Vacation Bible school at First Baptist here is not only a family affair. It’s also an Acts 1:8 affair.
DRY PRONG —Vacation Bible school at First Baptist here is not only a family affair. It’s also an Acts 1:8 affair.
With classes for adults, youth, and children, First Dry Prong seeks to use the time-tested evangelistic success of VBS to reach a multitude of age groups in the surrounding community, Pastor Lloyd Whitman said.
“Everybody in our church at Dry Prong can go to Bible school from 3 to 100 years old, because Bible school is that important,” the pastor said. “It’s been my experience here at Dry Prong that our adults love Bible school. The first year, people said ‘We never heard of such,’ but that year we had over 100 adults at night, and that was eight years ago. [The adults] go through the same program as the children, including crafts, recreation, and some of the music.”
In years past, supper was prepared for adult attendees, most of whom were coming in from work, Whitman said. The meal was followed by craft time, a team effort that usually followed along with the VBS theme.
One year, adults built space ships.
This year, however, the program was a little different, with adult lessons conducted on Sunday nights for five weeks, the last week of April and every week in May, the pastor said.
Whitman again used the team approach, to go along with this year’s sports theme, and assigned each team a captain. Teams answered scripture-based questions the pastor posed, with the goal of beating the other teams.
“This year we did youth and adults before children, so the adults could be more prepared to teach the children,” Whitman said.
First Dry Prong welcomed 88 adults, 24 youth, and 250 children to Bible school this year and saw 23 professions of faith in the children’s group, Whitman said.
But VBS isn’t over, he added.
“The thing we also do is go out to other churches that need help with Bible school,” he said. “This is where we’re having a great time.”
This summer First Dry Prong is helping three other churches, including Pineville’s Main Street Mission. VBS there took place in early July. In all, 23 volunteers from First Dry Prong taught children, while the pastor at the mission taught the adults.
“It was a tremendous week,” Whitman said, explaining that First Dry Prong simply recycles its own VBS materials. “We’re set up so that it becomes one of our mission endeavors. We take all the material and do all the refreshments.” About 50 people attended VBS at the mission.
July 22-26, First Dry Prong is planning to travel to Lydia Baptist Church in New Iberia for another VBS, Whitman said.
The plan is to leave Dry Prong on Sunday morning with campers, which workers will hook up in Lydia, he explained. Then, after a parade inviting children in the community to VBS, workers might perform work around the church as they wait for the children to arrive that night for Bible school.
In all, 13 volunteers – including at least three youth – are traveling to Lydia from Dry Prong to lead the Bible school, while at the same time offering “on-the-job” training for workers from Lydia, Whitman said.
Cloverdale Baptist Church in Alexandria, behind the Rapides Coliseum, is scheduled to host Bible school from July 30 to Aug. 3, and Dry Prong workers will again be on the spot, helping out, Whitman continued.
First Dry Prong has even helped with vacation Bible schools at a church in San Antonio, Texas, two years ago, and twice in Honduras, the pastor said.
The San Antonio trip, which involved about 50 people from First Dry Prong, was a trip of faith, Whitman said.
“I knew it would cost us,” he said. “We paid our own way. We went on faith, and that Sunday before we left, a man visiting our congregation gave a donation that ended up being enough for us to go.”
The trips to Honduras were construction mission trips, and others went along to conduct VBS, Whitman said. The first time, about five years ago, the pastor was skeptical because the location was in the middle of nowhere, he said. “But about 300 children showed up for that Bible school from all over the place.”
This past March, the church sent another crew of about seven VBS workers, including Wanda Whitman, the pastor’s wife, and an interpreter. Again tagging along on a construction project, workers taught more than 200 children about Jesus Christ.
“When one or two gets saved, it’s worth it all,” the pastor added. “God gets the glory – I want Him to get the honor and the praise. It’s not about Dry Prong; it’s about the kingdom. We just want to help people wherever we can.”