NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — God often works unexpectedly. “Finding Hope: A Field Trip of Faith,” the Vacation Bible School material produced by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, is a prime example. Available March 1, “Finding Hope” is being called “a unique children’s resource designed to share the biblical concept of hope in fun and meaningful ways while leading children on a missional field trip to five communities in the U.S.”
To promote the material and to acquaint children’s workers with it, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Virginia sponsored a workshop at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond featuring national CBF congregational resource specialist Devita Parnell and a Virginia Baptist laywoman, Lisa Mason.
Susie Webb (left) and Lisa Mason review VBS material they wrote along with other women from First Baptist Church in Newport News. Their material was edited and produced by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as “Finding Hope: A Field Trip of Faith,” which will be available March 1.
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Parnell emphasizes, “We try to be good stewards of our financial resources and are very careful and strategic about what we do produce. However, when opportunities like this arise for us to partner with churches who are producing their own curriculum and materials, the CBF is able to increase its efforts in serving churches. Now that is a good story.”
But, as is often the case, there is a story behind the story. This one involves Virginia Baptist women.
Susie Webb, children’s minister at First Baptist Church of Newport News, and her fellow church member Lisa Mason were concerned that the simple biblical message of missions was being overshadowed in the fiction-based Wild West dude ranches or Polynesian islands in recent VBS material. While these themes may add an element of excitement, Webb and Mason believed children were learning more about the settings than about the Bible.
A VBS pupil from Central Baptist Church in Richmond, wears “hope” glasses made during one of the sessions. Central piloted the material for the CBF.
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Their concern led them to discover and use material produced by Passport, Inc., called Water U Doing? — material that emphasized a mission project called “watering Malawi.” This, however, was Passport’s only VBS-type material to date.
As women from the church met for dinner one night, the subject of their recently-concluded VBS came up. One asked, “What are we going to use next year?” and before the session ended, despite the fact that only Mason had previous curriculum-writing experience, they decided to write their own VBS material.
“There were mixed reactions from them,” Mason recalls. “Some thought, ‘Can we really do this?’ ”
Mason, Webb and the others listed what they wanted in the material. They wanted the children to become aware of children in other parts of the country. They wanted them to learn of very real needs, like poverty, but in a way that did not present the impoverished in an inferior light. They wanted their children to know that children in poor families were rich in other ways. They wanted their children to understand that God had gifted them and expected their gifts to be used to help others know him and to have better lives.
“We wanted to stick to Bible study and not be distracted by the costuming and decorations. God is real. The Bible is real. But so much is presented as cartoon,” said Mason. “A lot of time went into choosing the right Bible story,” remembers Webb.
Mason picked up the thought: “We wanted to make sure that the Bible stories flowed naturally into the teaching emphasis.”
During a conversation with Parnell, whom she had met previously, Mason presented their ideas and she liked what she heard. So did Bo Prosser, the CBF’s coordinator for congregational formation. They offered the CBF’s resources in designing artwork and in producing a DVD, the script for which Mason wrote. The CBF even sent someone to meet with the women during the writing process to offer suggestions.
By last summer the writing was complete enough for First Baptist of Newport News to use the VBS material their own members had written. In addition, Central Baptist Church in Richmond piloted the material, using it for its VBS last summer.
“In some ways, we were building the plane as we were flying it,” remembers Nathan Taylor, associate pastor for Christian formation and children at Central.
Still he was very pleased with the material. “Our children could actually identify with other children in the world and what they are going through, while being invited to participate in caring for them with God. There is such a — what some have called — ‘McDonaldization’ of VBS (entertainment, etc). I think there is a real thirst for more simple, meaningful content that elicits Christ-like compassion from children and that engages them in true, disciple thinking and behavior.”
The curriculum is designed for a five-day school, but may easily be adapted for fewer days.
Webb and Mason are careful to give credit to Nancy Thomas, Nancy Slate, Paula Fowler, Mary Watkins Wright, Norma Sowell, Nikki Reid and Michele Reed, each of whom contributed her own gifts to the project.