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The history of Vacation Bible School

The history of Vacation Bible School

Last updated on: June 29, 2017 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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The history of Vacation Bible School 2017-06-28T20:39:05-04:00 Gene Veith

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This week is Vacation Bible School at our church, as well as at others I’m aware of.

Church historian Chris Gehrz at the Patheos blog The Anxious Bench (a blog about church history) gives us the history of this institution, which, like Sunday School, had its origin in ministry to poor children in the big cities.

In 1997, Prof. Gehrz observes, 4 out of 5 churches ran a VBS. In 2013, the number has dropped to 2 out of 3. That’s a major decline, but those are still big numbers.

I recall churches I’ve been in debating every year about whether to do it the next summer. After wondering if it is worth it, we always decide to do it for one more summer. Then we repeat that pattern of reluctant agreement the next year.

Do you think it’s worth it? It seems that this is one activity that really can attract the “unchurched,” since parents are often desperate to send their kids somewhere once school is out. Then again, I wonder if the VBS, as it is now practiced, with its fun, games, songs, and crafts, has the same substantive effect that it did in the early days. (I would add that CPH has what sounds like a substantive curriculum.)

From Chris Gehrz, Source: A Brief History of Vacation Bible School, The Anxious Bench:

If your church is anything like mine, it’s currently hosting hundreds of children for Vacation Bible School (VBS): a week-long program of Bible stories, worship, missions projects, crafts, and games. And if you’re anything like me, you’re both volunteering for VBS and wondering just when this model of Christian education became a staple of the church year.

In 2015 Michael Altman noted the lack of a good history of VBS. Now, I’m not the historian to write that book, but I did have some time last week to dig a bit.

In his 1964 history of Christian education, Wheaton education professor C.B. Eavey traced the idea back to Boston just after the Civil War, but it’s generally agreed that the first VBS antecedent to be held as a summer church-run activity took place starting in 1877 in Montreal, Canada. Then in 1898 Eliza Hawes, the children’s ministry director at New York City’s Baptist Church of the Epiphany, organized an “Everyday Bible School.” Originally held at a rented beer hall, attendance plummeted in 1900 when Epiphany’s pastor insisted on relocating to the church itself. The program moved back near the beer hall the following year, Hawes’ last at the church, when she ran seven separate schools.

But it was another Baptist from the same city who is most frequently credited with founding the “vacation church school” as we would recognize it: Robert G. Boville, executive secretary of the New York City Baptist Board of Missions. “He had a concern,” write James E. Reed and Ronnie Prevost, “similar to that of [18th century Sunday School founder Robert] Raikes in Gloucester [England], that children of New York be given religious instruction during their idle summers to keep them out of trouble and develop patterns for productive and upright adult living.” Or as Eavey put it: “The vacation church school was started to gather idle children into unused churches where unoccupied teachers might keep them busy in a wholesome way in a wholesome environment.”

[Keep reading. . .]

Photo from Concordia Publishing House.

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