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Many churches were inspired to love their community a little extra in honor of Valentine's Day last month. Ridgeway Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., decided to celebrate an entire week expressing love around its community, and its favorite project centered around loving on the elementary school where they sponsor a Beach Club.

A group of Beach Club volunteers woke up in the very early hours on Valentine's Day to set up a coffee stand in front of their Beach Club school, Balmoral Ridgeway Elementary. These volunteers prepared enough coffee to give away to hundreds of parents and teachers and even decorated the tables with a fun Valentine theme. They served the coffee from 6:45 a.m. until the last parents came through to walk their children into school.

"I hope it lets the parents, students and faculty/staff know how much we care about all the students – not just those who are members of KBC,” Toni Davis, the club’s record keeper, said. “I hope the parents felt a sincere welcome for their families to visit Ridgeway Baptist Church. It’s important for those we encountered to have seeds planted that might grow into new Christians.”

Ridgeway Baptist Church sees the benefit of loving on the entire school. Right now, the Beach Club has only 18 children registered, but that smaller number does not deter the 15 volunteers from coming each week to invest in the whole school.

Along with the coffee they also gave out a card with their church information and offered a free copy of a book their pastor wrote about following Jesus. The church hoped to make many connections through its coffee stand; not only to grow their Beach Club, but also see more families connect to a local church.

This outreach by Ridgeway Baptist is exactly what KiDs Beach Club® was designed to do by mobilizing the church to go outside its walls in order to take the message of Jesus Christ into the heart of its community.

It’s a cycle that allows the church to make an impact in its community for the Kingdom, allows the church to share Jesus Christ in public schools to foster life change in the hearts of children and then connects that child and his or her family back to that partnering church.

Davis’ highlight of doing the coffee stand was getting to see the kids in Beach Club and their families as they were coming to school. She loved being able to wish the kids a great day at school, “and get hugs from them, too!”