Growing in faith at Vacation Bible School

From the WORD, of Saint Timothy's Episcopal Church, Herndon, June 2016.

“Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them.”  Matthew 19:4.

In the little town where I grew up, kids didn’t go to sports camp in the summer.  There weren’t art or music camps either, for that matter, or academic enrichment camps or canoeing and rock climbing camps.  My family didn’t take much vacation, either, because Mom always played the organ on Sunday mornings.  But there was Vacation Bible School, and it was pretty much the highlight of the summer.

We had Vacation Bible School at our own church, of course, the first two weeks after summer vacation began.  But sometimes, mom would haul us off to the Vacation Bible Schools at other churches—at the Lutheran church up on the hill, where you could play tag in the enormous cemetery, or at my grandparents’ Methodist church.  One summer, I think we spent a full four weeks in Bible School, which probably amounted as many Bible stories, peppy songs and graham crackers as a full year of Sunday School at Saint John’s.

All the Difference in the World: My Life in Sunday School

Reblogged from Covenant

Thirty years ago this weekend, I was promoted. I had started first grade a week before, and, at the Rally Day assembly, I mumbled through my assigned recitation (a short poem). The Sunday School superintendent handed me a brand-new, black leather King James Bible, with my name written on the inside cover in her elegant hand. The inscription also notified me that I was now a member of the Junior Department of the Sunday School at Saint John’s Church.

To everyone at Saint John’s, though, I was really joining “Mrs. Truax’s class.” It seemed even then that she had been teaching forever. She had taught my mother back in the early Sixties, when the church was brimming with Baby Boomer children, a class in every corner of the Sunday School annex.

It was rather different on my promotion day, when amid the inevitable fluctuations of children’s attendance, our congregation found itself at a low ebb. I was the only promotion we’d had in several years, and the Junior Department was to be composed of me and about a dozen sixth graders. It was rather abrupt to shift from felt boards one week to reading through the Book of Esther in seventeenth-century prose the next, but I was proud at being able (mostly) to follow the lines in my new Bible.

"One Such Child"-- A Tribute to Dorothy Truax

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”  St. Matthew 18:5

Back in September of 1984, when I was six years old, I was promoted.  I became a member of the Junior Department here at Saint John’s Church, which for over half a century was known to everyone just as “Mrs. Truax’s class.”  I can still remember those first few weeks. We read through, of all things, the Book of Esther.  The Sunday School superintendent had presented to me with a brand new black King James Bible on Rally Day, the Sunday before. I was very proud of myself for being able to keep up with all the sixth graders in the class, piecing together all the words.

And then, a few weeks later, the Junior Department changed dramatically.  All those sixth graders were confirmed, and moved on into another class, taught by someone else over on the other side of the Fellowship Hall.  I was the only one left.  Now by the rules we follow in most parts of life, that should have been the end of the Junior Department.  You just don’t prepare a Sunday School lesson each week for one six year old boy. 

But Mrs. Truax did.