Lessons From VBS

We started VBS at our church this week.  It is an exciting time, and those organizing the whole week have done an excellent job of organizing the people and material that are involved in making a successful VBS.  I am excited by the number of children that we have attending from our church, from other area churches, and glad that we have students that to my knowledge have no church that they presently attend.  This is truly a good thing that is happening.  And yet, every time that I see a VBS sign, I am reminded of the original purpose of VBS and the decline of biblical Christianity and its perception in our world. 

There was a time not too long ago where the church was the center of a community.  If there was an event to be had - it was happening at the church, or it was in another location but sponsored and organized by the church.  And while the church in whatever time period we are commemorating was not perfect, it was perceived in part by the community as a whole to be a benefit.  This is not just my church, this seems to be the history of the majority of churches in America.  There was a "glory days" some 30 - 60 years ago in which each church hit its stride and was making progress in reaching people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The gospel was seen as something that had impact into the lives of every man, woman and child.

Now we live in a different age.  The church has both freely given and had taken away much of its centrality in communities.  And we have a gospel that we get excited about sharing with the kids who come to  VBS.  But then we go to work and we forget the gospel is not for kids alone.  It is for their parents and grandparents.  The gospel is for their mom, their dad, their step-mom, their step-dad, for all the members of their family.  It is for our co-workers, it is for our friends, it is for our neighbors, it is for all those with whom we come in contact.  But perhaps most of all, the gospel is for us. 

This is the lesson that I learned from VBS today.  It was a reminder that not only was I preaching the gospel to the kids who came.  I was preaching the gospel to myself.  I needed to be reminded that I can find my righteousness only in the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I needed to be reminded that it was only by the gift of this righteousness, freely given in grace by God, that I can stand before God and be right.  The gospel is no less for the lost as it is for the redeemed.  And we must stop thinking that only the lost, and only the kids, and only those in other parts of the world need the gospel.  Perhaps the reason that we are not sharing the gospel as we should is that we have forgotten how important it is to us.  And when we forget that, we lose the urgency to share it with the world around it. 

Today I was reminded that I, a Baptist pastor, 37 years old, father of three, husband of one beautiful woman, I need the gospel more than anyone.  And praise be to God that His glorious Gospel is for me!