We are thinking about getting one of the "snow" companies to come out for our Carnival. I've researched prices and they are not too bad. We might take up a special offering in our Senior Adult classes to offset the cost of this. On the Texas Gulf Coast we rarely see snow so this will be a special treat for our kids.
Our VBS starts right after Father's Day. We are talking about offering a special time for Dad the Sunday night before we begin on Monday morning.
Why Dad? Research from the Barna group shows that most parents are abdicating their responsibility for the spiritual training of their children soley to the church. This is not Biblical according to Deuteronomy 6. Parents are to be the spritual trainers of their children, but they feel inadequate and not eqipped, so they think they are doing the best thing by giving the kids to the church to provide that. As a church, we have about 300 hours with kids through the 1st-6th grade years. Parents have 12,000 hours from 1st-6th grade. The parents are far more effective as spiritual trainers. The church needs to teach them how!
So...start with Dad! Dad has more influence than any other person to lead the family. The theme this year is very masculine, so we want to do a special event to encourage Dad by teaching him how to have a family devotional each night of VBS. The devotionals will support what the kids are learning each day, but more importantly will teach Dad the importance of leading his family spiritually.
I'd love to hear if anyone else is doing something along these lines and any additional thoughts...
We have like 1000 of those flavor-ice popsicles in our church's freezer. We have a nice playground, so we may just invite the community to come the Saturday before, and there will be plenty of "Arctic" popsicles to go around! Or we may just go into the neighborhood and invite kids and give them a popsicle and a flyer about our VBS.
These are really more outreach ideas than actual "kickoff" ideas. But what better way to kickoff than to invite the community to VBS?
LifeWay Community 
