Not Your Typical VBS

This year will be our fourth annual CampFire: Kids Worship Band Camp at the Vineyard Church in Campbellsville, Kentucky. CampFire is an alternative to VBS that focuses entirely on worship. But it's not just the act of worship that we focus on. We actually teach the kids (ages 8-13) how to lead worship. How in the world do we do that? Why do we do that?

When we became the Children's Pastors at Vineyard Campbellsville in 2011, my husband and I wanted to find an alternative to Vacation Bible School for our summer programming. We wanted a fun activity for the kids at our church, but every church in our small town had some sort of VBS and most of our church kids had been attending the other churchs' VBS's for years. We needed something different.

Many churches produce Vacation Bible School (VBS) as an outreach to their community. That's a great thing! Many churches produce a VBS to give their church kids the discipleship they need in a fun way. That's a great thing! Some churches have no idea why they do VBS. They just always have so they think they have to. I loved VBS growing up. I attended VBS til I was a high school student. I loved it! I am not against VBS. We just needed something different because our church kids already had VBS options in our town.

We decided to focus on worship. We teach kids to lead worship. Musicians in our adult worship band volunteer to teach their instruments to the kids at camp. The kids don't have to have any experience with music because we have different levels for each instrument. If you are a beginner, you can learn the basics of your instrument and maybe chords by the end of the week. Surprisingly many kids are able to play an easy worship song by the end of the week. Others who have previous experience with music lessons will take a more advanced class and possibly be put into worship bands to practice working together. In this setting kids can learn more advanced concepts like learning to follow the worship leader, how to worship with your heart while watching the people in the audience to see where the music needs to go.

These are kids, of course, so we also incorporate activities like an outdoor carnival in the church yard, boating at the lake, and more. Check out the schedule here. We always have a campfire at a local farm and invite the whole family. We are proud of this CampFire experience and believe its producing great fruit in our kids ministry and putting the kids in the forefront of ministry on the main worship stage, as well. It's not your typical VBS, but it is a great experience for our local Vineyard.

Interested in joining us? Want to come to Kentucky to participate? Interested in having a CampFire experience at your church? Check out this link or send us a message.