VBS Focuses On 'Championing Their Faith'

Vacation Bible School at Oasis Church in Ulysses went Olympic this year.

"I think we were around 120 kids that we served here," said Lead Pastor Andy McMillan.

The theme for this year's VBS July 30-August 1, was an Olympic based one dubbed "Champion Your Faith".  How did they choose the theme?

"We use an organization - a church that produces VBS Curriculum for free," McMillan said. "We typically make the decision with whatever churches want to partner with us that year."

This year's VBS at Oasis was a partnership between Oasis, Heartland Faith and United Methodist Church.

"The theme was focused on championing your faith - it is based on the idea of helping kids to understand we have to own our faith," McMillan said.

During the three-day event, those who participated were able to partake of a number of activities.

"We have bounce houses that the church owns," McMillan said. "We invested in those a few years ago.  We had games outside and some obstacle courses."

The bounce houses have been used for other local events as well.

"Most of the city events use our church's bounce houses," McMillan said. "We partner with the city to help with events when it is available. We don't rent them out or anything like that, but if the city says, 'hey we would love to have you partner with us at the event', then we try our best to make sure it's covered."

McMillan said Oasis is a good place to host events such as this.

"One of the things we have that some of the others don't is the amount of flat square footage," he explained. "Some of the others may have more square footage, but it isn't flat. Plus, we have property by our facility, so we have the ability when we do events if churches are up to partnering with us to host events better at our facility, because our facility layout is more practical."

Oasis provides a "safe zone".

"We are really passionate about safety for the children," McMillan said. "For instance, all of our rooms that are kids' ministry rooms, are equipped with security cameras. And, all of our rooms are also equipped with trained kids' ministry workers. So when we tell people to drop off their kids - we are safely structured. We want it to be a safe place that people can drop their kids off."

They utilize the same philosophy for Sundays.

"Nobody serves in our child's ministry without undergoing a professional criminal background check - that's the rule for kids or youth ministry," McMillan said. "We've made the commitment that we are going to have the safest place in town for kids to be. We want it to be the easiest place for kids to be to have fun and be in the safest environment."