I love VBS! I love the excitement that it generates in our church and community. I love the passion for it that builds in my own heart leading up to it. I love the fun and craziness and chaos that comes along with the week of VBS.
There’s just something totally energizing to a children’s pastor about pennies in buckets, pies in the face, and points on a scoreboard. But the one thing that excites me most about VBS more than anything else is the potential it provides for bringing new kids and families to Jesus!
There can be many purposes for a church’s summer outreach, and there can even be many different approaches that can be used other than VBS. But no matter what you do or what you call it, the most valuable benefit that “VBS” provides is the opportunity to move outside the walls of your church and reach out to your community in a big, personal, and eternal way.
VBS is an awesome and dynamic outreach opportunity, and it needs to be outreach oriented for a good number of reasons. Here’s a few:
For most churches, VBS is the largest children’s ministry event all year long, and the best opportunity to reach more kids at one time with the life-changing message of Jesus. Even compared to other ministries in the church, Vacation Bible School is often one of the most consistently effective and productive of them all.
Many kids will come to your VBS that may never otherwise come to your church. Don’t let this discourage you, let it encourage you! VBS naturally brings out new kids and families who might otherwise never darken the doors of your church, because many kids whose parents would say ‘no’ to church, say ‘yes’ to VBS!
VBS shows parents that you really care about their kids and allows them to get a first impression of your church and ministry. With new kids comes watching parents. They’re watching to see how friendly we are, how organized we are, and whether they even realize it or not, how much like Jesus we are. The impression they have of our church will probably be in direct proportion to the way we treat them and their kids. And the truth is that if parents know that we love their children, we’ve just built a connection and potentially opened their heart’s door to the gospel.
VBS gives you five days of repetitive influence and gospel exposure! Most churches do VBS for as many as 5 days in a row. Think about it… The influence that would normally take 5 weeks of regular church programming to accomplish can be done in just 5 days! And in addition to that, a clear presentation of the gospel can be given 5 days back to back! That’s a huge window of opportunity for the Holy Spirit to work.
Kids get saved and make life changing decisions for Christ at VBS! Oftentimes, if a VBS is evangelistic in its outreach, there will be as many or more salvations in that one week than the rest of the entire year of children’s ministry. And with 85% of people coming to Christ before the age of 13, no doubt multiplied thousands of those have made their decision to follow Christ during VBS!
VBS has great potential, but it really needs to be an intentional outreach opportunity, reaching the hearts and souls of many we may never otherwise be able to reach.
Are you all in for your church’s VBS or summer outreach?
- If you’d like to see the curriculums that we’ve written and use, you can check them out by clicking here.
- Portions of this article were first published in the 2015 VBS Showcase Edition of KidzMatter Magazine.
