May 18 is National Day of Prayer for VBS

As the headline to this post proclaims, this Sunday is the annual National Day of Prayer for VBS.
Each year, on the third Sunday of May, churches are encouraged to take time to pray not only for their own upcoming Vacation Bible Schools, but for churches down the street and around the world.
VBS continues to be an extremely successful evangelistic outreach, resulting in 80,000 plus professions of faith each year in the Southern Baptist Convention alone. In addition to the thousands of decisions to become followers of Jesus Christ, approximately 2,500 kids, teens and adults each year make public the decision to pursue a career in ministry. And if these numbers are not enough to celebrate, as a result of VBS churches collectively identify approximately 1,000,000 unchurched individuals annually.
Here are six opportunities to encourage your congregation and VBS team to join you in observance of the National Day of Prayer for VBS.
1. Create and distribute a call to prayer. List specific prayer requests for your own church and team as well as the VBS dates of neighboring churches.
2. Start the day early by asking your VBS team to join you for prayer prior to regularly scheduled activities.
3. Work with your pastor and worship leader to include prayer for VBS in the morning service.
4. Schedule an afternoon prayer walk through and around the buildings that will be used for VBS. After the team has prayed for your church, travel throughout the community stopping to pray for churches displaying VBS banners and signs.
5. Communicate with your congregation’s homebound members and ask them to pray at a specific time and for specific needs.
6. Invite your VBS leadership team to your home for an evening or after church prayer gathering.
Jerry Wooley, @vbsguy, has served as Lifeway’s VBS Ministry Specialist since 2006.