“Oh, I know Jesus loves me, Oh I know Jesus loves you, from the top of my head to my wiggly toes …” That song (with motions) is stuck in my head. Why? We just finished our Vacation Bible School and that was part of the theme song. Vacation Bible School was great and I know I learned more than the kids. The kids learned a lot, but I can say without a doubt that I learned more. Just over a year ago I wrote a post “7 Lessons learned from Vacation Bible School”. I learned some more this year and was reminded of some of the lessons I learned last year.

-I learned that energy makes worship and learning a lot easier and more fun. The kids brought the energy every night and the adults used that energy to serve in powerful ways. Now if we could just get the rest of the people who attend on Sunday mornings to have a little more energy. Maybe we should start requiring that they do motions with every song. What do you think?

-I learned that giving can be fun. Our church, that is not large, at least not yet, had a total of 47 kids attend VBS. Those kids gave over $1,000 in 4 nights!!! You read that correctly. More impressive is they did it with no incentive of a prize and none of the money given was for anyone they knew. The money is all going to Africa to send a bunch of kids to school and feed thousands of kids who otherwise would have no meal at their school.

(Highlight: some of you are being cynical and thinking that all the money came from the kid’s parents and grandparents. Much of it did, but we had many, many kids emptying their personal banks to give their personal money for other kids. In fact one boy had been saving coins since last year’s VBS so that he could give to other kids this year. How is that for sacrifice?)

-Serving together is a great way to get to know people. There is a great bond that forms when you serve with someone.

-We have many outstanding adults. So many gave so much of their time, and energy, to serve the kids. Some gave up hours at work, some took vacation days to serve and all of them gave all the energy they had to serve. There are some serious naps going to be taking place this weekend.

-Smiles really do made a huge difference. I wrote something about kid’s smiles last year and I was blown away by the smiles of the kids and the smiles they were able to produce in the adults this year. I will go through smile withdrawal this next week.

-Kids love to volunteer. When we asked for volunteers we had dozens of hands go up no matter what we were asking them to do.

-Kids remind me that Church can, and should be, fun.

What are some of your memories of VBS? What have you learned from serving children?

Here’s hoping that you receive many smiles this week.

Dennis