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After your quiet time with the Lord on Thursday, September 14, when you close your Bible, would you consider providing a Bible for a child in a public school? 

September 14 is North Texas Giving Day, when thousands of generous donors give back to their favorite charities in North Texas. It costs KiDs Beach Club® just $20 to put a KBC Explorer’s Study Bible into the hands of a child and your gift that day will help provide a child the hope of a relationship with Jesus Christ in confusing time in our world.   

This year, North Texas Giving Day has set up a way to schedule your $20 gift, as early as seven days in advance.  Please go to kidsbeachclub.org/givingday beginning September 7 to schedule your gift.

The effects of Hurricane Harvey have put a real fear into the hearts of children along the Gulf Coast where we have 11 after-school Bible clubs. Their security and world as they have known it, has been shaken. When school resumes for the children in that region, our KBC volunteers will be ready to assure the children in those Beach Clubs that there is a sure foundation in Jesus Christ during times of uncertainty.

Those KBC volunteers represent nine partnering churches who are not only providing spiritual guidance to these children in public schools but are ministering to the physical needs of the families of Beach Club children as well. One of KBC’s core principals is that we impact communities for God’s Kingdom by equipping churches to minister outside the walls of their building and become beacons of hope in their communities, especially during disasters like this.

Your financial gift to KiDs Beach Club® on North Texas Giving Day will greatly help us continue to provide hope in Jesus Christ. A generous donor has already provided a matching gift of $4,000 so please go to kidsbeachclub.org/givingday beginning September 7 to schedule your donation.

While some Leadership Luaus have already taken place, every volunteer should make plans now to attend remaining Luau events in the month September to help them get ready for a new year of KiDs Beach Club®.

Leadership Luau is a high-energy time of worship and celebration for Beach Club leaders to connect with other leaders in clubs near them. Leadership Luau is not a typical training event, but an exciting time to get recharged and ready to achieve the mission of giving every child a Jesus experience inside their public elementary school.

A lot of hard work goes in to preparing for Leadership Luau, however Vickie Sneed, a club relations specialist in Tennessee, went all out to create a masterpiece of decorations to set the mood for a fun day of training for the Leadership Luau in Bartlett. Sneed spent countless hours planning and crafting the luau. 

“Hopefully I'm sending a message to our volunteers that they are important and worth the time it took for decorating,” Sneed said.

“My hope is that when they walked in and saw the decorations, their mood was lifted and excitement and energy filled the air. I want each volunteer to be encouraged, motivated and eager to embark on another year of KiDs Beach Club®.”

She and a team of nine others got together at church for a full craft day in the time leading up to the Leadership Luau. They painted several surfboards, created palm trees from carpet rolls, turned close to 100 pool noodles into an extravagant coral reef, crafted more than 100 flowers from tissue paper and coffee filters and so many other fun decorative projects. They went as far as to build a surf shack for refreshments, several beachside scenes, a beach ball arch and a life-sized ocean wave for attendees to document in photos to share on social media.

David Riggs has volunteered for three years at the Beach Club at Lakeland Elementary in Lakeland, Tenn., and has attended Leadership Luaus previously. On the practical side, he loves getting all the new information at one time with the volunteers from all of the other Beach Clubs in his area. In that everyone is gathered together for the training, a highlight for him is getting to meet the new volunteers he will be serving with for the upcoming school year in his Beach Club. 

Evelyn Davis, who has been a volunteer for two and a half years at Ellendale Elementary in Bartlett, Tenn., wouldn’t miss Leadership Luau. When asked why she attends she said, “Because of all the information I glean from the people sharing.” She especially loves to hear from other volunteers and club leaders about their experiences in Beach Club and the encouragement they have for one another.

Davis serves her Beach Club as a decision counselor, which is someone who talks with children about making Jesus their Forever Friend. She encourages others to attend because “Leadership Luau gives me enthusiasm for sharing Jesus with the children.” 

Leadership Luau provides the opportunity for volunteers to gather together and get excited about sharing Jesus with children.

“Seeing the potential impact of reaching kids for Christ through Beach Club is motivating and uplifting,” Sneed said.

In addition to providing an opportunity for you to connect and share ideas with fellow volunteers, top-notch KBC leaders are eager to share three new promotion and registration tools designed to grow your club and streamline the registration process:

• New online registration
• Individual web pages for every Beach Club
• New tools to promote your Beach Club

If you have not yet registered for Leadership Luau, go to kidsbeachclub.org/luau to locate and register for an event near you. You won’t want to miss this time of worship, celebration and learning!

KiDs Beach Club® redesigned its website over the summer and it can still be found at kidsbeachclub.org. It is vastly different than our old site and we think this new design better conveys who and where we are as an organization by telling the stories about our Beach Clubs, the kids who attend and the volunteers who serve. 

With the redesigned website come two new features everyone should know about, including Find a Beach Club and online registration.

To find your child’s club, click either of the links to “Find a Club” in the main navigation menu at the top of the website or the orange “Register KiDs” tab in the upper right-hand corner of the site. That will open up a page with a map of the United States. You can use the interactive map by zooming in to find your club or you can click the name of your state below the map to bring up a list of school districts. From there, you can select the name of your child’s school.

That will bring up a page for your child’s Beach Club with information about meeting dates and times, location and information about the sponsoring church. At the bottom of the page, there is a “Register Today!” button with a direct link to the new online registration form. Just click it to register your child. You will have to fill out a separate form for each of your children who will attend Beach Club. The form is accessible a variety of ways, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets and mobile devices and is optimized for the Google Chrome browser.

Be on the lookout for the new promotional club flyer that may come home with your child or be available at the school or the sponsoring church. You may even have it sent to you electronically from your school district through PeachJar or a comparable service. The flyer has information about the Beach Club at your child’s school and the direct URL to find your club’s page on our website.

In addition to those new features, users will see a focus on the ministry's four core values, the four Cs: Impacting Communities for the Kingdom; Sharing Christ in Public Schools; Fostering Life Change in the Hearts of Children and Connecting Families to a Church Family. And it's all presented right on the home page.

The website comes with other new features, including real-time reporting of the number of kids impacted by Beach Club, the numbers of volunteers who serve in Beach Club and the professions of faith made by Beach Club kids, both for the current school year and since the start of Beach Club in 2003. Also on display are the number of clubs, partnering churches and the all-time number of Bibles distributed.

Most of the information from the old site was adapted into the new site, which was designed in conjunction with Artistry Labs. It is presented entirely different and in an engaging way. We think you will find the site does a good job explaining who we are, what we do, where we are, when clubs meet and how to do a Beach Club. In fact, we answer all those questions under the "About" tab in the navigation bar. 

We hope you like it and visit often to read and watch the countless stories and video about how KiDs Beach Club® is connecting kids to Christ and putting Bibles in their hands.

It’s always exciting when a new church partner starts a Beach Club, but it’s even more exciting when they’re in a new state. This fall, Grand Avenue Baptist Church in Fort Smith, Ark., has the distinction of starting the first Beach Club in Arkansas at nearby Albert Pike Elementary.

Grand Avenue recently prepared for this ministry by promoting Beach Club at their Vacation Bible School. Moreover, they gave VBS attendees the opportunity to be involved in the outreach by designating the week’s offering for Beach Club.

“Anybody want to know what that money’s going to help do?” Sherry Goodrum, one of the VBS leaders and a teacher at the church, excitedly asked her young audience. “It’s actually going to go for a really cool activity. It’s called KiDs Beach Club®.”

She enthusiastically explained the purpose of Beach Club to the VBS attendees –many of whom are students at Pike Elementary, and thus potential Beach Clubbers.

“KiDs Beach Club® is an innovative ministry established to mobilize the church to go outside of the walls. You know that the church needs to go outside the walls to make sure that the message of Christ gets to the heart of our communities.”

She also described what kids can expect at Beach Club meetings, “We’re going to tell the truth of scripture at these meetings, every time, in an effort to make sure that Jesus is cool at school.” 

Goodrum presented this information as a lead-in to the offering, which was collected throughout the week in traditional VBS fashion: boys against the girls, with Goodrum getting a pie in the face if the boys won, and a male leader facing the same fate if the girls won.

Despite all the fun and competition, Goodrum ultimately directed the focus back to the unified effort of raising funds for Beach Club.

“The money raised during the VBS will help to purchase Bibles,” she said. “Isn’t that awesome, for others to hear about Jesus’ love?”

At week’s end, they had collected $718 for Beach Club. As for the competition, the girls won, sparing Goodrum from the pie. More importantly though, the kids at Grand Avenue had a valuable opportunity to participate in outreach, learning at a young age to help and pray for one another.

In addition to Arkansas, KiDs Beach Club® will also expand this fall to Ohio, marking the ministry’s 11th state. 

As Beach Clubs around the country enter the new school year, consider how you can create opportunities for your church family – young and old alike – to contribute to your Beach Club. Click here to find out how you can get involved in Beach Club.

Tina Kimbro has joined the KiDs Beach Club® as the independent area strategist for Central Florida.

Kimbro has served as a director of children's ministry for 18 years and is a contract worker for The Florida Baptist Convention, equipping children’s ministry leaders in children's evangelism, Sunday School and missions. She attends Trinity Baptist Church in Apopka, Fla., where she teaches a small group Bible study, coordinates the children's choir program and leads kids’ worship.

Her husband Jay also serves in the church as associate pastor of discipleship, missions and evangelism. He previously served KiDs Beach Club® as an area director in Florida. They have three children and nine grandchildren. In her free time, she enjoys being with family and walking on the beach.

When Sally Hofmann spoke at the Bibles for Beach Club Benefit Dinner and Auction last month, she delivered what many deemed to be the quote of the night.

“I cannot wait to travel back to Nashville and tell them we are auctioning off helicopter hog rides to raise money for Bibles!” she said, referring to one of the hunting packages auctioned off earlier in the evening.

Hofmann is the senior vice president of sales and marketing with HarperCollins Publishing, which publishes the KiDs Beach Club® Explorer’s Study Bible under their Thomas Nelson division. The company has produced Bibles for nearly 220 years, a heritage in which they take pride and still consider to be the heart of the company.

“We obviously consider publishing Bibles a sacred trust, and it’s the center of everything that we do,” said Hofmann, who previously headed up the Bible publishing group.

They produce different Bibles geared toward readers of different ages, the ultimate goal being that readers of all ages have a Bible that they can understand and will enjoy reading. Thus, they are a fitting partner in helping KiDs Beach Club® produce and distribute Bibles that speak to kids on their level.

“Our partnership is just a perfect marriage,” Hofmann said. “It’s blending both of our passions together.” 

She spoke about the development of the KBC Bible, which is based on Thomas Nelson’s best-selling Explorer’s Study Bible. KiDs Beach Club® founder Jack Terrell customized the KBC version by inserting four-color tip-in pages that explain how to use the Bible, how to spend time with God, how to live a Christian life, and, most importantly, how to be saved. 

Hofmann said, “We took an awesome product that we already had created, and Jack and his team were able to just really invest into really making the Bible understandable for the children.”

Despite this praise, the time spent in developing this Bible would be pointless if it were not being put into kids’ hands. This is why Bibles for Beach Club is so important. Hofmann spoke to this outreach, as well.

“I’m so encouraged by the dreams that Jack has had for this organization, to make Bibles available to every child going through the program,” she said.

The reason we are able to put a Bible into every child’s hand is because of donors like you. 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.

Hoffman wrapped up her remarks by quoting Proverbs 22:6, one of her favorite Bible verses. It reads, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

She teared up as she said, “To me, there is no better way than by children reading God’s word and having the scripture make a permanent mark in the child’s heart. And KiDs Beach Club® is doing just that.”