The Church's Summer Witness

Many christian educators are enthusiastic about summer opportunities for church education. According to Wayne Buchanan, executive director of the National Sunday School Association, “summer is one of the brightest prospects we have for Christian education. Children and youth have more time than during the school year. Their availability for longer and more frequent periods of time in church educational activities greatly enhances the potential of their Christian learning experiences.”

“Innovative” is the adjective that best describes many church programs in the summer months. Among the areas of experimentation are vacation Bible school, service projects for youth, camping, and evangelistic efforts.

Some churches hold vacation Bible school in the evenings, others have it in the mornings and afternoons, and still others have morning sessions for children and evening sessions for youth and adults. In many churches, evening programs for young people include recreation, Bible study, films, discussions, and refreshments—often under a name other than “vacation Bible school.” Mothers’ classes with special appeal to non-Christians have been an effective evangelistic tool in VBS. Some schools have been conducted much like a daycamping program, with daily field trips to points of interest, along with Bible study and crafts.

Another novel and fruitful idea is having the school in neighborhood backyards. Last summer, workers from the Racine, Wisconsin, Bible Church held VBS in twenty-one backyards throughout the city. Attendance soared from the traditional 300 in the former at-church VBS to 840, most of whom were unchurched. Harvey Martin, director of Christian education, reported 125 conversions compared with 12 the previous year.

The traditional two-week VBS is giving way to one-week schools, according to a recent nationwide survey (reported in the Research Report on Vacation Bible School Trends, Scripture Press Foundation, 1969). In this study, 48.0 per cent of the 5,076 schools in 1966 lasted ten days and 40.9 per cent lasted five. But in 1968 the five-day school led the ten-day by more than 11 per cent (49.7 per cent compared with 38.1 per cent). The percentage of schools of other lengths (such as six days, eight days, or one day a week for ten weeks) increased slightly from 10.3 in 1966 to 13.9 in 1968.

These experiments have led to an overall increase in VBS attendance, according to the Scripture Press Foundation study. However, many summer educational activities are suffering from a shortage of workers, and in most churches summer brings a decrease in Sunday-school attendance and a disbanding of children’s church. This is caused in part by the longer vacations and longer weekends now available to many American workers. Also, increased affluence has enabled many Americans to purchase cottages for weekend and summer use. The problem is heightened by the popularity of community summer programs (such as sports, scouting, camping) and increased summer-school offerings.

But these difficulties may be a blessing in disguise. Robert Marquardt, a Christian-education executive of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, believes they are forcing churches to break the “edifice complex” and to find ways to reach out from the church building to the lost during the summer.

Summertime provides special opportunities for young people to participate in service projects. More and more churches are encouraging their youth to conduct children’s Bible clubs and vacation Bible schools in rural communities, the inner city, and other out-of-the-way areas. Other young people are holding gospel services and distributing literature, and witnessing in convalescent homes, jails, hospitals, trailer parks, and migrant workers’ camps. Many local churches and several denominations have developed programs for sending their young people to visit foreign and home mission fields such as Mexico, Puerto Rico, Appalachia, Alaska, and Indian reservations in Arizona.

In many larger churches church-sponsored social gatherings for teen-agers are more frequent during June, July, and August, and regular weekly youth meetings often give way to more informal after-church singspirations on Sunday evenings, many of them held in homes.

Realizing that people welcome the refreshing and relaxing outdoor atmosphere of camps, many denominations and individual churches have developed extensive camping programs. The work of Christian Camping International has done much to stimulate interest in church-related camping. Many Christian educators think that camping is one of the best things evangelicals are doing in Christian education. Speaking of the camping ministry of the Evangelical Free Church of America, Kenneth Meyer, Christian-education executive of that denomination, observes, “It is just amazing to note what churches will commit themselves to financially and in labor in order to build a camping program for their district or region.”

Camps are said by one camp expert to be “one of the best places for winning people to Christ and helping them grow spiritually,” and are the scene of many life-changing spiritual decisions by children, youth, and adults. In 1967 the Baptist General Conference of America, for example, reported that 863 conversions and 1,736 other spiritual decisions were made at their camps.

Another exciting trend is day camping—camping from approximately 9:30 to 3:30 on one or more days each week for several weeks. Trips to nearby farms, parks, beaches, museums, and other spots of interest, combined with sports, nature hikes, Bible studies, and crafts, have high appeal to young people in the primary through junior-high age levels. Many churches are discovering that day camping is an excellent means of reaching unchurched children and youth in the community for Christ.

Some summer evangelistic efforts have been unusually successful. Chicago’s Bellevue Baptist Church showed gospel films in its parking lot on Wednesday evenings after prayer meeting, and other churches have shown them on Sunday evenings. “Films have been shown at shopping-center parking lots, at fairs, and in homes to invited guests,” reports the Rev. Lawrence Swanson, Baptist General Conference Sunday-school secretary. Some families have shown films in their front yards—an excellent way for them to take the Gospel right to their own neighborhood.

With the use of these and many other innovative ideas, summer is becoming one of the most fruitful seasons of the year for church education. Increasing numbers of churches are finding that “he that gathereth in the summer is a wise son” (Prov. 10:5)—Dr. ROY B. ZUCK, executive director, Scripture Press Foundation, Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

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