Volume 9, Number 2, May 2008

Campus Bible Fellowship in Cleveland , OH

This is the fourth year that Campus Bible Fellowship in Cleveland has partnered with Faith Baptist Community Center in the inner city of Cleveland. CBF students have gone down to the Center nearly every Saturday during the academic year to lead a Kid’s Club for children ages 8-12 years old.

This year has been the largest and one of the most challenging that we have experienced. For reasons that only God is aware of, the number of kids coming to club has increased greatly from a year ago. Our largest club has been 22 kids which, in the space that we have, is just about maximum capacity. Weekly attendance has usually been between 12 and 21. By the end of the year we had 78 kids on the roster.

During the fall semester particularly, we had several really active kids with short attention spans and even shorter tempers. Several times these boys lost control and erupted in anger during club. We never knew what we would face on any given day so that kept us on our toes and on our knees. One of the kids that used to come to club is now in juvenile detention because he was caught running with a gang and stealing. He is 11 years old. This situation caused us to see that each of these children are at risk and that the gospel we share could be the only thing between them and a life of violence or teenage motherhood just a few years down the road. Many of these kids act out because they don’t know any other way of coping with the frustrations that are a normal part of their lives. They often lack positive feedback in their homes and schools.

The sheer number of kids on club day and the angry outbursts caused our CBF students to prepare more thoroughly for club and to pray more diligently. We asked the Lord for wisdom as to what we could do to have more control over the kids and to better show them the love of Christ. God’s answer was to use strategies designed for kids with ADHD, to develop a rule chart and to use preprinted nametags each week so that we could treat each child as an individual rather than seeing them as a bunch of kids with unrecognizable names. Instead of a mob of kids they became Kortez, Juwan, TaNahya, Rodreyunna, Denasia…they became individuals. The Center director and his wife also began to cook up more elaborate snacks, which led to chatting with the kids while we ate together family-style. We began to bond with even the more troublesome kids over pizza rolls, chips and Gatorade. They were no longer strangers but “our” kids.

The CBF students were able to hone their ministry skills – leading games, teaching the Word and even leading some kids into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It was the first time that some of my CBFers had ever had the privilege of seeing someone trust Christ as Savior. Although only God knows how many kids truly accepted Him as Savior, we had the privilege of counseling more than 10 children for salvation. Other children who had previously accepted Jesus as Savior grew in their faith.

Kid’s Club at Faith Baptist Community Center was, without a doubt, one of the best parts of our CBF year. We thank God for the opportunity to serve Him this way.

To get involved, contact us at CBF-Cleveland@juno.com or call (216) 990-2311 to talk to our CBF staff person, Mary Amesbury.