10 x 3 = 120
On average 10% of kids attending VBS are unchurched. How do we know? When asked about church affiliation on the registration card 10% of parents leave the response line blank or write “none”. For the average VBS 10% equals 10 people.
For many churches discovering 10 unchurched people (and getting all their contact information) in a year is a big deal. But an even bigger deal is the number 10 does not reveal the real story. When you consider that the original 10 are typically children, add in one or two parents for each child, a few younger or older siblings, and maybe a grandparent or two who lives in the home with one or more of the children, you can quickly arrive at 40!
There are very few churches where the discovery of 40 unchurched individuals would not be a big deal. How about for your church?
Dream for a moment what might happen to your church if you spent all the weeks between now and VBS 2012 cultivating relationships with the 40 unchurched individuals you discovered during VBS 2011. What if all 40 became actively involved in the life of your church, and then next year during VBS 2012 you discovered 40 more? You spent another year cultivating relationships and the second 40 became actively involved in the life of the church. Now you have 80. During VBS 2013 you discover 40 more and cultivate relationships and now you are at 120.
For the majority of churches that conduct VBS 120 people would double the size of the congregation. And all this from one week of VBS followed by 51 weeks of cultivating relationships. I think you would agree that this is a fantastic return for the investment.
What are you doing this week to intentionally build on the relationships discovered during VBS 2011? What will you do next week?
For the past three weeks I have been sharing tips for planning VBS 2012, but before we get too excited about next year we need to make sure we are doing everything possible to grow the relationships with the unchurched discovered this year.
Don’t you just love math when 10 multiplied by 3 becomes 120?
We benefitted greatly from our VBS outreach this year. Every unchurched child who attended got a hand written kid friendly letter. As a rusult, many of those children and their families have enrolled in our Sunday School classes and AWANA Club. By the way we handed out 2000 flyers to our community. Total enrollment was 360 and almost half were unchurched. We live in a very mobile military community. God continues to bless our Big Apple Adventure. Yeah!!!