VBS is one of the biggest outreach events that churches do to reach families. Kiddos come from near and far the for event and its a way to get them in our doors in hopes of reaching those families. I was personally the kid to went to every VBS in our area to get out of the house and give my Mom a break. I came to know Jesus about VBS, so I'm super passionate about the ministry. I did notice though as a kid that none of these churches really reached out to my family that I went to after the fact. Now that I'm in kid's ministry, I have adopted some ideas and thoughts on how to reach out to families to follow up. Here are some ideas that maybe you could incorporate at your church:
Begin Follow Up before VBS starts - have a plan in place to execute follow up as its happening. Don't wait a month down the road and start follow up. You want people to have your church fresh on their mind and the best way to do that is have follow up ready to go before you begin.
Have a Follow Up Team of Volunteers- get a few of your volunteers that have the gift of hospitality and make their goal reaching out to those families through phone calls, a letter, and/or a cute gift for the family. This leads into my next idea.
A Cute Gift for Visitors! - I noticed a cute bucket full of cute summer activities helps and makes the family think you are thankful they came with a personal letter. Fill it full of summer things geared to the age group of their kiddos.
Parents Night - that last night of the event, make it into a family night where the kids do their worship music they have learned, and introduce them to your church. Communicate the things you have planned.
Share your summer calendar and plug them into what is going on in your church- I do a summer calendar because it communicates what is going on and engages them into our program. We have a sports camp three weeks after our VBS program finishes and I am going to use our follow up to get them to come to camp. Then from camp, I will try to plug them into large group worship in our church as a family.
Follow Up may be hard but following these few steps have helped me in ministry and I can't wait to see what God does in our church through our kid's ministry's VBS!