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In the Lead On podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee, discusses practical ministry leadership issues, focusing on Vacation Bible School (VBS). Highlighting its evangelistic impact, Iorg shares humorous and humbling anecdotes. He emphasizes VBS's significance as outreach, involvement, training, and Bible teaching events. Iorg urges aggressive follow-up plans for new families and suggests doing more than one VBS session, leveraging resources for wider outreach. Lastly, he advises providing alternative activities for VBS staff to maximize their energy and effectiveness. Ultimately, he encourages churches to embrace VBS for its transformative potential in summer ministry.
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What is Lead On Podcast?
Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.
Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.
From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.
Put these principles into practice and Lead On!
Welcome to the Lead On podcast. This is Jeff Wewerge, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. If you're new to the podcast, our focus here is on practical issues. We talk about the ins and outs, the ebbs and flows, the ups and downs of ministry leadership. This is not really a preaching podcast, although I'm a preacher, so every now and then I just preach a bit.
Jeff Iorg:It's not a doctrinal or a debate podcast. It's not a denominational podcast. It's about ministry, about the real work of getting it Today, I want to talk Today, I want to talk about one of my favorite subjects, a summertime activity that many churches have called Vacation Bible School. I want to talk today about getting the most out of your Vacation Bible School experience and how to maximize it for real kingdom impact. Now Vacation Bible School is already one of the most impactful things that many churches do.
Jeff Iorg:It is typically the most evangelistically fruitful ministry that a church does throughout the year. It typically is also very fruitful in attracting new families to churches, reinvigorating children's ministries, and in other ways, really, encouraging and focusing a church during its summer ministry season. So So your church may already be doing Vacation Bible School, and you may already be doing it well. But I hope on the podcast today to give you some new ideas about how you can get the most out of your Vacation Bible School experience and how it can make a tremendous difference for you in the long term future of your church. Now before I get to the meat of the podcast, though, I need to tell you 2 stories.
Jeff Iorg:Because Vacation Bible School has 2 Jeff Org stories. One of them turned into one of the funniest moments of my early ministry days, and the other one turned into one of the most humbling and impactful moments of my early ministry formation. So let's talk about the funny story first. I started out in ministry as a children's minister. I was responsible for everyone in our church ages birth through 12 years old, and I was responsible for leading the Sunday school, the discipleship ministry, the outreach programs, the activities, and, of course, the Vacation Bible School.
Jeff Iorg:Now I was young, still a college student myself when I got this responsibility. And back in those days, I was pretty bold. In fact, I was willing to try anything to try to advance our church, advance the mission of the gospel, do our work more effectively. And so we came up with this brilliant idea that in order to promote our Vacation Bible School and attract even more children to our project, we should do a Vacation Bible School parade. So we organized a parade, meaning that we got as many children as we could to bring their bicycles and decorate them, and we went through the neighborhoods on our bicycles, riding, handing out literature about the Vacation Bible School, and drawing attention to the event that was coming.
Jeff Iorg:But I wasn't gonna ride a bicycle. Oh, no, sir. I decided that I needed to ride on a riding lawnmower. And beyond that, I decided that I needed to dress up in a gorilla costume and ride a riding lawnmower in the Vacation Bible School parade. Now I want you to hold that image in your mind just for a moment because I am now the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Jeff Iorg:I'm about as traditional a Baptist bureaucrat as a person can be these days, but I want you to see who I really am. A young guy in a gorilla suit riding a riding lawnmower in a vacation bible school parade. This sounded like such a good idea. We were going through the neighborhoods. We were attracting attention.
Jeff Iorg:We were gathering more people who were coming to our bible school as a result of our outreach efforts, but I miscalculated on one thing. The mower ran out of gas. And as it would happen, it ran out of gas just about as far away from our church building as I could possibly be on our chosen parade route. Did I also mention this happened in Texas in steamy early June where I'm in a gorilla suit with a dead lawnmower a couple of miles from the church? Yeah.
Jeff Iorg:You know what happened. While the rest of the children and adults rode their bicycles and went back to the church and continued on the parade, I, in my gorilla suit, started pushing my riding lawnmower across town back to the church. Yes. That was a humbling and now really funny day in my early ministry leadership. So I don't know what you're doing to promote your Vacation Bible School, but until you get a gorilla suit and a riding lawnmower, I still think you've got work to do.
Jeff Iorg:That's my first Vacation Bible School story. But the second one was much more serious and much more impactful. After being a children's minister for a few years, I became a pastor. I started my pastorate in, January of 1983, and in that month, 2 women came to see me. 2 very fine church members, Lois Bundy and Jeanette Thornton.
Jeff Iorg:Lois and Jeanette made an appointment, came in my office, and said, pastor, we know you just arrived, but summer will be here before we know it. And we'd like to ask you for your plans related to Vacation Bible School. Well, this was exciting to me because I love Vacation Bible School, And I was a children's minister, and I'd done them well, and I knew how to do them really well. So I listened to these 2 women and they said, in the past, we have alternated being the director of our Bible school. 1 of us directs 1 year, the other one directs the other year, and it's time for us to get started on it for this year, and if you'd like for us to continue that pattern, then, Lois said, it's my year to be the director, and so I'll con I'll start getting Bible school organized.
Jeff Iorg:Well, I realized as a new pastor that I had a lot of things on my plate, and I didn't really have time to be thinking about organizing a Bible school, and here were 2 women in my office that were volunteering to take on this responsibility. And while I knew that they probably wouldn't do it very well and would need me to sweep in and rescue them at the end. I thought, I'll give them a chance because I don't really have time to do it, and they're willing, and we need to get something started on this soon. So, yes, I said, Lois and Jeanette, let's continue our pattern of you maintaining bible school, and Lois, you be the director this year. So a few weeks later, she cut came back and said, well, we're well underway on pulling together our bible school for this summer, and we just thought we'd brief you on our plans.
Jeff Iorg:Sure, I said. Lewis then told me, you know, every year in bible school, we set a goal of having a vacation bible school attendance equal to the total enrollment of our entire Sunday school. Well, I did a little head snap because I thought that can't be what she means. Our total Sunday school in our small church had an enrollment of about 200, which meant we had about 75 to a100 that came every Sunday, and that was all ages, not just children. And so she's telling me that she wants to have more than 200 people in bible school.
Jeff Iorg:I thought, that's a pipe dream. That'll never happen. But I smiled and said, well, Lois, that's a worthy and ambitious goal. Let's see how that goes, but in my mind, I thought, well, when this fails, I need to step in and be positive and encouraging because there's no possible way. A church that normally has 20 or 30 children on a good Sunday is going to have 200 people show up for its Vacation Bible School.
Jeff Iorg:Well, you know what happened. The 1st day of bible school, I was astounded as 100 hundreds of children came. We had a couple of 100 or more people show up for our bible school. I was blown away, and I learned something that day. I learned that people who are properly called and motivated and passionate about ministry will move heaven and earth to do it well, And these two women had for years been training and learning and growing in their capacity to lead Vacation Bible School, and they had the capacity to do it far better than I did.
Jeff Iorg:That was a humbling moment. I had to bow my head and pray and say, god, forgive me for being so arrogant, so judgmental, so paternalistic, and failing to see what you were going to accomplish through these women who are so committed to doing these Vacation Bible Schools and doing them so well. For the next 6 years, I was the pastor of that church, and I'm happy to say I stayed out of the way and let Lois and Jeanette direct the bible schools on alternating summers, supporting each other, helping each other, learning and growing with each other, and I watch them continue year after year after year to lead a significant and impactful evangelistic and discipleship event through our church called Vacation Bible School. So let me encourage you with those two stories. The first one, kinda funny.
Jeff Iorg:Me in a gorilla suit on a riding lawnmower. The second one, pretty humbling. Me learning how arrogant, cocky, self centered I could be, and failing to understand how God could use other people to do things that were far more impactful than anything I could have ever dreamed of doing. So let's talk for a few minutes now about some of the benefits of Vacation Bible School, and why I have loved it for all these years and been a part of it in so many different ways over the years. The first benefit I've already touched on, and that is it's a significant outreach event.
Jeff Iorg:Vacation Bible School is one of the easiest things to invite people to to join or to participate in or to visit as outsiders to your church. Vacation Bible School is nonthreatening. It appeal it it has a good reputation. It's something that appeals to and connects with the needs of children and therefore the needs of families. It's something that is a service project and a benefit to the community.
Jeff Iorg:And so for all these reasons, Vacation Bible School is one of the easiest things to invite people to who are not yet Christians or who are not yet part of your church. It's a significant outreach event. Now I'm gonna come back to say something more about that in just a moment, but let's just hold that thought for now. A second reason that I've always loved Vacation Bible School and why it can be such a benefit to your church is it's also a significant what I will describe as an involvement event, a significant involvement event. I remember in those early years of watching Lois and Jeanette do Vacation Bible School, I was astounded at who they got to volunteer to work at Vacation Bible School.
Jeff Iorg:They had all these jobs that were needed to be done. Drivers for the church buses and vans, parking lot attendants, recreation coaches and monitors, people preparing and distributing their refreshments, all these jobs. Most of them were not jobs that were required to be skilled teachers or to understand how to develop curriculum or even manage a classroom. They were just the support roles that were needed to make a really good and large Vacation Bible School work, and I was always astounded at who they were able to recruit to do these jobs. Older men that I thought it would have had no patience for children or for VBS said, sure.
Jeff Iorg:I'll be glad to come and drive that bus, or I'll be glad to monitor that parking lot, or I'll be glad to deliver those snacks, or I'll be glad to keep those records. Same thing with people who who lacked mobility or the capacity to be as active as maybe it needs to be in a in a VBS classroom. They would also sign up to do these other support type roles. Vacation Bible School is a significant involvement event. It's a way to get many people involved in the life of your church and in a focused ministry activity that might not otherwise be involved or might not otherwise be as focused in their commitments or in their level of participation.
Jeff Iorg:So when you're thinking about Vacation Bible School, you typically think about teachers. Who are we going to get to teach 2nd grade? And that is a very significant role. We'll talk about that more in just a moment. Very significant role, but when you're putting on a really good Vacation Bible School, you need a lot of workers that don't have anything to do with directly teaching children, a lot of support staff, and if you will broaden your range of appeal, and look to other people in your church in your in in your church's ministry circle, you might be surprised at who would step forward and make this event successful by being involved in what it might at first appear to be tangential ways, but are really very significant ways to making the whole Vacation Bible School experience successful.
Jeff Iorg:A third reason that Vacation Bible School is so significant, I've already alluded to, and that is it's a significant training event. Now I talked about it being an involvement event, and now let's talk about it being a training event. Vacation Bible School is a really good opportunity to bring people in that you're trying to train for future involvement with children or preschool ministries, and to get them involved in a nonthreatening way through Vacation Bible School to give them an opportunity to field test, if you will, what it might be like. Vacation Bible School is a great place to recruit people to be assistant teachers or classroom monitors, to give them the first experience to work in a classroom with a more experienced teacher, to see how it's done, and to see what they can learn about how they might do it in the future. So when I say Vacation Bible School is a significant training event, I mean, it's an opportunity to train people to become the the cadre of real of workers that you need for your children in preschool ministries.
Jeff Iorg:So think about it. When you're thinking about Vacation Bible School, don't just think about who can we get to teach 4th grade, but think who could we get to be an assistant in the 4th grade classroom? Who could we get to be a classroom monitor or a classroom helper, a teacher's aide? Give them a non threatening title that would help them to be exposed to what happens in the classroom, and to learn that maybe they can do more than in that context than they could have ever imagined. You know, one of the reasons that more people aren't teachers teachers is because they're intimidated by the responsibility.
Jeff Iorg:They just don't know what to do, and they're afraid that they they wouldn't know how to do it if they tried. They've never seen anyone modeling teaching children. When they go to an adult classroom, they know what that looks like, but they know that's not what happens in a children's classroom, and so if they're going to see themselves doing that kind of ministry in the future, then perhaps they need someone to model it for them, and they need to be in the classroom where they can be exposed to this kind of teaching opportunity. So I want you to think about Vacation Bible School, not just as a teaching moment for children, but as a training moment for you to get more people involved in tangential ways so that they can start experiencing what it looks like to teach children and begin to understand and discover how they might be involved in that process. So the benefits of Vacation Bible School, it's a significant outreach event, a significant involvement event, and a significant training event.
Jeff Iorg:But there's one more reason that it's significant that I wanna highlight today, and that is it is also a significant Bible teaching event. Vacation Bible School with 2 to 3 hours of in classroom instruction every day equals more than a quarter of Sunday school lessons that you might teach on a 1 hour or a 50 minute basis week by week by week. Just think about that for a moment. You have the opportunity for 5 days, for 2 to 3 hours a day to be teaching, instructing, supporting, and encouraging children as they learn the word of God. There's not anything that we ever do that's more intensive in bible teaching than this experience.
Jeff Iorg:That's why I'm really, glad to be a part of a denomination that promotes Vacation Bible School. It's really bible centric. You know, Vacation Bible School is is about fun. Yes. And it's about outreach.
Jeff Iorg:Yes. And it's about, training and involvement. It's about all these things. But at the core, at the real core of what it must be is a bible teaching moment, an opportunity for an intensive time of really coming together to learn and study and grow in knowledge of the word of God. And when children have that opportunity for 4 or 5 days in a row to build on concepts day by day by day, it really does intensify their learning and their capacity to retain what they're what they're experiencing much more so even than a weekly Sunday school.
Jeff Iorg:So I wanna challenge you. Just do the math and think about how much time is spent in a vacation bible school actually teaching the bible, And then compare that to what you're doing through your Sunday school, and you'll recognize that 1 week of Vacation Bible School equals 3 or 4 months of Sunday school teaching, which makes it an even more important and more significant event in the life of a church. Well, we've talked about 4 different ways that VBS is significant as an outreach, involvement, training, and bible teaching event. Now you're probably doing some of these things already, but I hope I've given you a new idea or 2 to motivate you to how you can use Vacation Bible School as even a more significant and consequential event in your ministry context. Now, let me challenge you with 3 ways to get more out of your VBS experience.
Jeff Iorg:The first way is to develop an aggressive follow-up plan for new families contacted through Vacation Bible School. Unfortunately, many churches perceive Vacation Bible School as a 1 week experience. So the children come to Bible school for a week, they have some kind of family night at the end of the week, they might have some kind of follow-up worship service the following Sunday, and that's it. Man, I wanna challenge you to get away from that way of thinking about Vacation Bible School as an outreach event, and I want you to see it instead as the launch point for a multi month outreach to families. Say it again.
Jeff Iorg:The launch point for a a multi month outreach to families. When you first contact someone through Vacation Bible School, it is unrealistic to expect you're gonna get everything done you need to do in that family in the next 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 days. Instead, use Vacation Bible School as a way to initiate a relationship, to start a conversation, to begin building bridges of relationship. And in order to do this, you're going to have to have an aggressive follow-up plan for new families, meaning that you have a plan to follow-up with them with personal contact, phone, visit, other may other ways of of interacting so that over the next several months, you have the capacity to build relationships and influence the family for the gospel. Vacation Bible School also is an opportunity to start a relationship, not with children, but with an entire family.
Jeff Iorg:This is where you have to get other people involved in your project. So you have a per 22 children come to VBS and and you start a relationship with them, but then you invite their family their parents to come to the family night and the parents come, and that's their first time perhaps to ever come to your church. And you're gonna make sure that at that family night experience that someone meets those, parents who is in that same age group, maybe in their age group of Sunday school or life group or something like that, and they're gonna start a relationship with them and start reaching out to them for participation at their level. And then you're gonna make sure that this family gets follow-up contact about other things that would appeal to their family, like, here's how you can transition from Vacation Bible School into our regular Sunday school. Here's how you can transition from Vacation Bible School into our summer camp program or our summer ministry programs.
Jeff Iorg:Here's how you the you you children that came to Vacation Bible School can join the team that's preparing to put on the Christmas program this fall or something like that, to where you have an intentional strategy to communicate these names of people who came to you through Vacation Bible School to other ministry organizations and ministry opportunities in your church family. Now this is not complicated, but does require intentionality. You're going to have to make a plan, and you're going to have to work the plan, And that typically means you need someone who's administratively gifted to simply put together a simple way of charting the people who come to Vacation Bible School, making sure they get connected with the prop proper people in your church ministry context, and if there's some follow-up reminders or prompters that are given over the next several months to keep these relationships going. That's what I mean by an aggressive follow-up plan for new families. If you're thinking of Vacation Bible School as a one off experience that only lasts 5 days, you are missing the opportunity to make the full impact possible by using it not as the consummate event, but as the launch event so that you initiate the relationships to Vacation Bible School, and you sustain those relationships over the next several months by connecting children and their parents to various need meeting ministries or various ministry opportunities appropriate to them in the total life of your church.
Jeff Iorg:Listen. Why is it, for example, that your church has a fall festival or some kind of fall carnival where you try to invite people to participate, but you don't think about going back and getting that vacation bible school roster and making sure one of those children gets invited. It's just as it's just as simple as that, of being intentional to make sure that you carry through your VBS effort on into the year and on through the various activities and opportunities your church makes available to families who are first contacted by Vacation Bible School. Alright. Here's a second way to get more out of VBS.
Jeff Iorg:Now brace yourselves. This one's gonna be hard to hear. Do more than one Vacation Bible School. I can hear the fainting around the world right now as people are hearing me say this. Some of you who've just finished Vacation Bible School or about to do it in your church, you just passed out when I said do more than 1 vacation bible school.
Jeff Iorg:But listen to my reasoning and listen to the opportunity. Here's what many churches do. They spend a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money getting ready for Vacation Bible School. They study the curriculum. They develop all the activities.
Jeff Iorg:They lay out all the plans. They buy all the the props and the decorations. They do all of that, and they use it 1 week. Why not think about this? Why not think about pulling together a core of the people who put on your Vacation Bible School and going across town to another church that doesn't have the resources to do a vacation bible school and putting on a mission vacation bible school in their community?
Jeff Iorg:Or why don't you think about pulling together a team that's done your vacation bible school and doing a second vacation bible school as an outreach from your church into your own community, maybe doing it off-site from your church building or something like that, Or think about doing it a different time. Maybe your church has vacation bible school in the mornings. Do a vacation bible school in the evening in another location in your community to make it possible for people who are on a different schedule to participate. Find a way to leverage the resource to do more than 1 vacation bible school. Look.
Jeff Iorg:You already have studied the material. You don't have to study it again. You've already bought all the material, all the props, all the, activities. You don't have to buy those again. You already have all the decor items and all the music and all the stuff that's required to do Vacation Bible School.
Jeff Iorg:Why not just do it a second time? You may say, well, that's a lot of work. Well, ministry is a lot of work, and it will require some sacrifice and some commitment. And while you may not be able to get your entire Vacation Bible School team to do a second VBS, there are probably people in their Vacation Bible School organization that are so passionate about this that if given the opportunity, they would do more than one VBS. Now the record in our family is 4 Vacation Bible Schools in 1 summer.
Jeff Iorg:Yeah. We did 4. Now I use we, editorially speaking, because mainly my wife did 4 Vacation Bible Schools, but believe me, the whole family had to be supportive to make that happen. My wife prepared all her material, studied, gathered, led a Vacation Bible School. And then 2 weeks later, she went to another state, joined a mission team, and did another Vacation Bible School.
Jeff Iorg:And then 2 weeks later, another one, and then a week later, another one. Over that summer, our family sent my wife to do 4 vacation bible schools. It was fantastic. My wife loved it. She felt like she was getting finally the real bang for the buck on all this preparation she had done to lead a Vacation Bible School, And she was able to make a missional impact, particularly in a couple of church plants that didn't have the resources to do a full VBS, but certainly needed one in their community.
Jeff Iorg:Listen. Do more than 1 Vacation Bible School. Do a second one in your community at a different time. Do a second one in your community at a different location. Do a second one in your area for a church that doesn't have the resources.
Jeff Iorg:Get on a team and go to another place where there's a church plant that's trying to get started and do a Vacation Bible School for them. Find a way to leverage Vacation Bible School to do more than one. Now it may not be as big as the one you do in your church. I understand that. And it may only be the skeleton crew or the hardcore crew or the missional crew that pull out and do that second one.
Jeff Iorg:I get that as well. But just think about how we're wasting the resource of all the effort we're putting in to do 1 Vacation Bible School when doing that second one would require a little more effort, but, frankly, not that much more investment. And then here's a third way to get more out of your Vacation Bible School, and, really, it's a way to get more out of your Vacation Bible School staff. And that is recognize that many people who work in Vacation Bible School are also busily working in the areas of your church. And when you have a Vacation Bible School experience, plan alternative activities for the Sunday team the week before and the week after Vacation Bible School.
Jeff Iorg:You will find that this will energize your workers because it got it recognizes that they already have demands on their times and that they can also double up and teach Sunday school both those weekends and vacation bible school and all the other activities that may need to go on with your children or your your church's ministry. Let those 2 weekends be something that you do that's special or different or unique that gives some of these workers a bit of a break. And in doing that, you're going to maximize your bible school because you will have given people a little bit of a break from some of these other responsibilities that they're trying to carry. I always worked on those Sundays as having the weekend that we had a special speaker come in or a special program that came in or we did some kind of, you know, video based curriculum or something that would give people a break from having to do their hard preparation of teaching and preparing. It was also good times to do more activity, more out more, more things that invigorated and allowed children expression because they were about to be in class all week long for VBS.
Jeff Iorg:So maybe if they did something else on the Sunday, it would be a it would be a good lead in for that. Lots of options out there, lots of ideas, but think about ways you can maximize your VBS staff by giving them a break from some of their ongoing responsibilities. Well, I started today with 2 stories. 1 a funny one, me in a gorilla suit. 1, a more sobering one, me being humbled by 2 women who had a passion for Vacation Bible School and did it so well.
Jeff Iorg:Over the years, now almost 40 years since I wore that gorilla suit, I've been involved in Vacation Bible Schools at one level or the other, in almost all kinds of churches and contexts. It's still something that I believe every church should find a way to do every summer. And if you're in one of those fortunate churches that does a really rock solid VBS, find a way to do another one. To help a church, or a church plant, or someone who doesn't have your resources to have the privilege of having a good Vacation Bible School. Thank you for joining on the podcast today.
Jeff Iorg:It's a busy time of summer ministry, and Vacation Bible School is an important part of it. Put these insights into practice today as you lead on.