Blog

Another exciting year of Beach Club is under way and we couldn’t be more excited your children are a part of it. In club, they are hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, learning character through the lens of scripture and receiving a Bible of their very own.

KiDs Beach Club® is an innovative ministry established to mobilize local churches to go outside their walls in order to take the message of Jesus Christ into the heart of their communities. Our vision is to provide every third- through sixth-grade boy and girl a Jesus experience within the culture of his or her public school. Principals, teachers and even superintendents are telling us that they are seeing a change in the culture of the schools that have a Beach Club.

This year, we are in a record 180 schools, sponsored by 149 church partners in 11 states. The local church in your community cares about you and your family enough to invest its time and energy by partnering with KiDs Beach Club® in your neighborhood public school.

KiDs Beach Club® partners with local churches in order to:

• Impact Communities for the Kingdom
• Share Christ in Public School
• Foster Life Change in the Hearts of Children
• Connect Families to a Church Family

Since our ministry began in 2003, more than 18,000 volunteers have dedicated themselves to showing children the love of Christ every week in our public schools. To God’s glory, more than 8,300 children have come to make a profession of faith to have a relationship with Jesus Christ while in Beach Club.

Since 2003, KiDs Beach Club® has handed out Bibles to 55,212 children in public schools. In 2015, we started Great Treasure Day to give a KBC Explorer’s Study Bible to every child in every Beach Club and since then, more than 34,000 Bibles have been distributed to kids at no cost to them, their parents or our partnering churches. We have been blessed by group of donors who passionately believe in getting Bibles into the hands of children and into their homes.

By connecting kids to Christ and putting Bibles in their hands, KiDs Beach Club® makes it possible for your local public school and your local church to work together in supporting kids and families like yours.

To find out which church partners with KiDs Beach Club® to sponsor the club at your child’s school, please visit kidsbeachclub.org/find-a-club. If your family does not already have a church home, we hope you’ll consider attending the church that sponsors your child’s Beach Club.

Also at that link, you also can find the dates your child’s Beach Club meets, the date of Great Treasure Day, who to contact with questions and even a link to become a volunteer in your child’s Beach Club. We have parents who serve in our clubs and you’re welcome to attend Beach Club any time. We just ask that you reach out to the club leader ahead of time so he or she can provide your name to the school.

If you have any questions about Beach Club, please check out our website at kidsbeachclub.org. We also hope you will connect and engage with us on social media. We’re on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @KiDsBeachClub. We’re always looking for images and video of your kids in Beach Club or with their KBC Study Bible, so we hope you’ll share those with us.

We pray we are able to make a positive impact in your child’s life and to be a tremendous blessing to you and your family.

Thank you to everyone who participated in North Texas Giving Day! Your support is valuable to our ministry and is helping connect kids to Christ and put Bibles in their hands.

Because of your participation, we were able to raise $37,409, surpassing our ambitious goal of $30,000. Several of you made gifts on the North Texas Giving Day website, but others donated to our website, mailed in checks or joined us at Texas Roadhouse in Bedford and Mesquite, Texas, where a portion of that night’s sales were donated back to KiDs Beach Club®.

Of course, that total also includes a generous gift of $10,000 that was provided to us by a passionate donor of our organization to be used as a matching gift, helping double our first $10,000 given to KiDs Beach Club® that day.

Your gifts allow our volunteers to share the gospel with kids, teach them biblical character and provide them with their very own copy of God's word, which often times is their very first Bible. In some instances, it's the only Bible in a child's home.

We had a full slate of activities on North Texas Giving Day that started at 4:30 a.m. with a small group representing KiDs Beach Club® at Victory Park in downtown Dallas and ended after 10 p.m. when Jack Terrell, our president and founder, wrapped up an appearance on a local radio station. Watch Now!

If you tuned in to News 8 Daybreak on WFAA-TV that morning, you probably saw our motley crew wearing Hawaiian shirts near a guy holding a KBC surf board and with pictures of kids showcasing their KBC Bibles. Shortly after that show ended, Tammy Terrell, Jack’s wife and our club relations director, appeared on Facebook Live with WFAA and told them all about our ministry that is making a difference in the lives of kids, their families and their communities and how we are trying to change the culture of public schools. Throughout the day, we shared video from other staff members and went live on Facebook on multiple occasions, including one time that joined Jack and Tammy Terrell inside the Beach Club where they serve at Viridian Elementary in Arlington, Texas.

We mentioned Jack’s appearance on the radio, but earlier that night, Dr. David Vroonland, the superintendent of schools for the Mesquite Independent School District, joined the Chris Krok Show on 820 AM WBAP in Dallas to discuss his desire to have a Beach Club in all 33 of the elementary schools in his district. Listen Now!

Vroonland, who will be a featured speaker at the next Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner April 13, 2019 at Texas Motor Speedway, understands the importance that faith and love play in the development of a children. He says they are just as important as a quality education, which his district is providing.

While children may feel loved at home, some may not. He says that what KiDs Beach Club® provides for kids who attend our after-school program in the 19 schools in Mesquite, as well as 161 other clubs across the country, is a foundation of faith. Those kids also feel the love of volunteers, who weekly model the love of Christ.

We encourage you to visit our Facebook page to hear his full interview or to watch Jack Terrell’s interview on the Chris Krok Show. All of our North Texas Giving Day content on Facebook is still available.

Your generosity is appreciated. In times like these, the work you're helping us do is more important than ever. Thank you for helping us make an eternal impact in the lives of children.

If you did not have a chance to make a gift on North Texas Giving Day, please know you can support us anytime at kidsbeachclub.org/give.

Great Treasure Day, the day every child in every Beach Club receives his or her own KBC Explorer’s Study Bible, is coming to your club very soon. Actually, a small number of clubs has already had Great Treasure Day. This fall, Great Treasure Day will take place in a record 180 Beach Clubs. This fall, it’s highly likely we will hand out the 60,000th Bible since our ministry began in 2003.

God’s word is the greatest treasure anyone could ever find, and it is the foundation on which KiDs Beach Club® is built. We want every child to have their very own KiDs Beach Club® Bible to read, study, share and grow from, making a daily and eternal impact on their lives. This is a fun and exciting day for all involved.

Great Treasure Day is celebrated differently by every Beach Club and usually takes place during the fifth club meeting each year. Most of those will fall in the month of October though some Beach Clubs will celebrate their Great Treasure Day in November. 

Bibles are provided to our partnering churches at no additional cost to them. This is because of our many great Bibles for Beach Club donors, whether they give at the annual Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner, on North Texas Giving Day or as a monthly Bible donor. 

We want to encourage everyone to take photos and videos during their Great Treasure Day and to share them with us at KiDs Beach Club®. And when those Bibles make it into your home, we want to hear what getting a Bible means to your kids and what giving a Bible to a child means to you!

Please share your pictures, videos and stories on social media by using the hashtags #KiDsBeachClub and #GreatTreasureDay. We hope you’ll follow us and engage with us in our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram communities.

If social media isn’t your thing, you can email us anytime at news@kbcmail.org so that we can communicate it on our blog or in the monthly Surf Report e-newsletter.

To see when Great Treasure Day will be held in your child’s Beach Club, visit that club’s page on our website, which can be found by clicking kidsbeachclub.org/find-a-club.

Children who attend Beach Club already bring their Bible to school on the day their club meets, but KiDs Beach Club® is encouraging everyone to bring their Bible with them to school another special day; Bring Your Bible to School Day is Thursday, October 4. 

Bring Your Bible to School Day is an annual, nationwide, religious-freedom initiative for students from elementary school all the way up to college level. It was created by Focus on the Family to equip and empower Christian students to understand their religious freedoms and express their biblical beliefs in a way that shows the love of Jesus.

Participation in Bring Your Bible to School Day is student organized and initiated, as well as protected under both First Amendment and Equal Access rights. These are the same rights that allow KiDs Beach Club® to be held on public school campuses.

In recent years, you may have noticed the increase in news headlines about students being told they can’t engage in simple religious-freedom activities, such as reading their Bible personally during free time or praying during lunch. That’s why it’s so important to come alongside our students and encourage them that they do still have religious-freedoms protected under the United States Constitution–and they don’t have to be ashamed of or hide their deeply held religious beliefs.

Our Beach Club kids know they can have their Bible at school and read it during quiet time. They enjoy reading it before school, in the library, hallway, cafeteria and even together on the playground.

They are taught how to share their faith and pray with their classmates. These religious freedoms are protected. 

On Bring Your Bible to School Day, thousands of students across the country will take the lead on their campuses to celebrate religious freedom and share God’s hope with peers by taking a simple action: Bringing their Bible to school!

We hope all Beach Club kids will participate and we encourage you to your KBC Study Bible with you to school that day. If you can take a picture of your child with his or her KBC Bible at school and share it with us using the hash tags #BringYourBible and #MyKBCBible we would love to see those pictures!

To learn more about what you can do to support the students’ efforts and help them get the word out, please visit bringyourbible.org. They have resources for parents and churches to help you share the event with your students. They also have videos of students just like yours sharing their story of bringing their Bible to school. They even have explanations about myth vs. fact regarding students’ legal rights. 

I Timothy 4:12 says, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” And that’s what the Bring Your Bible website seeks to equip students to do.

Parental support for students participating in Bring Your Bible to School Day will be absolutely key since it does require courage in this culture of spiritual relativism to acknowledge the existence of redemptive truth. So, we hope you will surround your student participant with prayer and encouragement as they participate in the event.

KiDs Beach Club® is grateful for our kids, parents, volunteers, educators, churches and other friends of our ministry. We are excited to hear how the Lord is working in your child’s life, in your family, in your Beach Club, in your school and in your church.

Your KBC stories and experiences not only inspire us at the corporate office but they also encourage others who are part of our amazing team of more than 2,500 volunteers and more than 20,000 parents and supporters. 

As the Lord provides powerful moments in Beach Club, please take a moment to share them with us by visiting kidsbeachclub.org/mykbcstory. Of course, you can email your story idea to stories@kbcmail.org or you can share them with us on social media by using the hashtag #MyKBCStory.

We want to not only showcase you and the kids at Beach Cub but to show our amazing donors and supporters how their prayers and financial gifts are resulting in life-changing experiences in communities and public schools across the country.

We have many avenues to share your great stories with thousands of our KBC friends:

• Surf Report E-News
• KBC "Beach Currents" Blog
• Bibles for Beach Club Monthly Newsletter
• Social Media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at @KiDsBeachClub

Share Your Story

We hear it all the time: God can’t be in public schools! The Bible isn’t allowed in schools anymore! Since you’re a supporter of KiDs Beach Club®, you know neither of those statements is true.

Even some of our volunteers occasionally find it difficult to believe they are sharing the gospel with kids in public school, but they never take it for granted or underestimate their role in the spiritual development of children.

“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.

“I didn’t even realize that you could go into a school and have a Bible club at a public school,” she admitted. “To have that opportunity is a huge blessing and a huge ministry opportunity… they may not have a good understanding as to who God really is and who Jesus really is and why Jesus was sent to earth for them to have that intimate relationship that they can have with Him.”

Kids not only have a weekly opportunity in Beach Club to sing worship songs to God and to learn who God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are, but they can learn about Him through stories in the Bible. Thanks to donors like you, we are able to provide every child in every Beach Club with their very own study Bible and our volunteers are teaching kids how to use it.

“We can teach them how to incorporate that into their lives,” Criswell said. “We can teach them character traits that hopefully we’re planting nuggets and truth within their hearts… that I hope will eventually take root and that they can then look back years later and have those little nuggets that they can dwell on for whatever experience and trials they are going through.”

Courtney Cain spent several years as the club leader at Hanby Elementary in Mesquite, Texas. She had previously taught fourth grade at the school and remembers when she first realized the school needed Beach Club at her school.

“One day, in the middle of the school day, one of my students was very upset so I took him aside in the hallway when the rest of the class went to P.E.,” Cain said. “He said he was very scared because his older brother had given him drugs and he had smoked earlier that morning. He was terrified that he was going to get arrested.”

Cain said she knew many kids she taught have difficulty at home but said that story made it very real for her. That is when God told her it was time to get Beach Club at Hanby. Beach Club is teaching kids the difference between right and wrong through the truth of God’s word.

“God’s word is so powerful!” Cain reminds us. “When we put Bibles in the hands of these kids, those Bibles are going into those homes where these things are happening and where these kids are experiencing trauma or hopelessness. For the word of God to be going into their homes and for them to go share what they have just learned at Beach Club, and for the kids to have consistency with people of God each week and to associate God with love and with generosity, it really opens their eyes to all that He has for them. It really just starts planting those seeds and giving them hope.”

When you read stories like these about the opportunity we have with this ministry, there is little doubt of the eternal impact we’re making in God’s kingdom.