VBS spans generations in East Texas church

image_pdfimage_print

NACOGDOCHES—Vacation Bible School for children is the highlight of the summer for many churches, and some even hold an adult Vacation Bible School. Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches is one of the few, however, to host an intergenerational VBS.

Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches had an intergenerational VBS this year in part because "we believe the church is to be this community where everybody is connected to everybody else in Christ," Pastor Kyle Childress said.

Vacation Bible School is geared toward everyone at the East Texas church, with participants ranging from 2-year-old toddlers to some who have seen many Vacation Bible Schools in their more than seven decades.

The church-wide evening VBS is partly from necessity and partly a reflection of the church’s identification of community as one of its primary goals, Pastor Kyle Childress said.

“To be honest, we ended up doing it this way because we tried some other things that didn’t work,” he acknowledged.

A traditional daytime Bible school for children wasn’t working because the children’s parents had a difficult time arranging transportation and it also was hard to find an adequate number of workers with daytime availability.

“We needed everyone in the church to take part because we’re small,” Childress said. The congregation averages about 60 to 70 during the summer months and from 90 to 100 the rest of the year, he said.

Also, an intergenerational VBS meshes well with the church’s philosophy, he added.

“Over time, we began to realize that we believe the church is to be this community where everybody is connected to everybody else in Christ,” he said.

It especially is important for children, Childress believes. He points to research that indicates exposure to and caring relationships with other adults outside the family is key to the spiritual growth of children. It is even more important in a society where many children grow up in single-parent homes or are separated geographically from their grandparents.


Sign up for our weekly edition and get all our headlines in your inbox on Thursdays


{youtube}b724Bg_EWq4{/youtube}
Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches offered an unusual Vacation Bible School this summer. It was for all ages, not just kids.

The church used a curriculum called “The Good Life” from Alternatives for Simple Living. Session titles include “Do Justice,” “Cherish the Natural Order” and “Nurture People.”

“Cherish the Natural Order” focused on appreciating the world God had created and the role of humans as caretakers of that world.

The evening kicked off with church members, predominantly children and young families, but adults of all ages in the mix, bringing food. Some brought food from a local farmers’ market to illustrate the evening’s theme, but one wise father brought pizza to satisfy the tastes of the children and more than one adult.

Following the meal, Education and Children’s Minister Jane Childress, the pastor’s wife, led the group in a time or reflection of memorable times spent in nature.

Those times ranged from a boy recalling a time harvesting watermelons with his grandfather to a young girl talking of playing in her backyard with her brother to a young father recalling a hiking trip in Colorado to a senior adult couple remembering a canoe trip.

Mrs. Childress then led the group through a responsive reading and dramatization of Genesis 1. Beginning without lights outs until God created it, various members brought items such as tea lights to a central table to signify the creation of the moon and stars, and fruit and plants and stuffed animals as their part in God’s creation was read.

The group of about 40 then divided into two groups for game time. Each group took an inflated globe and began tossing it around the circle to simulate the earth’s orbit, being careful not to let it drop. As the game continued, however, the facilitators added such things as clothing, cell phones and books to the thing the players had to take care for in addition to the earth.

The point was, the group was told, that while most people want to be good stewards of the earth, many times the things people want make it harder to live up to the ideal.

Participants of all ages in Vacation Bible School at Austin Heights Baptist Church in Nacogdoches recycle discarded items from home to make decorative crosses.

The evening ended with small groups using things brought from home to make crosses. The idea was that recycling was a means of being a good caretaker of the earth and a way to bring glory to God by honoring his creation.

George Patterson, a member of Austin Heights who is a retired minister of education and also the son of a minister of education, acknowledged a difference from a conventional VBS.

“My father was ‘Mr. VBS,’” he said. “The lack of structure here he just wouldn’t have understood, but for this time and especially this congregation, it works.”

Childress acknowledged a little less structure is present, but he’s OK with that. “You can’t do a straight Bible lecture like you would with adults, but that’s all right. I want our kids to learn by pray by watching and listening to our older adults pray,” he said.

The closer the relationships between children and adults, the more responsibility it places on adults, he pointed out.

“There is a greater responsibility in peoples’ lives because these kids get to know you, and they start to watch how you get mad, how you pray, how often you show up at church,” Childress said.

The additional responsibility is worth it, however, because of what is at stake, he said.

“We need to raise Christians, because if we don’t do it here at the church, it won’t get done anywhere else. And growing relationships and building relationships is the essence of it all,” Childress said.

 


We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.

Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.

More from Baptist Standard