By Landon Coleman
Pastor, Immanuel
At Immanuel, one of the casualties of the 2020 COVID year was Vacation Bible School – aka, VBS. Like most churches, we put a temporary pause on VBS in 2020, and one year later we brought VBS back in 2021. I imagine most churches felt like we did in 2021, VBS was “back,” but it just wasn’t quite the same. I realize COVID is still around in the world, and I know new variants will keep popping up. However, VBS this year felt like a real VBS.
A real VBS feels like a giant mess that doesn’t really get picked up for months. Chairs and tables get moved all over the building. Glitter and play dough get mashed into the carpet. Decorations get ripped off the walls, taking paint with them. Like I said, it’s a giant mess. (Kudos to our facility engineer, Cody Lyon, who works overtime to keep the mess to a minimum).
On a more positive note, a real VBS also looks like the body of Christ at work. This is one of the great joys of VBS for me as a pastor. To pull off VBS, we need all hands on deck working together. This brings our older members into relationship with our younger members. This requires our adults to serve with our youth. Some are working in registration, or the kitchen, or recreation, or music, or Bible study, or missions, or the nursery, or security … but all are working together for one purpose.
That one purpose brings me to the real, defining element of a “real” VBS, which is the good news about Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible. After all, it’s called Vacation “Bible” School! More than anything else, this week is a unique opportunity to tell boys and girls the good news that Jesus Christ has provided a way for sinful people to have a relationship with God. By living a life of perfect obedience and dying a sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus accomplished everything that needed to be accomplished for the salvation of his people. Our response to his finished work is simple. We must repent of our sin and believe the good news about Jesus.
A real VBS is about a local church doing what Paul described in 1 Corinthians 3:6. We plant gospel seeds, we water gospel seeds, and God gives the growth. Last week we had the opportunity to plant and water some 500 gospel seeds. That was our work. Now we pray that God would do what only he can do – give spiritual growth in the lives of the children who came to VBS.
Odessa parents, thank you for sending your kids to spend the week with us at Immanuel’s 2022 VBS. We hope to see your kids next year for VBS in 2023, but we also hope your family will be a faithful part of a Bible preaching church in the fifty-one weeks in between VBS. If you don’t have a church home, come see us at Immanuel!
