{"id":3346,"date":"2022-11-22T16:50:40","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T16:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/?p=3346"},"modified":"2022-11-22T16:50:41","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T16:50:41","slug":"whitestone-hosts-vbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/2022\/11\/22\/whitestone-hosts-vbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitestone hosts VBS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Children
Children at Whitestone Church of the Brethren Vacation Bible School. Photo by Sally Hylton. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whitestone <\/a>C<\/a>o<\/a>m<\/a>m<\/a>u<\/a>n<\/a>i<\/a>t<\/a>y<\/a> <\/a>Church of the Brethren<\/a>, a rural church in north-central Washington state, had several young families move into the area and ask about Vacation Bible School (VBS).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The congregation has an average attendance of 10-15 people and had not hosted VBS for more than 20 years because of changing demographics. Having only a few people to put it on, the
congregation searched for a family-based format that could bring family groups to the church to play together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group patterned family theme nights after the David C. Cook “Zipped to Gather” curriculum, hosting three themed evening events: Water World\/Living Water, Retro Field Day\/Run the Good Race, and Carnival\/Joy\u2014where families attended together for fun and reflection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The church provided games each week according to the evening’s theme, followed by songs and snacks. There was a talk time integrating the games and biblical principles. The experience was received with enthusiasm and good participation from neighboring families and churches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Children
Hopscotch at Whitestone Church of the Brethren Vacation Bible School. Photo by Sally Hylton. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"Children
Ice age activity at Whitestone Church of the Brethren Vacation Bible School. Photo by Sally Hylton. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This story originally appeared in Messenger magazine. Subscribe to Messenger here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whitestone Church of the Brethren hosted a Vacation Bible School with a family-based format that could bring family groups to the church to play together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[429,418,427,428,426],"class_list":["post-3346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pacific-northwest","tag-31-180","tag-pacific-northwest-district","tag-vacation-bible-school","tag-vbs","tag-whitestone-church-of-the-brethren"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}