VBS and burgers

Ok, let me clarify why I hate VBS, but first I need to talk about my favorite burger place.

I don't eat many burgers, especially now that I'm training for a marathon, but when I do, I don't go for McDonalds or the higher class, Fuddruckers. I go to Lucky Burger. The building is shaped like a sombrero and serves up a nice 1/4 lb burger with a side of some of the best fried rice in town. When I go out of town, I search for these sort of places because I like the indigenous, the eclectic, the heterogeneous. I'm just not a happy meal kind of gal.

Now onto VBS. Many years ago, VBS was a different animal. It kind of had the feel of a backyard Bible camp, the closeness of small groups, a distinct personality, and just overall simplistic fun. Perhaps it is just my "neck of the woods," suburban, affluent Houston, TX, but things just aren't the same. Now, VBS is prepackaged, overpriced, and homogeneous to the point that aside from the theme, you can't tell the difference between publishers. One has a chipmunk and a buffalo telling about Jesus, and another has a mouse. It's all the same.

Now don't get me wrong--it runs like a well-oiled machine. When I started this job a year ago, I was told that I didn't have to do anything but walk around and smile, and they were right. Here it is, a year later, and aside from adding a rather large missions component to it, I'm the smiling poster queen, but I hate that. Why don't I do anything about it? It's because at this point, it runs smoothly, it's not broken, per se, and since I am a one staff member team, I've got to pick my battles.

Now to answer Trisha's question-- yes, I am ministering. If you read the rest of my blog, you can see the many, many areas in which we are ministering. I'm busy because I am constantly in prayer, constantly in motion, thinking of ways to minister inside and outside our community and doing all of them. The problem is that VBS is not a ministry to me, at least not in this area. The churches around here call each other in January to find out which publisher each church is using so that they don't duplicate. They also pull out their calendars and fight over weeks because down here, parents want cheap (yes, we charge for VBS down here because the curriculum is so expensive and so are the tshirts and all the little dodads that go with it) babysitting all summer--every week should be filled with a VBS from somewhere, and it is. June is the Baptists, us, the Church of Christ and the Methodists. July is taken by independence day, the Bible church, the other Baptist church, the nondenominational mega church, etc. It is sickening.

And because it is a well oiled machine, it is the most efficient choice to put a cap on the amount of kids who come--200. It means better security, better organization, better planning. It also means that once Suzie and her little friend Betsy and all their little goldilocks friends pay their tuition with checks clipped together to ensure that they are in groups together, the chairperson/s begins having to turn away neighborhood kids, last minute move ins, kids who are outside the flock and sometimes worse turn away reasons--I've seen it all from churches around here, not just ours. That's not ministry to me, but it's the obvious choice when you're doing one of these kits.

I have a volunteer crew of brilliant, creative women and men, and yes, they run the ship so well that it is flawless year after year, but to me, their brilliance and love of the Lord is lost in the midst of (forgive me using the phrase again) Chuck E Church, and the kids get lost in it, too. But my team is only so big, and we are planning unbelievable ministry opportunities all the time, so I can understand why doing something as simple as Group VBS sounds easy and wonderful.

Two years ago, I worked for a church in Bolingbrook, Il that didn't have the funds for one of these VBS to go boxes. We put our heads together and created our own VBS. It was called Bible stories come to life, and the kids became a part of the Bible stories. They crawled into an ark that we made of crates and pallets and heard the story while a friend of mine and I ran around outside holding up rainbows and blue streamers and spraying the window with water and making fake birds fly. Yeah, it was low budget, but the kids loved it, and every one of them could tell you the story afterward. "Yeah, but it's Noah, you say. " Ok, well we also made a life sized ark of the covenant, created a river in the church hallway with rocks and reeds on the side, had the kids carry the ark down the river and into the temple, etc. We had the kids blow trumpets to crumble the wall of Jericho and on another day, had them sit inside the dark well/pit while looking up at the tiny light in the ceiling and hearing the story of Joseph. This was ministry--this was VBS to me, and I even adapted the idea to create the Fear Not Festival last year, which was astounding because of my volunteers' brilliance and artistry. That is my idea of VBS.

Well, I've rambled on enough, and you hopefully understand my point of view now, and if you don't, well, I can't ramble on anymore. It's not that VBS is bad, it's just another happy meal, and next year, maybe we'll do something more.