Ministry Focus: CEF Child Evangelism Fellowship

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    Today I want to share a ministry that I support. Child Evangelism Fellowship is an organization that I've been familiar with for years. It has been around since 1937 and is focused on sharing the gospel with children by working with local churches to equip them and give them tools to use to that end. Currently, their two biggest ministries are Good News Clubs and 5 Day Clubs. Good News Clubs are weekly after-school Bible clubs during the school year that can be held in schools or other locations. 5 Day Clubs are similar but last only 5 days and are usually led by trained youth (supervised by adults). My family became involved about 11 years ago when our church started a club in a local elementary school and my homeschooled daughter felt led to be a helper. She worked with that club for 5 years before leaving for college. It ended for various reasons including COVID, but my church had an opportunity to start it again a couple of years ago and this time I was able to work with it!

    I have been so impressed since I started working with this ministry. The training, materials, and help from their local director are all excellent. Every week the lesson incorporates the gospel message, a scripture of the week, a lesson based on scripture, and lots of games and songs to help review. We also have time to talk with the children on a more personal level about their bible questions and things they have going on in their life. 

    Parents and guardians have to register their children, and many of our children don't have a home church. Probably more than 50 percent have difficult home situations. In spite of so much working against them, 14 of our club's children have become Christians in the last 2 years. Three of them made decisions over the summer and then told us, but the other 11 happened in our club! We have had about 25 regular attendees each year. That is an amazing result. These children's lives are being changed at an age when it can change the trajectory of their lives.

    Even though my family's involvement began at a time when we were homeschooling all our children, we realized what an opportunity it was to share the best news ever with children outside the walls of the church. I wanted to share this ministry in hopes that others will consider becoming involved. Our area director is great at helping churches accomplish this. She matches children with schools and lays all of the groundwork. Additionally, she trains all leaders, does background checks, and provides materials. Whenever our team has struggled to find enough leaders she was able to connect us with others in the area who were interested but not involved in another club. She also paired our church with another church who helps with the financial costs of the materials and has provided another leader for our club.

    If this piques your interest, I encourage you to pray about it and look at the CEF website below for more information. Even if you cannot participate, you can support the ministry financially and in prayer. It costs money for them to maintain area directors and support staff who are diligently working to start more clubs and maintain existing ones. We have several churches in our area that cannot start a club at the time, but financially support our local CEF. CEF is a Christian organization that is not tied to any particular denomination. If you have questions feel free to email me at kim@kimgriffin.org .

https://www.cefonline.com/about/

If you are in the Upper Cumberland area of Tennessee like me, our director would love to have you reach out at: https://www.uppercumberlandcef.org




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