5 Things I learned from doing VBS Online and In-Person

I haven’t written in a while. This pandemic has done a number on me. My family and I have been healthy, but if you’re in ministry, you know the crunch we’ve been in for the last few months. Every new month feels like the next level of Jumanji. (What happened to the murder hornets?!)

A big part of most kidmin’s summer is VBS. I’ve led 12 of these as a kid’s pastor and been a part of one for as long as I can remember. However, it goes without saying, this year is different.

First some context. I’m in Florida and we entered Phase 1 in May and Phase 2 in June. Our church has re-opened to family services, but there are no in-person next gen ministries currently.

Kids and families are coming back, but only a fraction of them are involved in person or online.

For months the question has loomed, what are we going to do for VBS? I was already months behind on planning and marketing, coronavirus news continues to look bad, and with online numbers dwindling since Easter, who’s going to come? If I do it in person, I won’t have the numbers I used to have and if I do it online, I may have even less.

Then in prayer, I think I got a God-Idea. What if we did the VBS online and in person?

Immediately I was full of questions. 

•  Is that even possible? 
• Will the curriculum writers let me? 
• Do I have the people and the resources?

I’ve said on this blog before, I’m an Orange fan and was planning to do their VBS. They already provided an online version of VBS that I could use in a private group, but there was still going to be a lot of work, and my time margins have shrunk to almost nothing because of producing weekly online services for kids. Have you seen Potato Head Theater?

Then my friend Yancy posted about WOW VBS. They hosted a global online VBS for free and all I had to do was set up a watch party on Facebook or share the YouTube link to my parents. What’s more, almost all of the work was done for me.

So, I went for it. I announced an online and in-person VBS. We will go live every night for a few minutes before the stream begins then throw to WOW and come back for discussion in the room and online.

My church had been streaming live for years, so the tech was already figured out. All I had to do was get the people. Thankfully. I only needed a fifth of the volunteers to pull it off. Two weeks later we started.

You can watch the first service here.

Here’s what I learned.

1. Lower expectations. 

I may have VBS for hundreds of kids in the past, but not this year. Like everything in this time, big numbers cannot and should not be expected. But that’s ok. God’s Word does not return void. Whether I had 5 kids or 500 kids, lives would be impacted. Was I bummed when I didn’t hit my in-person number goal? Absolutely, but I gave myself 2.5 seconds of a pity party and moved on. In reality it’s never been about the numbers. It’s been about the Gospel and making an impact.

2. Expand your volunteer positions. 

Unlike other VBS’ I didn’t need station leaders or small group leaders. What I did need was a camera crew, a production crew, tons of greeters and ushers, online hosts and people to help me organize them. VBS like this is going to be different. I had all new needs and needed to recruit different kinds of people to make it happen.

3. Partner with other ministries. 

As I said before my church has been streaming live online for years. However, for VBS, I usually bring in my own team and we are very stripped down on the tech side. In the past it’s been a combination of me running slides from the stage and a teenager running sound. This year was an all-new ballgame, and I had to rely on the tech ministry heavily. Thankfully, I built relationships with these people over time, so the ask was much easier. I still had a skeleton crew and had to train new people to run cameras, but without their partnership, this VBS never would have happened.

4. Get parents involved. 

 For years in the kidmin space, we’ve been talking about partnering with parents. I thought I knew what that meant, but the pandemic has shown me just how little I was doing and how much more I needed to do. VBS was no different. I can’t do VBS online if parents don’t let their kids watch on Facebook or YouTube. I can’t do VBS in person if parents don’t bring their kids. I took it a step further and required parents to attend with their kids. I needed their help to maintain social distance guidelines and to serve as small group leaders. I probably would have more kids come in-person if I didn’t make this requirement, but I also would have needed twice as many volunteers. I did have some parents upset they couldn’t drop their kids off, but they weren’t upset with me, more with the situation, and I can live with that.

5. This works and will need to be repeated again. 

In all the conversations about how this pandemic is changing things, I hear over and over again that online is here to stay must be more central to what the Church does every day. I hope that next year’s VBS will be back to “normal” in terms of structure and numbers, but I will host VBS online again. There are copyright issues and streaming issues, and people issues, but they are worth working through. Because online scales so much better than in-person. I can reach hundreds and thousands of kids through online all over the world. Also, many kids miss days. With online, they don’t have too. Just as primetime TV has become individualized, Church has to as well. Children’s Ministry and by extension VBS must follow suit.

Like everything in the church world, nothing is going to be the same as it was before all of this. We will never get back to whatever “normal” was in January. 

 And that’s ok. 

We were never promised tomorrow even though we acted like it. Things have changed. It’s time for us as the Church to rethink, adapt, innovate, and think outside of the box when it comes to ministry. I don’t know what that looks like, but at least for VBS, I believe this is a step in the right direction.

If you’d like to read more about VBS you can find the posts here.