VBS is one of the most complex ministry outreaches in children’s ministries. It takes 3-6 months to put on a one-week event for tons of kids and a major part of the kidmin annual rhythm.

One of the more complex yet essential parts of VBS is the schedule. It answers the question, “How are you going to get multiple groups of kids to multiple rooms throughout your campus all at the same time, not lose anyone, make time for bathroom breaks, and still get all the content covered?”

While most curriculums have their own suggested schedule based on their proprietary structure, I’ve found most of them follow the same model. I’ve used the same basic schedule template for the last 20 years and today, I’m sharing it with you.

Click here to download your VBS Schedule templates.

Whatever you use for your schedule there are 5 essential questions you need to ask when creating it.

1. Is this a Day or Night VBS?

The first question you have to answer is what time of day you want to do your VBS. Personally, I’m a fan of nighttime VBS because I can get a lot more volunteers. Working parents, especially men, will find it difficult to take time off. However, I found doing it at night alleviates this problem.

While many churches have success during the day, usually those teams are full of teenagers and stay-at-home moms. Yes, you can ask people to take a week of vacation to serve, but for me, that’s a big ask, and I’d rather make it as easy as possible for someone to volunteer.

If you do it during the day, the best time is 9am-12pm. This gives you time to get there and do last minute set up before the kids start arriving. Many parents will drop off on their way to work and pick them up on their lunch break. You could open early and serve breakfast or stay open later and offer lunch.

I would caution an early afternoon start because it would be difficult for working parents to bring their kids. In addition, if you’re running a preschool VBS, this is prime nap time. Trust me, you don’t want a bunch of cranky preschoolers at your event.

There is a little more flexibility at night but not much. The optimal start time is between 6 and 6:30pm. This gives your participants and volunteers time to get off work, pick up their kids, feed them, and get to VBS on time.

The length of your VBS will determine your start time. If you’re running a full 3-hour VBS, then getting out at 9:30 or later will not be appreciated by the parents. As much as possible try to be done by 9pm. Your parents and volunteers will thank you.

I’ve seen a few churches start as early as 5pm, but that usually includes a dinner option where kids can come as early as 5 but the actual event doesn’t begin until 6.

2. How many days are we meeting?

The traditional VBS is 5 days long. I’ve led many that long, but I found many kids didn’t come Fridays.  I would typically see a 50% attendance drop from day 4 to day 5. I tried family experiences, guest pushes, prizes, parties and more. While they did push that number up, Day 3 (Wednesday) was almost always my highest attended day.

Also, 5 days for three hours is a big commitment. While I found many families and volunteers were willing to make it, they were exhausted by the end of the week.   

After several years of experimentation, I landed on a 3-day VBS with a Family Experience on Day 4. This model leaned into my growth curve of peaking on the third day and gave an opportunity for parents to join in the fun on the final day.

As a bonus win, my volunteers loved it because it felt like a much smaller commitment that didn’t interfere with their family plans.

3. Will it be 2 hours, 3 hours, or something in between?

The next question you have to answer is how long is the VBS. Many curriculums give you enough content to run for 3 hours and leave it to you to cut it down to fit.

For years, I ran the full 3-hour event. While it was successful, and I had hundreds of kids come every year, by the end of the week, my volunteers were exhausted, and kids’ attendance started to drop.

In an effort to keep engagement up, I experimented with different lengths.

I tried two hours first and found that was too short to make up time.

Many times, a station (mainly my opening) went too long, and we had to cut other stations to accommodate. In addition, the curriculum we were using asked for 20 minutes minimum to cover all their activities. I thought I could give them that much time, but I forgot to consider travel time between the stations, bathroom breaks, dismissal, and welcome time for each station. 

Depending on the size of your church, groups need a minimum of 3 minutes in between to make this happen and that’s still too short. Five is much better. By giving my groups 3 minutes in between this gave my stations only 17 minutes to do all their stuff. As a result, my station leaders were frustrated almost every night.

To make everyone happy, I extended my VBS to two and a half hours with the same content. I didn’t add any more stations, I just gave more time to them and extended transitions to 5 minutes. This extra 30 minutes gave us time to breathe, and we didn’t feel like we were running from station to station.

4. Do we do the same thing every day?

Yes and no. A lot of kids love things to be predictable and variable at the same time. While we had the same stations each night, I changed the order in which they went to them. This kept excitement and anticipation going all night because it kept them on their toes.

Since the schedule changes every day, I print them on a different color paper every night and give them to the volunteers. This way they’ll realize if they have a purple schedule and everyone else has a yellow one, they’re looking at the wrong day and need an update.

A special note: I tried this with preschoolers as well, but my leaders told me that it didn’t work as well. They asked to keep the same order every day. The younger kids needed the consistency more than the excitement. They were already excited just to be there.

5. How will you communicate?

An uncommunicated plan is just a dream. You can have the perfect schedule with all the necessary information beautifully laid out, but if no one looks at it, you’ve just waisted your time.

At my training meeting one of the major sections is to go over the structure and format of the schedule. Even if I don’t have all the details nailed down, I show them how to read it, where the rooms are going to be and how long they have to get to each one. In addition, I tell them about the different colors for each day and where they need to go to get the new schedule.

At the beginning of each day, we meet 30 minutes before for 5 minutes to make special announcements, give out the schedule, and cue them on the main point. Even though not every volunteer makes that meeting, the ones that do spread the word. My crew captains are a huge help here.

I have many excuses for it, but my opening session always goes long, messing up the whole schedule. It became so common that my assistant and preschool director would be waiting for me after I dismissed everyone to talk about schedule changes. 

Thankfully, by having 5 minutes between stations we had some buffer time we could cut without taking time away from the stations. If that still wasn’t enough, I’d cut from snack. While that's great relationship building time, there isn't any content and kids would finish in the first 5-10 minutes, giving us the time we need.  Afterwards, we’d communicate the changes to each station leader who would in turn tell the groups.

The schedule is the backbone of your VBS and is essential to having an effective event. You can begin working on it as early as possible and make changes in the moment. It needs to be flexible, clear, and concise so that everyone can use it. Answering these questions will go a long way to creating one.

If you’d like my schedule templates, you can download them here.

If you’d like to read more about VBS you can find the posts here.

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