Linden Churches host VBS event

Four Linden Area Churches come together to host a Kids Community Event, to better allow kids to get to know Christ. The event included bounce houses, bands, games, petting zoos, and Vacation Bible Study signup opportunities.

The Linden area held a kids community event at Linden Park on May 20 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. This event was put together by the four Linden Churches which included: Linden First Baptist Church, Pine Crest Church, Center Hill Church, and New Colony Church.

This event held activities such as two bounce houses, live music from bands, games, a petting zoo that had animals such as turtles, rabbits, cows, and a Llama, a bracelet-making booth, a Vacation Bible Study sign-up booth for each participating Church, and visual demonstration to show the love of Christ.

These visual demonstrations included things such as mentos in Coke Cola to show how God uses little things to lift us up, and a “creation trail”, which walks kids through Genesis and the creation of the world. There were also moments of devotion that took place where children further learned about the story of Genesis, and what was created on each day. There were also several food booths that offered things such as cotton candy, snow cones, hotdogs, and popcorn.

These Churches came out here in the community with the goal to host “something safe and fun,” says community event helper, Denver Hamilton.

Hamilton also says, “I think it means a lot to the kids, and to the parents, and to the community. It shows unity, because of the four churches coming together to do something like this, where it’s not a competition. We’re technically four different entities on the same team and we wanted to do something fun for the community to show that we’re still here. We’re still supportive. We want to be involved.

The biggest fear I’ve had from my church is that I’ve been told stories about churches that have become complacent and that they only want to deal with things that pertain inside the church walls. And we’re not called to be like that. We’re called to be lights to the world and in order to shine your light, you need to go out into it. And so, what better way than to do something like this.”

The four churches came out in the community together, not only to be seen in unity but also to welcome new members. They each had sign-up lists for Vacation Bible Study for children and young teens, as well as QR codes on each of their booths, to allow anyone a chance to learn more about the church if they were interested.

Hamilton expressed a desire to have more churches join in on the mission of unity by the possibility of inviting more churches, if allowed another community event, in the future. Some of the churches in the idea would be churches like Center Grove, Bear Creek, Pleasant Hill, or Cave Springs.

“You can’t tell me God’s not in this,” says Hamilton. “The one day the First Baptist Church had opened for this time of day, this time frame, this weekend, happened to be open for everybody else. And then we contacted the city to schedule this, at the park, and they had it opened. They said in fact, that they were going to contact one of these Churches out here to host something, to show off our park, because we just finished construction. With everything coming together like that, you can’t tell me God’s not in this.”