‘It happens when a Good News Club® inspires parents and others to form a body of worshipers, or a church plants another branch in an area because of a thriving Good News Club®,’ says CEF Acting Vice President of Administration Fred Pry
For Immediate Release
July 15, 2024
ST. LOUIS — Dozens of churches have started in the United States and around the world because of Child Evangelism Fellowship’s (CEF) outreach efforts. In fact, more than 50 new churches have been formed because of a Good News Club® and CEF’s partnerships with churches.
“One of CEF’s purposes is to see children established in their local church,” says Fred Pry, CEF’s Acting Vice President of Administration. “Usually that means helping them get plugged into an existing church.
“This also happens through a Good News Club®, which inspires parents and others to form a body of worshipers, or through a church that plants another branch in an area because of a thriving Good News Club®.”
Through a Good News Club®, children have received Jesus as their Savior, leading them to share the Gospel with others in their community and going on to become Christian leaders.
Each year CEF missionaries and volunteers lead around 80,000 clubs around the globe. Many children learn about Jesus for the first time, come to believe in Him as Savior, and continue to grow to know Him better through the regular Bible teaching the clubs provide.
A Tennessee story
In his first year of attending a CEF Good News Club® in Tennessee, a third-grade boy named Brent accepted Jesus as his Savior.
“When I asked where he went to church,” recalls CEF club worker Jeff Nichols, “He replied with these five words: ‘I’ve never been to church.’
“As I drove home that day, I couldn’t get those words and the look on his face out of my head.
“God, and Brent, are why I do what I do today. CEF comes alongside churches who don’t want to only sit back on Sunday, throw the doors open and say, ‘Come on in and let me tell you about Jesus.’
“CEF helps churches GO! That means going to where the children are who haven’t heard about Jesus’ love for them. Going to those families who aren’t showing up at church because no one has shown them the amazing love of God.”
CEF helps churches do this by training, equipping and supporting the church so they can evangelize, disciple and establish faith in the boys and girls in their church.
“God has blessed me to be part of a team of people all over this country living out the words of Jesus which revealed the heart of God when He said, ‘Let the children come to me’ (Luke 18:16),” Nichols said.
Planting churches in Albania
In 2016, a CEF team, including trained volunteers from a partnering church, visited the small village of Libonik-Maliq in Albania and held a Christmas Party Club. About 300 children heard the Good News of Jesus Christ that day. The children’s ministry continued, and an adult meeting started. After one year, there was a church with a regular Good News Club® and church ministry.
The local church in Albania created a partnership with the Albanian Church and Moody Church in Chicago. Through them, God provided a new church building in that village. The church was dedicated on Easter 2023 by Erwin Lutzer, Pastor Emeritus of the Moody Church.
Along with CEF workers, over 150 people celebrated the mighty work God alone started and continues to do in a small Muslim village in southeast Albania. The Evangelical Church of Libonik-Maliq and its pastor have followed this method of using Christmas Party Clubs. In the last nine years, they have planted seven churches in villages reached through their ministry partnership with CEF.
Child Evangelism Fellowship, which was founded 87 years ago, has been establishing the Good News Club® in countries around the world for decades. Clubs are thriving worldwide, in countries including Australia, Cambodia, Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Uganda and many more.
In 2023, through CEF’s combined ministries, more than 25.2 million children worldwide heard the Good News. More than 577,000 teachers were trained around the world.
For more CEF news, see the ministry’s latest edition of the online magazine Impact.
Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) is an international, nonprofit, Christian ministry that has been dedicated to seeing every child reached with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, discipled and established in a local church since 1937. CEF is located in all 50 American states and in most countries around the world, with over 3,500 paid staff and tens of thousands of volunteers around the world.
###
To interview a representative from Child Evangelism Fellowship, contact [email protected], Beth Bogucki, 610.584.1096, ext. 105, or Daniel Moyer, ext. 104.