Events like VBS are opportunities for Christians to plant a seed in the minds of young people and older people alike. We have an opportunity to invite people to a special event in which they will feel no pressure and can just have an opportunity to get to know the people of the church. We have an opportunity to maybe get someone to be with us that otherwise would not visit. Will we take advantage of that opportunity?
Let me tell you why VBS is important. If you haven’t heard me tell the story from the pulpit yet, you will. A man by the name of Riley Swicord once knocked on my office door. It was an odd hour, as time that folks aren’t normally in the office, and yet someone was knocking on my door. Riley asked to speak to me for a few minutes. After we had introduced ourselves, Riley and I began to have a conversation about why he had knocked on my door that night. Riley had been through a nasty divorce, and seeking to find happiness again, he had tried everything he knew to try. He’d tried drinking; he’d tried having relationships with multiple women; he’d tried buying nice things; he’d tried everything. He said he’d reached rock bottom. It was then he began to seek the Lord. He remembered when he was 11 years old, he had attended a VBS in Georgia where he grew up. He had been invited by a friend from school and with the permission of his parents, he attended each night. He had never been to a church and from what I gathered had never been back to one. Yet, when he began to seek God, that was the memory that came back. That’s significant because Riley was 46 the night he knocked on my door. That’s 35 years that had passed from the time of a seed being planted at a VBS at a congregation of the Lord’s church in Georgia and the time he knocked on my door in Alabama.
Riley and I began to study the scriptures together and after about 6 weeks of study, Riley obeyed the gospel. All because someone planted a seed in his mind when he was 11. If Riley had never been invited to that VBS, he may never have come to the knowledge of the Gospel and become a Christian. Riley died in his early 50s from cancer. He now can spend eternity with the Lord all because someone invited him to VBS. Who knows if the person you invite may be a Riley Swicord? You’ll never know if you don’t make the invitation! Plant a seed!
-Josh Romo