Photograph by Rubén Bagüés via Unsplash

Each winter, our local Christian bookstore would host a preview of the curriculum options for the upcoming VBS season. We scoured the themes. Was it biblical enough? Evangelistic enough? Was it too liberal or too conservative? What publishers had the best music or most compelling crafts? In later years, we looked for material that was the easiest to teach. That usually meant centers. I can still remember the excitement and the exhaustion, and even some of the songs.

It is unclear who organized the first Vacation Bible School program. The answer is elusive, like so many origin stories, but they all seem to arise around 1900 in America. In one notable example, Eliza Hawes of New York City’s Baptist Church of the Epiphany rented a beer hall to conduct her Everyday Bible School, having seen the children in the streets. Her all-summer program moved to the church at one point only to find the kids would not come, so they moved back. Her evangelistic goal was accompanied by genuine compassion for the children, reminiscent of Robert Raikes’ motivation for the Sunday School in England nearly 200 years earlier.

Dr. Robert Boville, who worked for the Baptist Mission Society, expanded the idea to 17 schools by 1903 and he soon established the Daily Vacation Bible School Association as a national organization. The grassroots programs caught the eye of denominational leaders and curriculum publishers. The Presbyterians embraced the program in 1910 and Northern Baptists (now American Baptists) in 1915. Standard Publishing began printing full-scale VBS materials in 1923.

One glimpse of the early days was from Harry Emerson Fosdick, considered a pioneer of VBS programs. As a newly engaged student preparing to start his training at Union Theological Seminary, he recalled, “The experience probably taught me more than it did the children.” Still, he remembered working “hard that summer, dealing as best I could with the boys and girls off the streets.”

Later in the 20th century, VBS was part of nearly every church’s Sunday School program. Many churches still have photos from that era with VBS attendees overflowing the front of the church. It had an acceptance in the wider society that motivated even unchurched families to send their kids to “get a little religion.”

I call this an ode because, in addition to the stated goals, there were always some added benefits that were never mentioned in the curriculum.

First, pulling off a VBS was always an exercise in spiritual gifts. No other church program invited such a diversity of abilities. There were of course teachers and musicians, but you also needed crafty people, those recreationally inclined, tech people, cooks, stage designers, registration organizers, teens and grandparents, set up and clean up people, and collectors of stuff. People even had a chance to “try out” teaching a class. We found that young people who aged out of the classes quickly jumped at the opportunity to serve as “helpers,” the most valuable players of any VBS.

One summer, folks from our church offered to help a rural church, short on staff, to pull off a VBS. They had 2 teachers, kitchen help, and the people to do registration. We offered the rest. Kids who had never entered the church came from the neighborhood. During one snack time, a few kids asked the kitchen ladies if they could have more. Instead of “No! We won’t have enough,” those grandmothers, who were gifted in snack making, put their arms around them and said, “Sure, we’ve got plenty!” We left at the end of the week, knowing those kids would be back whenever they were invited.

Also, VBS was often an opportunity for cooperative ministry in a community. Yes, church consultants would remind us that working with other churches on a VBS was not going to help the church grow. We accepted that. But there were some discoveries we made that were just as important. For one, when we had to cooperate on a VBS, we were reminded that we were not the only Christians in the community, an illness to which Christians are prone. Underlying suspicions would begin to melt, as we worked side by side on a common goal. A cooperative VBS was also a visible message to the community that Christians can work together. We have lost that on so many levels. In some communities, Roman Catholic and Protestant churches even worked together. Finally, a delayed benefit of working cooperatively was that when everyone went back to school, kids now also had their VBS friends.

A third tribute to VBS has to do with the unique situations in which people would be placed when they would have to share their personal faith with the children. If we wanted kids to share a “God sighting,” we would have to come up with an example. In a lesson, a student would ask an innocent faith-related question and the volunteer would find themselves having to simply and publicly explain the answer as they knew it. I remember roaming as the pastor and hearing church members talk about what they believed. I suspect it may have been one of the first times some talked about their Christian faith that way. Fred Craddock would say, “You don’t even know what you believe until you hear yourself say it.”[i] It was evangelism, pure and simple, more powerful than any theologian or Bible-based curriculum. But most importantly, it put us in the unfamiliar, but critically important position of being evangelists.

I wrote this in the past tense because I am retired, but VBS is alive and well. The arc of VBS may curve up and down, but if you can pull it off, the benefits go far beyond the curriculum statements of purpose.