Tuesday, June 26, 2007

VBS Time

The VBS volunteers met tonight to prepare for this special summer happening at First Church. What a wonderful creative, dedicated group! Alex and Janna's organizational skills are making this all come together with purpose and order. Although I am quite pleased with our VBS, I often wonder if something is missing. I think that Diane Butler Bass's blog titled "The Sock Puppet Church" might have given me a hint. Maybe we should re-think the VBS in a can approach that we have all bought into during the last decade or so. Seems like this is a topic that we should include in our evaluation. In the meantime, our folks are sharing their talents and lots of time in preparation for Cokesbury's "Lift Off" I look forward to a great week!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My congregation of 53 members (average attendance of 40) held its VBS two weeks ago. We used Cokesbury's Lift Off, and had 15 volunteer staff. The exciting part is that we had 37 children attend -obviously most from families that are not members.

I would love to have the kind of unique creativity suggested in the attached article. Nonetheless, I am so very grateful for the kind of "canned" material available from Cokesbury. The kids seemed to truly enjoy their time together, and the volenteer staff had fun as well--maybe because of so many children.

And the really great news is that two new families are coming because of their experience with our VBS (at least one parent came each night). Thank you, Cokesbury!

Rev. Jean said...

Welcome back, George. I have missed your comments. VBS can be a very effective evangelism tool. One of our leaders this year first attended First UMC with her children during VBS several years ago. Congrats on your VBS!

We, too, will us LIFT OFF and I think we have combined canned and creativity fairly well. I just found this article to be interesting as I think "canned" is a possible pitfall in which many aspects of church life can be found. Therefore, I did find Bass's book CHRISTIANITY FOR THE REST OF US - How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith- to be interesting.

Anonymous said...

I have memories of making strnage crafts (at least mine were strange) and of drinking koolaid for refreshemnts, It was in the late afternoon and the coolness of the church was welcome after a long day in the sun. I don't remember the lessons, I am ashamed to say. I do remember some of the songs. And I definately remember the programs. We had parts to say, and we had to sing, not lip sync. (The music CDs have bothered me for years.)