Shortly after the stay-at-home order was issued and churches could no longer hold physical services, a supporter came to Chicago CEF with a great idea. Since Child Evangelism Fellowship has such wonderful materials to reach children and help disciple them in the word of God, he would fund us putting 500 boxes of children’s materials together and sending them to 500 local churches. In each box would be an explanation of what those resources were for, how they could used and how to connect with online resources that were available for children.
Within a week the first boxes started to go out and two days later we received a call from a local pastor excited about being able to connect with the kids in his church in a new way. He requested devotional booklets for each child in his church. Another church requested hundreds of outreach materials to be added to each box going out from their food pantry and another church requested seven different outreach and devotional materials to be used with the children in their church as well as the children living in homes in neighborhoods surrounding their church. Some of the requests for materials have been coming from grandparents seeking materials they can send to their grandchildren and then spending time on the phone with them each day going over the various devotionals.
Now that all the boxes have been sent out, we are following up with each church and asking if there is any other way we can be of assistance to them through trainings on zoom, or in any other area they see a need. One need that has been coming up is churches who normally do large sport camps and VBS’s are saying they are having to cancel those this year and are wondering if they can do 5-Day Club outreaches in the neighborhoods surrounding their churches instead which would be much more appropriate do to social distancing rules in place. Pray with us as we seek to put those together and for social distancing rules to be such that our Christian Youth In Action training can take place the end of June and 5-Day Club outreaches the rest of the summer.
Also, if you would like to receive one of these boxes of materials or you know of a church that would benefit from one, please use the link below to let us know and we will send one out right away.
