When three or four churches in the Newark area run VBS the same week each summer, families split up and attendance thins out everywhere. Should area churches collaborate on one big community VBS or is friendly competition healthy for reaching kids?
Join the debate to comment
Reading is free. Members pay to post — that's why it stays clean.
Add your commentSomeone needs to gently point out that Acts says nothing about VBS programs, Jerusalem neighborhoods, or the Roman Empire spreading the gospel through competing summer children's programs. That's... not what happened in Acts. At all. Please open your Bible before citing it in a debate about Vacation Bible School logistics in Wayne County.
Born and raised in Newark, went to VBS at First Baptist on Miller Street every single summer as a kid. Back then there was ONE VBS in town and the whole community showed up. Now my grandkids are being pulled three different directions in the same week and nobody wins. This isn't competition, it's just stubbornness dressed up as ministry.
Tried raising the joint VBS idea at our church council two years ago. Got told our theological distinctives make cooperation 'complicated.' I pushed back and asked which theological distinctive was relevant to teaching 8-year-olds that Jesus loves them and we should be kind. Meeting got real quiet real fast. Still waiting on an answer.
The real question nobody's asking: who funds all these separate VBS programs? Curriculum packages, decorations, snacks, volunteers — each church is spending thousands on the same week. Combine those budgets and you could bring in actual professional worship leaders, better resources, maybe even reach kids in parts of town that are currently getting zero outreach. Stewardship is a biblical value too, people.
I appreciate both sides but can we talk about the kids who get NONE of it because their parents are so overwhelmed by the scheduling chaos that they just skip everything? I work at the elementary school here and I talk to these families. When there's confusion about which VBS is on which day at which church, parents who were already hesitant just give up. One clear community event would remove that barrier entirely. Outreach means making it easy for people to come in, not complicated.
Hard disagree. Our VBS at Calvary reaches kids that would NEVER walk into another church. Different styles, different music, different approach — some kids connect with one and not the other. If we all merged into one giant community VBS run by committee, it would be so watered-down and politically compromised that nobody would get anything out of it. The 'unity' crowd always forgets that unity doesn't mean uniformity.
My daughter volunteered at two different VBS programs last summer because she felt guilty choosing. She was exhausted by Wednesday. These churches are burning out their most faithful young members trying to staff separate operations simultaneously. That's not healthy for anyone.
Actually the early church in Acts ran separate VBS programs in different neighborhoods of Jerusalem and that's exactly why the gospel spread so fast across the Roman Empire. Collaboration sounds nice but God used distinct congregations with distinct callings throughout all of Scripture.
ok so i just moved here from Rochester about eight months ago and honestly i was shocked when i saw four separate VBS signs posted the same week in a town this size. like genuinely shocked. where i came from the churches in our area figured out a rotation years ago. one church hosts each summer and the others volunteer. attendance was huge and it was the talk of the whole community every year. newark could absolutely do this if egos werent in the way sorry not sorry
Should Christians pray to saints — or is asking Mary and the dead for help straight-up idolatry?
56 comments
Did Christianity give birth to modern science — or did the church spend centuries trying to strangle it in the cradle?
56 comments
Does God choose who gets saved, or do you choose God — and is Calvinism secretly making God into a monster?
55 comments
Do humans have an immortal soul — or did the church steal that idea from Plato and dress it up as Scripture?
55 comments