How else would you celebrate the nation’s best-known Vacation Bible School (VBS) promoter? A VBS to blow out all VBSes of course.
James Blakeney, an associate focused on preschool and children’s ministries at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) since 1997, will retire from his position Jan. 31.
While he plans to move immediately into a part-time role focused primarily on promoting VBS, the state VBS leadership team would not settle for a traditional retirement routine. These are sold-out VBSers, after all. Whatever they did, it had to be over the top. And they achieved their goal with a surprise retirement celebration Oct. 11.
Seventy-five friends and family members from across the state and nation drove to the event in Tallassee, which featured 17 themed booths for each VBS Blakeney has promoted for Alabama Baptists.
The energy apparent behind the planning and execution of the surprise for Blakeney falls in line with the passion put into planning each year’s VBS training for the leading evangelistic event in Southern Baptist life.
Jerry Wooley, VBS ministry specialist at LifeWay Christian Resources, attended the event to help celebrate Blakeney’s passion and heart for VBS.
‘Passionate about VBS’
“He understands that a successful VBS is where the workers are trained,” Wooley said. “Alabama provides one-eighth to one-tenth of everyone trained in the nation. There’s a phenomenal number of people who gets trained in the state.”
Jeff Slaughter, Nashville-area VBS songwriter who wrote 16 programs for LifeWay, said, “Alabama Baptists are always the forerunner in everything related to VBS because James Blakeney is so passionate about VBS.”
Prepping now for what will be his 20th VBS training tour in the state, Blakeney leads a team that makes five stops across the state in one week in February 2015 to train associational VBS leaders who will then train church VBS leaders.
Daniel Edmonds, director of the SBOM office of Sunday School and discipleship in which Blakeney serves as an associate, added that not only does Blakeney train VBS leaders, he also attends their events and teaches VBS in churches himself. “He visits in virtually every association, which means he is in 75 or more churches during their VBS week,” Edmonds said.
“VBS is a year-round endeavor for James … kicking off in November and wrapping up in August just in time to start recruiting and promoting in September and October for the next November kick off.”
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