Misty Pollard has been involved in Vacation Bible School as a volunteer for a long time, but this year, it hit differently. A few months ago, she gave her life to Jesus for the first time.
“I’ve helped with VBS in the past and done the crafts part of it,” Pollard said. “I was always excited for the kids, but I knew something was missing.”
About 20 years ago, she and her husband had gotten in the habit of taking their young children to church regularly, and as they left church one Wednesday night, he told her the sermon had hit him straight in the heart.
“Our preacher at the church we were attending at the time came to our house later that night, and after we listened to him, I just kind of followed my husband’s lead as he accepted Jesus into his heart,” Pollard said.
‘Something was missing’
But she said something felt off for the next two decades.
“I knew something was missing; my life wasn’t connecting the way it should be,” she said.
Then in May, as she listened to Thomas Hyche — her pastor at Glory Baptist Church in Winfield — “the lightbulb went off.”
“Jesus was tugging hard,” she said. “That sermon spelled it out loud and clear. At that time I knew that’s what had been missing the past 20 years. I had thought I was saved, but I wasn’t.”
And as Hyche gave an invitation for all who wanted to give their lives to Christ to raise their hands, he watched as Pollard — the church’s VBS director for this year — lifted her hand in the air.
“She had served at another church faithfully for 20 years, helping lead VBS, but she had never gotten saved,” he said. “Now you can just tell the difference, and her excitement for VBS is through the roof.”
Pollard said it’s like the weight of the world is off her and a new peace has taken its place.
“It’s the most wonderful feeling, and now I want to tell everybody,” she said.
She sees VBS with fresh eyes.
Instead of just focusing on making it a fun week for the kids in the craft room, she sees the purpose that’s been there all along — to introduce children to the love of Jesus and the gospel message clearly and early.
Sharing Jesus
“As a little girl, I didn’t get to experience VBS; we weren’t in church, Pollard said. “Now I love VBS. I want to reach out to all the kids and for them to know Jesus as soon as they can. I want them to know how wonderful it is; I just can’t explain it except that it just is.”
This summer, she dove into helping Glory Baptist prepare for its one-day VBS July 29, which had a farm theme with a petting zoo and a variety of stations designed to share the gospel through stories.
“I’m ready,” Pollard said a few days before the event. “I can’t wait to see what God’s got planned for us.”
Patty Burns, VBS strategist for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, said though VBS season is still going, she’s heard stories all summer of churches working hard to use VBS as a way to reach their communities with the gospel.
She’s been especially encouraged by the stories she’s heard from rural churches across the state.
“What excites me about that is that they don’t say, ‘We don’t have enough kids to do Bible school.’ Instead, they’re seeing VBS as a way to get more children into their church,” Burns said. “They’re using it as an outreach event.”
Gum Springs Baptist Church in Hartselle — a congregation that averages around 50 on Sundays — is one of those. Tammy Winton, the church’s VBS director, said they only had two or three children and a couple of junior high students who attended the church regularly before VBS.
“We knew our limited resources, and we prayed for God to send us people we could serve and serve well,” she said.
And when it came time for VBS — held in the evenings the second week of July — they had 41 enrolled, including 15 junior high students.
“I don’t know where they came from; God just sent them to us, and we adjusted our classes to have a ‘teens’ class instead of a fifth and sixth grade class,” Winton said. “It’s a good start to a youth group.”
Gum Springs also made the fifth night a family night, and a lot of the parents came, she said.
“We’ve already had one mom come to Sunday services since then,” she said. “And we’ve got a plan to go and visit the nine kids who made decisions to follow Christ.”
They’re hoping to reach the kids and reach the parents through them, Winton said, kind of like how Pollard and her husband were drawn into the church through their kids’ involvement initially.
With VBS igniting this kind of ongoing outreach to children and families, Burns said the stories don’t end when VBS does.
After the last churches wrap up their Bible school events in the next couple of weeks, she’ll start to get reports of what happened all over the state this summer — the SBOM created their own form this year to collect data from Alabama Baptist churches through email.
Those numbers are important to help with VBS planning for future years, and they’re worth celebrating, she said — but even those won’t tell the ongoing story of the impact that’s made.
VBS “is a great opportunity for the church to show how much Jesus loves us and model how to share the gospel in a fun and exciting way,” Burns said.
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