Not Your Mamma's Bible School

This week our church is having Vacation Bible School. I'm an "as-needed" teacher, which means I drift back and forth between classes as help is needed. Today I filled in for a teacher who was gone, and had 20 second graders with one teenage assistant. I'm looking forward to being a drifter again for the rest of the week.

Maybe my memories of the years I attended are a little hazy, as it was 20+ years ago, but seems to me like things are a little, no a LOT, different.

I remember playing on the playground for recreation, probably playing kickball in the grassy lot beside the church, Red-Rover, etc. We pulled into the parking lot this year and saw two giant inflatables on the grassy lot: one for bouncing, the other a slide.

The theme this year (did we even have themes when I was little?) is Saddle Ridge Ranch, aka cowboy theme. The rooms and hallways are decorated in amazing detail. The missions room looks like a cave, with brown paper crumpled up and covering every inch of wallspace like a rock wall. One room has paper covering all four walls with panelling drawn on it to look like a lodge. The craft room is decorated like a barn. The kindergarten room has brown paper logs on the wall to look like a cabin. Cowboy boots, hats, saddles, ropes, bandannas are all throughout the church. A big inflatable horse stands in the sanctuary. Each room has a paper mantle and fireplace taped to the wall. I remember helping as a 9 or 10 year old with the decorating and it took a long time so it was probably kind of elaborate then too. But I remember using posterboard, scissors, markers, glue and tape.

The crafts now come in pre-assemble kits to match the theme. I remember stacks of construction paper, puddles of glue, cap-less markers, scattered glitter. The teachers had curriculum, but the work of assembling and creating were left to them.

Can you really have Bible School without watered down Kool-Aid and butter cookies that have the hole in the middle for sticking on your finger like a ring? We are this year. And I must say, I appreciate the change. The fellowship hall is Big Sky Grill for the week and we've been having some hefty snacks: yesterday was grilled cheese sandwiches, pickles, cereal trail mix, pudding, and choice of sweet tea or pink lemonade. Today was mini-pizzas, animal crackers, watermelon and cantaloupe wedges, and the drink choices. Those ladies and their grandkids who are helping them are working non-stop for 3 hours or more, but they are making our jobs as teachers so much easier.

We now have theme songs, videos, and choreographed motions (more like dances) for those songs. ("Say yeah-yeah yeah yeah yes to V buh-buh-B S.")I remember having Miss Edith the elderly organ player (who is still the organist, by the way) play a certain two chord combination that meant "stand up" and another for "sit down". I don't remember if we sang, but I don' t think it was taped music with a heavy drum beat and western twang. In my day, we lined up outside and filed in by class, and I hated it. It was hot, took forever to get lined up and march in and was pointless. We still march in by class, it's hot, doesn't take quite as long now that I'm older time goes by faster, and I still hate it. It's still pointless. But we do, as we did then, say the pledge to the American flag, Christian flag, and Bible. I like that. Hearing 100+ kids drawl out ,"I plehhhhdge alleeegience.....toooo thuh flaaag....uv thuh U-niiited States. . . ." was enough to make me get all teary this morning.

Now I know that just because things were done differently when I was a kid than they are now doesn't make them the right way but seeing VBS now is a little sad. We assume our children need a flashy, fun, entertaining, pre-fab, themed, loud, new, decorated,costly week's worth of Bible School. Oh, well. They'll have their memories 20 years from now, and I'll keep enjoying mine.