Sermon: Look At Yourself (James 1:22-25)

Listen to sermon here.

Sermon preached at New Life Fellowship Baptist Church on July 27, 2008

Vacation Bible School a Blessing

We just completed our fourth Vacation Bible School at New Life Fellowship. This year was unique in that it was the first time that we ran the whole program as a church with out assistance from other groups or churches. The first year after the church launched we were assisted by Neighborhood Bible Time. The next two years we were assisted by Pastor Pemberthy and the Stanfordville Baptist Church Youth Group.

I was particularly excited to see the way our own people banded together and worked so hard to make it all such a great blessing and ministry. We had individuals pouring many hours into decorating, advertising, preparing games and crafts, bringing and serving snacks, overseeing our verse memory, our VBS store, and just generally helping out by watching out for kids. Each day we had at least fifteen or twenty adults helping out.

In addition to all the adult help we were blessed to have our teens working throughout the week. It was a fantastic opportunity for our teens to generally serve and be used by God. Most of the boys helped in the games and recreation time. This was a much needed area. The boys also helped in the set up and clean up each day. The girls worked directly with the children and were divided up by age group. We had two girls with the the K-1st grade class, and in each or the other three classes.

Both the boys and girls helped out each day with the skits at the end. These skits are always a particular attraction for the kids.

Our theme this year was "All God's Creatures" and we had a contest each day allowing the children to bring in various types of bugs, frogs, lizards, snakes, and other critters. It was very interesting to see the little getting excited about collecting all the critters. (I'm sure all the moms are really pleased with me right now too.)

On Thursday we were privileged to have Pete from the Pocono Snake and Animal farm come to give a demonstration involving two live turtles, a live snake, and a live fox. The kids loved it but the exciting part was the way Pete taught the children about God's creation. Pete is a believer and he emphasized the Genesis Creation by God.

On Friday we drew our Bible lesson time to a conclusion with a salvation invitation. Over twenty children and at least on adult responded to the invitation. To God be the glory!

We are already looking forward to next year's VBS. Hope you can make it.