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We are so excited to announce four new additions to the KBC family. Dr. Frank Banfill joined KiDs Beach Club® as the executive vice president for strategy and organizational growth; Christy Hughes has a new position as remote club relations specialist; Keith Williams is a club relations specialist; while Anna Tromanhauser has joined our corporate staff as our ministry assistant.

Banfill will oversee the ministry’s development as an organization. He will help ensure that KiDs Beach Club® has the best team and strategies possible to reach our goals. Banfill comes to KiDs Beach Club® with more than 30 years of experience in ministry and business. His ministry experience includes serving as a senior pastor in Ohio, as the director of mobilization for the missions organization e3 Partners/I Am Second, and as the founder/president of MaxPoint Missions, a non-profit organization that trains leaders and transforms African villages out of extreme poverty. He co-founded a college in Africa and helped launch several nonprofits in the United States. He also trained leaders across six continents and helped plant churches in nine countries. 

Banfill’s business experience includes the founding and development of an international travel agency. Also, he worked for popular comedian Michael Jr., managing his career and building his expanding organization, Michael Jr. Productions. 

Banfill has a doctorate in global leadership and organizational management from Indiana Tech, as well as seminary and undergraduate degrees from Liberty University. He has authored two books, as well as numerous magazine articles, research papers, and blogs. Banfill’s community work includes serving on the Tarrant County College Trinity River Business Advisory Council and teaching adults at Cross City Church First Euless. He has been married to Beth for nearly 30 years and they have two adult children.

Hughes’ new role at KiDs Beach Club® will work with our partner churches and participating schools that are located in areas where do not have a local KBC representative. She will provide training, mentoring and resources to help these churches better impact their communities through Beach Clubs.

Hughes, who has been a member of the KBC staff since 2014, has been a volunteer with KiDs Beach Club® since 2009. She lives in Lakeland, Tenn., where her husband Terry is the senior associate pastor at Faith Baptist Church. Together they have one daughter Grace, who attends Mississippi College in Clinton, Miss. 

Williams is a native and lifelong Memphian. During his formative years, he was licensed to preach the gospel at the age of 15. During the last two decades, Williams has worked in Urban Youth Development with at-risk youth at Memphis Boys and Girls Club, Benjamin Hooks Job Corps, and former Memphis City Schools. Most recently as an education advocate and clergy organizer, he organized hundreds of congregations for transformational education reform serving as senior advisor for the Tennessee Pastors Action Coalition and field organizer of the Memphis Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 

As a licensed and ordained pastor, Williams believes in the future of all children and is unwavering in his belief that every child needs and deserves a relationship with Jesus Christ. He received his Bachelor of Religious Arts in Christian education in 2003. Currently, he is completing the Master of Divinity at Memphis Theological Seminary. Williams and his wife Lashonna do ministry together in a variety of contexts. He also is the interim pastor of the Greater Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church. They have two boys, Nicholas, a high school senior, and Marcus, a third grader. In addition, the Williams’ just had a sweet baby girl Anaya, born May 3. 

As ministry assistant, Tromanhauser supports our accounting, operations and donor development activities. She comes to KiDs Beach Club® with an extensive background in office and business management and has also worked for or volunteered with multiple parachurch and non-profit organizations during her career.

Tromanhauser graduated from Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn., with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. There, she also met her husband David, who is a Texas native. She and her husband moved back to Texas from Tennessee four years ago, and currently attend and are very involved at Cross City Church First Euless.

Tromanhauser is an avid sports fan, loves to do crosswords puzzles and plays board games and cards. Most of all, she enjoys traveling to be with her family, which includes five children and seven grandchildren. She also enjoys a great cup of coffee, while watching the news or visiting with friends. She is excited about this new adventure at KiDs Beach Club® and hopes to be able to contribute to its future growth and sharing the gospel to and putting Bibles in the hands and hearts of many more kids and their families.

Help us welcome to all four to KiDs Beach Club®!

If you attended the Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner April 13 at Texas Motor Speedway, you may remember hearing a short message from John Kramp, the senior vice president for Bible distribution at HarperCollins Publishing.

That’s the parent company of Tommy Nelson, which partners with KiDs Beach Club® to produce the KBC Explorer’s Study Bible. He asked the crowd of nearly 450 attendees to fill in the blanks of Psalm 119:11. “Your word I have hidden in my ‘heart,’ that I might not ‘sin’ against You.”

“How is it that so many of you know that verse?” he asked. “I thought about that today.

“I’ll tell you why I know it,” Kramp said. “It’s because, along the way, I had access to the Bible. I had access not only to a Bible just in any form, but a Bible that I could understand. But more importantly, I had access to people who helped me hide that word in my heart.

“That’s what we’re doing tonight,” he told the crowd. “We’re trying to put God’s word in kids’ hands. We’re trying to give them a copy of the Bible they can understand and we’re supporting a ministry where people are helping children hide God’s word in their heart.”

That is what you are helping KiDs Beach Club® do in a growing list of nearly 200 Beach Clubs in 11 states. We’re connecting kids to Christ and putting Bibles in their hands! You are helping to enable nearly 2,700 volunteers to share the gospel and teach biblical character in our weekly, after-school Bible clubs.

“Being able to come into this school on a weekly basis and teach God’s word and teach who He is to these kids is an amazing and unique opportunity,” said Katherine Criswell, a Beach Club volunteer at Mohawk Elementary in Richardson, Texas.

Your support of our ministry allows us to give a Bible to every child in every Beach Club at no cost to our partnering churches or families. In most instances, those Bibles are the first Bible a child has ever received and in some instances, it’s the only Bible in their home.

During the 24 weeks of Beach Club, our trained volunteers use our Bible-driven curriculum, which is written specifically to point kids to their KBC Study Bible six times during every one-hour Beach Club. Each Bible story is assigned a character word and memory link (or Bible verse) that best compliments that story.

At the end of every Beach Club, children are given a take-home card with the memory verse on one side and the corresponding character word (and definition) on the other. Additionally, each child receives a “Hang 10” page that connects that week’s lesson to a daily plan allowing kids and their families to spend 10 minutes daily reading God’s word or in prayer.

When we fill our hearts and minds with God’s word, it helps foster spiritual growth and guards against a secular culture that often times seems overly negative and increasingly ungodly. It will guard against things that hurt us and displease God. Keeping His word inside our heart fills it with the wisdom of God and leaves little room for sin and other worldly wisdom. We each have a responsibility to guard our heart and to keep track of the things we hide inside it.

The KBC Explorer’s Study Bible presents God’s word in a way kids can understand and enjoy reading. Tommy Nelson is a fitting partner in helping KiDs Beach Club® produce and distribute Bibles that speak to kids on their level.

After getting her own KBC Study Bible, a girl in Beach Club at George Bush Elementary in Addison, Texas, said, “It’s cool because it has God’s words in it, and God’s words are in the Bible so we can read them all the time.”

Another child in the same Beach Club could not stop sharing how thankful he was to receive a Bible. “I can’t believe that I have my own book that came from God. I’m so happy. I thank God for it. Thank you!”

You are the reason why not only those two kids have a Bible, but why we are able to put a Bible into the hands of every child in every Beach Club. You are making it possible for kids to learn God’s way at this young age, providing a resource that will help and sustain them throughout their lives.

To God’s glory, we have been able to put more than 61,000 Bibles into the hands of children since 2003. We have already placed an order for another 10,000 Bibles thanks to contributions made at the Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner earlier this month.

You are making this possible and for that we celebrate!

John Kramp, HarperCollins Senior VP for Bible Distribution from KiDs Beach Club on Vimeo.

When author and Bible teacher John Piper addressed nearly 20,000 students in Atlanta, Ga., he made what sounded like a simplistic statement saying, “You don’t have to know a lot of things in order to make a huge difference for the Lord in the world. But you do need to know a few things that are great and be willing to live for them and die for them.”

He then uttered quite a statement that considerably quieted the crowd.

“One of the really sad things about this moment right now is that there are hundreds of you in this crowd who do not want your life to make a difference,” Piper said. “All you want is to be liked. Maybe finish school, get a good job, find a husband or a wife, a nice house, a nice car and long weekends, good vacations, grow old, healthy, have a fun retirement, die easy, no hell. And that is all you want. And you don’t give a rip whether your life counts on this earth for eternity. And that is a tragedy in the making. That is a tragedy in the making.”

KiDs Beach Club® is blessed to have many of you who serve as volunteers and supporters who ARE making a difference in the lives of thousands of children every week.

Two men who have greatly influenced the addition of Beach Clubs in their areas are Dr. David Vroonland , the superintendent in Mesquite ISD, and Dr. Jeff Thompson, the associational missionary of the Concord Baptist Association in Fort Smith, Ark.

During the KiDs Beach Club® Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner at Texas Motor Speedway on Saturday, April 13, both men will share their stories of how they were presented an opportunity to promote KiDs Beach Club® and realized that as a person of influence, they could make a difference with bold and creative initiatives to help open up Beach Clubs in new schools.

Dr. Vroonland has publicly made it clear that he supports the faith element as an important part of a child’s healthy development and desires to have a Beach Club in all 33 of his district’s elementary schools. That support from the top has helped set the tone for principals in 19 Mesquite elementary schools to welcome Beach Club on their campuses. Dr. Vroonland will deliver the keynote speech at the dinner.

Dr. Thompson was skeptical about Beach Club the first time he heard about it but after witnessing one for the first time, he quickly changed his mind and hit the ground running to get as many Beach Clubs started in Fort Smith, Arkansas public schools as he could by using associational funds to assist area churches underwrite the cost.

“We need to take the gospel to people,” Thompson said. “With 62 percent of the kids and families that are involved in KBC being unchurched, that is a huge (mission) field. I know right now, nothing else that we do on a week-in-week-out basis comes anywhere close to engaging lostness.”

Dr. Thompson will share his huge vision of bringing KiDs Beach Club® to more than 1,000 schools in Arkansas and how those who attend the Benefit Dinner can help to make that happen.

Dianna Booher, a long-time KBC supporter and best-selling author of 47 books, recently outlined three essentials to becoming a person of influence for an article in Forbes Magazine. She wrote that people of influence must operate with:

1. Consistency: Being a person of integrity that others can trust.
2. Empathy: Being a person who listens with an open mind and understanding another person’s point of view.
3. Courage: Being a person to take the opportunity to present your case in an empathetic way that helps others meet their long-term goals.
   
   

KiDs Beach Club® would like to invite you to be a part of our Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner and continue to influence the spreading of the gospel in public schools by financially supporting this ministry.

Doors to the Grand Ballroom at The Speedway Club open at 6 p.m. for the popular Dine & Dash and Pick & Play games that feature restaurant gift cards and various fun activities in the DFW area. The program and dinner will begin at 7 p.m. and will be followed by an eight-item live auction and then testimonials from Dr. Vroonland and Dr. Thompson.

You can buy an individual ticket for $100 at KiDsBeachClub.org/Dinner. You can also purchase a table for $800, which includes 10 seats, and a ride for one person around the world famous race track in decorated pace cars.

If you can’t make it to the Benefit Dinner and would like to make a donation in support of the Bibles for Beach Club program, please visit KiDsBeachClub.org/Bibles.

KiDs Beach Club® hasn’t always handed out a Bible to every child in every Beach Club. That is a relatively new initiative of the ministry. Through 2014, each Beach Club only gave out one Bible each week.

Fray Webster has been a long-time friend of KiDs Beach Club® and has been supporting the ministry since Jack Terrell started it in 2003 as part of the children’s ministry at First Baptist Church Euless. KiDs Beach Club® became an official non-profit organization in 2006.

“When they spun off on their own, we were a small financial contributor, kind of like a cheerleader on the sideline,” Webster said. “But we weren’t heavily involved in any way, form or fashion.”

That changed when Webster joined the organization’s board of directors. In those early years, the ministry was more focused on when they would see 10,000 kids join Beach Club or when they would see 1,000 professions of faith.

Through his own daily devotion and prayer, Webster began hearing another message from God.

“He really just put on my heart that His word needed to be in every child’s hands,” Webster admitted. “I just began questioning that in my heart and my mind as to how we could do that. Could we do that at KiDs Beach Club®?

“Surely, if other groups could do it, certainly we could, too,” Webster remembers. “God began putting it on my heart, burning it in my heart, so I asked the question at a board meeting, ‘Why do we not give a Bible to every student in KiDs Beach Club®?’”

That meeting was in early 2014 and when the organization’s annual benefit dinner rolled around in September, it was renamed as the Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner with the sole purpose to raise enough money so that every child could receive a Bible of his or her very own.

“It’s obviously ordained by God as He brought this thing together,” Webster said. “I may have been the one who mentioned it at the board meeting, but He had already put it on the hearts of many people and there was an immediate affirmation that we needed to pursue this when I brought it to the table. Then God began orchestrating ways for that to happen.”

In January 2015, KiDs Beach Club® implemented Great Treasure Day, the day that every child in Beach Club receives his or her own copy of God’s word. The name was inspired from Psalm 119:162, which reads, “I rejoice at your word as one who finds great treasure.” It’s a memory verse that every child in Beach Club learns that day when they receive their Bible.

“I was at a Beach Club two years ago when we gave out Bibles,” Webster says. “It was a powerful, powerful time. I’ve seen some of the videos documenting Great Treasure Day, but it was a beautiful time to be in a Beach Club on Great Treasure Day to see children receiving their Bibles – the excitement,  the anticipation leading up to that and to walk in that room and see the Bibles stacked up on the table ready to be given to the children, it’s fantastic.

“I sat down with a group of about five fourth-grade boys and got to visit with them. I sat at their table as they were called up to get their Bibles. They were excited about them and they brought them back and every one of them immediately opened their Bible and began thumbing through the pages, looking and reading bits and pieces through their Bible.”

Webster says he loves hearing stories about kids reading the Bible at school and the stories about parents asking if they can have another Bible because they want to read it after seeing how their children are so encouraged by reading the Bible. Webster reminds us of Isaiah 55:11, which says, “So is my word that goes out from my mouth; It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”

“We understand that God’s word accomplishes what God wants it to,” he says. “So, to put a copy of God’s word into those children’s hands – every child – they might be a teenager before they pick that Bible up and really read it, but that’s when God speaks to them. It might be their mom, or their dad, or their brother that’s not in a Beach Club.

“We’re putting a Bible into that home. We’re putting it in there with a dynamic and fun message to that child that encourages them to pick that Bible up and read it. I just think when the word of God is read, it changes lives.”

You’re helping KiDs Beach Club® distribute God’s word in public schools and it’s not only changing a child, the culture of the school, a family or their community, but it’s also changing lives for the benefit of God’s kingdom.

“We’re not (just) dealing with giving a third grader a Bible,” Webster reminds us. “We’re dealing with eternity here. Think about the families that we can change. What if it’s the third grader who accepts the Lord and they begin witnessing to their brothers and sisters and their family and nothing happens there, but that third grader grows up, gets married and has a family. What happens to those generations afterward? It’s an incredible opportunity.”

You can help us reach even more kids and their families for Christ by attending this year’s Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner on Saturday, April 13 at Texas Motor Speedway. Tables, half tables and single tickets are available now at kidsbeachclub.org/dinner.

We often hear people say that God is no longer allowed in public schools or that our public schools are full of darkness where there isn’t light.

As a friend of KiDs Beach Club®, you know the first statement just isn’t true because you cannot remove God from anywhere Christians are present. As for the second statement, we are helping our partnering churches go into our public schools, an often-overlooked mission field, to show the love of Jesus Christ and to shine His light.

Schalee Sanchez, now the club leader for the first-year Beach Club at Janie Stark Elementary in Farmer’s Branch, Texas, decided to enroll her kids in public school rather than go the home school or private school route. It was a process that began about four years ago, when she and her husband moved back to the United States after serving as missionaries in Colombia.

Sanchez said her heart was burdened and troubled for all of the things that go on in schools during this day and age.

“It’s just so sad,” Sanchez said. “I began praying about it more and more. I felt like God was saying I want to teach you to fight back but in the right way. I believe that KiDs Beach Club® is doing that. It’s a way, in a spiritual realm, that the armies of God are fighting against the darkness.”

Her children now attend Janie Stark Elementary and participate in Beach Club.

“We felt called that God opened a door for our kids to go to school here,” Sanchez said. “So, as our kids started getting involved, I heard about a beach club in another school through a member at our church and that sparked my interest”

During this past year, God brought several people into Sanchez’s life who were volunteering at Beach Clubs in other schools. She went to visit one club and talked with parents who had children in the club about the positive impact it was having on their family. God’s hand began to work and the desire to start a Beach Club grew on Sanchez.

“As a mom of four kids, I was concerned about becoming a club leader and taking on that responsibility,” Sanchez admitted. “But God brought a whole team of prayer warriors to come alongside me, a team of incredible volunteers that have made it possible, support from my church and the elders there – from prayers to financial support.”

A majority of the volunteers in the Beach Club at Janie Stark Elementary School have children who also attend. The volunteers don’t all attend The Branch Church, which partners with KiDs Beach Club®. Sanchez says that the volunteer group come from four other churches and almost all of them attend a Mom’s in Prayer Bible study.

“One of the really cool things for me was that it wasn’t just about people from the local congregation that were interested in sharing the love of Jesus in a public school,” Sanchez said. “But He brought other believers from the body of Christ in from other churches with the mission of sharing the light and God’s love. So, children will know that God loves them and has a special plan for their lives.”

Keneé Dover is a volunteer in the Beach Club. She and her husband also serve together in a kindergarten class in their church and he told her Beach Club might be the most important work she does all year.

“Being able to spread the Word of God to young hearts is the biggest blessing that we are given,” Dover said. “To be able to give that gift to children when it really sinks in. I feel like it’s when they are children, especially children that have never heard about God and never heard about Jesus. It’s important for us to share that with them because we are called to share the Good News. It’s the Great Commission, ‘Go to all the world and preach the Good News…’ Our world is right here in this community and there are people who don’t know Him yet.”

Dover is proud of Sanchez for bringing the Beach Club to Janie Stark Elementary.

“Schalee had it called on her heart to start this club,” Dover added. “We debated on public school or private school for that reason and we chose, because we are believers, to be the light in the public school. This just gives us another avenue for our children to be able to share and be an encouragement to their friends, and then to be able to partner with our children, to be the light in little hearts, is just the biggest blessing.”

Sanchez urges anyone who thinking about starting a Beach Club or to become a volunteer to go for it.

“I would tell you that God is able to work through you, in a powerful way,” Sanchez said. “He isn’t just going to impact the kids an hour a week when the volunteers are there. What I have seen is how God uses a Beach Club to impact students and their parents throughout the week. That for me makes it a valuable investment of our time. God multiplies what we pour into that one hour during the afternoons every week.”

For more information about KiDs Beach Club®, click the "About" tab at the top of the website.

Typically, churches partner with KiDs Beach Club® so they can go outside their walls and into their communities, specifically to reach kids with the message of Jesus Christ in their public schools in an effort to connect them back to their church. However, we recently learned it doesn’t always work out that way.

Christ Church in Irving, Texas, which has sponsored a Beach Clubs at Farine Elementary School since the 2013-14 school year, found out a family picked its congregation because it partners with KiDs Beach Club®.

When Leslie Jaramillo and her family moved from Dallas to Irving, they took on the task of finding a new church home. She knew what they wanted denominationally but had another requirement – that the church must be sponsoring a Beach Club.

“When I had my list of churches, I saw that Christ Church had a Beach Club and I thought, ‘I know that they believe what I believe, in making Jesus your forever friend and that Jesus is the only way for salvation,’” Jaramillo said. “So, when I saw that Christ Church had a Beach Club, I was pretty much set on that church. Then once we met the people, I knew we couldn’t walk away.”

Jaramillo was a volunteer with KiDs Beach Club® through her church in Dallas for four years before she moved to Irving. Teaching in Beach Club is a huge part of her life. Her oldest son, who is now 7-years-old, is a club member as well.

“I tell him that he has been in Beach Club his entire life. I was pregnant with him and teaching in a Beach Club,” Jaramillo jokes.

She is so passionate about KiDs Beach Club®.

“I think having access to kids in their school is such a unique opportunity,” Jaramillo said. “KiDs Beach Club® meets kids where they are and reach kids that otherwise wouldn’t be reached. There are parents that would never consider putting their kids into a church program, but since it is so easy, they do.”

Megan Peacock, one of the club leaders at Farine Elementary talks about why KiDs Beach Club® is so important to Christ Church and why it drew Jaramillo to ultimately choosing it as her family’s church home.

“It is important to me because our church is very passionate about being involved in our community and building relationships with our schools in our community,” Peacock said. “It is just a phenomenal treasure that we get to go into public schools and talk about Jesus. So, we would be foolish to pass that opportunity up.”

For Christ Church, KiDs Beach Club® has been a catalyst in the community.

“It has really opened our eyes to the community, helping our church look more like our community culturally and appearance wise. So, we have seen the fruits of our investments at KiDs Beach Club® pour over into our Sunday morning programs by bringing families from Beach Club into our building.

“We have such an impact and it is amazing that Leslie chose our church because of Beach Club. She is a storyteller here and she is using her gift and passion. Her family is so highly involved, and I am not surprised at all that this is how she chose her church.”

To find out which schools have a Beach Club, you can visit KiDsBeachClub.org/Find-A-Club. There you can find out which church partners with us to operate that Beach Club.