Southern Baptists are celebrating an important birthday this year, and a few Tennessee Baptist churches made the most of the occasion.
If fun music, crafts, snacks and lots of energetic kids and adults come to your mind, you are on the right track. Lifeway’s Vacation Bible School is 100 years old this year, and according to Liane Keaton, ministry assistant and VBS director with Sylvia Baptist Church in Dickson, VBS just keeps getting better and better.
“We asked our children to dress like 100-year-olds” on Thursday night of the church’s VBS in early June, Keaton said. “We sang happy birthday to VBS and blew noisemakers during the opening assembly (that night).”
Several kids took up the challenge to dress up, and one young girl even wore a life alert necklace, Keaton said.
Jayne Simpson is children’s minister at First Baptist Church, Huntingdon. Out of the 100 years Southern Baptists have been hosting VBS, Simpson has worked half of those, she says with a laugh.
“I started teaching Sunday School when I was 15 and began working in VBS about the same time,” Simpson says.
To commemorate 100 years of VBS at her church, the sixth-grade boys passed out noisemakers in the Sunday morning service before VBS began.
As Simpson promoted VBS, the church blew the noisemakers and shouted, “Happy Birthday!” Then, the pastor surprised Simpson by presenting her with a quilt the VBS workers created from VBS t-shirts over the years.
A history of missions and evangelism
Vacation Bible School got its start in 1898 when Virginia Hawes started a Bible club for kids on the east side of New York City.
Hawes was a Baptist and the sister-in-law of John Broadus, a founder and later president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Knowing that most kids would not come across town to the church building, Hawes started what she called “Daily Vacation Bible School” in a beer hall that was available during the day.
Three years later, the New York City Baptist Mission Society assumed responsibility for the effort, and Robert G. Boville used college and seminary students to lead five Vacation Bible Schools in 1901. Two years later, in 1903, the number grew to 17.
By 1917, Boville helped facilitate expansion of VBS to Canada and, over the next several years, promoted VBS in China, Japan and other countries around the world.
At the same time, VBS was growing across denominations in the U.S. A young Georgia pastor named Homer Grice heard about the VBS trend and held his first VBS in 1922. In 1924, the Baptist Sunday School Board (now Lifeway) hired Grice to develop VBS resources for churches.
“A hundred years later, over 25,000 churches are reaching 2.5 million kids each summer through Lifeway’s VBS resources,” said Ben Mandrell, president of LifeWay Christian Resources.
Continuing ministry and outreach
VBS continues to be a significant summer outreach for churches across the U.S., including FBC, Huntingdon, and Sylvia Baptist Church, its directors agreed. “VBS is the largest evangelistic gospel project for kids,” Simpson said. “Maybe for anybody.”
Her church’s daytime VBS continues to be popular with families, she added. As a children’s minister, Simpson sees the value of focused gospel conversations with children in a fun, structured setting.
“We now consider regular church attendance to be twice a month,” Simpson said. “That’s only an hour and a half a month for children to hear the gospel. VBS allows us 15 hours in a week” to speak into the life of a child.
Keaton agreed. She also loves to see families attending worship because their children attended VBS.
“Children are the driving influence in getting families to church,” Keaton said.
Both leaders advise that VBS should be an essential part of any church’s outreach strategy and summer calendar. Realizing the strong competition for a family’s time from summer sports and family vacations, Keaton and Simpson encourage churches to set a time on the calendar each year and to start planning early, trusting the Lord to provide workers and to bring the kids and families who need to hear.
“Take a step of faith, and just do it!” Keaton said.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Ann Lovell and originally published by Baptist and Reflector.
