SCL

The cartel is already at work in my church. And it over a month until VBS. I think I shall refer to them as the cartel mostly because they know they are and will enjoy the title.

That’s awesome. I’m actually our church’s VBS Director and that is exactly what I will be doing tomorrow: decorating the entire church for our VBS. Woo hoo.

I was PART of the cartel!!! Seriously…my mom and her best friend ran the show, and they (only half jokingly) deemed me “third in command.” Because if one of the teachers needed to know something about the order of the day, where a supply was, or whatever, and couldn’t find my mom, they’d just ask me. And if I didn’t know the answer, I’d make one up.

We actually had a hard time getting teachers to show up and decorate their rooms. So the Sunday before VBS started, we began offering them lunch (potluck, of course – church people are suckers for casseroles!) after church, followed by a mandatory VBS meeting, and then “time to decorate their rooms” in which the cartel stood over them with tazers. Just kidding about the tazers…but I think it’s only because my mom never thought of them!!!

I was a cocky, snot-nosed high school/college kid, and I pretty much did what I wanted as far as crafts or whatever my area was that year. Even if it went outside “the book.” And if my methods were questioned? “You should be happy I’m here helping with VBS and not out having sex or taking drugs.” You can’t argue with logic like that!!

I did a History Day project. Six years ago I did a documentary film on the Columbine Massacre. However, being only four years after the incident, I lost at the state competition. They weren’t able to judge the impact of such an event so closely to it’s occurrence. Too bad, because any news story that talks about teenage violence immediately mentions the Columbine incident.

My brother, on the other hand went to National History Day with a drama about the Rwandan Genocide. He did reasonably well too.

However, the secret to winning the National History Day competition is to do a project about children- say the Orphan Train, or children who fought in the civil war.

If you are content with only making it to the national competition, you simply need to highlight some event that glamorizes some famous individual from your state. In Iowa, that’s Norman E Borlaug or James Van Allen. (Look them up, they’re pretty cool).

yes, some people (including myself) have a whole tackle box filled w/ art supplies. and i thought it was a genius idea

back over 10 years ago after being too old to be a student at vbs i started helping out w/ the 6th grade. best part was i was in charge of all the 5th and 6th grade table centerpieces. yes, centerpieces. we must have gotten fancy. but anyway i loved being part of the decorating team! i remember setting up centerpieces from jungle themes that included fake waterfalls and those mini plastic lizards and snakes to an outerspace themed year where i came up with close to 20 rocket ships made up out of the tubular shaped cardboard from paper towel or toilet paper.

all i know is i used a ton of rubber cement in my crafting years and i think i know why you have to be 18 now to purchase it. also got quite good at using a hot glue gun.

our vbs director enlists her husband to decorate. he’s a carpenter and makes these elaborate villages or veggie-tale land. best part, she lets the kids take the stuff home at the end of the week. thanks leader of the cartel…now my son has a massive palm tree in his room. you can’t just sneak that into garbage with someone noticing.

Our church has in the new handbook a rule outlawing glitter. I kid you not. Our custodians cannot sweep it up properly so it has been banned!

While not a member of the VBSDC, one year my mom dressed a life-size cut out of Bogart from Casablanca in my dad’s bathrobe as a classroom decoration…

haha. i just was talking to my brother last night about my mom and grandma riding down to the church to spend 7 hours turning an 8×8 sunday school classroom into a camp ground with a fire in the middle. apparently the pastor stopped them at really having a fire in the middle of the room. weird. VBS, the only place where the church can almost be destroyed year after year and the old people still support it 100% as a youth function.

1) Why’d you get a D? Because it didn’t look nice? That sucks.

2) I really am not creative and will probably be relegated to Orange Drink duty.

I was allowed to decorate my VBS room when I was a teen assistant one year, and I used Scotch tape instead of the VBS-approved-wall-adhesive. When the tape was removed, it took the paint clean off the walls. The cartel and the janitor didn’t talk to me for MONTHS, and I never got to decorate a room again (I’m 29 now, and STILL!)

all that decorating they do to make VBS look cool and yet the VBS rooms still smell like week old diaper/6th grade b.o….where’s a can of air freshener in those secret little boxes….

I once got myself into pretty deep waters with my church’s Cartel. I was a church secretary at the time, and the Children’s Ministry Team had neglected to put Decorating Day on the master calendar.

When they came in to transform our auditorium into the Arctic (3 weeks before VBS, mind you) and I told them they couldn’t because there was a wedding the next day, their idea was to have an Arctic-themed wedding- how DARE this young couple impede on their decorating plans??? How ever will our church know about VBS if they aren’t in a make-shift igloo to remind them?

It was scary. I had to hire the Worship Pastor as my bodyguard for the next month…

Ha ha. My wife has been a VBS decorating lead for the last two years. It seriously becomes a 40 a week job in the weeks leading up to VBS. There are seriously about 400-700 man hours put into decorating for VBS, and we have a small church.
I will say though that she has a love/hate relationship with it. She really wants it to be better than last year (and the other 5 churches in the area who are doing the exact same Group VBS) but it really is an insane amount of work and a surprising amount of pressure.

This is so true, and absolutely hilarious!!!! I am so part of the cartel…

Hi. My name is Amy, and I’m part of the VBS Cartel.

I got “the list” last week at church. In order to help the Cartel with their monumental task we’ve been asked to help contribute paraphernalia to the cause. We are to donate any number of important items to make the VBS transformation go more smoothly. And thus the list of old newspapers, popsicle sticks, grocery bags, crayons, tin foil etc ran on. I decided I’d contribute the lentils. Because what’s a VBS program without dried beans glued to something!

Oh, and my History Day project, circa 1986, was a slide show on the Japanese Internment camps from WWII. Complete with Depeche Mode’s “People Are People” running on a loop in the background. Sweet!

psst Jon you told me that when this came up to remind you to credit me. It is awkward though because I feel wierd about it…IT WAS MY IDEA GIVE ME MY CREDIT!!! Really I’m not like that I would rather sit quietly in the background and smile secretly knowing I had the idea.

I also did a History Day project, it was in 8th grade and it was on Harriet Tubman and I made it to the state competition. I don’t know how, because my presentation stunk, but I did and it was pretty exciting.

“they will swoop in like eagles and confiscate your craft products”
Or… they can swoop in on wings like eagles… either way, I hope someone get’s song suckered because since your post yesterday, that song has been stuck in my head. UGH!

Also, I got sucked into VBS this year. I feel like I enlisted into VBS. “It’s a 6 week commitment” she warned. Now all I have to do is sign on the dotted line with my blood…

At my old church, we bought treats from Dollar Tree. I don’t car if you crackers taste stale or your juice is watered down! You will drink/eat it and you will like it! The audacity of some kids…

VBS has reached new levels of awesomeness thanks to people in the cartel.

I used to watch crappy puppet shows, sing “Father Abraham” and stare at lame-o flannel board stories.

Kids today get a multi-media production and fabulous prizes. Plus, they can go around to forty different VBS events in one summer and collect a entire wardrobe of t-shirts … saving their poor parents lots of money. (not that my kids ever did that)

lucky!

How many empty 2 liter dr.pepper bottles can you fit into a 2002 dodge caravan?
Answer: 325. But just barely, and be sure there’s no one in the passenger seat, and call ahead to the designated drop off point. You will require help when you open the doors and EVERY STINKING ONE of those bottles comes crashing out like the red sea on pharoah’s army.

Just one of many reasons I decided VBS crafts director was not my spiritual gift. Wow. I didn’t realize I was still so bitter abot that!

Where we are we pass the decorations along to the next church having VBS. It is best to be a church in one of the middle weeks. The first VBS is a little sparse. As the summer progresses, the accumulated awesome decorations from the various cartels make VBS pretty spectacular. It is best not to be the last VBS. The decorations are great but it may take an extra trash pickup trip to get rid of everything.

As I sit in my office (yes I am a Kid’s Minister and sadly one of those whose crayons and tissue paper were confiscated because I too AM NOT even remotely artistic)the walls down my kid’s hall have been uniquely, garishly and intimidatingly adorned with an entire underwater seen…complete with scuba divers, treasure chests and giant-kick-a** jelly fish!…and ALL of it was created with litearly HUNDREDS of rolls of butcher paper…and yes, it is VERY scary…BUT my kids will LOVE it on Sunday morning!!!

I’m crafts……i don’t need no stinking decorations……

One VBS year (the year I was VERY pregnant) I had my husband chopping bamboo the day before VBS and then constructing a full size foot bridge for the children to pass over to get into “China.” Not sure there are a lot of foot bridge’s in China, but my Mississippi-Southern Baptist-VBS (& pregnant) self certainly felt it was completely necessary…

you have definitely been at my church…. this is AWESOME!!!!!! i once used my artistic gifts to design a skyline… this was a very long project… the cartel swept in and destroyed this work… and opted for a much cheesier solution. ugh. that was my last year in vbs design

Speaking of VBS, have you considered a send-up of all the parents who, instead of actually having to tend their children all summer, just send them to a different VBS every week?

I’m a history teacher, and if you could have showed the historical relevance, I would have passed you with at least a B. I always like creativity in projects.

When I did my student teaching, this one kid that I had in my Junior civics class asked me how long this paper I had assigned was supposed to be. Given that I had already said how long it was supposed to be three times, I told him that it had to be exactly 500 words, every other word bolded, every third word underlined, and that it had to be printed landscape style.

Well, suffice it to say, he did it. I laughed, he laughed, I gave him a quick verbal quiz to make sure he knew the material, and he got an A.

As a side note, he had a sister in 4th grade that was the coolest little girl ever. She used to come to my classroom after school (it was a k-12 small country school) and try to make me think of words that she couldn’t spell. It’s pretty amazing when a fourth grader can spell out things like “superfluous” and “cybernetic”.

I’M A PROUD MEMBER OF THE VBSDC!!! I don’t go running around telling the other teachers how to decorate though— I’m competitive— I work my crepe paper, stapler, dollar store props and other decorations into my area (the CRAFTS STATION – no seriously!!) and make it look FANTASTIC so everyone else’s areas can’t even compare!!! I’m the VBS Director this year (And still doing the crafts!) so I get to expand my creative craftiness into the sanctuary— IT’S GOING TO BE *AWESOME* THIS YEAR!!!!!!!! mwaah-hahaha–
~Lisa~

I am a children’s pastor and I have come to the conclusion that the VBS arms race is for the adults and not the kids. There is no reason to spend thousands of dollars on cardboard, tape, and paint when the kids have an equally good time if you throw in a good game of dodge ball in with your lesson. I know it is supposed to be for outreach, but whenever I ask to invite community kids groups I just get told we do not have enough workers or space. This is not for church kids!

I love it….I probably spend more time on VBS decorations that I do anyother thing (in my life). Along with my faithful side=kick (my mom), we start months ahead of time getting things together. Honestly, we usually take a few weeks off after VBS and then start on next years. I destroy my house and office to accomodate my decorations….Yes, the cartel is alive and well in Souther Baptist Churches, and I, my friends, are a mastermind in it.

We're allowed to decorate however we want at our VBS. For the past couple of years, they even let people paint the walls. It started with a fish mural. This year one room is painted to look like the inside of a barn. My parents and I built a shed thing in one of the rooms. Anyway, all that to say, it would appear the cartel hasn't made it to my church yet. Maybe they won't.