Kids from the Rainforest Falls VBS week, holding the LEGO robots they built.
This summer I spent a week running a robotics station for Vacation Bible School at Gracepoint SDA Church in Boynton Beach. No pay, no contract. And I want to say plainly why, because I think it matters more than what we actually built: I didn’t go there to grow Code N’ Create. I went because building something real with your hands is one of the clearest ways a kid can meet God, and because this is my ministry before it is my business.
Here’s what actually happened. Every day that week, kids from about five years old up through their teens built a real robot with their own hands and made it move, sense, and think. Not a toy. Real code, real engineering, tied to whatever the Bible story of the day was. That it worked across that whole range, five year olds and teenagers at the same table building the same thing, told me something about the curriculum I built. But it also told me something about what happens when you hand a kid a real tool instead of a worksheet.
One day the theme was “God is love.” I built the lesson around a delivery cart, a robot whose whole job is carrying something to a friend who needs it, and tied it to the story of the Good Samaritan. The kids weren’t just hearing that story that day. They built it. Because that’s the thing about a hands-on lesson: it doesn’t let a kid stay a spectator to what they’re being taught.
By the end of the week, the Pastor told me there’s no amount of money that could pay for what this program does for these kids. That they love it, and they love building the projects. Coming from him, that landed different than any review could, because he wasn’t talking about a business. He was talking about kids getting reached.
I want to be honest about something else. I didn’t walk into that week expecting anything back. No guaranteed pay, no promise of what would come after. And I still walked away blessed, not with anything you could put a dollar figure on, but with something I wasn’t looking for: a sense of community I didn’t expect to find in a church I’d never set foot in before that week, a shared vision for these kids with people like the Pastor, Ms. Phyllis, and Mr. Marin, and something close to a new family. Parents stopped by just to watch. Kids asked when they could do it again. A church that’s been quietly rebuilding its youth ministry pulled me into that rebuilding with them. None of that showed up on an invoice, and none of it needed to.
That’s what I want you to take from this if you take nothing else. When you serve without keeping score, God doesn’t forget it.
“God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.” (Hebrews 6:10)
If your school, church, or co-op wants to see what a session like this actually looks like, reach out. I’d love to bring it to your kids too.
Caleb Dawkins
Founder, Code N’ Create
codencreate.org
(772) 301-9257