The Good News Club by Stewart Katherine

Author:Stewart, Katherine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2012-01-29T16:00:00+00:00

MY FINAL DAY at Missions Fest brings a video program from the CEF and a meeting with the organization’s top man in Washington State, Jeff Kiser. Jan Akam and a number of the other CEF activists with whom I have become acquainted join several dozen other participants.

Kiser is a tall, blue-eyed father of seven, perhaps in his early fifties, who speaks in a somewhat stilted fashion.

In his seminar, “Open Doors, Open Hearts,” Kiser describes walking into his first training class for the CEF.

“I said to God, ‘Where are the guys?’” he recalls, relating the conversation as matter-of-factly as if he had been asking a passerby for directions.

“And He said to me, ‘You’re a guy.’”

Kiser turns the program over to the prepared video on the Good News Club. “One of the most fruitful mission fields—the public schools,” intones the voice-over. The face of Liberty Counsel president Mathew Staver appears on-screen, professing the legal right of the CEF to operate in the public school environment. “We are in a spiritual battle,” he says. “We need to take this opportunity. Otherwise the enemy will take it from us.”

A dark-haired pastor appears on the video. “Good News Clubs provide great opportunity to carry out ‘The Great Commission.’ It dovetails into the philosophy of our church,” he says. A second pastor adds, “If we do not reach children at this age, we will not reach them at all.”

Kiser puts on another video, this one featuring a cute little girl named Brenna. Brenna tells us how she managed to recruit every single child in her first-grade class to join the Good News Club. At video’s end, a dark screen is illuminated with the words of Isaiah: “And a little child shall lead them.”

After the video, Kiser stands up in the front of the room and resumes his talk, focusing on practical issues involved in starting up a Good News Club.

Get to know the secretary and the janitorial staff, he advises. “They are the most important people for you to know at the school.”

Jan Akam interjects, “A lot of times they want us! This one school superintendent wanted us in! He called and said, ‘When are you coming?’”

“We tell the boys and girls that they are missionaries, and that they can invite their friends,” Kiser continues. “We tell the boys and girls that they can give out literature if it doesn’t disrupt the school day.

“Try not to have Good News Clubs on Mondays and Fridays because kids might have other family obligations and there are more holidays that fall on those days,” he advises. “Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are prime days.”

Jan Akam breaks in again. “At our Good News Club, we’d sing songs about Jesus real loud, and the kids in the classroom next door could hear us!” Her expression turns contemptuous. “They were doing Indian things, or who knows what.”

“At one school open house,” says another audience member, “I got a table at the end of the serving line for ice cream. Every kid came through

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