Bible School’s Theme Combines Occupations And Spiritual Truths
When folks at Garland Avenue Alliance Church decide to host a vacation Bible school, they don’t mess around.
This year’s school, continuing until Friday, has a staff of 115 volunteers. More than 350 children are participating. Staffers have even turned church rooms into mock-ups of a hospital, a farm, a police station, a carpentry shop and a fire station.
When students walk into the hospital room, they have to scrub down. Some church members who are nurses even got hold of some monitoring equipment to add to the realism.
“They enact a trauma, the whole bit,” says Kathy Crosby, the church’s director of children’s ministry.
It’s theatrical, but what does it have to do with a Bible school? Crosby says the props are all to drive home the school’s theme, “Jesus Works for You.”
“We picked five occupations that have a tangible appeal to children,” Crosby says. “(But) each has a spiritual truth attached.”
Crosby says the school relates each occupation to the Christian faith. She says carpenters shape wood the way Christ shapes people; doctors are for people who are sick, and so is Christ.
But, the occupational theme isn’t just metaphorical. Crosby had firefighters come by and talk about their job. Police officers paid visits in the DARE van. An ambulance crew showed off its hardware, too.
The children are split into five age groups, and each day a group visits a different theme room. There they learn about the grown-up world of work and hear a religious lesson, too.
In the farm room, a volunteer sits atop a pile of hay, reading Bible stories to children - in the company of two live sheep and a real garden. In the carpentry room, youngsters may hear about Jesus’ days as a carpenter, and they get to make their own wooden stool as well.
There’s time for just plain fun, too. Students get treats in each of the areas, such as red licorice in the firefighter room. All five groups also meet each morning to be serenaded by an evangelical version of The Village People.
The singers are - you guessed it - a police officer, a firefighter, a doctor, a farmer and a carpenter.
They sing a reworded version of “YMCA” against a backdrop of painted theme murals, complete with prop hay bails for farming and a working stoplight representing city jobs.
The curriculum idea was the church’s own, Crosby says. While it takes a small army of volunteers to run, she says Garland Avenue Alliance is large enough to support it.
“We have 800 people at a typical Sunday service,” she says. And, many of those are people with families.
“We have a phenomenal number of young families,” Crosby says. “It means just tons of kids.”
, DataTimes