Vacation Bible School on Sundays?!!!

The week of January 17th I'll be talking about several different ways to utilize Vacation Bible School resources . . . beyond using them for the traditional one week in the summer. Don't get me wrong . . . I'm a huge fan of the summer week of VBS; for many churches it is their main, if not only, outreach to their community all year. But, VBS resources tend to be written with the goal of intentionally engaging children to both make a decision for Jesus and to learn how to walk with Him - they are some of the best resources for use in children's ministry beyond the traditional week of VBS. 


Years ago my husband, children and I lived in Northern California. I was the children's director at our church; our children's pastor was Jim Dahl and he really knew what it meant to have an intentional children's ministry! I learned so much from Jim about effective children's ministry! We had a church of about 1600 people - approx.  400 children - and three, hour and a half long morning services each Sunday. During the summer we gave our regular children's ministry volunteers the summer off - they taught throughout the school year from September through the middle of June - and recruited new volunteers to run our VBS for ten Sundays. Our Summer Sundays were so much fun! All the things children did in a typical VBS, we did on Sunday mornings! We actually had parents tell us they planned to go to the mountains or the lake and skip church, but when their children heard their plans they ended up going to church first . . . the kids said they couldn't miss church!


Back them most of the publishers provided ten days of lessons in their VBS materials so this worked really well for use on a Sunday. I'll talk more in detail in two weeks how to use VBS materials on Sunday's, but as you read my Top Ten VBS Countdown for 2011 think about additional ways you could utilize VBS in your ministry!