VBS...oh dear

I waffle a lot on VBS. Some days I hate it. Some days I love it.

I love it because of things like the little boy last night. We were playing games and somehow, he missed the "fill the cup full of water, put the cup in your mouth and start running." Instead, he just had a mouth full of water, all blown up like a chipmunk, with water occasionally sputtering from his clenched lips. It was hilarious.

And I hate it for so many other reasons. I hate that we dress up the Gospel in themes ripped from popular kids' movies because by doing so we say the Gospel is irrelevant unless we dress it up with something that really matters. We use curriculum that makes no sense in terms of what stories it puts together and offer kids no substance. We make it a time-driven, programmed production in a whole world where kids are forced into time-driven, heavily programmed, heavily produced lifestyle. We demonstrate poor stewardship by spending hundreds, even thousands, of dollars on all those bells and whistles. We demonstrate poor stewardship by creating elaborate decorations that are used only once and suck up an amazing amount of time, not to mention money or materials.

By doing all those things, we refuse to be an antidote to a culture that consumes too much, fears silence and believes nothing.

The only proof I need that what we should be offering is an antidote to those things in our world is that last night, it didn't take long before I dropped the third game from the rotation we were playing. That game involved a parachute and themed animal. I dropped it because the kids were having so much fun playing another game: freeze tag.

That's right. Freeze tag. No supplies, few rules, just a big open space freeze tag.

There's far more Gospel there than in any decked-out sanctuary.