Survey Results & Comments
Does your church offer a summer Vacation Bible School Program?
Over 94% said they offer VBS, less than 6% said, no they do not.
Do you use a pre-packaged program, write your own program, or use a combination of the two?
Over 54% use a pre-packaged program, almost 14% write their own, almost 36% use a combination of the two.
Do you invite non-church members?
Just over 1% invite only church members, and a whopping 98.84% also invite the community.
Now for some of the comments from those who took the time to share their wonderful ideas.
How do you promote your program to the community?
Some of the teachers said they advertise in the newspaper, over the radio, on their church signs and websites, distribute flyers in grocery stores, Facebook, door-to-door invites in surrounding neighborhoods and parks, flyers that we take to the Little League, notes in the elementary school newsletter.
Here are some more unique ideas:
Promote Church Unity
"We ran a VBS style week combining churches in our town, we advertised to all the schools in the age range and did not use it to promote church membership at any specific church."
Traveling VBS
"We are a small rural church. Not many attend because of larger churches in the area putting on such BIG programs. SO...we travel. Our entire church (25 - 30 adults and 10 - 15 children of various ages all commit to participate in the traveling VBS. Each VBS is ONE Sunday evening. We travel to 4 different locations on 4 different Sundays. We use the Sunday nights in June to take our show on the road! We go to nearby town's public parks. Everyone in the church has a job, from set up, preparing refreshments, serving refreshments, manning a game or 2, being in a skit, helping with a craft, and/or part of a gospel presentation -- and of course knock down and clean up. Early in the week we post small posters in a 2-3 block area around the park. Then on the day of our program, we arrive an hour before the program begins and a group goes door to door giving out a small flyers. Another team looks for groups of kids and or adults playing together in our near the park while a team is setting up games, refreshment tent, props, etc. We all wear our church t-shirts the entire time so that kids and families recognize us as a team.
Adult VBS (wow!):
"We also have an adult VBS."
Local Food Pantry
We hand out flyers at our food pantry and our Friday Lunch Bunch program.
Have a Parade! (Double WOW! How unique is this?!)
"We have a 1.5 mile long parade the Saturday morning before VBS starts (Monday - Friday) to help promote the VBS. We also post and hand out flyers telling about VBS - the lessons, games and crafts. We advertise that we have a van that can pick up kids as well."
And coming up next week, your responses to: "Do you charge a fee for your Vacation Bible School Program? Do you have an opinion, pro or con, about charging for VBS?"
(I received some passionate responses to this one. One person was offended by my even asking it.
Uh-oh! So, stay tuned!)
I hope these ideas inspired you, as they did me!
Your webservant,
Sarah Keith <><
