Last week we did our annual Vacation Bible School for kids from Monday through Friday. The theme this year was ‘Released: God has the power to set you free’ and focused on stories from Peter’s life in the book of Acts. For the last few years, our children’s ministry has developed their own programs instead of buying something.
This year, instead of doing a closing program type thing on Friday evening (after everyone was tired and worn out from the week), we decided to focus the theme of our Sunday service on the VBS theme. We invited families to come and planned a picnic and games for afterwards. We hoped this would be a great way to engage parents and also to engage the bigger church family with VBS.
We did a lot of our normal things with some VBS specific elements.
During the pre-service time, we showed a slideshow of pictures from VBS week.
We then began with welcome/announcements/greeting. Following this, we took a moment to specifically welcome people again and explain the special focus on the morning. Additionally, we took an opportunity to let the newer people know about why we do some of the things we do (like singing) and invited them to participate if they felt comfortable or else feel free to observe and that there would be an opportunity to ask questions after the service.
We did a ministry spotlight on a local organization called Granny’s Love. Each year, this organization collects school supplies and packs backpacks for kids that might not otherwise be able to afford stuff for school. Our kids had learned about his during VBS and brought stuff in, and we took the opportunity to challenge the adults to finish filling the big green box.
We then moved to our call to worship from Ephesians 5:19-20, again taking the opportunity to highlight why we sing and inviting people to do so. We sang songs related to God’s power, some of which had been done during VBS. Our songs included Our God Saves (Baloche/Brown), Mighty to Save (Reuben/Fielding), and Your Name (Baloche/Packiam). We followed that with a time of prayer and scripture based off of Ephesians 1:15-23.
During the offering, we showed a highlight reel of a variety of scenes from the dramas that happened each day during VBS. The dramas were the primary group teaching tool. Afterwards, our children’s ministry director got and gave a summary of VBS. She interviewed two people, one volunteer and one student, about their experiences and what VBS meant to them. She then thanked people and led in a prayer of thanksgiving for all that happened during the week.
For the message, our senior pastor focused on some additional stories from the first part of Acts and built off of the VBS theme of God’s power. He did it in character as Luke, the author of the book of Acts, to help connect with the theme of VBS. At the end of the message, we showed a video of a teen who had recently accepted Christ at a youth conference to demonstrate that God is still transforming lives today. You can watch it below.
We did have a small technical glitch with the video in that it would only play the audio, but no video. We ended up restarting our presentation software, and it then ran fine. That happens sometimes, and we are trying to figure out why. Not sure if it is a windows thing, a codec thing, or a network thing.
After the video, we had a moment for a soft invitation, and then did a reprise of Mighty to Save. We also had Song of Hope (Robbie Seay Band) prepared, but did not end up doing it because of time. The senior pastor closed the service with prayer and instructions for the picnic as well as inviting guests to come back and to feel free to ask any questions that they might have.
We had a number of guests this morning, which was a good thing. The energy was a little flat, but it was good to be able to focus on, celebrate, and involve the larger church in the experience of VBS.
Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to leave a comment with any thoughts you might have.
If you would like to know what other churches did as they worshiped together, be sure to check out Sunday Setlists at The Worship Community.
