Local schools participate in Bible study after hours

For students in three area elementary schools, learning about the good news is easier than ever. It gets delivered to them once a week.

KiDs Beach Club, a national Bible study and outreach group headquartered in Bedford, Texas, operates on the campuses of E.K. Key and Frasch elementary schools in Sulphur and Oak Park Elementary in Lake Charles, as well as in two other Louisiana parishes, and 10 other states. Locally, the club has partnered with Houston River Baptist Church, First Baptist Church of Sulphur and Trinity Baptist Church of Lake Charles to reach the third- through fifth-graders in those schools.

“A current myth, believed by many, is public schools are a closed mission field. This is simply no longer accurate,” the KiDs Beach Club website reads.

Flyers passed out show “clearly that it is an afterschool Bible study and parents are informed that it is a faith-based club. We go through the proper channels, and get approval from the school districts and principals,” said Dave Crome, vice president of marketing and communications for KiDs Beach Club. “Thanks to the Equal Access Law passed by the Supreme Court in 2001, religious outreach groups such as our own can function like any other after-school program.”

In nearly 16 years of ministry the group has reached about 100,000 pubic school students and given out more than 60,000 Bibles through their partnerships with more than 150 churches.

KiDs Beach Club’s average 49 students and 13 volunteers per school across the nation.

This number is boosted by the outliers of both Frasch and E.K. Key, which, according to Calcasieu Parish Schools Public Information Officer Holly Holland, have around 95 students and more than 100 who choose to participate in the club.

Mother Amy Drymon, whose two sons have attended Frasch Elementary’s KiDs Beach Club for the last two years, said she’s happy for her boys to attend the group for a bit of extra Bible education.

“We do go to church. We are Christians ... I was raised Baptist, so I know what the Baptists believe in, and they don’t have a lot of theological differences to me, and if they do, we discuss them at home,” she said. “The boys like to go so I let them go.”

The teachings of the group focuses on four fundamentals — child, family, church and school — with the human emphasis placed on “fostering life change in the hearts of children” and “connecting families to a church family.”

Reba Byrd, a children’s ministry assistant at Trinity Baptist, said the church has “enrolled close to 60 students, with eight volunteers” for the Oak Park Elementary club, which meets in the school’s art room.

“We are there to share Jesus with these kids after school in our games, activities and personal attitudes to show God’s salvation, and offer them different character skills each week,” she said. “We give them a snack, and we reward good behavior. We ask the older kids to set a good example for the younger kids.”

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Online: www.kidsbeachclub.org