Vacation Bible School (VBS) is mainly a children’s outreach comprising the largest evangelistic effort of any kind for Alabama Baptist churches.
Yet many adults, even into their senior adult years, attend VBS offered in one form or another, according to James Blakeney VBS promoter in the office of Sunday School with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions.
“There is no age limit — VBS materials are available for bed babies to senior adults,” he said. “It’s an excellent kit and some pastors use the material as a series for Wednesday night prayer services over several weeks.”
Of the 185,294 VBS attenders in 2003, 7,104 are adults, defined as over age 18 and 10,719 are youth, defined as junior high and high school age. These are people enrolled and participating in VBS classes designed for their age groups, and not adult and youth teachers or helpers.
Even so, children comprise the largest group of VBS attenders with Alabama Baptist churches reporting 167,471 children attending VBS 2003, as of Oct. 4.
To better accommodate children’s busy schedules and those of their parents, nighttime VBSs have grown to more than half of all Baptist VBS gatherings in Alabama.
“There are a lot of different methods and changes, but I guess one of the major changes over the last 20–25 years has been the movement to a night VBS,” Blakeney said. “When I was a child they were daytime only and two weeks in length. Now, 60 percent of all Alabama Baptist churches conduct VBS in the evenings,” he said.
Even with the success story of VBS, some Alabama Baptist churches do not have them due to few or no children in the church. Others have revived them to attract children and younger couples moving into the community, Blakeney said.
Attendance varies widely, but among VBS attenders this year 23 Alabama Baptist churches reported more than 500 attenders at their VBSs. The largest reported was Hunter Street Baptist Church, Hoover, with 1,200. Blakeney said something new in the last two years of VBS in Southern Baptist life is how churches report their statistics. It used to be they would have to send in three separate reports — one to the mission board of their state, one to their association and one to LifeWay. Now by using a user number and password they can file their reports on the Southern Baptist Directory Services and all three organizations have the information.
Flexibility in presenting VBS means that some churches opted for a one-day VBS on a Saturday, while others had a three-day VBS. Some shortened the daily hours from three to two and others went the full three hours for five days.
Blakeney said the reasons for different hours and days of VBS vary with the churches, but economic resources and number of volunteers are a couple of variables affecting the decision.
Flexible schedule
Several churches are having VBS at times other than summer, in part because of year-round school. Blakeney said the first Alabama Baptist church to report VBS statistics this year was New Salem Baptist at New Sight in Tallapoosa Association. Tallapoosa County public schools and Alexander City schools are on the year-round schedule, so having VBS in March worked well as a scheduling option, Blakeney said.
New Salem Pastor David Tuten said VBS 2003 marks their fifth year to conduct VBS during spring break in March.
“The first year we had a three-week break in the spring and a six-week break in the summer. Around here in the summer there are lots of Vacation Bible Schools and even with the traditional 10-week summer break scheduling VBS was a challenge, because we tried not to overlap with the Vacation Bible Schools of nearby churches,” he said. Attendance was higher in 1998, their first year to have a March VBS, than in either of their previous two years of summer VBS, he said.
Their night meeting time for VBS remained in place with the move from summer to spring.
The county and city schools changed their spring break to two weeks instead of three in 1999 and have remained on that schedule since. Though VBS attendance lowered a little as a result, VBS is still a strong success, according to Tuten, also making the point that March avoids competition from a heavy youth sports season.
“A drawback to March VBS is you don’t get as much advanced preparation time because VBS materials aren’t out until mid-to late December, so you have to adjust your planning time frame, but we managed OK,” he said.
“You pretty much have to do your own training of VBS workers since our associational VBS training clinic for workers is about a month after we have VBS, and I believe our VBS is before the State Board of Missions’ VBS training,” he said.
Tuten, whose wife, Teresa, is a special worker who leads clinics for the Sunday School office of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said a key in VBS leadership is to have workers that are experienced in VBS or who have taken advantage of Sunday School training clinics. He said he believes the teaching procedural part is not that different from Sunday School or previous VBSs, although specific information about the current VBS theme could suffer.
VBS is “doing old things in new ways,” according to Margaret Mangham, preschool Sunday School director at First Baptist Church, Mobile. “Having grown up and gone to Bible school when they lasted for two weeks, I have such fun and positive memories that being involved in it now gives me the opportunity to remember the good things from my past and pass them on,” she said.
Mangham said an effective VBS at any Baptist church is enlisting teachers who genuinely love children and the Lord and are willing to “plan, plan, plan.”
“When they carry out their plans they have made an impact on the lives of the children that is lasting and they themselves have been blessed by the Bible School,” she said.
“We used our children’s choir literature and had a music and mission Vacation Bible School. It’s a different twist that we’ve done for three to four years now and it’s been well received.
The choir literature for the summer quarter is put together so that you can use it in a day-camp setting, like VBS, and there’s strong missions and biblical emphasis to this literature,” she said. Their church held a VBS with many first-time teachers, who Mangham says are ready to work in VBS 2004.
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