Stressing and Obsessing with VBS Decorating

To decorate or not to decorate, or maybe the real question should be, "Just how much should we decorate our church for VBS?"

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Let's start with asking why we decorate in the first place. I think we decorate for VBS for the same reasons that we theme our children's areas or church platforms. It creates a "wow" effect. It makes VBS feel like something special. And it sends a message that you cared enough to make the place special for your VBS guests. That "wow" effect makes a very good first impression - so it is important.

So how much decoration does it take to get that message out? Only you and your team can decide that. I just want to give you some ideas for getting the most bang for your buck in this post.

Sanctuaries take a lot of work to make an impact. We share our decorations with another church. This year they made these big coral reefs for on the platform. We had jelly fish hanging from the lights and cardboard water bubbles on the walls.

The short video below shows what we did in a small walk through room and in our craft room. We covered both in blue. For about $70 you can buy a 1000 foot roll of colored paper. We used less than 1/2 of it to cover our craft room. In the smaller room we used blue plastic which had been used 2 years running. We added some Dollar Store plastic tablecloths.

Decorating for VBS

Recently our church had the opportunity to be involved in a collaborative VBS. We partnered with two other churches. The VBS was actually held twice, once at the “mother” church and then again at our church a month later. 

We moved all of the decorations down to our church and

DIY Theming Part 2 - Dignified Doors

In my last blog post I wrote about some DIY tools available through online sites to theme, remodel, or just spruce up your children’s area. In this post and the next, I want to show you what we

DIY Theming That Doesn't Look Like You Did It Yourself

Earlier, I wrote a blog post about the DIY remodel of the children’s area in our church building. I wanted to do the work ourselves to save money, but I had one stipulation: I did not want

Bible Times Sunday School Room

This room came about when we were doing a VBS a few years back. The program had scenery you could project onto the wall of a room to make it look like the inside of a Bible time’s home.  I thought we had some rolls of white paper we had made look like stone, and so I planned on doing the whole room instead of just one wall.

Two things changed that.