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As we near the Christmas season where we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, KiDs Beach Club® is excited to celebrate with you, our family of loyal prayer warriors, volunteers, parents and financial supporters, the milestone of reaching 200 Beach Clubs!

“I’m thrilled to tell you that on October 22, the goal of reaching 200 Beach Clubs was accomplished and it now has ‘DONE’ stamped all over it,” Jack Terrell, KBC founder and president, said. “We’ve reached 200 Beach Clubs with even more coming in each week that are set to launch in February. I’m amazed!”

The 200th Beach Club will start in January at Lawrenceville Elementary in Lawrenceville, Ga. Tina Kimbro, a club relations coordinator with KiDs Beach Club®, has been praying over the area and focused on for several months.

“I was so excited that Central Baptist Church in Lawrenceville was partnering with us to start this club to begin with, but the fact that it is No. 200, which many of us in the field and the KBC office has been praying about for a long time made me absolutely ecstatic!” she explained.

Steven Greene is the lead pastor at Central Baptist Church and has a background in student ministry. Since coming to the church two years ago, he has established strong relationships in area high schools and middle schools and has been praying for a way to minister inside the elementary schools. After speaking with Kimbro at the Metro Gwinnett Baptist Association Meeting in April, he knew this was the open door he had been praying about.

“I didn’t have any background in elementary school ministry,” Greene said. “It’s a different world with regulations and other areas but the way Tina and KiDs Beach Club® have been able to navigate that and figure out how to get us started in January was huge.”

When Pastor Greene arrived at Central Baptist in 2017, the church had no children’s ministry. In fact, his four children started that ministry. It is now starting to grow, and he believes the Beach Club at Lawrenceville Elementary will bring many new faces to their campus.

“This really fits and is perfect for our church,” he said. “This fall, we started a Wednesday night kids program and I view Beach Club as the outreach arm of our children’s ministry.”

The wave of excitement for starting this Beach Club has made its way through the congregation as many has stepped up to serve as volunteers.

“It’s so exciting to see the volunteer team that we’ve been able to build,” Greene said. “It’s an amazing mixture of people who have stepped forward that want to be involved, a lot of surprises! The age range is 19 to the mid-70s and it’s not only cross generational but cross cultural as well. We even have some who are family members that are getting involved together and that’s special.”

The response has also been strong in finding Beach Club Lifeguards to pray for and serve outside the club.

“Several Sunday school classes and the women’s group have signed up to be Lifeguards to write notes of encouragement to the students each week and to become the prayer partners behind the scenes. This is perfect for them and right up their alley to be able to be missionaries on the local level and be able to reach out to the families of these children.”

Please pray for this Beach Club and the volunteers from Central Baptist Church to have an immediate impact on the students and staff at Lawrenceville Elementary. This will be the second of 90 elementary schools in the Gwinnett County Public Schools district to start a Beach Club and both Kimbro and Greene believe that many others will follow suit.

“That school district is wide open, we have great potential there” said Kimbro, who has had conversations with administrators within the district who would like to see many Beach Clubs in many of the schools.

“It’s not just an open door,” Greene said. “We have people inside the schools begging for someone to come in and do ministry in their schools. We can’t wait to start!”

Celebrate 200 from KiDs Beach Club on Vimeo.

When you’re doing your Christmas shopping this year, especially this week on Black Friday and CyberMonday, please shop AmazonSmile and support KiDs Beach Club®!

When you use AmazonSmile to make your purchase, Amazon automatically donates 0.5 percent of your purchase to KiDs Beach Club® at no additional cost to you. The company says that tens of millions of products on their site are eligible for AmazonSmile donations without any higher prices being passed on to the consumer.

Amazon has sent us checks from your purchases totaling $967.01 which amounts to more than four cases of Bibles that go to children in public schools.

“What a treat it is to receive a check from Amazon and the joy it brings to know that folks are thinking of KBC when they make their purchases,” KBC Finance Director Angie Hughes said. “The beauty of this program is that when our donors shop Amazon for items they regularly purchase, they don’t have to pay even a penny more to contribute to the meaningful work of KiDs Beach Club®.”

If you haven’t had a chance to sign up yet, it only takes a minute. You can start by logging onto smile.amazon.com and login with your regular Amazon account.

Then select KiDs Beach Club® as your charity and start shopping. It’s as easy as that. The hardest part is remembering to do your shopping on smile.amazon.com instead of the regular website, amazon.com, but that’s what bookmarks are for!

The 2020 KiDs Beach Club® Train Up A Child Winter Conference will be at 121 Church in Grapevine, Texas on Saturday, February 1 from 9-11 a.m. All Beach Club volunteers in 11 states will be able to participate by viewing a live video feed from numerous watch locations.

Whether your Beach Club is experiencing challenges or is a well-oiled machine, there’s always room for a little maintenance. Don’t miss this chance to hear from those who are familiar with KiDs Beach Club® and are willing to share how they are overcoming obstacles to make club the best it can be. 

Dr. Rick Nichols, the senior pastor at Wildwood Baptist Church in Mesquite, Texas, and Jeff Jackson, the children’s pastor at Brown Missionary Baptist Church in Southaven, Miss., will be speaking at this year’s conference. Both speakers plan to share about how their church and club volunteers approach the profession-of-faith process in regard to the many opportunities they have had to engage students who have accepted Jesus as their “Forever Friend.”

Additionally, we will recognize volunteers for their outstanding commitment to servant leadership. You will also hear about a new elite volunteer program from KiDs Beach Club® ­called Beach P.A.T.R.O.L., which will revolutionize our ministry and help us reach 100,000 students in 2,000 Beach Clubs by 2025! Also, prepare to laugh at the comedy of Jason Earls mixed throughout the morning.??

The Train Up A Child Winter Conference is just the maintenance your club needs to keep winning the hearts and minds of children for Christ.

If your church is interested in hosting a Watch Party for your volunteers (or other volunteers in your area), please contact your local Club Relations Specialist.

You can watch the entire Train Up A Child Winter Conference from this past January on our website at kidsbeachclub.org/conference. We’ll be adding more details about watch locations as they become available.

Train up a Child 2020 Promo from KiDs Beach Club on Vimeo.

The article below was published on the KBC blog last December (2018) and we're bringing it back again this year because if offers such a amazing lesson about what it means to be generous.

Many Beach Clubs reward kids for good behavior or accomplishing certain tasks in their clubs with trips to a treasure chest that is usually stocked with candy or inexpensive toys. Some clubs, like the one at Bukhair Elementary School in Richardson, Texas, use a ticket system explains surf team leader Kevin Perry.

“We have little tickets for each child, and we sign our initials on them when they show up to Beach Club, when they recite their scripture verse, when they bring back their Hang 10 page or when they bring their Bible,” he said. “When they fill these tickets up – it usually takes them three to four weeks to fill up one ticket with 15 signatures – they can go to the treasure chest and turn them in for a small prize.

“If you lose your KBC Study Bible, you have to turn in two of these tickets to get a new one.”

That’s what a fourth-grade boy named Delmer decided to do recently, but for a very unique reason. Perry asked him what happened to his Bible.

“I still have it,” Delmer said. “But I want to get one for my younger brothers to share and then they won’t keep tearing up my Bible.”

Perry says Delmer has a lot of energy and is a good kid, who knows the answers and participates in memorizing the scriptures. He sings and actively participates in worship and looks forward to the Bible lesson, his favorite part of Beach Club.

“He’s very attentive,” Perry said. “He’s wound up and you might think he’s not paying attention, but he absolutely is paying attention.”

Perry has seen other kids replace their lost Bible, but he had never seen a child turn in their tickets to give a Bible to anyone else. Perhaps guided by the lesson that day – about generosity, no less – Delmer wanted to give a Bible to his brothers.

“They just started learning about the Bible and I thought it would be good for them to have a Bible of their own,” Delmer explained about his act of generosity. “I read the Bible to them.”

The Bible lesson that day was from Luke 21:1-4 about the poor widow who gave all she had.

“And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites. So He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all; for all these out of their abundance have put in offerings for God, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had.”

There was no coincidence that on that same day the Bible connection leader shared this story that Delmer filled up his second ticket.

“The spirit of generosity he shows is amazing,” Perry said. “He wasn’t prompted to do that; he came up with it all on his own. Quite frankly, it surprised me, but I was pleasantly surprised.”

Perry suggested there is a lesson in this story for adults.

“The lesson in it – for us adults – goes back to being a child and having a generous spirit by thinking of others first,” Perry said. “Sometimes we forget that as we grow up. We get so focused on ourselves and our mission in life that we forget to be generous to others and I think that’s something we can all learn from Delmer.

As we approach the end of the year and in this season of giving, we ask you to prayerfully consider making a gift to KiDs Beach Club®. Your contributions and support help us reach kids like Delmer with the Good News. Together, we're connecting kids to Christ and putting Bibles in their hands, all the while making Jesus cool at school!

“I’m so excited for Beach Club today,” Madyson, a first grader at Rutherford Elementary School in Mesquite, Texas, said when she arrived at Beach Club earlier this month.

Why? It was Great Treasure Day.

“We get Bibles and get to take them home and we also get to pray to God!” she exclaimed with great anticipation.

The buildup for Great Treasure Day begins the first day our after-school Bible clubs begin meeting. Great Treasure Day is the day KiDs Beach Club® hands out a KBC Explorer’s Study Bible to every student in every Beach Club who has not yet received one.

God’s word is the greatest treasure and it is the centerpiece of Beach Club. The name itself was inspired from Psalm 119:162, which reads, “I rejoice at Your word as one who finds great treasure.” Every child in Beach Club learns the verse the day they receive their Bible.

“I explained to them today, this is (from) God, your heavenly Father, who thinks you’re the most awesome thing He’s ever created, and he wrote you this letter that’s the Bible,” said Scott Morgan, a Surf Team leader at Rhea Intermediate School in Forney, Texas. “I don’t think a lot of kids understood that. They thought it was just a book with words in it. To see their faces smiles when they got the Bible was so awesome.”

Holly Grubbs, the principal at Rutherford, agreed. She praised the work Beach Club volunteers are doing at her school.

“We appreciate how you come in every week and pour into the hearts of our children who we see every day,” Grubbs said. “Today was Great Treasure Day at Rutherford and every child received a Bible. There is nothing more heartwarming than watching the smiles on these precious children’s faces.”

Your continued support of KiDs Beach Club® allows every student to have their very own copy of God’s word to read, study, share and grow from, which is making a daily and eternal impact on their lives. The Bible as a moral standard and the plumb line for character education. Good character starts from a transformed heart. God’s own perfect character is revealed in His word. When every child has a Bible of their own, they are better equipped to learn God’s word and live God’s way.

“It’s important for kids to be in God’s word because God speaks to them through His word,” Rhoda Golden, a volunteer at Rhea Intermediate, said. “It’s not second hand. When they can get into the word, they can read it and then the Holy Spirit will work within them as they’re reading just as He does for adults.”

The same day Reagan received her KBC Explorer’s Study Bible at Rhea Intermediate, she asked Jesus to be her “Forever Friend.” Angela Morgan, Scott’s wife, is also a volunteer in Beach Club and had the privilege of leading Reagan to Christ.

She explained to Reagan, “‘Now you can get into that Bible and read about God and get to know Him better; you get to see how much He loves you.’ She was so excited,” but she began to tear up and confessed that her family doesn’t attend church because they are busy with softball tournaments on the weekends.

“I told her not to worry; that she can pray to God anywhere,” Angela said. “You can open that Bible we just gave you; that’s all you need.”

“I was able to share with her that I was saved in the fifth grade and I didn’t have a family to take me to church and that’s what I told her, ‘don’t lose hope, stay in that word and God will provide a way.’”

KiDs Beach Club® is a solution for churches, like First Baptist Forney, which sponsors the Beach Clubs at Rhea and Smith intermediate schools, to go outside the walls of its church to reach unchurched children with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“I think (Beach Club) provides an opportunity for some kids,” Angela said. “Maybe their parents don’t have the time or make the time to take them to church, but here we are. All they have to do is stay after (school). They get a great opportunity to be in the word, to worship, to have fun playing games and just to be with other believers and grow in that way.”

GTD at Rhea Intermediate from KiDs Beach Club on Vimeo.

The little girl in this picture is Whitley. She is being raised by her grandmother. When she came into Beach Club on Great Treasure Day at Buckley-Carpenter Elementary School in Somerville, Tenn., she was in awe of the table filled with Bibles.

She told Ellen, a volunteer in the club, that she really hoped she would “win” one of those special books.

Later, she was so excited to receive her own KBC Explorer's Study Bible!

That evening, her grandmother messaged Jason Almond, the church coordinator for FBC Somerville, who partners with KiDs Beach Club to operate the club, to say, “Whitley keeps talking about how she won her very own Bible at KBC.”

When he sent the photo to KiDs Beach Club, Jason wrote, “This little girl in particular is close to making a decision for Christ. Having her own copy of the Word will certainly be another thing that brings her one step closer to that decision.

“I'm so excited for what the Lord is doing!”