Eric Bailey's

Today we started our Bible Day Camp at church (for those who are older than teens, this is VBS). We have been useing Group Publishings packages for the past few years. Boy does this make a difference. We don't have to originate things, and the pressure for bringing it all together is a lot less than it has been.

I run one station that various students shuffle in and out of, and this is how I think Bible Day Camps should be done. All I have to do is use the creative direction form the materials that Group Publishing sends with the package to tell the Bible Story for the day. What kind of a job is that, tell kids a Bible story. The story I enjoyed telling the best was the one from two years ago when I told the story of Elijah, but this one was right up there for the telling. The set was not near as intricate, but the story of Gideon is a fun one.

The set for Elijah was a tub with sand and rocks, and a small altar built to sacrifice a chocolate bar. Before we get to calling down fire from God to light the altar a fireman bursts in and sprays down the altar with his extinguisher and gets after me for trying to do what Elijah did. The kids loved it.

That year we also did Jonah where I build the belly of a whale. I used a fan, two large sheets of plastic and duct tape. With the fan on the lowest setting I inflated the plastic (it even pulled the carpet off the floor until I anchored it). We used flashlights to see and told the story from the belly of the whale (including being spit up at the end of the story).

The Gideon set was that of a stone ledge, three trees, a light in the roof, and a camp fire. We were up on the stone ledge and could not see down into the valley where the Midianite army was and we burst paper bags and waved glow sticks to scare them. It was fun. Tomorrow I tell the story of Daniel. I'll let you know how it goes.