KBC Blog (2021)

As we near the Christmas season where we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, KiDs Beach Club® is excited to celebrate with you, our family of loyal prayer warriors, volunteers, parents and financial supporters, the milestone of reaching 200 Beach Clubs!

“I’m thrilled to tell you that on October 22, the goal of reaching 200 Beach Clubs was accomplished and it now has ‘DONE’ stamped all over it,” Jack Terrell, KBC founder and president, said. “We’ve reached 200 Beach Clubs with even more coming in each week that are set to launch in February. I’m amazed!”

The 200th Beach Club will start in January at Lawrenceville Elementary in Lawrenceville, Ga. Tina Kimbro, a club relations coordinator with KiDs Beach Club®, has been praying over the area and focused on for several months.

“I was so excited that Central Baptist Church in Lawrenceville was partnering with us to start this club to begin with, but the fact that it is No. 200, which many of us in the field and the KBC office has been praying about for a long time made me absolutely ecstatic!” she explained.

Steven Greene is the lead pastor at Central Baptist Church and has a background in student ministry. Since coming to the church two years ago, he has established strong relationships in area high schools and middle schools and has been praying for a way to minister inside the elementary schools. After speaking with Kimbro at the Metro Gwinnett Baptist Association Meeting in April, he knew this was the open door he had been praying about.

“I didn’t have any background in elementary school ministry,” Greene said. “It’s a different world with regulations and other areas but the way Tina and KiDs Beach Club® have been able to navigate that and figure out how to get us started in January was huge.”

When Pastor Greene arrived at Central Baptist in 2017, the church had no children’s ministry. In fact, his four children started that ministry. It is now starting to grow, and he believes the Beach Club at Lawrenceville Elementary will bring many new faces to their campus.

“This really fits and is perfect for our church,” he said. “This fall, we started a Wednesday night kids program and I view Beach Club as the outreach arm of our children’s ministry.”

The wave of excitement for starting this Beach Club has made its way through the congregation as many has stepped up to serve as volunteers.

“It’s so exciting to see the volunteer team that we’ve been able to build,” Greene said. “It’s an amazing mixture of people who have stepped forward that want to be involved, a lot of surprises! The age range is 19 to the mid-70s and it’s not only cross generational but cross cultural as well. We even have some who are family members that are getting involved together and that’s special.”

The response has also been strong in finding Beach Club Lifeguards to pray for and serve outside the club.

“Several Sunday school classes and the women’s group have signed up to be Lifeguards to write notes of encouragement to the students each week and to become the prayer partners behind the scenes. This is perfect for them and right up their alley to be able to be missionaries on the local level and be able to reach out to the families of these children.”

Please pray for this Beach Club and the volunteers from Central Baptist Church to have an immediate impact on the students and staff at Lawrenceville Elementary. This will be the second of 90 elementary schools in the Gwinnett County Public Schools district to start a Beach Club and both Kimbro and Greene believe that many others will follow suit.

“That school district is wide open, we have great potential there” said Kimbro, who has had conversations with administrators within the district who would like to see many Beach Clubs in many of the schools.

“It’s not just an open door,” Greene said. “We have people inside the schools begging for someone to come in and do ministry in their schools. We can’t wait to start!”

Celebrate 200 from KiDs Beach Club on Vimeo.