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This past fall when North Euless Elementary School celebrated Great Treasure Day, each child was given a brand new KBC Explorer’s Study Bible. With excitement and curiosity on this highly anticipated day, the children flipped through the more than 1,420 pages of scripture and turned to the colorful KiDs Beach Club® insert pages.

The children’s enthusiasm was evident, but for some children on that day a small worry began to surface. Each week during Beach Club, the children had been told how the Bible is God’s love letter to us and his sacred word. With so much focus on its importance, the children were nervous and a little overwhelmed to use their new Bibles.

During one meeting, Kelley Crow, a member of the strategic growth team at KiDs Beach Club®, who also serves as a surf team leader at North Euless, was passing around a pencil for her Surf Team to underline the day’s Memory Link.

A little boy named Joshua expressed his concern about writing and marking in his Bible. He didn’t know you were allowed to do such things to such a special and holy book.

Crow was able to tell her Surf Team how it is not only OK, but it is encouraged that the children mark verses in their Bible. She also encouraged them to write notes in the margins of the text.

“It is important to be able to look back on what has been studied in Beach Club, and marking the verses helps you to remember later,” Crow remembers telling the children. 

The club leaders at the North Euless Beach Club, which is sponsored by First Baptist Church Euless, realized the problem and offered a solution. Now, every week at club, volunteers bring highlighters for the children to use during Beach Club. They must bring their Bible with them to club in order to get a highlighter. Leaders taught the children how writing and highlighting in their Bibles is OK, and how it can help them study God’s word better. They are encouraged to highlight that week’s Memory Link in their Bible and mark the page so they can review it between club meetings. 

Children at North Euless and at some other Beach Clubs across the country cannot wait to get their highlighters and listen to the lesson. They turn to the scripture passages and the next thing they want to do is highlight the verses in their Bibles.

Instead of the children being nervous to study God’s word, their Bibles are glowing with different colors of highlights on verses they have learned in Beach Club.

“Any time they can get excited to open their Bibles it’s a great thing,” Crow said.

The ability for these children to receive their own Bible to write in and learn from would not be possible without your support of the Bibles for Beach Club program. Without KiDs Beach Club® going into the public schools many of these children would not know how to use and study God’s word.

Our time to reach these children for Christ is short, sometimes even shorter than the four years between third and sixth grade we focus on. Joshua, whose concern led to the implementation of highlighters at North Euless, will be moving after this school year. There is not currently a Beach Club in the town where his family is planning to move, but thanks to your support and his concern, he will be armed with a KBC Explorer’s Study Bible that is now filled with highlights and notes from what he is learning in Beach Club.

Merry Christmas from the KiDs Beach Club® family! We hope you will seek Him and
celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior by attending worship services on 
Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. If you do not have a church home,
please consider attending the church that sponsors your child's Beach Club.
For the complete list of our partnering churches, click here.

For nearly 11 years, more than 14,000 Beach Club volunteers have been sharing the gospel with elementary school children inside the walls of their public schools. One of the ways to measure the incredible impact KiDs Beach Club® has had on more than 77,000 children is that nearly 7,500 children have made Jesus their “Forever Friend” by asking Him into their lives during Beach Club.

KiDs Beach Club® invites all third through sixth graders to attend Beach Clubs and while many children continue attending Beach Clubs each year through sixth-grade graduation, KiDs Beach Club® recently discovered the increasing mobility rate in public schools has significantly shortened the window to reach many of these children with the gospel.

“With the frequency of parents moving in and out of school districts, the mobility rate of elementary school children is at an all-time high,” said Paul McCollum, vice president of school relations for KiDs Beach Club®.

“In many cases, we only have one year to reach these children and get Bibles in their hands,” he said. “As a former school principal, I can attest to the fact that it is a dual-edged sword. On one side, you have opportunity to impact a greater number of children in any given time frame, but on the other side, high mobility creates the need to be stealthily targeted in your resulting impact. If it is important for their education, it is imperative for their salvation.”

For many years, KiDs Beach Club® provided only 24 Bibles, one per week, to each Beach Club to give out during the 24 weeks of Beach Club.

In 2015, God clearly spoke to the KBC team that every child in every Beach Club should receive a Bible and through His provision KiDs Beach Club® started Great Treasure Day, the special day to hand out Bibles in each club, in the spring of 2015. On Great Treasure Day that spring, we handed out more than 11,000 Bibles. The expectation was that from that point on, KiDs Beach Club® would need about one-fourth of that amount or around 4,000 Bibles, to hand to incoming third graders plus any new child that would start attending Beach Club.

What KiDs Beach Club® discovered was that the number was closer to 50 percent, which reflects the high mobility rate within the public school system. In reality, because many of these children may only be in a school with a Beach Club for one year, the window to reach these children is much smaller than originally thought. The KBC leadership believes God is orchestrating events in the lives of many families, to allow children to be in a school with a Beach Club, even for one year, just so they can get a copy of His word.

In the first two years after implementing Great Treasure Day, KiDs Beach Club® has handed Bibles to 26,758 children, bringing the overall total for the ministry to 47,823.

Three times in the final chapter of the final book of the Bible, Revelation 22, in verses 7, 12 and 20, John wrote about Jesus coming quickly. It has never been more urgent to get the gospel to a lost and dying world than it is today.

KiDs Beach Club® is praising God that He continues to keep the doors open to the public schools to share His word in after-school clubs across America and give these children, many who don’t have a church home, the chance to hear about Him for the first time and receive their very first Bible so that even if the family moves, those children can take His word with them for direction in the years to come.

If you would like to make a tax-deductible year-end gift to support the continuing efforts of KiDs Beach Club® to provide every child in every Beach Club a Bible, please visit kidsbeachclub.org/give.

KiDs Beach Club® will welcome two new board members in January. Ron Cornelius will rejoin the KBC board of directors after one year away, while Julie Dalavai will join her husband Emmanuel Dalavai as a board member.

Cornelius has actively attended church since his youth and came to know the Lord when he was 13 years old. He grew up as the fourth of six kids on a 16-acre farm surrounded by hills near Springfield, Oregon, where his mom still lives in the very same house. Cornelius graduated from the University of Oregon in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in business management and an interest in real estate. After graduation, he left Oregon to see the world including backpacking through Europe. In 1983, the Texas real estate market was doing well so he moved to Texas and in 1991 started his own commercial real estate company.

His heart for people and love for travel in the United States and abroad has taken him on mission trips to Africa, Russia, China, Brazil, India and Ecuador. He works with prison ministries and Big Brothers Big Sisters, where he is currently mentoring two young men that have been released from a Youth Correctional Institution in Gainesville, Texas. Cornelius and his wife Sherry married in 1985 and have two children, Tiffany and Logan. Ron feels called to serve the Lord with his time, talent and treasures through various activities and is excited about what God is doing with KiDs Beach Club®.  

Julie Dalavai began following her calling of international missions after working on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. for two years. With the Journeyman program, she was able to work in Paris, France on a church-planting movement.

After her time in France, Dalavai started working for Inventiv Health, coordinating logistics for medical education programs and has served there for more than 10 years. 

At church, Dalavai has helped organize and lead mission trips to France, South Africa, Armenia and Iran. She has also participated in mission trips to Tanzania, Columbia and India. Dalavai loves to watch musicals, read and travel with her husband.

Dalavai accepted Christ as her savior when she was 8 years old and currently serves alongside her husband at First Baptist Church of Euless. She is a graduate of Baylor University with a bachelor’s degree in foreign service.

“I am reminded all the time that we do not have to go to another country to be able to build relationships and share the gospel with individuals of other backgrounds and religions because our Metroplex is so diverse,” she said.

KiDs Beach Club® looks forward to seeing what these two community leaders bring to furthering the vision and strengthening the mission of KiDs Beach Club®.

Fray Webster was awarded with the Distinguished Board Member award for his six consecutive years of service on the KiDs Beach Club® Board of Directors.

In 2014, Webster came to a board meeting with the question, “What if we gave every child a Bible?” The idea came to him in is daily devotion that KiDs Beach Club® give every child in Beach Club his or her own Bible, instead of giving only one Bible away each week. It took great faith to express this idea. But, because of Webster’s obedience along with the work and donations of countless others, we now celebrate Great Treasure Day. 

According to fellow Board Member Steve Thomas, Webster was “one of the best board members. Fray was generous in his time, ideas and monetary contributions. He devoted a lot of energy to furthering the message of KBC.” Thomas went on to say Webster was “tireless in his efforts.”

Webster will still be a friend of KiDs Beach Club® and will continue to serve the Lord at First Baptist Church Euless and through the entrepreneurship of his business, the Bramata Company.

Christmas is just around the corner. It’s a season of giving and for some people that presents its own unique challenges. We all have at least one person in our life that it’s hard to find the right gift for. Maybe they even tell you they don’t really want or need anything.

Yet, you still want to buy that person a gift and scour the Internet for just the right item. We have the perfect idea. Why not give a Bible in their honor?

You know that KiDs Beach Club® gives Bibles to children in public schools across the country. You may already even be supporting our ministry and our Bibles for Beach Club program.

“This is a season of giving. This is the Christmas season,” said Paul McCollum, KBC vice president for development. “What gift is better than the Bible? Why did Christ come? He came to save sinners. What did he leave us in order to help us? His word. Just as Christ came for sinners, we are still distributing Bibles to kids to fulfill that purpose for which Christ came.”

Giving Bibles in the name of your friend or family member is a meaningful gift and could have an eternal impact on children for God’s kingdom. It might even be an introduction for them to an organization near to your heart.

To give the gift of Bibles, please visit kidsbeachclub.org/bibles.

If you include the name and address of the person you want to honor or remember, we’ll send that person (or their loved one) a card to let them know a gift has been made in their honor or memory.

When making your gift, you have the option to support the Bibles for Beach Club program with a one-time gift or you can provide a gift on a recurring basis, like weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually.

“The message at Christmas is the message we give all year long,” McCollum said. “Christ came to save you. Essentially, recurring giving is a celebration of that gift – Jesus Christ – 12 months a year. Every month, you’re celebrating Christmas. Every month, you’re fulfilling the mission of why Christ came and why we celebrate His birth.”

Your support of the Bibles for Beach Club program is making a lasting impact on the nearly 10,500 kids currently enrolled in Beach Club. This year, alone, you have helped us put 8,981 Bibles in the hands of children. The other children previously received a Bible. Since 2005, we have distributed 47,823 Bibles through Beach Club in public elementary schools.

While those numbers continue to climb upward, we have even more clubs signed on to start after the first of the year. For that, we are incredibly thankful to God for our partnering churches and the fact that He is opening doors to more public schools across the country. But we need your continued support to ensure that we’re able to continue giving Bibles to every child.

We’re thankful the support you have already provided to Beach Club, but in this season of giving, please consider making a gift of Bibles or when someone asks you what you want for Christmas, tell your friends, family and colleagues that is what you would like from them. 

Together, with your support, we’re making a difference in the lives of children. We’re able to provide them with a Jesus experience within the culture of their public school. We are connecting kids to Christ and putting Bibles in their hands.