Vacation Bible School is apparently where the slippery slope ends. I picked up my daughters (one a participant, the other a helper) from VBS at noon so we could have lunch together. But they were not hungry. “Why?”I asked. “Pizza, Kit-Kat Bars, ham-salad sandwiches….,” they replied while rubbing their full tummies. I was aghast, and responded with righteous indignation: “At Vacation Bible School? You didn’t have butter cookies with holes in the middle that you put on your pinkie while eating? No purple or red Kool-Aid dipped from a big pot?” Hints of moving away from clear biblical teachings about VBS had surfaced earlier: No Saturday parade of balloon-laden cars — led by a sheriff’s car or fire truck — inviting newcomers. And the whole VBS lasts just one week. I was almost afraid to ask what else they had done or not done at VBS. To my relief, they had a daily crafts time. Yet not one ashtray or rooster picture (made with colored corn) has come home. Music was a part of their experience, thankfully, but they did not know the words to “Daily Vacation Bible School” (“Where we work, sing and play, and are happy all the day. At our daily Vacation Bible School”). I was relieved that my younger daughter recalled each of the daily Bible stories so far — though taught by a female graduate of Southern Seminary before the Boys took over and cleaned things up. Learning eternal lessons from the Good Samaritan story and the friends who dropped a sick man through the roof to Jesus are fine. But didn’t he also say that his disciples would be known by their ability to stand and sit on piano cues?
