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WAVENEY ANN MOOREThese days, themes, props and interactive learning enhance vacation Bible school and Hebrew day camp.
ST. PETERSBURG - The vacation Bible school she's organizing for next week will be unlike the summer ritual of her now-grown children's day, acknowledges Anne Slocumb, director of children's ministries at First United Methodist Church.
Instead of being plopped down in one room to listen to a Bible story and make crafts, today's youngsters more often than not are being shuttled from one teaching station to another, and spiritual lessons are reinforced with each song they sing, craft they make and the very snacks they eat.
No more do churches limit the programs to children. Some invite entire families and cater to their hectic schedules with evening or weekend sessions, or as one local church is doing, offering the convenience of a daylong program.
And summertime religious programs aren't the sole province of Christian groups. At Congregation B'nai Israel of St. Petersburg, Jewish children will attend a Passport to Hebrew day camp that will include prayers and other activities such as baking Hebrew letter cookies and embarking on a virtual tour of Israel.
Leaders of today's vacation Bible schools speak enthusiastically about the resources that are available to help them plan for the programs. One curriculum, Scuba, an acronym for "Super Cool Undersea Bible Adventure," appears to be popular with local churches this year.
On Sunday, volunteers at First Baptist Church of St. Petersburg put the finishing touches on undersea scenery for the Scuba program that's being held this week. In the children's wing of the immense campus, corridors were awash with colorful fish mobiles and purple and green streamers hanging from ceilings. Cutouts, including a smiling starfish sporting a purple jumper, decorated the walls.
In the multipurpose room, an underwater scene was being created on the stage. In this room, vacation Bible school students would gather at the start and end of each day. One thing was certain, the gatherings would not be sedate.
"We just want them really pumped up and excited," Michelle Jockers, a co-worship and praise leader, said Sunday.
Vacation Bible school certainly has changed, said Mrs. Slocumb of First United Methodist, where next week's program is "maxed out" with 220 children.
"They don't stay in one room like my children did," she said. "What I remember my children doing, is they would just sit and they would have work papers."
In the Scuba program being offered by her church across from Williams Park, "The Bible point is reinforced in several forms, several times a day ... in the storytelling room, in the arts and crafts, in the snacks," Mrs. Slocumb said.
At the five-year-old Souls Harvest Fellowship at 2361 Seventh Ave. S, vacation Bible school is a new adventure. The congregation has erected a 6-foot wooden pyramid on its grounds, in keeping with the vacation Bible school theme "Treasures of the Nile on an Expedition to Jesus."
"We want people to drive past and wonder what in the world they're doing out there, and hopefully that will make them want to join us," said the pastor's wife, Kimberly Anderson, who is organizing the program, June 9-13.
Sessions will be held in the evenings.
"We just felt that we would get more adult participation. We don't want people to just drop off their kids," Mrs. Anderson said.
Grownups will study the book of Exodus.
Allendale United Methodist Church also is planning for adult involvement. Its program, "Lighthouse Families: Shining God's Light," will begin on June 20 and continue the following day. Participants will be grouped in families that can be biological or simply created or expanded as desired.
The program will be intergenerational, said Gail Stark, who is organizing the vacation Bible school at the church at 3803 Haines Road N.
"I certainly understand the value of intergenerational programs," said Ms. Stark, a gerontologist with the West Central Florida Area Agency on Aging Inc.
"Today's schedules fragment families and grandparents often live far away. We will be making vacation Bible school families."
Also trying a new approach is American Baptist Church of the Beatitudes. The congregation, which is working to attract young families, is holding its first vacation Bible school. The weeklong program, which starts on July 7, is being offered with Woodlawn Presbyterian Church and will run all day.
"Basically, we were just thinking that it would be less stressful and more convenient for parents to have their children stay all day than to have to find a way to have their children picked up at 12:30 like most other vacation Bible schools," said Danny Lee, neighborhood/youth director of ministries at American Baptist Church.
Organizing a vacation Bible school can be as simple as purchasing a kit from a store. Family Christian Stores in Pinellas Park, part of a large national chain, held a workshop in March to help churches plan their summer programs.
"Most programs are either one week or two," said store manager Robert Brown, adding that sessions generally are offered for children from kindergarten to about sixth or seventh grade.
Vacation Bible school kits range from less than $100 to over $500, he said, and can be enhanced with add-ons that can cause the price to rise into the thousands. Brown said the most popular programs this year are Son Harvest by Gospel Light in Ventura, Calif., and Scuba, which is from Group Publishing Inc. in Loveland, Colo.
The Pinellas Park store is where Ruth Caramico, a Sunday school teacher at St. Giles' Episcopal Church in Pinellas Park, shopped for that congregation's vacation Bible school.
The church, at 8271 52nd St. N, is holding its program in the evenings, beginning Sunday and ending on June 12.
"It works with today's schedule," Mrs. Caramico, a mother of four, said of the program's evening hours.
At Congregation B'nai Israel, the synagogue's weeklong Passport to Hebrew program will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. beginning on June 9. Ilana Dayan, an Israeli educator, created the first-time program for children entering grades 4-7. Students will play the Human Board Game, taking the Shvil Ha'Zahav, or the Golden Path, to win prizes and increase their Hebrew vocabulary. They also will star as tourists in a virtual tour of Israel.
"They will be working on a kibbutz. They are going to be eating at an Israeli cafe. There's an archaeologist who is going to be coming," said Bonnie Halprin, director at Congregation B'nai Israel's Pauline Rivkind Preschool.
"By the end of the week, they should pretty much feel that they have been on a trip through Israel. I'm really excited about it. ... As a parent, the importance for me in having my children attend this, is that they are being immersed in their Jewish religion."
Regardless of faith, summertime religious school shouldn't be boring for either teachers or students.
"The medium has changed," the Rev. Laney Pitt, children's pastor at First Baptist Church, said of the high-energy, interactive methods used to teach to children. "It's the way they learn."