6 Ways to Get Your Team Ready for VBS Season

Official Vacation Bible School season just around the corner, it is time to finalize last-minute preparations. During these days of great anticipation as well as great anxiety, it is important to not overlook team building and training. Just like Spring training for baseball, now is the time to work through issues, sharpen skills, and ensure your team is ready for the tasks ahead.

Teams are made up of individuals, but the best teams are coached and trained to perform with a single mind and focused goals. Following is a checklist of issues to insure your team comes through Spring training with single mind and focus.

1. Make sure everyone understands and agrees on the purpose of your VBS.

There can be multiple reasons for conducting a VBS (all of them valid) but for your team to truly function as a team there needs to be one unified and driving purpose. It is the understood purpose of VBS that provides motivation for both the team and congregation to fully support the ministry with their time and resources. When everyone is on the same page and working with a common purpose results will be much greater and more enthusiastically celebrated.

2. Make sure every member of the team understands his or her primary role is to connect with the unchurched families God brings to VBS.

While making sure registration, Bible study presentations and crafts are administered well is important, the most important thing that will happen during VBS is relationships. It is through relationships people are connected with the Gospel. It is through relationships people are connected with the church. Train team members to look for opportunities to begin conversations with parents as well as kids.

3. Make sure every member of the team has been trained and is ready to share the gospel with with kids, teens, and adults.

Since most churches conduct VBS for kids only it is easy to forget about older siblings and parents who also need to hear and respond to the Gospel. It is also easy for many team members such as the snack lady to assume they will not be called on to share the gospel since their responsibilities do not include leading the Bile study or worship rally. But it may be the snack lady who is the one person a kid feels most comfortable talking to, or it might be a member of the registration team who has the greatest opportunity to share the Gospel with a parent. During VBS, sharing the Gospel is a team effort.

4. Make sure every member of the team has been prepped on the foundational component of your VBS — the biblical content.

While every member of the team may not be responsible for teaching the daily Bible story, every member of the team needs to find ways and look for opportunities to connect what they do to the Bible story and central point. With the allotted time for VBS continually being reduced, it becomes even more important to insure everything done in VBS points kids, teens and adults to the truth and application of God's Word. This is the time to work with your team to insure every song, game, craft, snack and conversation points kids to Jesus.

5. Make sure every member of the team understands how to respond to an emergency.

The reality is, VBS and emergencies do seem to go hand-in-hand. Whether it is weather related, injuries and illness, or the kid who decides to walk across the street to a friend's house without telling anyone, emergencies happen. The best plan of action is created in advance, not at the moment of the emergency.

6. Make sure every member of the team understands VBS is not an end in itself.

When unchurched families are discovered, VBS is just the beginning and it is the responsibility of every member of the team to insure the relationships are continued and nurtured. Train your team to realize their jobs do not end at 12:01 on the last day of VBS, they are just beginning.