VBS: Don’t Skip it. Flip it!

Don’t be too quick to scrape VBS. Use it to accelerate critical relational engagement with kids in your church and community.

By Chuck Peters

I remember my dad sharing his secret for making the perfect pancake with me as a young boy. It was all about the flip. He taught me to watch for the edges to start getting dry and to look closely at the bubbles on top. Those were the clues it was time to flip the cakes so both sides ended up the perfect shade of golden brown.

Imagine someone trying to cook a pancake without knowing they needed to flip it over. In my imagination, it would be a fiasco of failure after failure. They’d pour the batter onto the hot griddle time after time only to find their flapjacks repeatedly ended up an inedible mess that was burnt on the bottom and doughy on top.

It might make that person wonder how anyone could like such awful globs of goo and cause them to swear off pancakes forever, without ever experiencing the sweet and savory, buttery and syrupy delicacy of a properly prepared pancake.

But those of us who have learned the wise ways of expertly informed pancake cookers know the answer isn’t to give up on pancakes and forget them forever. It’s to get a spatula. Don’t skip it. Flip it.

Reassessing VBS

There’s an equally sad and unfortunate segment of churches that have come to view VBS as an unappetizing glob of undercooked pancake batter and have deemed it unsavory. Some are inclined to skip it. If that’s you, I want to challenge you to reassess your VBS. My call to you is the same. Don’t skip it. FLIP it.

In our recent research and ministry strategy book, Flip the Script, the Lifeway NextGen team partnered with Lifeway Research to gather and review data to help us understand the unique cultural needs of Gen Z and generation Alpha so we can help kids and student ministry leaders reach them more effectively with the gospel.

The research supports what many next-gen leaders know experientially: While Gen Z is the most connected generation of all time through technology, they are simultaneously the loneliest and most isolated generation in history regarding real-life relationships. They are plagued by fear and paralyzed by anxiety, stress, and depression.

“While Gen Z is the most connected generation of all time through technology, they are simultaneously the loneliest and most isolated generation in history regarding real-life relationships.” — @_chuckpeters Share on X

And they are also a generation that doesn’t regard or respect positional authority. They do not hold a positive view of denominations, affiliations, or accreditations. In fact, they are suspicious of institutions and organizations. Many view corporations and organizations, including the church, as inherently evil.

Many of us have heard the familiar statistic that 66% of church kids will stop attending church regularly between the ages of 18 and 22. What most haven’t heard are the reasons that they give for their departure—reasons our research indicates are largely relational in nature.

More than 3 in 10 (32%) young people who left the church say church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical. Another 3 in 10 (29%) say they felt disconnected from the people at their church, and 23% say they never felt connected to other students in their youth ministry.

The value of relationships

How can we reach a generation that vilifies the church and organized religion? The research points to one clear strategy: We must reach the next generation through relationships. We must engage Gen Z and Gen Alpha with relational evangelism and walk with them in relational discipleship. The testimony of many Gen Z believers is not connected to a program but to a person, not to a gospel presentation but to personal gospel conversations.

The good news is this is a well-established model for ministry. Jesus invited His disciples to walk with Him and taught them in the Deuteronomy 6 style: when they lay down, when they rose up, and as they walked along the road. Jesus’s discipleship model was largely not one of lecturing and listening but one of walking together and talking together.

This is the kind of engagement we need to return to as the church. One thing is certain, we can’t just do what we have been doing. We need to apply a spatula to our kids and student ministries. We need to flip our strategies to cook the relational side.

The word FLIP, from the book Flip the Script, is an acronym that represents four key relationships every kid needs to find in our churches: Friends, Leaders, Influencers, and Pastors.

Friends

Every kid in your church needs to find a friend in your church. When I have a friend, I want to attend. Furthermore, research from an earlier book, Nothing Less by Jana Magruder, indicates kids who have a best friend in the church are more likely to stay connected to the church and in the faith and are less likely to walk away later in life.

But friendships don’t just happen because kids are in the same room. A sit-still, face-forward, be-quiet approach to ministry is not conducive to friend connections. We need to acknowledge the importance of friendships in the faith journey and take measures to intentionally help kids foster friendships.

Leaders

Secular educators are now acknowledging the significance of relationships in learning. Dr. James Comer, child psychologist and professor at Yale is credited with saying of children, “No significant learning can occur without significant relationship.”

In her famous Ted Talk, public school educator Rita Pierson said, “Every child deserves a champion—an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best they can possibly be.” If secular educators are this passionate about the power of connection, how much more should we be in our kids and student ministries in the church?

Every child in your church deserves a champion in your church—one adult leader who knows their name, their needs, and their situation. They need someone who cares for them and intercedes in prayer for them, who misses them when they’re gone and celebrates them when they return.

We won’t reach this generation with warm-body leaders who serve on a rotation out of obligation. We need to recruit new kinds of relationally-minded leaders to walk in discipleship relationships with kids and students in our churches. As kids become less predictable in their attendance patterns, we need our leaders to be more predictable in theirs. We need to seek out and train up leaders who are committed, consistent, connected, Christlike, and who care about kids.

“As kids become less predictable in their attendance patterns, we need our leaders to be more predictable in theirs.” — @_chuckpeters Share on X

Influencers

Every person in your church is an influencer for the next generation. We need to remind them of the importance of having friendly, warm, welcoming, positive, and engaging encounters with kids and students.

Kids notice the ways your church’s people interact with them and with one another, and every one of those interactions has the power of positive (or negative) influence that could have eternal consequences. They may not remember the words we say, but they will never forget the attitudes we convey. As ministry leaders, we need to remind every person in our church they are influencers.

Pastors

Kids and students need to know the pastor of your church isn’t just the pastor of the adults; he is their pastor too. Pastors need to have a presence, at least occasionally, in kids and student ministry spaces. Pastors don’t need to come in to teach a lesson but to make a relational connection.

When the kids in my church know pastor Ian plays the drums, has a brown fuzzy dog, likes the Detroit Lions (no judgements), and loves to eat pancakes, they will have a different perspective of him when they see him on the platform in big church. And they will be more inclined to reach out to him when they one day need pastoral care and counsel.

Relational investment

We must invest energy to earn a child’s trust and respect to have influence in their life. The formula is: Trust + Respect = Influence. The saying may seem trite, but it’s true: They won’t care what we know until they know that we care.

While relational ministry is highly effective, it takes time, and time isn’t on our side. As the frequency of attendance wanes, we need to be intentional to create quality connections in the time we have. And we need to look for more opportunities to have quality time with our young people to engage them in FLIP relationships. Every hour of engagement with friends, leaders, influencers, and pastors in our churches is critical.

A relational ministry microwave

Some quick napkin math shows that if a child attends your church regularly for one hour every other week it will take seven and a half months to attain 15 hours of relational connection. That seems like a long time for such a few hours of engagement, and that’s discouraging. But what if I told you there was a relational ministry microwave?

What if there was an accelerant that would fast-forward your relational ministry, propelling you to 15 hours of relational ministry connection, not in seven and a half months, not in three months, not in one month… but in just one week? There is one! It’s called VBS.

A traditional five-day, three-hour-a-day VBS provides 15 hours of relational engagement with every kid who attends—packing the equivalent of seven and a half months worth of the kind of connection essential to reach the next generation with the gospel. While VBS is a model with a long legacy, it’s one that’s tailor made to reach a generation longing for belonging and relationships.

“While VBS is a model with a long legacy, it’s one that’s tailor made to reach a generation longing for belonging and relationships.” — @_chuckpeters Share on X

So, don’t be too quick to scrape VBS into the trash can. Instead, use it as an opportunity to accelerate critical relational engagement with the kids in your church and community. Reassess VBS. Don’t skip it; FLIP it.

For permission to republish this article, contact Marissa Postell Sullivan.