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VBS Wins Souls
 Posted on Baptist Press Feb
28, 2008 | written by Polly House
http://www.baptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?id=27511
NASHVILLE
,
Tenn.
(BP)--It's a fact: Vacation
Bible
School
is the most effective evangelism strategy in the Southern Baptist
Convention. Churches that understand its effectiveness also understand
that follow-up is a critical component of the VBS week.
"The
whole point of Vacation Bible School is to lead the children, youth
and adults who attend to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Bottom
line, that's it," said Jerry Wooley, VBS specialist at LifeWay
Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In
2006, the most recent year's figures, nearly 3 million people were
enrolled in VBS, yielding 212,000 Sunday School prospects for local
churches, nearly 40,000 of whom subsequently were enrolled as a result
of VBS, Wooley said.
"It
is startling to realize that in
Vacation
Bible
School
in 2006, we documented 94,980 decisions to accept Christ," he
said. "That is 1.1 decision for every one person trained as a VBS
worker by our state conventions. That is phenomenal when you consider
that statistically SBC-wide it takes 44 people to win one person to
Christ."
And
26 percent of the 364,826 baptisms in SBC churches in 2006 were a
direct result of VBS, Wooley said of
Vacation
Bible
School
’s effectiveness as an evangelism strategy among Southern Baptists.
"These
numbers are just the ones we know about, that we have documentation
about," he said. "I can only imagine how many more people
are reached when you think about the parents, brothers, sisters,
grandparents and friends of these children."
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