Vacation Bible School

New Hope’s Vacation Bible School 2012 continues to move in a new and exciting direction. For many years VBS at New Hope has been known as a high quality, energetic, powerful week-long event held on our church campus. Two years ago, God began to give the Family Ministries Board a different vision. That vision was to take VBS off campus and into the community. It became clear that God was leading us to reshape VBS into a full outreach endeavor for children and families outside of the New Hope Church family. 

Knowing that the transition to a full outreach initiative would require a change in both mindset and method, we decided to take the change slowly. Last year, under the direction of Becky Feldbush, we transitioned from a week-long program to a weekly event. Every Sunday in July, our campus turned into a block party where families and children could participate in a relaxed and less structured manner, yet still have a VBS experience. The weekly events began with a hot dog BBQ that enabled families to eat together and get to know other families.

Because we wanted VBS to be more for the community and less for ourselves we invited the families of Sarah’s House as our guests. Sarah’s House is a shelter for homeless families—often women and their children, many fleeing domestic violence situations. Sarah’s House provides safe shelter, daily meals, personal casework and a rigorous training program to help families toward positive and sustainable change. Because many of the families did not have transportation, each week we took the New Hope bus and provided door to door pick up service. They were thrilled and each week 15-18 individuals attended VBS.

We learned much from our experience last year and now we feel ready for the next step, VBS-On-The-Go. This summer, we will provide an off-campus VBS experience for the children and families of Sarah’s House to be held at the shelter. Every Sabbath afternoon in July we will provide a fun and energetic Bible-based program for the residents. However, this VBS-On-The-Go experience will be more than just providing a program. It will be an opportunity for relationship building with the children and families living there. Therefore, we are inviting and encoura-ging New Hope families to attend as participants.  This will be a wonderful opportunity to model for children what it means to build bridges into the community. 

You will be hearing more about VBS-On-The-Go in the coming weeks.