NASHVILLE, TN 2/10/2008 6:31:05 AM
Don’t let Vacation Bible School end on Friday
Followup is an important part of VBS
If you don’t plan to follow up with Vacation Bible School, you might as well not have it.
“The whole point of Vacation Bible School is to lead the children, youth and adults who attend to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Bottom line. That’s it,” said Jerry Wooley, VBS specialist at LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Vacation Bible School is a ministry of LifeWay.
“The fun, the games and the music are the means to getting the opportunity to talk with the children and their families and share the Gospel with them,” he added.
At this year’s four VBS Preview events held at LifeWay Ridgecrest and LifeWay Glorieta Conference Centers and at LifeWay in Nashville, Tenn., the 2,500 men and women who came from local churches across the country heard the importance of having their VBS experience extend beyond the week of fun.
“Last year 90 percent of the people who turned in evaluation forms from the VBS Preview events indicated they needed help with follow up,” Wooley said. “We honestly had no idea the need was that great.”
In 2006, the most recent year’s figures, almost 3 million people were enrolled in VBS. There were 212,000 prospects discovered for Sunday school. Almost 40,000 people were enrolled in Sunday school because of VBS, Wooley said.
“It is startling to realize that in Vacation Bible School in 2006, we documented 94,980 decisions to accept Christ,” he said. “That is 1.1 decision for every one person trained as a VBS worker by our state conventions. That is phenomenal when you consider that statistically, SBC wide, it takes 44 people to win one person to Christ.”
Vacation Bible School is the single most effective evangelism strategy in the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2006, 26 percent of the 364,826 baptisms in SBC churches were a direct result of VBS.
“These numbers are just the ones we know about, that we have documentation about,” Wooley said. “I can only imagine how many more people are reached when you think about the parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents and friends of these children.”
Wooley said that he found it heartbreaking that some churches finish their week of VBS, take their enrollment cards, bundle them in a rubber band and stick them on a shelf to gather dust.
“I actually have had churches that proudly showed me stacks of bundled VBS cards from several years,” he said. “They don’t even seem to realize they are just bundles of missed opportunities.”
During this year’s VBS Preview, several breakout sessions specifically addressed ideas for following up with the children after VBS is over. Other sessions highlighted included volunteer appreciation, crafts/snacks and family night ideas.
Attendees were treated to a presentation of the Outrigger Island VBS musical, written by Jeff Slaughter and performed by the children’s choir of The People’s Church in Franklin, Tenn.
The two VBS themes for 2008 are Outrigger Island and Cactus Canyon . For more information go to www.lifeway.com/vbs .
For up-to-date news and information regarding LifeWay Christian Resources, visit http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/mainpage/0%2C1701%2CM%25253D200768%2C00.html.
