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Holy Week resources and reflections

New VBS directions to minister to needs of children, churches

 

Editor's note: Time to plan for the summer's upcoming Vacation Bible Schools! The Outlook provides overall plans in this article and an assessment of available curricula in the next.

 

For those of us who grew up in the church, the words "Vacation Bible School" have some very special memories. I remember looking forward to Vacation Bible School each summer. It was a week of fun, play, learning, and refreshments that always included butter cookies with a scalloped edge and a hole in the middle that just fit my index finger. 

Editor’s note: Time to plan for the summer’s upcoming Vacation Bible Schools! The Outlook provides overall plans in this article and an assessment of available curricula in the next.

 

For those of us who grew up in the church, the words “Vacation Bible School” have some very special memories. I remember looking forward to Vacation Bible School each summer. It was a week of fun, play, learning, and refreshments that always included butter cookies with a scalloped edge and a hole in the middle that just fit my index finger.

But that was a long time ago and many things have changed since then:

  • parents who are at work during the day and kids who are in child care
  • divorced parents who share custody
  • summer baseball leagues, swim teams, and camping programs

The lazy days of summers with both kids and parents eager for the church to provide something for them to do have been gone a long time! So does that mean the Vacation Bible School is a thing of the past? Well, I’ve been asking around and find that the answer is that Vacation Bible School is alive and well — it just doesn’t look the same.

Many churches choose one of the published curricula. These materials tend to be much more “user friendly” than in the old days. For a review of some of these programs see page 10 in this issue.

Other church educators I asked reported, “doing their own thing” each year.  Here are some examples:

 

1. VBS without walls. One church takes a “portable VBS” out to their neighborhood. Flyers are distributed in the homes surrounding the church announcing the program and inviting children of the appropriate ages to participate. Adults, youth, and children begin at the church and then walk to a nearby home where the morning’s activities are conducted in the yard of that home. They gather up and encourage others along the way to join them. Adults and teens tell the stories, lead games and activities and serve the refreshments.

This church has found that many area children attend because their VBS is not held at the church building. Many of the neighbors of our churches have never entered a church building and have no idea what goes on there. This congregation has found they have made friends with these unchurched neighbors, some of whom even venture into the church in the following weeks.

 

2. Church school musical. Some churches choose to plan their week around a children’s musical. Many wonderful scripts are available for such productions based on stories from Scripture, both simple and elaborate. You, of course, need musicians involved who can help teach the music and spoken parts, but the week will also include Bible study of the story and the making of costumes and scenery. I served one church that did not have a large group of children. The children and youth we had were scattered in age, which made VBS planning a real challenge.

We took on writing our own musical drama based on the story of Esther. Everyone learned the story from the Bible together from a good reader/storyteller. Then the students chose to work either on the script, the songs, the costumes, or the scenery. By putting our own words to familiar tunes that all the children knew, the production turned out to be very do-able. More parents and older brothers and sisters heard about our efforts and joined us for the last few days.

That church was sponsoring a large Vietnamese family whose children turned out to be wonderfully creative artists. Though their English was minimal, they easily took ideas from the picture books and painted amazing scenes for the play. It was a great to see these children be able to excel and to be lauded for their accomplishments. They may not have understood all the words, but it was clear they knew their contribution was being valued. Steven Spielberg was probably not at all threatened by the performance, but it was lots of fun and EVERYONE learned the story of Queen Esther.

 

3. Make your own movie. A church located near the water decided to make a movie of one of the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. A group of adults and youth met together and planned the week. They studied the story and chose locations in their area where some of the scenes could be videoed. They made all the arrangements for several days of “field trips” — drivers, permission slips, adults to go along, any permission they needed for where they wanted to film as well as some modest costumes. The first day, everyone learned the story of Paul’s adventures in founding the church at Philippi (Acts 16). The next several days the group left the church, traveled to the locations (river/boats and a farmer’s market with stalls) and filmed a scene from the story.  Since filming at a real jail was out, they created a cell by taping black crepe streamers floor to ceiling to create the setting.  With editing work provided by several talented youth and adults, the production made its debut on Friday. It was shown again during the coffee hour on Sunday and received rave reviews!

4. Turn the abstract into hands-on.  One year the curriculum we were using was on the theme of helping God by helping others. Dreading the thought of one more project like “make a list of things you can do to help your mom and dad at home,” I got a few people together to brainstorm about a project that would let the children have a real, hands-on, helping experience. We came up with the idea of conducting a “toy garage sale” to benefit the Heifer Project. The week before VBS, the children who wanted to participate distributed flyers in their neighborhoods that asked for donations of good used toys, books, and games to be collected for the sale. The children collected the donations from their neighbors and went through their own toys as well. The toys were brought to the church on Wednesday, and a team of adults sorted and priced them. The sale was advertised in the neighborhood. Thursday morning the toys, along with information about the Heifer Project, were set our under the trees in the church lawn and volunteers ran the sale. (Of course there had to be time for our VBS students to shop early that morning!) The result was an amazing amount of money. It turned out that many people made donations along with their toy purchases. Each class had chosen animals from the Heifer catalogue to purchase with its share of the money. Our closing program included each class posting a picture of these animals on a big world map and telling how the animals would help the people who received them. Then we all gathered around the map and prayed for the people who would be blessed by these animals. When the children sang their song about helping God by helping others, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house!

Why is Vacation Bible School still alive and well after all these years, in spite of all the hurdles and all the effort it takes to do it? Perhaps one of the reasons is that it provides our churches with a unique opportunity to “tell the old, old story” in a concentrated, creative, and challenging way; perhaps because with VBS we can tell that story anew to our own children and youth and to others who might never hear it otherwise.

 

Sylvia Washer has just retired as executive presbyter for Mission Presbytery, San Antonio, Texas. She has been a church educator, author, teacher, and administrator. She co-authored Get Ready! Get Set! WORSHIP!, a guide adopted by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to involve children in worship.

 

 

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