Vacation Bible School was the highlight of my year. It was an event that I was all in and extremely excited about.

One year we had a space theme, so I built a 16-foot tall space shuttle in our worship center.

Before we sent the kids off to their rotations, I would do a countdown and smoke would shoot out of the combustion chamber of the rocket.

Sadly, the smoke machine only worked half the time.

What I remember was hundreds of hours of preparation.

We would work a full week ahead of time decorating the buildings.

We were physically and emotionally wiped out before the day when VBS started.

After two years of seeing mostly our own church kids in attendance, I began to seek the Lord about taking VBS off campus from our church.

As the doors opened and we moved off campus, we were able to impact more children and their families than we ever had in-house at our church.

In fact, we were seeing many more children come to know Christ that week.

Here are some advantages of going off-campus:

1. There is very little prep time. When you go off campus, there is no decorating because you are going to apartments, mobile home parks, schools, and the like.
2. More people can be involved. We saw entire families getting involved at multiple locations. Children ministered alongside their parents.
3. The cost is significantly less. The money we saved from going off campus we invested in Bibles to give to children and their families.
4. You are going where people live. Amazingly, when you do ministry at a local apartment complex, families are very excited about you coming where they live. We had a greater impact because we were willing to move from comfortable to uncomfortable for the Lord.

As a children’s pastor for more than 33 years, outreach is my passion.

When I took our church off campus, we reached more people across the board.

We also saw the lives of many of our church members changed forever.

Their hearts became compassionate for the lost, and it made it easier for them to become kingdom focused.

I have put together a brief video called “Eight Advantages of Taking VBS Off-Campus.”

I will share my experience with you and give you ideas for you to move your church out into your community.