Easy as Pie

Let’s play a word association game. Ready? What’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say, “Fredericktowne Baptist Church’s 2021 VBS program”? Whatever you say, after you read about what they did at this year’s VBS, you will probably want your answer to include some synonym of innovative. If you have difficulty limiting yourself to a single word, “creativity out the wazoo” is also an acceptable answer. During a call with Mary Richard, coordinator of the Camalote sister church sponsorship program at FBC, I was filled in on what made it so creative that it couldn’t possibly be contained by a wazoo. 

Fredricktowne Baptist church

Each year, the mission aspect of the VBS is focused on collecting school supplies, filling backpacks for Sowers4Pastors, and sponsoring children in Camalote. Traditionally, their goal is to sponsor one boy and one girl for one year. It’s a contest between the boys and the girls at VBS. On the first day, each group brought in a few dollars. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a start. 

But this year, the director of children's ministries, Sarah Flores, had the idea to up the stakes to include more than bragging rights and a “Nanna-nanna-boo-boo! We won!” by the winning gender. Being a visionary, Sarah got buy-in from the adults involved to launch a pie-in-the-face contest in an effort to sponsor children in the program. If the girls raised the most money, Pastor Tim would be on the receiving end of a pie. If the boys raised the most, Sarah would take one for the team.

Mary and Gary Richard showing
 off the chart, which is not
technically a pie chart

The contest was announced on day one. The following day, the girls brought in $187--enough to sponsor one child for a year. The girls were only a few dollars ahead of the boys. By day three, both teams had raised enough to sponsor a child. The money was coming in so quickly that the chart made to show how much the children were donating had to be extended. (Insert your own joke about a real pie chart here.) The final tally was a combined $960 raised by the children. That’s enough to sponsor five children instead of two for a year. One hundred children attended VBS and approximately sixty of those were new and had never heard of Sowers4Pastors before this. 

A plastic tablecloth was brought in and Pastor Tim and Sarah were each the targets of a PIEING by their own children. (Yes, pieing is an actual word. Look it up.) It seems that Pastor Tim may still be blowing whipped cream from his nostrils, while Sarah’s daughter was a little gentler on the delivery. 

The other difference to this year’s mission project was that the children collected hygiene items instead of school supplies for the backpacks. Since Fredericktowne is a container hub for Sowers4Pastors, they had already received school supplies to fill the VBS’s backpacks. They put out a daily request for specific items. Mary Richard estimates that the children brought in around 600 individual items. 

The children filled backpacks for unsponsored kids in Honduras. They didn't just physically fill the backpacks. They prayed over the supplies brought in and over the completed backpacks. They watched Trish’s video about what life is like in Honduras, read bios of children living in homes with dirt floors, and talked about how these backpacks change lives. The Honduran children aren’t the only ones having their lives changed by this program. 

Thanks so much to Fredricktowne Baptist for all they do for the kids of Honduras, and a special thanks to Pastor Tim and Sarah! It's always exciting to see the different ways supporters come up with to help the ministry. Sowers4Pastors appreciates everything you do, but especially when you go above and beyond by taking a pie to the face!

- posted by Christi