Should Vacation Bible School at Romulus-area churches be primarily an evangelism tool targeting unchurched neighborhood kids, or a discipleship program for the children of existing members?

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  Kofi3d ago

  My frustration is with churches that advertise VBS all over Romulus and Wayne County, bus in 80 kids, have a spectacular week, and then do absolutely zero structured follow-up with those families. If you're going to make the evangelism argument then you better have a plan for what happens on Sunday August 4th when those kids and their parents need somewhere to land. Otherwise you're just collecting decisions for a spreadsheet and feeling good about your numbers. Evangelism without discipleship isn't a strategy, it's a photo op.

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• N

  Nina3d ago

  Born and raised in Romulus, attended VBS at First Baptist on Wayne Road every summer from ages 5 to 12. Back then nobody was asking this question — the whole POINT was to get neighborhood kids through the door. My mom led a carpool that picked up six kids from the subdivisions off Eureka Road whose families had zero church connection. Two of those families eventually joined the congregation. That's not a small thing. That's the gospel working exactly like it's supposed to.

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• L

  Liam3d ago

  I've been children's ministry director at our church near the Romulus/Belleville line for eleven years and honestly the framing of this question drives me a little crazy every time. It's a false binary. You design a program with solid biblical content — not fluff, actual theology — and it works for BOTH populations. Unchurched kids get introduced to the gospel. Church kids go deeper because they're explaining what they believe to their neighborhood friends. That dynamic is irreplaceable and you cannot manufacture it any other way.

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• YM

  Yuki M.3d ago

  My daughter went through VBS at a church here as a basically unchurched kid — her friend invited her — and it genuinely changed her life. She's 24 now and serving in ministry. I'm not even a member of that church and I'm telling you the outreach model saved my kid when I didn't know enough to do it myself. Humble yourselves, discipleship-only crowd.

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• N2

  Noah 213d ago

  okay genuine question for the discipleship crowd — if VBS isnt for outreach then what IS your outreach strategy for kids in this area?? because i moved here from downriver two years ago and the unchurched kid population around the Taylor/Romulus border is not small. are we just supposed to wave at them from the parking lot

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  Marco2d ago

  I just want someone to answer this: what do we actually DO with the church kids during an outreach-focused VBS when the curriculum assumes zero biblical knowledge? My son has been in Sunday school since he was three. He already knows the story of Zacchaeus. Watching him sit through a beginner-level lesson for the fifth consecutive summer because we filled the room with unchurched kids is not discipleship, it's babysitting. Give the church kids something substantive or don't be surprised when they age out of caring.

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• YL

  Yuki L.3d ago

  Discipleship. Full stop. We keep treating VBS like it's a marketing funnel and then wondering why the kids we 'reach' never come back in September. You spend a week doing crafts and singing songs with kids who have no spiritual foundation at home, and then what? They return to the same environment with zero follow-up. Meanwhile your own covenant children who desperately need grounding in Scripture get a watered-down program designed for absolute beginners. Serve your congregation first.

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• L

  Leo2d ago

  Counterpoint: some of those 'no follow-up' seeds get watered by someone else years down the road. We don't control the timeline of the Holy Spirit. A kid who hears John 3:16 clearly explained at age 7 in a Romulus church gymnasium may not respond until they're 35. Our job is faithfulness not measurable outcomes. Little uncomfortable with how businessy this whole conversation gets sometimes.

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• Y

  Yuki3d ago

  Fun fact: VBS was actually invented by D.L. Moody specifically as an inner-city outreach program in the 1800s so the discipleship-only argument is literally ahistorical. The whole DNA of the thing is evangelistic. You want discipleship programming, call it something else and run it on Wednesday nights.

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• Z

  Zara3d ago

  The bus ministry thing is largely a relic of the 70s and 80s and some folks around here haven't gotten the memo. You're not going to canvas subdivisions off Goddard Road with permission slips anymore and expect parents to hand their kids over for a week. Liability alone has changed everything. The evangelism model needs to be updated even if the evangelism goal stays the same.

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  Theo3d ago

  The Moody thing isnt quite right — it's more complicated than that and the format we recognize today came later through different figures. But the broader point about outreach intent is fair I'll give you that.

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