Vacation Bible School (VBS) is an incredible opportunity to serve and worship with children. Everything from the decorations to the music and dancing, to the over-caffeinated volunteers jumping around in crazy costumes, to the Bible stories that come alive to children for the very first time. This one week out of the year is such a pivotal moment for so many kids.

As a VBS volunteer, there’s so much to talk through and understand beforehand to not only keep track of all the children but to provide them with a fun and spiritually stimulating experience. There’s the decorating, the dance moves to learn, the lesson planning. It’s a lot of work and certainly a lot of information.

Then as a parent, there is a lot of nervous excitement and sometimes a little chaos keeping up with everything VBS-related. There are a lot of questions that parents have. Such as…

• Who do I leave my child(ren) with?
• Where do I pick them up?
• What are they doing all morning?

Churches have gotten so creative with how they execute this event, however, one hurdle remains for most of them: COMMUNICATION

• How do we effectively communicate with our volunteers and parents?
• How can we create long-term relationships with these families?
• How do we make sure parents feel comfortable dropping their kids off with us?
• How do we ensure our volunteers feel known, noticed, and loved?

Have you struggled with any of these questions?

I am happy to share that you don’t need to ask these questions anymore.

I’m going to show you HOW to effectively communicate with your volunteers and parents at your next VBS so you can build genuine relationships, execute an amazing event, and create a long-term impact for your church long after your VBS is over.

Okay so first, I’m going to walk you through the comprehensive volunteer communication plan. I think we can all agree that VBS is one of those all-hands-on-deck types of events. You need as many volunteers as possible! So you want to start thinking very early on about recruiting volunteers and training them to serve with you at VBS.

How to recruit VBS volunteers

Would you like to know a super simple way to recruit volunteers? I’ve got two messages for you to send out. Yep, that’s it, just two messages. The first one is a text message.

Check out some of these statistics: 26 billion text messages are being sent each and every day. Text messages have a 98% percent open rate; email comes in second at a low 20% open rate! And 90% of texts are read within the first 3 minutes of being received.

Doesn’t that blow your mind a little bit?

So the text message I want you to send is to all of your current kids’ ministry volunteers. This is a natural place to start with recruiting because these are people who already love serving with kids, are invested in the kids’ ministry, and will likely be on board for helping in some capacity at vacation bible school! The text could be as simple as something like this…

Hey Emily! We’re so excited for VBS this year. We’re looking for volunteers to join our team, & we think you’d be great! You’ll get the opportunity to love on, invest in, & encourage kids as they learn who God is. Is that something you’d be interested in being a part of? -Sarah

Hopefully, you’ll get some great responses from this and have at least a group of core volunteers who are committed to helping. But you would be remiss if you didn’t extend an offer to be a part of this amazing event to your entire congregation.

There are plenty of people who would love to help at Vacation Bible School who aren’t serving regularly in kids ministry. We recommend sending an email out to your entire congregation asking people to consider volunteering at your upcoming VBS. Maybe you just invite them to an informational meeting, ask them to commit by responding to your email or encourage them to fill out a form on your website. However you like to recruit volunteers is up to you, but extending this ask is important.

As a Text In Church user, you can schedule all of these messages ahead of time to make sure the right people get the right message at exactly the right time. You’re the VBS director. You are likely juggling 97 other things right now, right? Why not use the technology at your fingertips to take one thing off your to-do list!

Automatically schedule and send these important messages and eliminate the stress of potentially forgetting or scrambling to do it last minute. Start a free trial of Text In Church to save you time and eliminate stress!

After you’ve done some communication around recruiting, it’s time to train them and keep them engaged so they actually show up and serve. It is important to focus on your intention with your volunteers. Yes, we want them to be well prepared for how they will serve, we want them to feel connected to the bigger mission and know what they’re doing is important, and we want them to feel deeply appreciated. However, you also have an opportunity to steward the hearts of these volunteers. Remember that these people are sheep in your flock as well.

Maybe they’re just volunteering at Vacation Bible School because they love kids. Maybe they’re still doing a lot of questioning and searching in their own faith journey, but VBS sounded like a fun way to spend the week. A lot of the communication we recommend is informed by the posture of wanting to disciple these people as well as the kids and parents who participate in VBS.

Now, I’m assuming you have some sort of training or onboarding process for your volunteers. You’ll want to make sure you have that nailed down and sent out to your volunteers in plenty of time so they can block off their calendars. Here’s an example of a training reminder message, giving the date ahead of time to ensure a higher rate of attendance.

Thank you for volunteering at Hope City Church’s VBS. Because of you, more lives will be reached in our community. I’ll be in touch with more information, but in the meantime, save the date for June 20-24 from 8:30-11:30 for our incredible event. We plan to do a full training on the 19th!

Thanks for using your gifts!

-Sarah

Make sure you send them a reminder (or two) about it because life is crazy!

It’s also important to stay in touch with your volunteers leading up to the event. You want them to feel prepared logistically, but you also want them to be praying for the kids and families they will be serving. You want their own hearts to be softened toward how God will work during VBS, to have a posture of discipleship rather than just being laser focused on the tasks at hand. Volunteers and kids alike should have their hearts prepared for a week of worship, fellowship, and Bible study.

Here’s an example text message you could send…

We are just two weeks away from VBS! Join me in prayer for the kids and families that plan to attend. I’m also asking God for boldness and courage for those on the edge of signing up to take the next step. God is moving!

We have these done-for-you message templates inside our VBS Communication Plan that you can easily copy and paste! Download this free resource here.

Okay, now let’s talk about volunteer communication during the event. VBS is unique because it’s a single event, but it’s a week-long. It can be tiring for volunteers. There can be struggles when, for example, things that happen on Tuesday don’t get talked about before the morning ends, and then it’s Thursday before they have time or remember to bring it back up. So having open communication every day is so important for volunteers to stay engaged, feel supported, and keep you in the know.

Here’s an example of what we recommend sending to volunteers on a Vacation Bible School day.

First thing in the morning, send a text message that goes something like this…

Happy Tuesday! So excited for another great day. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to reach out!

Then, that same day, in the afternoon, send another text message:

Wow, another incredible day! Any cool stories you’d like to share?

We recommend sending two text messages a day throughout the entire week. These messages encourage your volunteers, show your appreciation, remind them of the impact they are making, and ask if they need any help or support. What I like about the afternoon text message is that it can provide you with some really cool testimonies about what God is doing at your VBS and you can share those with your whole congregation.

So, again, these messages are working to accomplish your goal of executing a high quality event with competent volunteers while also being mindful that each volunteer is a human being with their own needs and spirituality that you are shepherding.

After VBS, we recommend asking your volunteers for feedback. The easiest way to do this is simply by creating a survey. This gives some parameters so people know what kind of feedback you want. Here’s an example of how we’d send this out…

It’s really important to me that all volunteers feel supported, and we want to continue to improve the experience. I’d love to hear your feedback on what you liked or what could be better for you as a volunteer. [LINK TO SURVEY]

Sometimes leaving it open to “send me your feedback” will mean you won’t hear from a lot of people and others will send a LOT of feedback that frankly you just can’t control. A survey is a great way to ask for the type of information you want.

The second piece of this VBS Communication Plan is focused on the parents and families of the kids who attend your event. Parent Communication at VBS is something we have gotten really passionate about. So many churches have been missing out on a huge opportunity to follow-up with the families of kids who attend VBS because churches have no way of connecting with each parent at drop off or  they don’t have a way to organize contact information.

We listened, we learned, and we now have a strategy we know is impactful for relationship building and also for keeping parents informed and confident with leaving their children in your care.

The first thing I want to talk through is registration. You may already have your own system for registering. If you do, that’s great. The most important thing about registration is that you have some sort of confirmation that gives parents all the key information they need. And also that you get their contact information.

So as long as your current registration process can do those two things, you can translate everything we talk about to that. If you don’t currently have a good process for registration, or you’re looking to find a better one, you can do all of the sign-ups, confirmation messages, and follow-up messaging through Text In Church.

You can have your VBS registration and communication in one place with Text In Church. Start a free trial of Text In Church to see just how easy it is.

I recommend getting people excited and letting them know that registration is open. If you have everyone’s contact information from VBS last year, use that. If not, reach out to all of the families you have in your system from Sunday school and send them a text message hyping it up! This is a message you could send:

Exciting news! Registration is open for this year’s VBS. We are so glad you were able to join us last year and would love to have you come again!

Get people excited and expectant for future communication!

Once you have registration open, make sure you have a confirmation cued up for anyone who registers. We like a simple text message thanking them for registering and telling them to check their email for all the details. Here is an example…

Hi there, Anna!

Thank you so much for registering for Vacation Bible School 2022 at Hope City Church. This year, we will be going off-road for an Adventure through the colorful canyons and sunbaked trails of the southwest. By exploring God’s awesomeness, kids will form a rock-solid faith for the road ahead. We are THRILLED to invest in your child(ren) this week, as well as so many other kids from our community. We are focused on pouring God’s love out and having a blast while we do it!

Here are some important details to make note of:

Date: June 20-24
Time: 9:00-11:30 am
Location: Hope City Church
Notes: Save the date for June 24 at 6 pm for our closing ceremony

Share this link with your friends or family who might be interested! LINK

Looking forward to a great week of VBS!!

-Sarah

This is still just the very basics and I know all of this information lives on your website, flyers, and social media posts, but you still need to send it to parents. I promise. It’s safe to assume they may not know any of the information they actually need to know, so providing it in this email is vital.

Now, this is not the end of your pre-event communication. We recommend sending at least four messages starting two weeks before Vacation Bible School starts to make sure that parents have all the details they need, that they get reminders, and so they have the opportunity to ask any questions they may have. This is a great way to build trust with the parents not only for this event, but for future communication.

All of these messages are already written and ready for you to copy and paste in our Ultimate VBS Communication Plan!

And just like we did with volunteers, we also recommend messaging parents multiple times each day during the week of the event. We’ve seen from churches we work with that inviting the parents into consistent communication regarding their child’s spiritual experiences can only help the family unit and the spirituality of the parents as well. We want them to talk to their kids about what they learned at VBS, we want parents to ask questions and dig deeper, we want to hear what’s going on in their life, and honestly, they’re probably not going to offer that information. You have to ask.

So get in the habit of communicating often, not just at VBS, but in general.

Also, I can’t emphasize enough how much more confident it makes parents feel about trusting you with their children. VBS is a big commitment. That’s three hours per day for five days that they’re giving you their children. Show them you don’t take that lightly by over communicating what’s happening, what they can expect, and how to get in contact with you.

Alright, the final piece of parent communication at VBS is the follow-up after. This is super important and thankfully follow-up isn’t complicated. It’s simply taking an opportunity to invite this family into your church.

Send a few text messages to invite them to service, a text to ask how you could pray for them this week, or a text message inviting them to your church’s next event. You have the incredible opportunity at this point to be in continued communication with these families who may not belong to a faith community. So don’t miss it.

Don’t talk yourself out of it by saying they don’t want to hear from you or that you’re too busy. If the family doesn’t want to hear from you, they’ll tell you. Please, don’t feel like you are going to bother or annoy people. People want to feel invited and included, so take every opportunity to invite and include them in what your church community is doing.

Here are two simple examples of messages you can send:

Is there anything we can be praying about for your family this week?

Hey there! It was great to have your family this summer at VBS. We are kicking off our children’s programs on September 4 and would love to have you join us!

So simple, right?

It’s undeniable that communication is vital at a VBS event. Not only for volunteers, but for parents too. We know that you are busy with a long to-do list and that communication is just one part of this big event.

That’s where Text In Church can help. Save hours of time and have confidence knowing the right message is going to the right person at the right time with our automated workflows and done-for-you messages.

Start your FREE trial of Text In Church to see not only how easy it is, but how it will help you build lasting impact with your VBS volunteers and parents.

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