Our vacation Bible school was going on, and I was discouraged. We couldn't afford the full curriculum package. We made do with a few posters tacked up here and there. The entire thing was basically thrown together at the last minute by the same woman who had always done it. To top it off, VBS was being held in our musty church basement that always made my sinuses ache.

It was truly a wonder that anybody sent their children at all. After all, I had read that baby boomers demanded excellence in church programs—everything slick and professional. Our VBS was anything but. And yet we had a full enrollment.

Spotting excellence in the wild

As I passed the door to the third-grade classroom, a boy in the class seemed angry that, in the Bible story, God was going to destroy the world and kill everybody in the Flood. Listening to him confront the teacher, I suddenly knew that Cobblestone Church had an excellent VBS. It was helping boys and girls encounter, and at times wrestle with, God.

That, ...