CEF of Greater Huntington is privileged to serve Good News Clubs® in Cabell, Lincoln, Logan, Mason, Mingo, Putnam, and Wayne counties in West Virginia, Boyd County in Kentucky, and Lawrence County in Ohio. In 2018 we trained and supported Good News Clubs® that were served by 624 local Tri-State church volunteers who reached 2,763 local children. Over the past 5 years we have seen 1,399 students profess faith in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior and 508 students established in a local church. God is blessing this important work.
Our mission is to give every student in every school in each of our counties the opportunity to see, hear, and respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet despite incredible growth since 2001, there are still 70 schools and over 27,000 students without a Good News Club®. This is unacceptable, and we need your help.
Good News Clubs® provide one of the most proactive ways to reach children where they are—in the classroom. Current trends report that 80 percent of local students will never enter a local church, and yet a recent Barna study indicated that nearly half of all Americans who will profess faith in Jesus Christ will do so before reaching the age of 13 (43%), and that two out of three born again Christians (64%) made that commitment to Christ before their 18th birthday.
By the age of 13, or the end of middle school, our children and their classmates are being exposed to grief and loss, depression, sexual identity issues, anxiety, broken homes, physical, substance, or sexual abuse. We want to reach children and families with the Good News of Jesus Christ and help them connect with a local church before they make bad decisions.
To begin to address this challenge, we are launching what we are calling the “Child Advocates Initiative” and we’re seeking 99 Child Advocates. A Child Advocate is a person in our community who is resolved to do two things:
- Pray that God would be glorified and known at a local elementary school and that local churches would give children the opportunity to see, hear, and respond to the Gospel through Good News Clubs.
- Financially support this effort for $13 a month (again 13 being the age almost half of all people come to know Christ).
Today, would you prayerfully consider becoming a Child Advocate? We cannot do everything, but we can do something to aid Christ’s mission for his church. Please contact us if you are willing to answer the call.