Quality children's literature

We're in the midst of writing a series called The Bible 'n' Books. Our intent is to use quality children's literature and student art responses to teach favorite portions of scripture. It is going to be a refreshing change from our typical high-energy, multi-media programming. I hope that we can connect kids to the Bible in a fresh way. Perhaps we'll grab some kids who haven't gotten into it previously.


The first challenge was to find quality children's literature. I began my search at a leading online Christian bookstore. Then I went to Amazon. It was difficult to even know which search words to use to pinpoint what I was looking for. After much browsing, I ordered a bunch of books.

While we were awaiting the Amazon order, my colleague and I went to our local Christian bookstore. We were disappointed to find very little quality kids lit. We went on to Borders and Barnes and Noble. Again, we didn't find much. We found the Noah's Ark books by Peter Spiers and Jan Brett - those definitely fit our criteria and were familiar to us as former grade school teachers. But the best find of the day was the Jesus Storybook Bible: Every story whispers his name by Sally Lloyd-Jones. It's newly published and has fantastic kid-friendly, but not-too-babyish language. We loved the way it told the story of the Lord's Prayer.

With that we nailed down our four lessons and themes. Noah's Ark, Psalm 23, The Lord's Prayer, and Jesus A to Z.

Then two days later the package from Amazon arrived. I was delighted to find some fantastic, beautiful books. Now we definitely have options for doing The Bible 'n' Books again next year. Here are some of my favorites:

At Break of Day by Nikki Grimes This is the story of creation showing the conversation that Jesus and God the Father may have had as they worked together to create the world.

To Every Thing there is a Season by Leo Dillon a beautiful book featuring art from cultures around the world illustrating the familiar passage in Ecclesiastes.

Jesus the Word by Mark Botuzzi-Jones covers John 1:1, the Trinity, and the Incarnation in an artful and poetic manner.

A few more pictures

For the first time 5th graders were included in the week. Even they got into the western theme by dressing up!

A lemonade stand to raise money for the VBS missions project.

Minda and Rowdy, our hosts for the Sing and Play Stampede.

Small group time

I am thankful for our creative and artistic volunteers who made a great visual environment.

Vacation Bible School

Vacation Bible School is two weeks behind us and I am still on the high! We used Group's Avalanche Ranch curriculum two consecutive weeks at the two campuses. Sharing the planning, the workload and the resources was a wonderful new thing for us.

This was the first year that we had a VBS planning committee. In the past one volunteer has directed the entire week. A group of 5 from each campus worked together and shared this year's load. The committee had a mix of paid staff and volunteers. I can't imagine getting it done without a group of creative and committed people. Last year's director (who stepped aside this year) wants to join the committee for next year. Now that says a lot!

There were some amazing God moments during the VBS where we saw His provision and His protection. There were also some gripping moments where we saw the enemy trying his hardest to put an end to what was happening.

I'm sort of a new fan of VBS. As a weekend program person, I always saw VBS as a big drain of time, money and people for just a one week event. There is a glamour surrounding a week like VBS that you just don't have during the year-round schedule of Sundays and Wednesdays! I think I was partly jealous of that. I also felt that the outreach mindset of VBS was a farce as the huge majority of attenders were from within the church.

BUT NOW...I know that having our own church kids for an intensive week is a huge asset to our ministry goals. We can get things done that just don't happen during an hour on Sunday or Wednesday. I saw that my own children were significantly spiritually impacted by their experience.

And I think that the best way to really make this an outreach is to train our people to be inviters. Signs, flyers and newspaper ads cannot surpass the potential of our own people bringing unchurched friends. That will be a goal for next year!

There's a lot more to say about VBS, but summer is halfway over and we've got a fall to prepare for!