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Kids begin hearing about Great Treasure Day – the day they receive their very own Bible – when their Beach Club first meets. By the time a Beach Club meets for the fifth time, kids are beyond excited to receive their own copy of God’s Word.

“My students came in and they were just so excited,” Sheila Fortenberry, a third-grade teacher at Cooper North Elementary School in Lubbock, Texas, said the day her club passed out Bibles. “They came over to tell me, ‘Miss Fortenberry, today is the day we get our Bibles.’ It just melted my heart.” 

Children are definitely excited to get something they can call their own. A girl who received her first Bible at her Beach Club at South Athens Elementary School earlier this month couldn’t wait to start reading her Bible at home. 

“I’m definitely going to read my Bible,” she said. “I’m going to get a flashlight and sit up on the top bunk and read it because it’s awesome. I love the Bible and it helps me when I read it.” 

Aside from the reason kids embrace their new Bibles, school administrators, teachers and pastors love the benefits kids get from reading the Bible and the impact they can have on other students. 

“I think it’s incredible,” said the principal of one Beach Club school who asked to remain anonymous. “For them to have their own Bible so that they can read and study the Word of God is a precious gift that all children deserve and need. 

“I think Beach Club benefits our students in a lot of different ways. Our job is to instruct and help to mold them as a whole person and helping them develop their spirituality is a very important part of developing them as a whole person.”

A boy, who also attends the Beach Club at South Athens, likes his Bible for the messages from God and on life’s lessons.

“The reason I love the Bible is that I get to read about God,” the boy said. “I get to read his love message. When I have problems, there are people in the Bible who have experienced that so when I go to it and I read about how they handled my same problem, I can use their way to help me out. 

The KiDs Beach Club® curriculum promotes good character which is supported within the KBC Explorer’s Study Bible and its tip-in pages.

“The kids associate those character qualities with righteousness and not necessarily only with morality,” said Courtney Cain, a co-club leader at Hanby Elementary School in Mesquite, Texas. “I would hear the kids kind of speak up, ‘that’s not what you listen to (at Beach Club),’ so I definitely saw them being advocates for doing the right thing with the perspective of doing it to glorify God and not to just do the right thing.”

Cain, who taught at Hanby the previous four years before moving to a middle school this year to teach reading, thinks kids understand the impact and meaning of Great Treasure Day.

“I think that saying it was a Great Treasure Day is not over-exaggerating because for these kids in particular, being given anything just means so much to them,” Cain said. “Being given the Word of God obviously is the greatest thing you can give them. I don’t think they’re unaware of that. I think they will just value and remember this day.”

“One of the exciting things about handing out all these Bibles is that many of these students don’t even have access to a Bible, so to give them the opportunity to have a Bible to call their own, means a great deal,” said David Griffin, a pastor at Community Life Church in Forney, Texas. “How awesome is it that we get to come into a local school and get to hand out Bibles to people and they’re just longing to have those.”

The Beach Club at Hanby even gave away highlighters so kids could begin marking in their Bibles to identify their favorite verses and stories they learn about in Beach Club.

“One of the kids came up to me after he had been given his Bible and asked me, ‘do I really get to keep this?’ and that was probably my favorite moment,” Cain said. “Even after we had given the Bible to him, he really couldn’t believe it. He was just so excited to be reassured he was going to get to keep it.

“The spiritual implications are huge because the kids are literally being taken from death to life. We saw several kids come to know the Lord last year. Obviously, that is going to have an impact in the classroom.”

Great Treasure Day is the day that Beach Clubs hand out the KiDs Beach Club® Explorer’s Study Bible to every child in every Beach Club who has not already received one.

God’s Word is the greatest treasure on earth and it is the centerpiece of our ministry. We want every child to have their very own copy to read, study, share and grow from making a daily and eternal impact on their lives.

Most of the 164 beach clubs will hold their Great Treasure Day on the fifth week of their club. While schedules vary, most will take place this month. Some Beach Clubs, like the one at Shady Oaks Elementary School in Hurst, Texas, have already had Great Treasure Day. 

“The kids have been counting the days since we started” said Suzette McCash, the club leader at Shady Oaks, which distributed their Bibles October 8. “We told them on day one that in three weeks we would have Great Treasure Day and that they would get their own Bible.”

There are countless benefits to kids receiving their own Bible.

“Teachers tell us the kids open their Bibles in class and read their Bibles there,” said McCash, who has served as the club leader at Shady Oaks for all 10 years of KiDs Beach Club®. “In this day and age, you just would be surprised that could happen, but that way, they get to share with their friends who Jesus is. That is our main goal. We want them to know the Bible is a great treasure. That it is the true Word of God and that He loves them.”

Another positive is that KiDs Beach Club® may be putting a Bible in a home for the first time. 

“I think it is a good thing that we can give to know that these children are putting Bibles in their home,” McCash said. “Some of them may have never had a Bible in their home. There might be parents that are looking at these Bibles that have never opened one before. Hopefully, that is what is happening.

“We have a brother and sister here that came from Beach Club to join as members our church. The mother is an active member now. So it has just been an all-around good (experience). How can you go wrong when you put the Word of God in someone’s hands? It’s a Great Treasure Day every day when they can walk away with a Bible. I thank Beach Club for the opportunity to do this.

Perhaps the biggest positive is that kids are getting something they can call their own.

“They are excited. For one thing, it’s theirs,” McCash said. “Some of them don’t have any thing that is theirs and this Bible is theirs. The parents have been good to help them get the Bibles back and forth to school. I think they are just very proud that they are their own. We haven’t had many, if any, that have lost them.”

Before Great Treasure Day started last spring, each club was giving away just one Bible each week of the club. McCash said she noticed a big difference when KiDs Beach Club® began giving every child a Bible.

“When we were giving away one a week they would have it one week and lose it the next,” she said. “I think this has made a big difference, that we have made a big affair out of it and they see that they’re special because they get this Bible and they get to hold on to it. No one literally can take it away from them.”

Your support of our Bibles for Beach Club program helps put Bibles into the hands of every child in KiDs Beach Club®, helping connect them and perhaps their families to Christ. Thank you for your continued generosity.

KiDs Beach Club® is turning 10 years old in the spring and we will have a giant celebration on April 16, 2016 at the Hurst Conference Center in Hurst, Texas.

We will not only celebrate our birthday but we’ll also be celebrating more than 6,400 children who have put their trust in Christ in public elementary schools! By that time we will have also handed out more than 40,000 Bibles in Beach Clubs and will be raising funds to continue to provide God’s Word for every child in every club.

Would you consider volunteering for one of our committees?  We have opportunities to serve with the following committees: Silent Auction, Dine and Dash/Pick and Play, Decoration, Registration, Table Hosts/Ticket Sales, Sponsorship and Entertainment/Publicity.

Please contact Dave Crome at dcrome@beachclubs.org if you would like to be part of this great event.

Hey parents, have you contacted your church yet to encourage them to sign up for KiDs Beach Club® Summer Camp? Our camp will take place July 22-26 at the Latham Springs Camp and Retreat Center in Aquilla, Texas.

Right now, only KBC partnering churches have the opportunity to register groups for Summer Camp. That will change in November when spaces will be opened up to hundreds of additional churches. The camp is for all third through sixth grade children and you don’t have to attend beach club to join your church at camp.

“In my two decades of ministry experience, summer camp impacts kids like nothing else I’ve found,” KBC Executive Director Cindy Leach said. “There’s something about getting away from the daily routine and distractions of life that allow kids' minds and hearts to be open and to experience God in life-changing ways. That’s why I’m so excited about KiDs Beach Club Summer Camp.” 

A team of experienced camp leaders will provide a fun and impactful program that kids will remember for years to come. We’ve got all the details covered so your church volunteers can focus on your kids as they have a blast with traditional camp experiences while learning to share Jesus with their friends and become leaders on their school campus. 

“We’ll present Jesus to kids and prepare them to go back to their schools as leaders, sharing the truth of Jesus with their friends,” Leach said.

Why should your church choose KBC Summer Camp? Camp provides a unique opportunity for kids to get away from day-to-day distractions so they can hear the voice of God. Our prayer is that every child at KBC Summer Camp will experience God’s presence is a unique way and leave equipped to lead others to follow Christ.

Your church won’t want to miss this preteen camp experience with a KiDs Beach Club flavor. Contact your church and let them know you’re interested so it can reserve a space right now.

For more information vist: kidsbeachclub.org/summercamp

Great Treasure Day – the day we hand out a KiDs Beach Club® Explorer’s Study Bible to every child in every Beach Club who has not yet received one – is just around the corner.

God’s Word is the greatest treasure on earth and it is the centerpiece of KiDs Beach Club® We want every child to have their very own copy 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.

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®. You can share them on social media - @KiDsBeachClub on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – by using the hash tag #kidsbeachclub or #greattreasureday. Also, you can email them to us at photos@beachclubs.org. Remember, when taking video with your smart phone, please turn it on its side so that the long edge of the device is parallel to the floor.

Chris Burton, the children’s minister at First Euless, is a volunteer at KiDs Beach Club at North Euless Elementary School. He initially provided this powerful testimony at the KBC Basic Training event at Christ Church in Irving in August and shared it again with us. We offer it as encouragement so you realize how much KBC is making a difference in the lives of the children who attend Beach Club.

“We were there at North Euless one day and the kids really weren’t listening. We were trying to get their attention. To say that we weren’t frustrated would be a lie because we were a little frustrated.

I asked the kids, ‘Guys, why are you here?’

When I asked that question, one little girl stood up in the midst of all the kids and she said, ‘Mr. Chris, I would love to tell you why I’m here.’

She began to tell me her story about how she lives with her mom – it’s just her and her mom – and how she doesn’t have a dad in the home and her mom works two jobs and works basically seven days a week and that includes Sundays. So they can’t ever make it to church. She told me, she looked at me and said, ‘Mr. Chris, this is my only time to hear about Jesus.’

When she said that to us, God just did something inside of us. It changed our whole Beach Club for that year. It changed what we were doing with the kids. It changed the leaders perspective in the way that they were excited about Beach Club. God just did a work in our club that year through what that little girl said.”

First Euless ministers to hundreds of these children each week through eight different Beach Clubs. 

“The reason why it is so important for us to have eight (Beach) Clubs,” Burton continued. “The thing about our church that we are definitely Kingdom minded. We understand and try really hard to get our kids – that we are a part of in Beach Club in the different schools – to our church. We know a lot of those kids may never make it.

Why it is important for a church to be Kingdom-minded is realizing that even though you’re reaching these kids and that even though some of these kids may not ever come to your church. It doesn’t change the fact that us not sitting where we are in our church waiting for people to come to us. Us not sitting and doing that is so important because it is so important for us to go to where they are. Because there are so many kids out there that aren’t able to come to church and that is outside of their control.

But as a church, we shouldn’t be waiting for kids to come to us. We should be going to them and taking Jesus to them. Where is the best place to do that, especially when you’re talking about kids? That is in the school system. God has opened the door through KiDs Beach Club® for us to be able to do that and all we have to do is step into it. That’s one thing I love about Beach Club. It gives us the opportunity to do that. We teach kids the Bible. There is probably no other way we would be able to do that if it weren’t for KiDs Beach Club®.”