South Alabama churches use day-camp style VBS to draw unchurched

VBS on steroids — that’s what Wanda Price, director of Camp OB Outfitters at First Baptist Church, Orange Beach, calls the church’s two-week, day-camp style Vacation Bible School.
   
Turn your traditional VBS into a day-camp format, and what you get is an extra-hectic two weeks, she said. 
   
But in the middle of the fishing, kayaking, cookie baking and French horn playing that accompanied OB Outfitters, one sound stood out — “Mrs. Wanda, I’m a Christian now.”
   
The voice belonged to one of the 31 children who accepted Christ during the day camp, which ran 9 a.m.–3 p.m. at the Baldwin Baptist Association church every weekday for two weeks in June.
   
“That’s the reason we do camp,” Price said. “Our heart is to reach children and sow a lot of seeds.”
   
First, Orange Beach, isn’t a large church, she said — it runs about 150 total attendance in Sunday School most weeks. But nearly 200 children turned out for OB Outfitters this year, a large number that’s a norm for the camp, now in its fifth year. Pre-OB Outfitters, the church’s traditional VBS attracted between 40 and 60 children.
   
“It may not work for everyone, but this just works for us,” said George O’Neal, the church’s recently retired children’s minister. “We use the LifeWay curriculum; we just spread it out over two weeks.”
   
The result is a morning devoted to Bible study and music and an afternoon that allows concentrated adventure activities such as fishing, archery, drama and kayaking.
   
“Some (out-of-town visitors) come down for vacation here during those two weeks just so their kids can come to OB Outfitters,” O’Neal said. “For many of them, it’s their first time to fish.”
   
And their first in-depth introduction to Christ, he added. “It’s not just a numbers thing. The teachers talk one-on-one with the kids.”
   
Then the pastor meets one-on-one with those children who have shown special interest in knowing more about Christ, Price said.
   
“We feel really comfortable that these kids knew what they were doing, and we could not be more thrilled about the things that have happened here,” she said.
   
So thrilled, in fact, that they’ve passed the feeling on to a sister church.
   
Price’s daughter Kara Stephens, children’s minister of Bush Memorial Baptist Church, Troy, is now implementing the same camp-style VBS at her church that she helped with at home in Orange Beach.
   
For the second year, the Salem-Troy Baptist Association church has followed the lead of First, Orange Beach, and taken its VBS out of the box and outside the church building, too — to the great outdoors, the college football field, art studio, science lab and even through the solar system.
   
Held June 5–9 this year, Camp Troy, as Bush Memorial Baptist calls it, piqued the interest of many parents in the area who would not normally send their children to VBS. 
   
The camp harnesses the popularity of secular sports and arts camps and parents’ interest in their children learning such skills.
   
“With Camp Troy, we’re not just pulling kids from other churches,” Stephens said. “We want to reach out in a way that is not traditionally ‘churchy’ so that unchurched children and their families can be drawn to the Lord. It provides a great opportunity for us to make contacts, to love children and to share the Lord.”
   
Karen Butler, a Troy University student who taught fifth- and sixth-graders, said she was pleased that those attending Camp Troy were diverse in religious background, race and socio-economic status. “Everything with the camp went so smoothly; it really was an answer to prayer. During the worship times, it was wonderful to see the kids excited about singing songs and being at church. Many of them were asking questions and remembering the lessons from day to day.”
   
Children who attend the camp participate in traditional Bible school activities — including Bible lessons and crafts — each morning and areas of interest, or tracks, each afternoon. The tracks cover everything from dinosaurs for preschoolers to woodworking and intro to piano for school-age children and are geared toward fun, hands-on activities that reinforce the Bible lessons taught in the morning. 
  
“Reinforcing Bible lessons through the tracks helps children connect God and His Word with everyday life,” Stephens said. “We try to take church and stretch it into things they are interested in, encouraging them to glorify God in everything they do.” 
   
The camp pulls from the talents and abilities of the Bush Memorial church family that volunteers to teach the morning classes, lead afternoon tracks or serve lunch.   
   
“Camp Troy is the biggest outreach effort we take on all year,” Stephens said. “It requires a lot of our church in terms of time and money. People take vacation time, give above and beyond and would tell you it’s worth every bit of sacrifice to see children come to know the Lord.”
   
According to Stephens, VBS attendance grew 150 percent last year from 50 to 125 children, and registration had to be cut off. This year, attendance nearly doubled again with 220.
   
“Our regular, average-sized churches with average-sized VBS budgets can have a huge impact where they are,” she said. “We’ve seen it work in two different places: in a beach community and in small-town Alabama. We’ve been amazed at how the community has responded, and we would encourage other churches to try it.”