It has come to my notice that although I’ve been mentioning VBS on the blog for years, and have even posted pictures of the set and kids playing games, I have never explained what exactly VBS is. I, after all, had never heard of it before I moved south and joined our current church.
 |
| Bible classroom from Road Rally |
VBS stands for Vacation Bible School, because it takes place during summer vacation and you learn about the Bible, although if it feels like school it kinda seems like you’re doing it wrong.
Churches do VBS in various ways, so I understand. Sometimes it’s in the evening for all ages, even adults, and dinner is included. Sometimes it is more classroom-based. Different churches invite different age ranges of kids.
Here is how we do it at our church, and what I’m talking about when I mention it.
Our church is big, and our Vacation Bible School is big—pushing 500 children attending. Therefore, kids are divided into smaller and smaller subgroups.
 |
| Bible classroom from Cave Quest |
First we divide early childhood from elementary age. My job is to direct the early childhood program, which runs pretty separately from the elementary. We plan for 150 early childhood participants, ages 4 through rising first graders. We plan for another 350 elementary kids, rising 2nd through 6th graders.
Then we divide children into crews of three to five children (these are carefully, thoughtfully pre-assigned and are a large part of our work in the weeks just before VBS). Each crew is led by a crew leader. Our youngest crew leaders are rising seventh graders, like Caleb last summer, and usually lead the early childhood crews. Most of our elementary crew leaders are high schoolers.
Then we organize crews into groups of five or six crews who spend the morning traveling together, all led by a crew leader mentor. The mentor is an adult who helps the crew leaders to engage well with their crew kids. In the elementary program, this mentor may or may not have a crew of their own, but in early childhood, the mentor does not have their own crew; instead they also act as the Bible teacher.
All these divisions are planned out beforehand and mentors, crew leaders, and crew kids are placed with as much care as possible.
The Sunday before VBS week (which runs Monday through Friday) is set-up Sunday, when every volunteer spends all afternoon transforming every bit of our church building into whatever theme we’re working with that year—caves, racetrack, outer space, science lab, construction site, etc. General areas and individual rooms are set up:
- two main stages/gathering areas,
- eleven Bible rooms,
- five craft rooms,
- two outdoor game areas,
- a massive snack-distribution operation,
- a movie theater; plus
- a whole registration set-up,
- two photo booths for crew pictures,
- a quiet room for overwhelmed children,
- a first-aid station,
- two staff snack nooks,
- a multi-room nursery for staff kids and
- a “war room” for the admin team.
 |
| Early Childhood stage for Building the Body |
 |
| Big room set for Road Rally |
 |
| EC stage for Road Rally |
 |
| Building the Body Bible classroom |
 |
| Building the Body Bible classroom |
 |
 |
| Road Rally photo booth |
All these volunteers and tasks must of course be organized as much as possible beforehand to minimize wasting our limited time.
Generally, room leaders are in charge of decorating their own rooms, and we take the ~150 crew leaders and divide them up (beforehand!) to help with different rooms as well as to move furniture, decorate main areas, and get supplies ready for each crew.
 |
| Bible classroom from Clues |
The two main gathering areas (the two biggest rooms in our building) are marked off in taped, color-coded and numbered squares for the crews to sit in during opening and closing times. Over the years, we have honed the exact measurement of these taped-off squares to optimize space while still allowing 3-5 little bodies to fit inside the square. Taping the squares must be done on set-up day, but we don’t assign that task to any old teenager, oh no. This is a VERY SERIOUS task assigned only to the kind of experienced men who own professional carpenter squares and 100-meter tape measures.
Each crew also gets a correspondingly labeled backpack for the crew leader, prepacked with such essentials as bandaids, blank incident report forms, Sharpies, and whatever other goodies the crew leader wants to add. During the week, this bag is used to haul around all the crew kids’ crafts and other stuff they collect along the way.
Monday morning is go day. The crew leaders need to arrive well in time to get themselves ready before kids arrive, and since some of them are adults with their own children, the nursery workers need to arrive earlier than that, so at least some of the admin and registration team needs to arrive even earlier than that to get everyone checked in.
When children arrive, they are greeted by our extensive registration team. Most participants are pre-registered, although we also welcome walk-ins. Either way, we gather all necessary information from them including parent’s names, authorized pick-up persons, emergency contacts, any special or medical needs, how they will be going home, and whether they have an allergy to any of the snacks we intend to serve that week. Then they are given a color-coded name tag with their crew number on it and escorted to the proper large gathering room to find their square and meet their crew leader.
Crew leaders have been trained to greet their crew kids warmly and get them engaged with conversation or coloring or some other contained activity right away. (We hold mandatory trainings for all our crew leaders every year in June and July, covering everything from the VBS schedule to safety procedures to behavior management to connecting with young kids on a spiritual level.)
At 9:00 the program officially starts. There is a main worship leader/emcee who is up front in each of the gathering rooms (one for elementary and one for early childhood), along with a team of helpers to lead the kids in singing and doing motions to the songs. The opening program lasts about 25 minutes and includes a skit guy who shows up and (hopefully) makes the kids laugh. During this time, the overall lesson for the day is introduced—a concise idea that will be repeated many times in different ways throughout the morning.
 |
| Main stage in the elementary room |
 |
| Memento from our “rejoice—pray—give thanks” segment during the opening time. |
After the big room time, crews begin their rotations to different stations. The early childhood schedule is much simpler than the elementary schedule, because it stays the same every day. The elementary kids have a different schedule each day, because at some point during the week, each group gets to help make the snack. So they rotate through stations in a different order every day, but thankfully for our early childhood kids and their middle school crew leaders, our schedule is exactly the same all week.
All the little kids start with their Bible station. They are dismissed by groups from the big room into their eight respective Bible classrooms, where they hear the lesson presented by their Bible teacher.
 |
| Classroom door from Clues |
 |
| Bible classroom from Sola System |
After that, the Bible teachers travel with their groups to crafts, snack, games, and a video time—each station reinforcing the overall Bible lesson of the day in a different way.
 |
At the end of the morning, all the kids gather back in the big room for a brief closing time that includes singing and one last wrap-up of the lesson.
Then comes the dreaded dismissal time.
Our children’s ministry director is fond of saying that we’ve never lost a child; we’ve just misplaced children. And dismissal is the time when children are most likely to be misplaced.
Only about a third of our participants come from our own church body, which means we don’t know most of the families well. Therefore, we require all picker-uppers to enter through the main door of the church and check in with the registration team to confirm they are listed as authorized pick-up people. They are then given a token that they must show at the exits in order to take a child away.
But before we invite parents to abscond with their children, we first dismiss several special transportation groups. These children come from various nearby neighborhoods and are transported by a small army of volunteer drivers. They are all labeled upon arrival with color-coded wristbands and are dismissed by color group to meet their drivers. These children—who are four to six years old, are in a busy room full of a couple hundred people, have had a very long morning, and have armfuls of crafts to carry home—must be expeditiously gathered and double-checked against my daily list to make sure everyone gets to where they’re supposed to go.
After that, it’s a simple matter of
- inviting the parents forward to collect their darlings,
- guarding the door against escaping little ones and unauthorized adults,
- bringing the few children who are inevitably left when all the parents have gone to a kind adult who will call their parents and remind them they have a stranded kid,
- attending the crew leader meeting so the crew leaders can debrief their day with their mentors,
- and attending the director’s meeting so the directors can debrief.
If it’s a quick, uncomplicated director’s meeting, we’re done by 2:00. More often, we have behaviorally-tricky children to discuss, safety issues to tighten up, and maybe even some encouraging stories to share.
