Not sure - I’m just a minion. I didn’t get the night’s schedule until half-way through our program last night.
The “Amazing Grace” is fun. Half a verse done slow to lead it in, then fast gospel for the rest. It’s just the first verse again and again, though. Someone studied up on 70’s rhythm/funky guitar for these recordings - that’s some of the best part of it.
(Hard for me to stay on melody for Amazing Grace - that song pulls at my harmony strings.)
I put together a CD of walking in/out music for the kids, it starts out with Chris Rice’s “Cartoons” - that’s a fun one. It’s got some DC Talk, Newsboys, ZOEGirl, & Third Day. Just stuff to set the mood, I hope.
Hmm. I guess “If I Had a Hammer” is out then … I’m trying to remember all the lyrics and, try as I might, I’m not coming up with God or Jesus. Funny, I have always thought of that as a Christian song.
Even if you told them not to do hand motions? (Which is what I would do if I was in charge of singing kids. Either it’s church or it’s goofy time. You can’t have both.)
I never made friends in that sort of “forced social” situations. The only one that worked was school and that’s just so long and every day that eventually you find someone who doesn’t hate you or want to call you fat. But when it was like “here’s this bunch of kids you have nothing in common with other than something your parents like to do,” I did not make any friends.
I don’t have direct experience with this, but what I do know is that when I was in middle school, and they would announce over the PA that CCD (catechism) at one of the local Catholic churches was canceled (so that the kids would know to get on the bus instead of walking to the church for CCD, since there were two big Catholic churches right near the school), all the kids who had CCD would cheer, because they all hated it. And that’s always been my impression of VBS too…that it’s something the kids are forced to do, don’t feel they can complain about to their parents, and that most of them don’t like. I hope it’s more exciting than that for some of them at least, or it would be pretty mean.
For me, VBS and such were things that I loathed going to but loved being there, if that makes any sense. I would sigh and ugh and grr when I was told I had to go every night, but looking back I enjoyed myself when was there (even if I didn’t like any of the other kids, Veggie Tales was still cool).
I think you have a mistaken idea of church. You can, in fact, have both.
During bouncy, peppy songs that didn’t have hand motions, the kids who made them up were having non-harmful, creative fun. I never had the remotest desire to squelch that - in fact, the opposite. I want them to enjoy themselves. Plus, kids are not stupid - they can tell the difference between the types of songs where bouncing around is ok and where it is not.
Someone needs to tell the churches I went to with friends as a kid about that. It was not a fun time, and vacillated between boring and quasi-threatening.
These were various Protestant churches for the most part – Congregationalist and Methodist are examples in the boring column, Evangelical Baptist and whatever the church my cousins went to was, that was in an old roller rink and had tracts in the lobby about how everyone was going to hell are examples in the threatening column. I always thought the Catholic services were sort of dreamy and interesting and pretty, but I didn’t believe the religious stuff behind them.
It wasn’t great. I think if I’d gone to a church where everyone was super nice at about the age of 8 to 12, they might have been able to sell me on the religious stuff just by being my friends. But it never happened.
This atheist isn’t going to recommend that you “spice up the discussion.” But I will beg you to avoid what my kids encountered on the very first (and last) day when they went to VBS - instructors telling them that they and their parents were going to hell if they didn’t accept Jesus as their personal saviour. :rolleyes:
Well - if you send kids to a Christian event, this is part of the Christian belief. Kinda had to expect that the beliefs would get stated. It’s a core issue. Like I said earlier, the Unitarians are over there. VBS is a Christian evangelical event.
I’m very much against what I call “condemnation preaching”, aka: “Believe or else” so they won’t hear it from me. Threatening someone is not a way to make them listen to what you have to say. Lord knows I was on the receiving end of this too much in my unbelieving days.
Well, I guess I thought that for kids 3d grade and under at least the 1st day they might start off with a little “Jesus loves you” and a Bible story or two before launching into “You’re going to hell!” The manner it occurred struck me as going somewhat beyond “stating core beliefs.” I am sure many many - probably most - people are capable of conducting VBS without being the assholes I consider these folk to have been.
Thanks all for the advice on this. It makes me feel good that by 8:30, ending time, the kids were asking for more songs. We did three more and they were enthusiastic for all.
Lots of people said I did a good job - unfortunately, this may just be buttering me up to slow my reaction times for next year’s VBS.
One more thing to go- the kids will do two songs for the congregation on Sunday. “Never Net No” will have to be one of them (a request from a 3-year old this week). Maybe “Amazing Grace” for the other - everybody knows those words.
Oh, they don’t need to butter you up before they ask you next year–they’d ask you next year whether they buttered you up or not, whether they thought you did a good job or not, whether you actually did do a good job or not. Sole criterion for “being asked to do it again next year”: you did it this year. Read that again–you did it. You acquiesced. You agreed. You did not run screaming from the room at the request, you did not pull a gun on the asker and threaten to blow her head off if she ever, ever mentioned it again, you did not do a no-show after having agreed to do it, or turn up drunk or naked or anything.
So, yup, you’re toast, next year. Be planning to be part of an Antarctic scientific expedition this time next year, that’s absolutely the only way you’re ever gonna get out of VBS 2009.
But it never happened.