Vacation Bible School
It’s November, and the dog days of summer are a distant memory now. So, I figure that gives us a chance to discuss something in a calm and reasonable manner. At least that’s what I hope.
I’d like to discuss…Vacation Bible School.
It’s no overstatement to say that Americans may very well constitute the largest unchurched people group outside of India and China. As many as 240 million Americans are unsaved, unchurched and unevangelized, and that number is growing.
Now, I understand that the best programming in the world can’t lead a person to conviction and conversion – people have this notoriously stubborn thing called their sin nature and, when it gets combined with their free will (sorry, Calvin), it makes them so hard to convert that only God himself can do it (sorry, Arminius).
I also understand that the effectiveness of our evangelistic work is terribly difficult to guage. A lot of good, no doubt, takes place beneath the surface, as the seed of God’s Word penetrates the soil of a human heart, germinates and begins growing long before any visible shoot appears. When a person comes to faith (or when faith comes to a person – whichever you prefer), rest assured much work has been done – seen and unseen – to prepare the soil, sow the seed and cultivate things before any harvest is reaped.
That’s extremely biblical language for evangelism, by the way. Jesus taught in an agrigultural context, so that’s the metaphor he used. I have never been a farmer, so it feels strange for me to use that terminology, but there it is. I trust you can understand the word picture.
So, having said how difficult I know it is to measure the effectiveness of our evangelistic attempts and having said how our best attempts to evangelize others could never make someone get saved, I still believe we ought to be rethinking some things when it comes to sharing the message of Jesus with those who are currently outsiders to the Christian faith.
For example, Dr. Ed Stetzer of the North American Mission Board has done a ton of research on how churches conduct outreach. He found that the number one outreach program – used by nearly 85 percent of Southern Baptist churches in 2008 – is…Vacation Bible School.
Eight-five percent. Vacation Bible School. Really.
Of course, having grown up where and when I did, I have fond memories of Vacation Bible School. Puppet shows. Memory verses. Booster, booster, be a booster and all that.
But can someone tell me honestly why in the world we need 85 percent of the 42,000 Southern Baptist Churches in America (that’s 35,700 churches, btw) doing VBS?
Does your church sponsor a VBS? If so, can you help me understand why?
November 16th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
At age 10 I accepted Christ at VBS. For that reason alone VBS gets my vote.
Beyond that, our church does VBS and does it very well. It is highly attended and is a great outreach to the community. It is a safe, fun place for working parents to drop their kids for one week during the summer. Many children accept Christ and are baptized after that week every year. I can’t imagine why churches wouldn’t do something that is relatively cheap, highly effective (far more than much of the preaching I hear) and a community wide draw.
Also, I remember at some point seeing a statistic that far more people become followers of Christ before age 18 than after. (I think it was a Barna statistic.) The Church needs to do a far better job reaching children and youth, having dynamic programs for them, and teaching them God’s word and a Biblical world-view so that at age 18 when they leave for college they remain active participants in the faith.
It seems like a better question might be why churches spend so much time and money on adult evangelism that is fairly ineffective. In all honesty I know of very few adults who had no background in Christianity (ie grew up completely separate from the faith) and have as adults become followers of Jesus.
By the way, as an aside I wanted to tell you that the devotional ‘The 52 Greatest Stories of the Bible’ has been a great blessing to me throughout this year. It starts my hour long morning bus commute everyday. Thanks.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I could have gone all day w/o hearing “Booster booster be a booster”. More than the need to discuss the cultural effectiveness of VBS, I just want to know what the heck is a “Booster”?
With all due respect to the above blogger, VBS was (is) like disco music. Awesome while it lasted. Very happy the above friend was saved while at VBS. My personal experience was VBS was a religious program that mimicked a glorified babysitting. Don’t drink the kool-aid. Welcome to 2009.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Jeff,
I am so glad to hear you first met Jesus through a VBS. I know lots of people who share a similar experience — whether it was VBS or a Youth Rally or something like that. However, as I travel and talk with churches all across the country, it seems that effectiveness is waning or is completely gone now.
Maybe your church does VBS better than any other church, but I wonder: does your community need another one? I would be willing to bet that there are a dozen such programs in your town. What might be created if your church took the time, energy, creativity and money you spend putting on VBS and tried to create a place where kids could learn about Jesus all year long? Or what if all the churches in town banded together to create something really extraordinary during the summertime?
As for the Barna stat — there’s some truth to that. The odds of a person making a commitment of faith decrease as they get older — with a sharp drop-off after age 18. That’s no reason to give up, of course, but we must take stewardship into consideration.
There’s another stat from Barna that concerns me, though. He says that somewhere between 65-80% of all those kids will drop out of church and be uninvolved in any kind of spiritually formative activity by the time they hit their early 20s.
So, let’s define “effective” and then let’s measure how “effective” VBS really is — long term. And let’s begin to think about what we might be able to do to not only get them in but to keep them in.
And thanks for the compliment on the book. I can only hope you grow half as much by reading it as I did by writing it!