• Home
  • About
  • Resources
  • Contact

Sunday School Revolutionary

Sunday School matters. Be revolutionary!

VBS Yields Souls for Jesus

June 28, 2011 by Richard Nations Leave a Comment

I am a big fan of Vacation Bible School.  I think it is one of the most effective evangelistic tools we can use to win boys and girls and their parents to Christ.

This month at SundaySchoolLeader.com we have been blogging about the benefits of and the great advantages we have by using VBS as an effective outreach tool.  Here’s a quick story to show how VBS connects with people and why your church should have a VBS or a backyard Bible club this summer.

I was pastor of a church in southeast Iowa several years ago.  We always had VBS every summer.  We would work hard to register unchurched kids and we made sure that we had an evangelism day and we attempted to lead the lost children (the older ones anyway) to Christ during the week.  And then we followed up with these children and their parents and tried to enroll them in Sunday school and encourage them and their parents to come.

One of those little boys that came to Christ that week was named Tony.  Tony accepted Jesus and his parents weren’t too interested in him being baptized because he was of a different religious background, but they said he could come to Sunday school if he wanted.  He did and we ministered to his family through our church van ministry for a few years (kind of off and on attendance).

I moved away from that church and served in another state and then later moved back to Iowa to serve in the state Baptist offices as a church consultant.  So one day, about ten years later, I found myself driving into southeast Iowa on a Saturday afternoon to preach at a nearby church the next day.  I stopped at a hotel in this same town and spoke to a nice young fellow about checking into the hotel for the night.  That day I had put on a Vacation Bible School t-shirt with the current LifeWay VBS theme on it. 

So I’m standing there absent mindedly checking into the hotel and this young man says “I recognize that t-shirt. Isn’t that about Bible school?” 

I said, “Yes, that is our church’s Vacation Bible School theme this year.” 

He said, “I know, they had signs for that hanging up at the Baptist church here in town last week.  My grandmother’s funeral was there.  That church really helped our family out when she died.”

He had my interest now.  So I asked him his name.  And sure enough it was Tony, the little boy that had accepted Christ in Vacation Bible School a decade prior.  Now he was a young man, running the front desk of the local hotel.  And he and his family had been ministered to by that same church where he attended VBS many years earlier.

So of course, I got in touch with the current pastor of the church and told him the story and encouraged them to follow up on Tony and minister to him.

These are the kind of things that happen in VBS.  I hope you plan to have one this summer.  If not a church-wide VBS, consider having a Bible club on a picnic table in a park or in your backyard?  You will invest in the souls of little boys like Tony and you will find it well worth your time and efforts.

 __________________

Richard Nations is the Church Health Strategist for the Baptist Convention of Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa. Contact him at rnations@bciowa.org for more suggestions on effective VBS ministry.

Related posts:

Unexpected Benefits of VBS

It Is VBS Year Round Now!

Is VBS History? Maybe not!

Capitalize on Big Events!

Filed Under: Vacation Bible School

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Looking for Something?

Loading

Connect With Me

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Order Copies of Discipling and Caring

 

Two encounters are critical. First, the leader encounters God in His Word and is changed. Second, the leader guides the group to have a life-changing encounter.

Order Your Copy Today!

In John 13:34-35, three times Jesus said, “Love one another.” Your group is the ideal place to practice and launch the kind of love for one another that shows the world that we are His disciples.

Order Your Copy Today!

Categories

  • 100 Small Changes (103)
  • 30 Days of Prayer (2)
  • 31 Day Countdown (31)
  • 31 Days of 3 Roles for Guiding Groups (30)
  • 31 Days of Extreme Sunday School (26)
  • 31 Days of Missionary Sunday School (29)
  • 31 Days of Transformational Class (31)
  • 31 Days Series (2)
  • 31 Days to a Better Teacher (33)
  • 31 Ideas of Outreach & Evangelism (31)
  • 5 Weeks of Flake (27)
  • Assimilation (332)
  • Best Practices (6)
  • Bible Study (95)
  • Connect (15)
  • Disciplemaking (30)
  • Enlistment (44)
  • Enrollment (50)
  • Evangelism (75)
  • Events (26)
  • Flake's Formula (22)
  • Great Expectations (33)
  • Group Life (34)
  • Growing your Group (58)
  • Job Description (33)
  • Leadership (329)
  • Learning (52)
  • Ministry (122)
  • Misc (230)
  • Mission (53)
  • New Groups (52)
  • Organization (30)
  • Outreach (454)
  • Outreach/Evangelism (160)
  • Pastors/Sunday School Directors (476)
  • Planning (199)
  • Prayer (58)
  • Resources (44)
  • Serving (4)
  • Small Groups (144)
  • Space (17)
  • Space and Facilities (19)
  • Space/Arrangement (11)
  • Spiritual Disciplines (7)
  • Spiritual Maturity (265)
  • Starting New Classes (143)
  • Sunday School (457)
  • Teaching (589)
  • Theology (2)
  • Training (31)
  • Transformation (22)
  • Vacation Bible School (18)

Together we can make the needed changes to strengthen leaders and churches to reach Kentucky and the world for Christ.