WB VBS
VBS: A Whole New World, Part One
It’s time for VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL! Please tell me you’ve signed up to volunteer. Stop reading this email and let your children’s minister know you will help out wherever you are needed!
VBS began in the late 1800s as an outreach to occupy idle children in a wholesome environment during the long summer days. While there has always been a goal to educate children in the Christian faith, it seems that’s never been the primary function of VBS. Even in the mid-1900’s, The Christian Century referred to Vacation Bible School as “primarily a sort of supervised recreation center” to give parents a break from their kids at summertime. (Chris Gehrz has a great write up on the history of VBS over at Patheos.com, if you want to learn more!).
So are we really just asking volunteers to give up a week of vacation so other people’s kids can just have free day care? Is our only goal for kids to think of church as a fun place? The way we implement VBS definitely teaches kids something. So what are we teaching?
A Whole New World?
Most VBS curriculum for the last twenty years is not designed to show kids a whole new world. It’s meant to be recognizable, to feel like something they could watch on Disney, Jr. or hear on a Kids Bop album. There’s now music videos of older kids lip-syncing with grown-up pop star voices. The videos cut like real music videos do, so it’s not really possible to learn the dances. Oh, and usually the keys of the songs are not actually kid friendly. But it’s wild and catchy, so as long as we’re all having a good time, who cares!
VBS is a big money maker, so there’s all kinds of ad-ons you can buy from Christian publishers…my least favorite being the throw-away happy meal toy characters that go along with whatever the day’s power word is.
I’m actually not grumpy about VBS. I LOVE VBS (usually).
Sure, it’s not opening anybody’s eyes to a whole new world. In fact, it’s probably engraining the idea in kids at an early age that church is just another consumer-driven market that is fun one week a year and something you can ignore the rest of the year when things are boring. It’s probably burning out our children’s ministers and volunteers who put hundreds of hours into pulling off one weeklong camp. It rarely results in new families joining the church. I’m not convinced it does most of the things we say we want it to do.
Soaring, Tumbling, Free-Wheeling
I’ve never been a part of a VBS that wasn’t inherently intergenerational. I mean all ages, all in. Grandmas? Check. New dads? Check. Teenagers that you otherwise thought were lazy bums? Check. Everyone has a role. Everyone’s gifts come into play. And everyone is giving incredible amounts of their time and energy and love for one solitary reason.
They believe what they are doing matters in the life of a child. A CHILD, I TELL YOU!
Nobody is trying to impress someone more important than themselves. Nor is anyone checking off brownie points to try and prove their worth. A whole community comes together for one week, loses themselves to devote their full attention to a bunch of rowdy children that may never reciprocate the love, never “get” the lesson, never come back through their doors. And that, to me, feels a lot like the kingdom of God.
Can we do it better this year? Of course, we can! Can we focus more intentionality of stewardship of resources, on the songs and lessons we teach? Damn right, we can! I’d even venture to say that we could still get the same kids to show up without the Disney-fication of the program. But who wants to do that? Who has time to create their own VBS from scratch? Not you!
Plot Twist: You’re the Little Reformer
I’m starting a Little Reformers series over the next few weeks while I travel with my youth choir and participate in my church’s VBS. I thought it would be fun to imagine Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Wesley as children experiencing our VBS for the first time. I hope you’ll enjoy it. You and I may not be able to escape what VBS has been or is right now, and maybe you don’t even want to. But whether you run it, volunteer, or simply send your kids, I hope you’ll find some inspiration through these next few weeks of comics. Because each of you can be little reformers, noticing where things need to change, noticing where the expansive love of God is being cheapened so you can make it richer for some kid. Even if that kid never gets it.
Because the kingdom is not contingent on your success or ability to change anyone. All that’s asked of you is to be a faithful witness to the love and power of God. I’m already exhausted just thinking about it. But I’m also excited to see how God will work in my community through VBS next week. Maybe VBS gives us the chance to live in the paradox of the absurd profoundness of the king who welcomes the child.