And that’s
where her search may have ended.
The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s first independently produced
Vacation Bible School (VBS) curriculum, God
Calls Us: Around the World in 5 Days, was introduced during
the conference.
“At a glance, I really like the ideas that are presented
here,” Day said during a workshop featuring the new VBS
curriculum.
The low-cost curriculum, which focuses on global mission, was
well received in its APCE roll-out. The five-day VBS course is
intended for children ages 4 through 10. It invites learners to
explore customs and cultures of foreign countries through music,
food, crafts, language, games and other activities.
God Calls Us: Around the World in 5 Days takes Bible school
participants on daily “airplane trips” to five countries
where the PC(USA) is working in active mission partnership: Guatemala,
Malawi, Pakistan, Peru and the Philippines. During their “flights,”
children hear Bible stories and read letters from Presbyterian
missionaries around the world.
Each day, participants board a plane and travel to a different
destination, to experience that country’s language, crafts,
music and snacks.
The Rev. Bill Lane also attended an unveiling of the new VBS
curriculum on Jan. 27, the day before the APCE conference began.
As a “point person” charged with teaching others in
his presbytery about the curriculum, he liked what he saw.
“I have not read it cover-to-cover, but I think it’s
a wonderful concept, by looking at worldwide mission and where
we are connected,” said Lane, associate pastor for Christian
education, youth ministry and congregational nurture at Calvary
Presbyterian Church in Riverside, CA. “I like it because
it’s getting children connected to mission, and I think
that’s important.”
Lane and others said they also liked the VBS curriculum because
it could be used by small or large congregations, and because
its $35 price is within the reach of a church of any size.
“I think what’s nice about it is that it can be tailored
to churches, whether they’re a small church or a big church,”
he said. “ ... It allows you to use your imagination: ‘How
can I use my space for that?’ So I think there’s some
potential sitting there.”
Sandra Moak Sorem, publisher of Congregational
Ministries Publishing (CMP), which produced the new VBS curriculum
at a cost of $35,000, said expenses were controlled by not including
items that drive up prices, such as backpacks and T-shirts. She
said all the work, including the illustrations, was done in-house
to save money.
Another cost-saving factor was the fact that much of the curriculum
was actually derived from unused material originally written for
the 2004 We Believe intergenerational summer curriculum,
Christ’s
Command: Go into the World.
“We used some existing materials to make it available at
a lower cost, instead of creating everything from scratch,”
said Sorem, who said about 1,500 congregations must use the curriculum
for CMP to break even.
The VBS supports the summer curriculum of We Believe (for
ages 4 through adult), but can be used independently — a
factor many conference-goers said they appreciated.
“I’m really excited about it,” said Linda F.
LeBron, a retired Christian educator and past APCE president who
wrote the Christ’s Command summer curriculum. “They
told me I had given birth to twins, and I thought I had only been
carrying one around.”
LeBron, a Presbyterian elder from Alabama who conducts workshops
around the nation, said she conducted most of the research for
the summer piece over the Internet.
“What I did was got on the PC(USA)’s Worldwide
Ministries Division Web site, and started contacting missionaries
by email,” said LeBron, former director of Children’s
Ministries at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas, TX.
“I probably emailed 50 or 75 missionaries, until I finally
found 13 very different kinds of mission fields, and a good child-oriented
story.”
The Rev. Meg Rift, who led the curriculum workshop at APCE, said:
“The only limit to the VBS is your own imagination. There
are no bells and whistles. Your imagination is really the only
limit. You can do so much with this. It’s so rich.”
Rift said VBS exercises could be carried out using ordinary household
materials, such as maps, construction paper, string, and colored
markers or crayons. Props for the program, such as an airplane,
can be as basic or elaborate as users wish to make them.
“You can have your airplane with just two rows of chairs
and people just sitting in them,” said Rift, a former PC(USA)
national staff member who also worked on the VBS curriculum. “You
can tell them to put their trays in the upright position and tell
them, ‘We’re about to take off.’ You can make
an airplane with cardboard from refrigerator boxes and put holes
in them for windows and really be creative.”
Many at APCE also applauded the summer curriculum’s incorporation
of the PC(USA)’s 2004 Children’s
Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study, which includes
prayers, Bible verses and mission stories from around the world,
complete with maps and photos.
“I like seeing more than one resource being pulled together,”
Day said, “and the ideas are very easy to do. I don’t
see anything that would be complicated. I’ll be able to
go back to my teachers right now and say, ‘I think I may
have found our summer curriculum.’”
Others agreed with Day that the curriculums are easy and straightforward,
fun and Biblically sound.
“It’s very affordable, and the materials, since it’s
maps and things like that, anybody could get their hands on the
material,” said Wendy Markham of Kirkland, WA, director
of children’s ministries at Rose Hill Presbyterian Church.
“It would just take a matter of somebody sitting down and
coming up with some ideas and a little bit of planning, and they
should be able to pull it off.”
Day said she likes the distinctly Presbyterian content and the
emphasis on PC(USA) mission work. She said she’s especially
fond of the We
Believe series produced by CMP.
“I’ve been using We Believe this year, and
I’ve been very pleased with it, especially the middle school
and high school curriculum,” she said. “My teachers
have really liked it, and the kids have gotten into it. I’m
just excited that we’ve got some good curriculum going for
us now.”
Designed with teachers in mind, the curriculum includes “Teacher
Tips,” ideas for finding and inspiring volunteers, setting
the stage, and suggested time lines. The leader’s VBS book,
with reproducible pages and cassette come complete in one binder
for $35.
“For churches that don’t have a lot of money and
can’t afford these $200 kits that come with the puppet,
the CD and all the bells and whistles, this is just really practical,”
said the Rev. Tammy Wiens, CMP’s associate for curriculum
development and editor of the VBS curriculum.
To order God Calls Us: Around the World in 5 Days (Item #614900),
as well as the We Believe summer curriculum (#614800) and
the Children’s Mission Yearbook (#7061204451), call
Presbyterian Distribution Service at (800) 524-2612, or visit
www.pcusa.org/marketplace.
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