32 ideas for taking VBS beyond your church walls
1. Conduct Youth VBS separately at a fun location for a weekend.
2. Use the parsonage for the youth or VBX.
3. Our church helps a small church (mission church) to enable them to have VBS in their church.
4. For Family Night, we rent the local community swimming pool.
5. We took a team to a Navajo church to present the program.
6. Use VBS as a backyard missions.
7. Do a one day of VBS at a one time visit to an orphanage.
8. Do a brief VBS at a picnic area of a state park.
9. Conduct VBS in multiple concurrent locations (i.e.- parks, schools, etc.)
10. Take children’s choir to do the musical to area nursing homes, children’s hospitals, etc.
11. At the end of VBS, the celebration goes with the theme. Last year was a water luau and this year we’ll go to Kentucky Down Under.
12. Youth mission trips is where we use VBS material and let them teach VBS to children in low income areas who don’t have the chance to go to VBS.
13. We do VBS in Youth Emergency Shelters and Crisis Pregnancy Centers for moms and kids.
14. Adopt a church that is struggling and help them host a VBS.
15. Host a VBS on in a summer playground program and in low income housing play areas.
16. Visit shut-ins (homebound) and have a lesson with them.
17. We do a small version of VBS at a migrant work camp.
18. We will be doing VBS in Guatemala in November with our key leaders from this year’s VBS.
19. Use Club VBS on our Spring Break mission trip.
20. Use VBS curriculum on summer mission trips.
21. Present the musical at schools and community events.
22. Take VBS to Children’s group homes.
23. We one day of VBS at the mission we established in Kentucky and we get the kids to come from the community by bringing free school supplies.
24. We do a one day Back to School Bash at our local park and do one day of our VBS.
25. Perform the musical at nursing homes or Veteran’s homes.
26. Conduct Adult VBS at an Adult Assisted Living Center.
27. Coordinate VBS Link-Ups with other churches. Take in people, supplies, food/snack to help struggling churches.
28. Our youth use the VBS for their national mission trip – the youth help in an area in their local VBS and then help in that same area on the mission trip.
29. Find a church in your Association that does not do VBS. Pair up with their leaders to co-direct at their church to teach them how to lead the event. The following year they do it on their own.
30. Conduct VBS at a local housing authority facility or at a public housing complex.
31. We have an “offering contest” for our boys and girls to compete. A male and female member of our worship team goes in a dunk tank at the end of week depending on who wins. We use the monies for our annual mission tip and our kids have raised over $1,000.
32. We have our clown ministry go to housing projects to invite children to VBS.
I wanted to share that this year I was the Craft teacher for grades 4-12. I have often seen our crafts be left behind or thrown away when the children/youth get home. I came up with the idea of doing tray favors for our local hospital, hospice center and a cancer center in a neighboring town. We made netting bags and placed VBS verse and church info on these. This turned out great. We used the VBS theme, scriptures, logo and incorporated it into a devotion book to be placed on trays at the hospital, we made boxes out of used cards and placed Bible verses and our church info on them and finished them off with a couple pieces of candy or mints. We made tent cards using the Need Answers-Ask God logo and put the Motto and VBS verse on them and then asked the children/youth to add a message and a mint was glued to each one. Our final night we had been collecting items for the Samaritan’s Purse ministry and each child got to go “shopping” in the craft room and fill their shoe box and then they each wrote a note and finished their box up with the label. This proved to be a great success. On Wednesday night after we finished making our tray favors each child/youth got to make one or more of the crafts we had done during the week to take home. One child ask if she could make a box for her aunt that had cancer and she was thrilled. We carried our the VBS theme each night but we were able to reach out to so many people through this idea. I cannot take the credit as God led me in all I did. I had a great experience and also had a great group of children/youth and a wonderful group of helpers..
Those are great ideas. We are planning to do a Christmas VBS
pointing the children to the true meaning of Christmas. If anyone has idea would love to hear from them. Thanks.
We had a blast with Saddle Ridge Ranch this year. We call ours Family VBS because we have classes for everyone from babies through adults of all ages. In the past we did Monday through Friday in the evenings, but we were always so very tired by Friday night. The past several years we have gone Monday through Thursday and finish up on Sunday. On Sunday we have our Worship Rally for our Worship Service and then go to our VBS classes. When finished with classes, we release for a cookout/carry-in dinner and follow that with games and activities. This year we had horses there for the kids to ride to go along with the western theme.