My friends over at Orange Books are offering some great deals this week for their first ever Orange Books Deal Week. You can get any of the deals, but only through tomorrow. Here’s one that’s sure to help you get your on the same page and growing together:
Buy the Book Club Bundle (5 or more copies each of Creating a Lead Small Culture, Make Believe, or Married People), and get all of the following:
“What Is Orange?” (Orange Conference 2014 breakout by Reggie Joiner, audio file)
Do for a Few: A Training Event in How to Lead Small (a training and event guide)
One ticket to Orange Tour 2014
Plus, when you tweet or share on Facebook any of the deals using the hashtag #OrangeBooks, you’ll be entered to win a prize.
Go to OrangeBooks.com to learn more & be sure to come back tomorrow to learn about the last deal of the week!
My friends over at Orange Books are offering some great deals this week for their first ever Orange Books Deal Week. You can get any of the deals, any day this week, but here is today’s deal, which by the way is a little special to me. Earlier this year, I was asked to be a contributing author, so that means you have to buy it! 🙂
Buy one copy of the book Creating a Lead Small Culture, and get all of the following:
“Transitioning to a Lead Small Culture” (Orange Conference 2014 breakout by Elle Campbell and Kenny Conley, audio file)
“Say Yes to a Lead Small Culture” (Orange Conference 2014 breakout by Carey Nieuwhof, audio file)
A three-month trial membership to Weekly (an online subscription to empower your small group leaders and parents)
Plus, when you tweet or share on Facebook any of the deals using the hashtag #OrangeBooks, you’ll be entered to win a prize.
Go to OrangeBooks.com to learn more & be sure to come back tomorrow to learn about tomorrow’s great deal!
Well friends, our VBS ended last Friday. The end of VBS is always bittersweet but we had a good week. There were so many ways that I saw God working but I’ll share just a few:
Our volunteers were rock stars! They were so ready to jump in and serve in various capacities, whether leading games, helping to keep our building safe, leading meaningful discussions, being crafty, serving snacks or making sure that our sound was up and running. In fact, many of them took time off from work to be with us for the week. It was great to see our volunteers come together to make the week great!
Hearing stories of meaningful conversations happening at VBS, in the car or at home were so inspiring. Children were asking good questions and really grappling with what they saw and heard.
Seeing children worship was great! They were not only singing, they were worshiping. I know that God was pleased.
Here are a few pictures from Day 5:
Our thank-you gift to our fabulous family leaders (A Pinterest-inspired idea)Our family leaders made VBS s’more fun!
All week, our children were asked to bring in food for a local food pantry we support. Humphrey the Camel liked what we collected. 🙂
Day 5 also included taking down much of our decor so that we could prepare for our Friday night celebration service and picnic. This was the first year that we held our closing worship service on Friday night – we usually hold it on the Sunday following in lieu of our ‘normal’ worship services – but because of our church’s core values is connecting, we wanted a way to connect families to each other as well as to their child’s leaders.
The service lasted approximately 40 minutes and highlighted many of the songs the children learned in addition to a special visit from ‘Moses’. Our picnic (complete with inflatables, games, prizes and food) was a great ending to the day. Seeing families connect was a beautiful thing.
All in all, when I think back to the week, the two words that come to mind are grace and beauty. I described grace earlier in the week (you can read that here) but here’s how it was beautiful.
Seeing inter-generational ministry happening is one way that our VBS is unique. Seeing teens serve with older members of our congregation is one of the strengths of our program. Because of this, our VBS is something that seems to rally our entire church like no other event.
Seeing our staff come together and support our VBS makes me grateful to serve alongside my colleagues. Every department in our church made a contribution to our VBS. It truly is an all-church, all-staff endeavor.
Seeing the giftedness within our congregation makes me thankful that God makes us all different. Some have a knack to make things pretty; some are extremely organized; some are fun-loving; some are deeply passionate about seeing children learn about God in a Bible-based environment and want us to keep the main thing the main thing. VBS is truly a collaboration of gifts and talents.
Seeing the Holy Spirit move in the hearts of our children reminds me that despite all of our efforts, it is the Holy Spirit who prompts children to be receptive to the message of the Gospel. We want children who don’t know Jesus to accept His free gift of salvation and we want children who know Him to know and love Him more.
I am truly thankful to my fabulous team who worked so hard and tirelessly to make it a fabulous week. Once we all recover, we’ll celebrate! 🙂 To God be the Glory!
In my experience with VBS, Day 4 (Thursday) is usually the hardest day, but with God’s help and supernatural strength, we made it! (Read about Day 1 here, Day 2 here, and Day 3 here.)
By Thursday, I usually feel like I’ve been hit by a ton of bricks. I know that many of our volunteers feel the same way. so we usually try to be very intentional in keeping momentum going with volunteers who might be growing weary. Here’s what we did today to fuel and re-energize the team:
We asked volunteers to arrive 30 minutes earlier so that they could enjoy a light breakfast (bagels, coffee and juice) with us. We then made a few important announcements before leading the troop in a pep rally. I recruited one of our more energetic leaders to lead us in an energizing chant, complete with noisemakers! It was awesome!
We also began assembling gifts for volunteers. Our craft team leader assembled these gifts for her team:
Contents of these small tokens of appreciation: toilet tissue tube wrapped with paper, a tea light candle, a mint and chocolate kisses.
The finished product and a note
We are all exhausted but we’re hearing stories of life-change and it makes it all worth it!
Verse for the day:
” ‘For I am with you and will save you,’ says the Lord.”
