The importance of Vacation Bible School

Do you want to be blessed? Do you get excited about touching people’s lives? Do you get you excited about seeing change in the lives of children? Maybe you like to work behind the scenes and not be noticed and still bless others while serving our Lord and our kids?

This coming Monday night we launch this year’s VBS. It’s an incredible week and worthy of your time. It’s an eternal investment. You’ll be blessed and you’ll bless others, and you’ll glorify God!!

We need faithful workers for our week of VBS. We need faithful prayer warriors for our week of VBS. And you can start helping now as we prepare to change the eternal destinies of area children. You can pray. You can ask how you can help. You can ask children from your neighborhood or your unsaved relatives’ children to attend. You can give a ride if they need transportation. Sometimes a simple ride is the only obstacle to attending a week of VBS. Maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t know what to do, I just know that I want to serve?” No worries! Talk to our VBS leader and we’ll find a ministry that fits your gifts.

All of us need to be committed to evangelism. It’s wise though to particularly be interested in evangelizing children. By “evangelize,” I mean to proclaim the Gospel with intent to convert the hearer to Christianity. This is the business of an evangelist and evangelizing children should be the business of every Christian.

So why am I so interested in evangelizing children? “Why” questions are the most important questions of life! It’s been said that a man who can answer the question “what” will always have a job, but the man that can answer the question “why” will always be his boss. On one hand, some may consider a discussion that answers the question “why evangelize children?” a moot point. God said to, that’s why! Case closed! Yes, God commands us to evangelize children and that’s more than enough of a reason to do so. But God loves obedience that comes out of a desire to understand and know the heart and mind of God rather than mere rote duty. It’s worth our time to meditate upon why we do what we do. Working through this adds a healthy weight of responsibility on us while simultaneously empowering us to evangelize children for His glory. So let’s consider the answer(s) to the question: Why should you and I evangelize children?

Because children have a fallen nature and desperately need Jesus. The biggest issue for children is not childhood obesity or ADHD or hyperactivity or learning disabilities. The biggest issue is a heart problem. Our world is dominated by an attitude of disobedience against God. Disobedient parents have disobedient children. And without Christ, everyone, including boys and girls, are held in bondage to this disobedience against God. So children need to understand that they have a lost and fallen nature apart from Christ. For kids that grow up in a Christian home and an environment that is largely a Christian subculture, it’s easy for them to compare themselves against unchurched, more outwardly sinful children and consider themselves “okay.” I remember thinking this way too. I evaluated my standing before God based on what the bad kids were doing and what I wasn’t doing! But I had the exact same nature as those “bad” kids: I was dead in sin, held captive by the power of sin, and a child of wrath by nature (Eph. 2:3). I desperately needed Jesus. Even children need to be told firmly yet lovingly how desperate their condition is apart from Christ. Frequently, children are told how good they are. Well meaning people continually tell children, “You’re a good little girl. You’re a good little boy?” But none of us are good. Romans 3:10-11, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”

Because Jesus Christ and faith in Him is the foundation for any and all true knowledge. In our post-modern culture, it’s become noble to let children “decide for themselves” what they believe concerning religion. The idea is that we should be entirely neutral when we teach children anything. Schools endeavor to teach children reason and logic. Yet, the very foundation of all reason and logic is faith in the God of the Bible. Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Colossians 2:3 reiterates this truth, “in whom (Christ) are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” If a child does not have the foundation of Christ, then a child has no real knowledge and will not be able to develop in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. They’ll develop into adults who are incapable of making truly wise or God honoring decisions. If they do stumble into making a wise choice, they are by necessity borrowing from the Christian’s worldview. And they won’t know how to make decisions that make an eternal difference.

I remember hearing about a talk show in which a woman expressed that she did not feel she had any right to impose her religious beliefs upon her children (or any children, for that matter). Basically, what she was telling her children in no uncertain terms is that Mommy had absolutely nothing to offer when it came to the most critical area of their lives. She had no spiritual heritage to give because she didn’t know God. But as Christians that know and love God, we have a precious spiritual heritage to pass on to both our own children and the children of others.

Because evangelizing children gives me another valid reason to beg God for grace to keep me from falling. Be honest, why should God keep you alive? More importantly, why should God grant you the grace to keep you from falling? The Psalmist knew one valid reason for which to beg God for more grace: so that he could declare and share God with the next generation, “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come” (Psalm 71:17-18). Praying as the Psalmist prayed reminds us that we do not live our lives in isolation. We need grace so that we do not succumb to sin and so that we can influence coming generations. We spend our days here with many eyes upon us, particularly young eyes. We want to be found faithful so that we might show God’s glory and power to the next generation.

Churches today are doing all they can to appear hip, cool, and mainstream. Everything from the music, the decor, the clothes that the pastoral team wears on stage, the hair, the audio visual, all of it aims to reach a culture in tune with the main stream and there’s a place for that. But our lost world doesn’t need more “hip and cool.” They desperately need a 2,000 year old message, “YOU must be born-again.” Every child you know needs that message. That’s why VBS is so important!