Last week, I used some of my vacation days (I had accumulated just about 40 of them, way over my employer’s official limit) and spent several hours each day volunteering at church for our annual week of vacation bible school. As in years past, we used Group’s Vacation Bible School curriculum and this year’s theme was Avalanche Ranch.

We had two sessions each day, one from 9:00-12:00 and another from 6:00-9:00 (we joked about having an insomniac session beginning at 2:00 a.m.), as it’s difficult to accomodate 100 kids at my church, especially if it rains and the kids have to be inside. At the morning session, I was the leader of the orange crew (a group of five children); my responsibility was to lead them from one station to another and to keep an eye on them. In the evening session, I took photos of a crew and created a slideshow called Spotlight Drama to be shown during Showtime Roundup.

Each day we had seven sessions:

  • Sing & Play Stampede — an opening session of music where we met our Bible Buddy and learned the Bible point and memory verse
  • Chadder’s Wild West Theater — a brief movie about the daily Bible point (each day flowed into the next, so the five parts were actually one long movie)
  • Wild Bible Adventures — a Bible story
  • Horseplay Games — games
  • Cowpoke Crafts & Missions — crafts
  • Chuck Wagon Chow — snacks
  • Showtime Roundup — a review of the day’s lessons with a slide show of a crew (called Spotlight Drama) and more singing

We started each session with Sing & Play Stampede, had Chuck Wagon Chow in the middle and ended with Showtime Roundup. The order of the other four sessions changed each day.

Throughout the week, we learned the following things:

Bible Buddy Bible Point Memory Verse Bible Story
Buc the Bronco God is Real “The Lord is the only true God” (Jeremiah 10:10) Rahab protects the Israelite spies (Joshua 2)
Shadow the Cattle Dog God is With Us “For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go”" (Joshua 1:9)” The Israelites cross the Jordan River (Joshua 3–4)
Ranger the Bison God is Strong “The Lord is my strength” (Psalm 118:14_ The walls of Jericho crash down (Joshua 6)
Skye the Bald Eagle God is Awesome “For the Lord Most High is awesome” (Psalm 47:2) Jesus dies and rises again (Mark 15-16)
Boss the Ox God is in Charge “If you love me, obey my commandments” (John 14:15) God heals Naaman (2 Kings 5)

While tiring, the week was truly awesome. It’s great to see how children, unlike adults, put their complete faith in God and Jesus Christ. Equally impressive is how, at the end of the week, kids can repeat everything they learned.

The days were very long though: I arrived at 8:00 to help setup and prepare, left at noon, grabbed lunch, went home and did housework or napped, then went back to church at 5:00 to prepare for the evening session. On most nights I was home by 9:30 (except Friday, when the leaders went out for ice cream) and was asleep not long after (most often on my couch).

I’m already looking forward to next year’s VBS. Rumor has it that we might be writing/creating our own curriculum, so that should prove interesting. While it may be difficult, I know that with God’s help and a terrific group of volunteers, we’ll reach out to children just like we did this year.