Advice from the Experts: Increasing your VBS Potential by Investing in Leadership

The best VBS leaders are learners, and the best learners enjoy sharing with others what they have learned through trial and error. Today’s advice comes from Linda Epperson, Director of Children’s Ministries, Idlewild Baptist Church, Lutz, Florida.

1. Leadership Counts! Pray for the Lord to give you wisdom on who to ask to serve on the VBS Leadership Team. Develop strong leaders who have a passion for serving the Lord, who will use their gifts to lead, develop, and serve their teams. They become responsible for their assigned rotation areas. Plan for them to return every year and to invite someone else to serve alongside them. Continue the multiplication process of developing leaders. Make sure you include an evangelism team, age level team leaders, worship team, and decorating team with creative people.
2. Start in December/January to review the VBS theme and meet with your core leaders to cast a vision. Pour into them by providing tools they need to be successful. Develop a handbook to set direction and pace.
3. Pour into your leadership and provide a strategy to help them grow. Empower them to reach those in their sphere of influence and to invite them to serve alongside them during the week.
4. Cast the vision to your staff, leadership team, and then volunteers. Work alongside the church’s staff and provide detailed instructions on how they can serve during that week. Include every department in this ministry. Everyone uses their gifts to glorify God during this week.
5. Use technology for registration process, volunteer check-in, and online registration. Lifeway’s KidEvent Pro is a must for every church because it allows you to capture valuable information and it can be linked to your church’s web-site. You can design your own reports and it’s inexpensive. Highly recommend a technology geek to join your team. Give your Leadership Team access to the KidEvent Pro to view and manage their teams.
6. Use social media, FB, Twitter, and videos. Make baseball cards, flyers to hand out and don’t forget videos. Try texting volunteers about important meetings.
7. Enlist volunteers to manage your participants and place them into rotation classes.
8. Provide excellent training to the entire VBS volunteer team, then have your core leaders meet with their specific teams to program instructions.
9. Make sure all volunteers have completed their background check and know their specific role. Continually thank them. During VBS, provide a break room with goodies.
10. Have Fun! Enjoy your team and pray for them. Love the body of Christ, and the Lord will trust your heart and start sending children to your church so you can share the gospel of Christ and the Word of God with every child.

The reason why we do VBS will propel you to reach the community for Christ. After all, this is one of the greatest weeks for children’s evangelism in your church. May Christ be glorified!