resources for effective children's ministry

VBS Idea - Back Yard Bible Club

    Instead of a traditional VBS in a church setting, consider holding a Back yard Bible Club in church member's homes throughout your community. This can be a very effective way to reach into our communities for two reasons, first, with more working moms it can be a challenge to get children to and from a week of special 2 - 2 1/2 hour classes at a church. Also, those non-church families may feel more comfortable sending their children to a neighbor's home than to a church. If you would like to try Backyard Bible Clubs, the following schedule should prove to be helpful.

• 3 Months before
  • Pray - recruit prayer partners for each Backyard Bible Club.
  • decide on your curriculum
  • begin to promote in your church and have members sign up for the week they would be willing to host a club at their home.
  • decide who will teach - this can be a terrific outreach to involve your youth department in! Talk with your youth Pastor and work on training teams of 3 or 4 teens to teach the BBC. If you are having adults teach, find out who is available for what weeks.
  • plan a training for all BBC staff.
  • decide what time frame and what activities you will do in each club. One to one and a half hours works well in this setting so you would likely have a learning activity, story, songs and craft each day.
  • recruit an adult to coordinate each area of your BBC - for example, craft coordinator, music coordinator, Bible story coordinator and activity coordinator.

• 2 months before
  • finalize dates and locations for BBC.
  • hold training for teaching teams.
  • begin to gather supplies.

• 1 month before
  • begin to promote the dates and locations of BBC.
  • finish gathering all needed supplies.
  • have a "cookie drive" at church and have store bought or homemade cookies brought in for use at the BBC.

• During BBC
  • pray!
  • be available to assist wherever needed.

• After each BBC
  • Thank God for fruit!
  • follow up on decisions that were made.
  • follow up on visitors and invite them to church.

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