It’s a fact: Vacation Bible School (VBS) is the most effective evangelism strategy in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
Churches that understand its effectiveness also understand that follow-up is a critical component of the VBS week.
“The wholepoint 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.
In 2006, the most recent year’s figures, nearly 3 million people were enrolled in VBS, yielding 212,000 Sunday School prospects for local churches, nearly 40,000 of whom subsequently were enrolled as a result 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.”
And 26 percent of the 364,826 baptisms in SBC churches in 2006 were a direct result of VBS, Wooley said of Bible school’s effectiveness as an evangelism strategy among Southern Baptists.
“These numbers are just the ones we know about, that we have documentation about,” he 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 finds 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.”
For more information on VBS, go to www.lifeway.com/vbs. (BP)
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