Some Saginaw-area churches bus in children from apartment complexes and lower-income neighborhoods for VBS, while others design the week around their own congregation's families. Is VBS your best summer evangelism tool, or does mixing churched and unchurched kids dilute its discipleship purpose?
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Add your commentThe comment above mine is everything wrong with a certain kind of Christianity in the suburbs. "Nothing changes" — brother, you do not know that. You cannot know that. A child hears John 3:16 for the first time at age 7 at a VBS in Saginaw and maybe that seed doesn't sprout for 20 years. You don't get to measure kingdom work on a one-week timeline.
my daughter made her profession of faith at a VBS she attended as a neighbor kid not a church kid. she's now 19 and serving in youth ministry. so yeah. reach the neighborhood.
Grew up in Saginaw, went to VBS at Northwest Baptist every single summer from age 5 to 12. Back then it was absolutely a neighborhood thing — kids from all over showed up, my mom made phone calls, we knocked on doors. Nobody asked if your family was a member. That was the whole POINT. Somewhere along the way churches got precious about their programs and forgot that Jesus didn't check membership cards before feeding people.
Ok so I actually coordinate VBS at our church off Blue Mound Road and I want to give the practical side of this. When you bus in kids from outside your congregation you need MORE volunteers, MORE curriculum flexibility, MORE snacks (always more snacks), and you have to be really thoughtful about how you present the gospel because some of those kids have zero context for any of it. It's harder. It's also the best week of my entire year without question. The look on a kid's face when they hear for the first time that God loves them personally — I'm sorry but no amount of logistical headache outweighs that. We've had families visit our church in September because their kid wouldn't stop talking about VBS. That's evangelism. That's the real thing.
I think the real tension isn't churched vs unchurched kids. It's whether YOUR church has the volunteer base and the relational infrastructure to do outreach VBS WELL. A small congregation of 80 people trying to bus in 60 extra kids is probably going to do both groups a disservice. A larger church with real capacity should absolutely be reaching out. Know what you can sustain. That's just stewardship.
Genuinely curious — for the churches doing the apartment complex bus runs, are parents getting any follow-up? Like is someone going back to those families in August? Because if not I think both sides of this debate are missing the bigger issue which is that one week of VBS disconnected from any ongoing relationship is incomplete regardless of who the kids are.
Hard disagree with the "dilute discipleship" framing in this question. That framing already assumes unchurched kids are a problem to be managed. They're children. Made in God's image. The audacity.
VBS was literally invented as a street ministry tool in the early 1900s. It started as a way to reach unchurched urban kids. Somewhere along the line we turned it into a members-only summer perk with matching t-shirts. I have a master's degree in church history and this drives me absolutely up the wall every June.
Not gonna lie the "discipleship for church kids" model low-key just means parents get a week of drop-off programming while they run errands. Which, fine, I get it, summer is chaos. But let's not dress that up as a theological conviction about formation.
I'll say what others won't. Some of those apartment complex outreach VBS situations are basically just free childcare with a Jesus sticker on it. Parents drop kids off for a week so they don't have to pay for summer camp. The kids have fun, eat some goldfish crackers, make a foam cross, and nothing changes. I've seen it. I'm not saying don't do it, I'm saying let's be honest about what we're actually accomplishing and whether our resources could go further somewhere else.
Moved here from Dallas proper about two years ago and honestly the VBS culture in this area surprised me. Way more organized than what I was used to. But I do notice the churches that do heavy outreach to the surrounding apartment areas seem to have less... polish? to their programs. And the churches that keep it tight to their membership have these elaborate production-level things. I guess my question for Saginaw folks is: which approach is actually producing fruit in terms of those kids or families becoming part of the congregation long term?
both can coexist? like why is this even a debate lol. do your VBS for YOUR kids Monday through Thursday and then open it up Friday. problem solved. next question
Every summer my neighbor's grandkids come stay with her and they go to VBS at three different churches in two weeks because she signs them up for all of them. They're not Christian. They just love the crafts. And honestly? Good. Let them come. Something's going in. God's word doesn't return void and all that. Those kids are welcome at my church's VBS any day of the week.
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