summer event to begin with, so did we really ditch it? Anyway I am planning it, by using Fellowship’s Elevate Material. It lets us have the freedom and creativity do do some really cool things, but doesn’t break our budget, like Adventure Week might.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Interesting that you bring this up now. We are discussing the possiblity of some back yard Bible clubs instead of VBS because we are a mobile church. I’m not completely sold on doing it at this late notice but you have started a new thought in my brain. In our culture, VBS is still done by a few HUGE churches who can do things like bring in a carnival for their finally, so the smaller churches are not too appealing with their more traditional VBS. I think changing the name of it may help a little here, too. I have found at my past churches that we have not really gained families from VBS, it was more of a babysitting service.
June 8th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
We stopped as well. We were putting lots of time and effort into something that wasn’t working. Being willing to stop something that isn’t working is very important. At times can be very difficult, but very important.
June 8th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
We still call it VBS, but we are in more religious town. I have often wondered about dividing the idea of VBS into two separate events. One could be an over-the-top outreach camp. The other could be more small group based over several weeks to digg some kids deeper in the Bible. It seems to me that we all try to use VBS as the ‘one size fits all’ summer event.
June 10th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I’m in the same boat with Lori and Sam. We stopped doing VBS 3 years ago. As Lori referenced, we’re one of those big churches that can pull of a big bang… but at significant cost on my team and volunteers. The issue is (of course) not the strain on the adults except when we factored in the gain from the event. For a program intended to be an outreach event that would bring in ‘unchurched’ families, we were mostly just next ’stop’ for the hoppers (a.k.a. families that hop from one VBS to the next throughout the community b/c it’s a free event, and who would turn down free entertainment for they’re kids?!?).
But I LOVE Pastor Lori’s idea. How amazing would it be if we equipped our families to have their own ‘mini-VBS’ in their neighborhoods? Imagine the relationships that could develop within that mini-community. Then you’re no longer limited by the capacity of your building. Puts a burden for outreach on the church… but isn’t it supposed to?
June 10th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
To answer Kenny’s original question… Yes, we have done some tweaking of the VBS concept. Our final year was called VBX (the Vacation Bible eXperience) with the tag line… “This aint your Gramma’s VBS.” It worked
June 11th, 2007 at 1:43 am
We gave up on the traditional “VBS” many years ago when there were fewer and fewer volunteers each year and dwindling numbers of kids. It was time for a refreshing change! We moved the time to the evenings to avoid conflicts with swimming lessons and little league and to open the way for working parents to participate. We invited the entire church to participate by asking them to come help carry out a single tasks. (ie: only prepare snacks, help with or carry out crafts, be a security helper, baby sitting for other helpers, be shepherds - talking with the kids, playing piano or guitar, or leading singing and being teachers) When the volunteers discovered they would not be responsible for everything (the old way), and that the Bible Camp (what we called it instead of VBS) would be in the evenings…then our volunteers young and old went from 14 to 114! We also changed how we presented the material from classroom style lessons or boring dramas to singing the lesson. We were tired of singing the same old songs every year! So we spent several months writing all new songs to match the Bible stories. We used mostly familiar tunes in the public domain and put new Bible inspired words. We worked hard to take care of rhyme and meter so the songs were easy to sing and learn. After Bible Camp we gave everyone a quick and dirty live audio recording of the singing times. This way they could keep singing all summer long. The result was that within a year the attendance went from about 30 to 40 to nearly 200! Many were friends or neighbors. The highlight and the draw was the singing time. This was the factor that made everything work! Some of the original kids are now college students and whenever they see us, they start singing the songs. The songs and the message sticks! A singing oriented Bible Camp takes time to develop - but singing works! After twenty years of writing new songs every summer, we have over 400 songs. Three years ago we started making professional cd’s of the songs so that those who come after us won’t have to reinvent the wheel. To date we have released 5 albums and have enough songs written to make 25 more! They can be found on biblestorysongs.com or ordered at Christian bookstores.
Group singing is fun and effective if you do a few simple things. Have two people leading the singing and teaching the hand motions, then it’s not too overwhelming for the song leader. These two can pray and practice and work together with the piano and guitar players for a period of time before the Bible Camp. Then they become a team. If one fades and forgets something the other picks up the ball! Use an overhead projector or a computer projector and big bold type fonts to show the words on the wall. Holding a song book with words limits hand motions and other joyful involvements. Have the song leader give a short teaching time to explain the story and the song. Keeping it short is important to maintain the singing atmosphere and keep building momentum.
Don’t be discouraged in the beginning. It will take a little time for the kids to open up and sing if they have never done it before. It will take a few weeks for the song leaders to get over their fears of failure and of kids faces. Have happy parents and helpers and other young people sit with the kids - not on the back row as observers. Get the teachers to sing and then see if the kids can sing better than the teachers…boys vs girls…2nd grade vs 3rd grade…this side vs that side…etc. Try many ways to sing. Use rounds, sing loud and then sing soft, leave words out, stand up, maybe march around, sing the song backwards, even sing with no volume, let the kids all change places. Use the kids to come up and help lead the hand motions. Let them use a laser pointer to show the line or words being sung. Involve them however you can. Especially the naughty-ones, get them involved!
This is something that can spill over into the backyards and homes, not only in the summer, but all year long! Our kids could be found singing the songs as they rode their bikes or skated in the streets. What a wonderful and awesome event singing summer Bible Camps have become! We thank and praise the Lord!