I am getting excited about Vacation Bible School! The Family Ministry Team has been ordering supplies, planning decorations, and getting everything in place for a fun and vibrant theme: Rainforest Falls. It is going to be an action-packed week with a lot of adventure and it will all drive towards this:

An encounter with the true nature of God.

Not just facts about God. Not just Bible stories with a takeaway bolted on at the end. A genuine, age-appropriate, hands-on exploration of who God actually is — His character, His heart, and what it means that a God like this knows us by name.

This matters right now because the age group of the children for whom VBS is designed are part of a generation unlike any before them. Born after 2010, Generation Alpha has grown up entirely in the digital age — where information arrives in seconds, screens compete for every moment of attention, and the world moves faster than any child should have to navigate alone.

Our kids are smart. They are curious. They are more aware of the world's complexity than we sometimes realize. And what the research tells us — what parents and teachers and youth workers are experiencing every day — is that what they are hungry for is not more information.

They are hungry for connection. For something real. For someone to tell them the truth about who they are and why they matter.

That is what we hope to foster this summer. And step by step, day by day, our campers will explore five life-changing truths about who God is:

God is our Creator: You were made on purpose, for a purpose. Before the noise of the world told your child who to be, God already knew. They are not an accident. They are not a mistake. They are made.

God knows everything: He understands your heart. Every question, every fear, every thing your child carries that they do not have words for yet — God knows. And He is not surprised by any of it.

God is our safe place: You can find comfort and peace. In a world that moves fast and feels uncertain, there is a place that does not shift. A shelter in the storm. A peace that does not depend on circumstances. Kids need to know this place exists — and that it is a person, not a program.

God is love: No matter what, you are loved. Not earned love. Not conditional love. Not love that disappears when you get it wrong. The kind of love that pursued us all the way to a cross. Children who genuinely receive this truth carry it into middle school, high school, and every hard season that comes after.

God is forever: You have the hope of heaven. In a world obsessed with the immediate, the eternal is a radical and beautiful idea. Your child is not just living for today. They are made for something that lasts.

This is powerful. We need to hear these messages again and again. Through science experiments, crafts, games, and story time, we will get to connect the wonders of creation to the wonder of our Creator.

Vacation Bible School is open to every child (from ages 4 years old to fifth grade). It comes at no cost to families. If you know a child who needs adventure this summer, who needs to know they are seen and loved and made on purpose, register them on Realm, and bring them.

Bring your neighbors. Bring the kids on your street. Bring the family you have been meaning to invite for months.

This summer we have the chance to do something that echoes into eternity — to give a generation of children not just a week of fun, but the beginning of a friendship with the God who made them and loves them and will never let them go.