Hey! I am a pastors wife in RURAL Jordan, MT. The last two years, our small church (avg attendance of 20) has had a church from NC come and do our VBS for us. This year, they were unable to come, and so we are on our own. We have a strong kids ministry, and average about 25-30 kids on Wednesday nights during the school year most of whom do not attend our church. I just ask that you would pray that things would come together, and that we would be able to put on an awesome VBS for our town.

PS...one of our ladies came up with a great idea for recreation...we are doing cactus canyon, and are gonna have practice roping steers set up, and let the kids rope them!

I'll be praying for your VBS. It's always exciting and difficult at the same time to go from someone else doing this ministry to you doing it. The first time I directed VBS I remember being so overwhelmed and excited at the same time, but it came together beautifully. My biggest peice of advice, especially since you have a lot of unchurched kids it seems, is pay a lot of attention to your family night! Make it exciting for the parents and kids and use it to share the gospel, it may be your only chance to share with the parents! Have fun, use this as a time to show your church members what God can do through them, and make the most of every chance to share Christ in everything from promotion to follow-up! If you need some suggestions for resorces for training your workers in evangelism with children here are two:

Transforming Childern into Spiritual Champions by George Barna

The Faith of a Child by Art Murphy

Both these books are fairly short and very easy reading. We are going to use some of the information to run a Children's Evangelism Workshop for all of our children's ministry workers and any parents who want to attend.