It’s That Time

Our local Sunday paper consists of about eleven pages, excluding classified ads, at least four of which are devoted to “Church News.” Not that “Church News” is all that’s happening in our town by any means: we also have blackberry growers, flash floods, high-speed car chases, a quilt exhibit, weddings, deaths, and Dear Abby. That is, she’s not here, or anywhere, in person, but we all read a column written under that name by a lipsticky blonde woman holding up a cardboard cutout of Dear Abby, because most of the time, in between the high-speed car chases and the flash floods, there’s not that much else to do.

Right now, however, “Church News” is all the news that’s fit to print, and there’s plenty to do around here if what you want to do is participate in or volunteer for a Vacation Bible School. We have not, ourselves, been much in the way of Vacation Bible Schools over the years, but last summer my teenager assisted with our parish’s VBS, the theme of which had to do with rainforests. She came home every day singing some maddening song about listening to God, with hand motions which involved pointing to one’s ear every time a particular phrase — like “Listen!” — came around. She said that when the children sang this song, instead of merely pointing to their ears with their index fingers as the directions indicated, they all made the sign of the gun and pointed at their temples, which was what she felt like doing, too.

Gone are the days of the old-style VBS, in which children sat at long tables making models of Houses of Jesus’ Day out of sugar cubes or homemade flour-and-water play-doh, and sang “This Is My Father’s World” to the thumping accompaniment of Miss Anna Key McNeil at the piano. In my own Methodist childhood, we passed from Miss Anna Key to a sort of earth-toned phase in which we read Hope for the Flowers a lot, and sang a song with a refrain that went, “Hey! Hey! Anybody listening? Anybody care?” That song, as I recall, would have benefited greatly from the gun-to-the-temple hand motion, too.

At any rate, gone is all that. If you want Vacation Bible School 2009, then what you want is something like Lifeway’s Boomerang Express.

What is this? I’m actually still trying to figure it out. But apparently the deal is that you learn about Jesus by pretending to be in Australia.

You have your premise:

Hop on board LifeWay’s Boomerang Express as VBS 2009 takes a train ride across the Land Down Under! As kids wind their way through Australia, they’ll discover the vastness of God’s love, and they’ll learn that no matter where they go or what they do in life—it all comes back to Jesus.

You have your Boomerang Express Scripture:

“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” 1 John 4:9 Holman CSB®

You have your Boomerang Express Motto:

Follow!
Worship!
Live through Him!

You have your special Boomerang Express Terminology:

Teachers: Outback Guides
Kids: Kidaroos
Daily Challenge: Boomerang Challenge

You have your Rotation Sites:

Worship Rally Central
Bible Study Outback
Music Opera House
Crafts Crossing
Missions Harbor
Recreation Rock

and the “G’Day Cafe,” at which you’ll be serving down-under delicacies like Delightful Didgeridoos, Sheep Station Cupcakes, and Waffle Train Trackwiches.

And you have your kidaroos who’ll go home and say, “Hey, Mom! Where is God? God is in Australia!”

Hey! Hey . . .

Lifeway’s Boomerang Express
[Rating: 42/100]