Advice From the Experts – Involving Teenagers in VBS
The best VBS leaders are learners, and the best learners enjoy sharing with others what they have learned through trial and error. Following are words of advice that have been collected through the years from great leader-learners just like you.
- Don’t assume teens don’t enjoy VBS – they do. Especially when you include good snacks, messy games, and off-site activities.
- Get the youth leader/minister on board and you will get the youth on board.
- Give Youth VBS a name that relates to the theme but doesn’t say VBS.
- Create a traveling class that meets at a different home, park, or alternate location each day.
- Use Youth VBS resources for a lock-in, weekend retreat, or camp.
- Instead of requiring every teen participate in the same activities, provide a variety of rotation options and let teens pick the activities they enjoy most.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION: What advice do you have concerning involving teenagers in VBS?
I’m looking for information on how to use the Student VBS material as a week-end retreat for teens. I’m not sure how to break down the sessions.
Thank you for any info you can provide.
Since I’m not sure of the length of your retreat I’ll make the following suggestion for a retreat that begins after dinner and ends at lunch, and hope it will at least give you a guidelines for creating your schedule.
First, I want to encourage you to figure out a way to use all five Bible study sessions. As you have probably noticed, each builds on the previous study and we believe it is important to see both the progression of Daniel’s life (from a teenager in session 2 to an old man in session 5) as well as how each session points to Jesus as our Guide.
FIRST DAY (EVENING)
15 Minutes Recreation (icebreaker activity)
30 Minutes Worship
60 Minutes Bible Study Session 1
30 Minutes Recreation & Snack
60 Minutes Bible Study Session 2
Depending on how late you plan to allow the students to stay up you might add an optional craft time and offer two or three of the craft suggestions.
SECOND DAY (MORNING)
15 Minutes Recreation
60 Minutes Bible Study Session 3
15 Minutes Active Worship (get the students moving)
60 Minutes Bible Study Session 4
15 Minutes Recreation
60 Minutes Bible Study Session 5
If your time does not end with lunch I would expand the worship and recreation times on the second day, eat lunch following Session 4, and finish the afternoon with more recreation and Session 5.
80% of our leader volunteers are teens! I couldn’t do vbs without them. My best advice is plug them in where they want to serve. Nothing worse than a teen that working where they don’t want to be.