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 Posted 7/3/2009 11:43:28 AM |
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| We are a small church as well, and we Love Group's VBS! I've used Group since Fiesta. This will be our second year combining with other smaller churches in the community to do a community wide VBS. We have it at our local middle school. Last year 4 churches participated, and this year two more have joined us. It does make it a whole lot easier. The idea is to heve each church in charge of a different station. They provide the station leader and decorate that area. At this time some of the churches have more than one area, but hopefully we will continue to have more join. Then we pool the rest of the workers from each church as crew leaders. Snack supplies are divided among the churches. Missions are sponsored by individuals from each church. The children's supplies are sponsored by each church. This was $10.00 for Croc Doc. This also allows a smaller church who may not put on a VBS in their church due to lack of helpers or a small number of kids to join in. Each church contributes what the Lord leads them to do. We have a director that oversees it all, then each director from each church starts meeting about 6 months before to get things rollings. Last year was a great success, we had 2 non churched saved. It's a great outreach to the community, and allows those excited about VBS to rally together for the Lord! Hope this helps or gives you some ideas about next year. God won't put you through anything you can't handle. Don't let the devil drag you down. Use these trials to make you stonger for the Lord! He's on your side. Keep your heart in line with Him! God Bless, AJ
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| Posted 7/3/2009 4:27:30 PM |
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PLEASE DO IT AGAIN!!! you'll only get better the next time. begin to feel out people you know are reliable- folks from your ministries within the church...lay down the rules up front including if you have to miss a day to let you know ahead of time so you can have a plan b. making personal phone calls and letting them know their responsibilities might also help. i had a co-director, eventhough she may not have done as much as i would have liked, she was there for me to bounce off ideas. she also is a seasoned member of the church. i would also get the pastor involved. the administation is key...your pastor has to back you 100% and be HYPED about it as well, i think this helps a great deal....also, even though Group has guidelines... as you read the forum you see people tweek it all the time to fit their church... you might look at some things to cut out if you don't have the support in that area and to make it a more manageable.... i would be BEAMING right now as you said kids were saved and people told you how they enjoyed the program. many people don't even have a clue when things don't go as you had planned ...don't let the few adults have a negative influence on you not doing it next year. if you continue to be excited and stay in prayer, your energy will only catch on....also, the pastor has to let everyone know this is under your direction...enjoy your summer .
VBS Director for 3 years now...
btw, i did get a little snippy too with 1 or 2 people but mentioned this in my thank you notes to them- to not take it personal, just that it can get a little "crazy" while vbs-ing.. God bless
jackie
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| Posted 7/3/2009 4:30:43 PM |
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forgot to mention to include volunteer commisioning...this also conveys the seriousness of their jobs and responsiblities as this is done before the Lord and the congregation...
jackie
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| Posted 7/4/2009 4:18:52 PM |
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| Sorry that you had some bad experiences, mixed in with the good, at your successful VBS. Just remember not only to ask here for help (this forum is a great resource), but to ask GOD's help! Last year, we did not have enough volunteers, but with a lot of prayer (not just mine, but from our whole parish), God gave us exactly what we needed to have a successful VBS. We did our part too, but it is all in God's will, and if He wants you to be the director and sends you challenging helpers, then with your prayers and planning, His grace will be all you need to make it through. Ask Him to help you forgive the others, and ask for forgiveness for your own weakness, then you will be free to share His Love and Mercy--to be fearless in letting God's light shine! Blessings, Cheryl
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| Posted 7/4/2009 6:04:51 PM |
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| I am so sorry you had these problems and KNOW where you are coming from! (Small church here myself!) One thing that I think does work well is to have meetings with just your station leaders starting EARLY. Another suggestion I would make for you is to let those same teens be the crew leaders. No more awful teen class, but they are getting the messages AND serving and helping lead. Great experience for the teens. (THEY will need tons of training, though.) One way we've had success in getting folks to come to the planning meetings is to have them immediately after church and serve lunch. We also do things there like make shirts for the staff to wear so that they really want to come. I totally know how you feel about pouring yourself out only to be stepped on by others. But don't sweat it. You are serving a greater calling. The people who nag, naysay and generally bring you down are the ones who will have to answer to their Lord someday for their attitude AND missed the joy of four salvations! ((((((hugs))))))
Pictures taken on vacation at Lake Junaluska, NC.
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| Posted 7/4/2009 8:12:24 PM |
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| I'm sorry you had such a difficult time! Please don't give up, your kids need someone who loves VBS to direct! They need someone who understands how it all should work and fights for it to be done right. I have also dealt with some negativity from adults, but fortunately nothing like you have experienced. This year I told myself each night I was going to ignore the negativity and be as positive as I could in response. It wasn't always easy, but I think negative attitudes are contagious and I wasn't goingto let them effect me. My one suggestions is that you try using those teens as crew leaders. If you can get them some training and make it very clear what their responsibilities are it might help. We did the Rome VBS this year, and I have never been able to get people to come to training, but this year I at least got my shopkeepers to come and it really helped them to "own" their role and I felt so much more relaxed knowing they would do their part and I didn't have to worry about it. Just don't give up, each year will get a little easier! Christine
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| Posted 7/5/2009 12:45:06 PM |
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| I'm sorry to hear that you had a hard time with your volunteers for Crocodile Dock. I would pray about next year and see where God would want you to be. If you come back, be tough as a VBS Director and let your volunteers know that you're tough because it will impact the kids' lives the best the way that you're directing. Let them know that you're not being tough because you want to be, you're being tough because kids' lives are on the line and they need VBS so they can hear the Gospel and recieve Jesus as their personal Savior. As the Bible says, don't get discouraged for doing good. I'll be praying for you as you decide on directing for VBS 2010. God Bless, Josh
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| Posted 7/5/2009 7:45:26 PM |
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I also am from a small church and we only have about 25 kids that attend vbs. However, this year was the first year we did group, and we did Power Lab. I had 43 kids that attended. I prayed hard for people to help. I went through the church directory 4 months before and asked every single person individually (begged in some instances). I started off all my conversation telling them something like "You are soo much fun and I know you would have fun doing this and I know the kids would have fun with you." Some people actually ran in the other direction when I would walk towards them. But I stayed enthusiastic and believe me it got scary because my pre-registration was growing but my amount of help was shrinking.
I love Groups curriculum and I too wanted to follow every single detail and suggestion they had, however I learned fairly quickly that sometimes trying to do every absolute detail by the book is more stressful. So you say to yourself hey, these are the kind of people I have, this is the amount of help I can rely on, and I will do everything I can but I will not get discouraged if I can't do everything the book suggests. Then you pray HARD!!
As far as Crew leaders went that was the most stressful part for me because that is a lot of extra helpers needed. So my first recruiting went to the youth. Guess what I had three meetings prior to VBS and one meeting that was a mock run through of vbs and NONE OF THEM CAME. Not once... so I prayed and I called every one of them several times and explained as best as I could what they would be doing. And it worked out wonderfully. Not because of me but because of God, and nothing went exactly the way I planned. I spent four days of VBS in the hospital sick I was at VBS for DAy 1. I was the Sonic Sing and Play leader as well. All that planning and I get to attend one day... everything went as smooth as it could. But not the way I planned. Also have you thought about getting a co director sometimes it is hard to work with someone but other times they can balance you out make it someone you can have fun with, and who won't try to completely take over, but alleviate some of your stress.
There were kids who wanted to be in a group with their friends and adults who wanted their kids to be with their friends and I told them they would be in the same class just not the same group and I looked the kids in the eyes and told them "And you will still have a blast!! I promise!" Get the kids excited and used to the fact they won't be in the same group with a friend and the parents won't even care. If they do just remember its ok no one really losses.
I suggest if you decide to do it next year go around to all of the teachers and pass out a piece of paper and ask them to write what things they think need to change for the next year or suggestions they have. Get them as involved as you can, because that can help build excitement.
You said it isn't for the adults just the kids, but you do have to make the adults happy or they can make the kids very unhappy. That is the hard part about directing is keeping everyone happy. And it can take a couple of years to get it right, and the more successful the devil knows it will be the more he tries to destroy that success. Even in the midst of all that 4 people were saved that sounds like a total success!!!
God Bless,
Katie
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| Posted 7/5/2009 7:59:15 PM |
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Gosh...what a mess! The only comment I can add to all the good advice already given is this:
When you are doing good work for the Lord, Satan will get in your face and try to pull you down....DON'T LET HIM!!!!!!!!!!!! God loves you and the children He has sent...trust in Him! I love these words from Psalm 37:
"The steps of the Godly are directed by the Lord. He delights in the details of their lives. Though they may stumble, they will not fall for He holds them by the hand."Praying for you! Kimberly
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| Posted 7/6/2009 2:05:38 PM |
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| Thank you for all of your replies and suggestions. I appreciate it. I know that it is not always easy being the Director because you have so many people to try to please. I also know that sometimes things don't work out as planned, which was the hardest part for me to deal with. I thought that I had adults that I could trust to help but some of them left me in the middle of VBS without any notice. These were the same people who are part of a Missions Team from our church that actually go to other states and countries and run VBS for other churches. I thought that if they could go to all of these other places and do VBS that surely they would be dedicated to our own VBS since the kids in our community need Jesus too. But, I was wrong about that. Now they are already starting to raise money for their next Mission Trip which will be out of the country next Summer. I can't understand how they don't care enough about our own kids to help out for five nights but can go everywhere else and run VBS for other churches and stay for two weeks. I am planning to let our pastor know about how things went at our VBS since he was sick and couldn't be there. Thankfully, most of our congregation including the kids didn't realize the problems that we had at VBS, so to them everything went great. I am still trying to decide about Directing next year. I will keep praying about it and do what I feel is best when the time comes. I love VBS so much that I hate to just sit on the sidelines and not do all that I can for the kids. If I decide to direct again, I will be sure to let everyone know ahead of time what is required of their position and make sure that they understand that I need them all week before they say yes to helping. I will also try AGAIN to get my Crew Leaders ahead of time since we had some new people help out this year that just started attending our church. I will try to get everyone to attend a meeting to go over everything, but our church is NOT big on meetings. Our Teens are young teens (just turned 13) and not very mature so I am not sure about using them as Crew Leaders. They would rather be students at VBS instead of Crew Leaders. I will have to wait until next year and see how much they mature before asking them to be Crew Leaders. I just wish that everyone would have a heart for Children's Ministry like myself and the few other ladies that are always willing to help as much as they can. But, I know that not everyone loves working with kids and reaching them for Christ so I will try to do the best with what I have. Hindsight is 20/20 so I have learned a lot of lessons form this year. If I direct again, I will try to choose only leaders that I NOW know will keep their word and do what they promise, even if it means having to double our Crew sizes and cut back in some areas. There is one other lady who loves VBS as much as I do and we both said that if we could, we would run everything ourselves so that it would be done the way Group's VBS Program is written for, but we can only do so much. The rest we have to leave to others and pray for everything to work out. We just want everything to run smoothly and as planned so the kids will receive the maximum benefit from the entire program, not just parts of it. It is all in the Lord's hands and I know that everything we do is for His glory, not ours. All I can do now is pray and wait for next year and see what happens. Thanks again for all of your help. May God Bless you!
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