Well, it happened. We ripped traditional VBS to shreds.

In a previous post, I discussed our church’s plans to go a different route with VBS this year. (Read that post here.) Here’s how it turned out.

1. Attendance.

On the whole, attendance was roughly the same as previous years, but the makeup of those who attended was slightly different. In recent years, we have been volunteer heavy and kid low, which is strange given the fact that many of our volunteers felt burned out based on the amount of effort it took to put a traditional VBS on. This year, we had (and required) less volunteers, but we had more family units, more parents, and more kids! 

The families looking for a place to drop off their kids found other things to do this week. But the families who were looking for something to do together, those who struggle to let their kids go where they can’t supervise them, or those who simply wanted to take an active part in their child’s faith and engagement at church all showed up.

2. Event Name/ Lack of Theme

Calling our event Family Week was helpful because it communicated to the community that it was for the whole family, not just their kids. We wanted parents and grandparents there, too. What we found was that there have been parents and grandparents who would have stayed and participated with their kids in years past, but they understood it to be “not allowed” or “frowned upon.” They had been feeling excluded from church events like VBS. Exclusivity is not what a church should be going for, and yet it was an unfortunate byproduct of our previous modes of operation.

While we did not have a fun and kitschy theme/ slogan for the week, we did center our lessons each night around the family unit and the activity of the night. On Game Night, we tackled sibling rivalry and conflict, using the story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4). On craft night, we talked about Bezalel and the creativity God gave him to help build the Lord’s tabernacle (Exodus 31). We watched the feature film “David” on movie night, and then revisited David, Psalm 23, John 10, and the Gospel on Family Worship Night. The lack of theme actually gave us the freedom to choose our activities, lessons, and music without feeling boxed in. 

3. Volunteer Feedback

The post-VBS fatigue was nonexistent this year! Nobody felt exhausted on the last night. One of my volunteers, who has been serving at VBS every year for 30 years said, “It was wonderful! It was so much fun and I’m not even tired!.” Another said, “This is the way we should do it from now on.” 

While our volunteers did commit to serving, they did not feel trapped in their commitment when life happened during the week. When things came up in their personal lives, they didn’t feel pressure to be there or guilty for missing a night. Meaning, they were there because they wanted to be, not because they had to be. That fact, along with the fact that we were all together and not siloed off in different rooms, made the week that much more enjoyable.

Biggest surprise of the week? CRAFT NIGHT

I’ll be honest, I was nervous about dedicating an entire night to crafts. Questions raced through my mind. 

• What if the crafts we planned aren’t as fun as we thought? Or what if they’re too difficult? Or what if kids finish them in five minutes and we have to scramble to figure something else out?
• What if kids get bored and are ready to leave in 15 minutes?

What actually happened was our craft leaders didn’t feel rushed in explaining the craft, kids were excited for the activities because they weren’t being pulled away from some flashier activity (like kickball), and they didn’t feel rushed to leave their crafts behind because it was time to leave for another rotation. If they liked a particular craft, they could come back to it as many times as they wanted. We had kids leaving with multiple handmade magnets, bracelets, and there was an entire room dedicated to sand art that was always packed. 

The biggest issue that evening was that our nights ran from 5:45-7:30, but on Craft Night we were struggling to get families to go home after 8:00. They were having too much fun and didn’t want to leave!

Additionally, our Craft crew didn’t feel like they had to leave some of their favorite ideas on their Pinterest board. There was space and time for every craft! The extra help from all the volunteers and parents was a huge bonus for them too. 

Parents loved the activities, too, and making them with their kids rather than getting a quick glimpse at them before they wind up in the floorboard of the minivan made them that much more treasured. 

Other wins:

• We saw a HUGE uptick in teenage attendance.  Sometimes as much as a third or more of overall attendees were between the ages of 12 and 19. 
• People served in their sweet spots and not just served as gap-fillers.
• Serving together made fellowship, conversations, and relationship building so much easier for our people.

Areas of Improvement:

• We asked families or individuals to sign up to play a part in our Family Worship Night (sing a song, read some Scripture, give a devotion, read a poem, pray, etc.) I would have liked to have seen more families sign up to participate, but it ultimately felt pretty balanced between our team’s efforts and others’ participation. And, actually, everything said and done in the service flowed really well together and felt cohesive as if we had planned it that way. So, not a huge miss, but not exactly what we hoped for.

• Because no one registered for VBS, I feel like I personally dropped the ball in gathering contact information for follow-up from those not regularly connected to our church. In hindsight, a sign-in sheet (instead of a sign-up sheet) would have easily done the trick. 

We’ll continue to kick around ideas for how to make family events work both for our church and our city. For instance, I’d like us to use the week to give our families opportunities to serve and be missional together, so that’s an element that will likely get added in for next year. But for now, we are grateful for Family Week 2026. 

I think the wins of the week far outweighed the losses, and our people felt loved, encouraged, and heard. Our community felt loved and seen.. We pray that the seeds planted and connections made produce abundant kingdom fruit.