Teach and Win 1,000 School Children

Youth gangs are on the rise in Central America and many schools are becoming centers of juvenile terror.  Suddenly, many public schools are open to weekly Bible teaching in the classrooms.   Their laws permit this and the school authorities have found no other answer to the problem.   Weekly Bible teaching has proved to completely change the spirit of the schools and the children come to genuine saving faith in Christ.    The Church on the March, a mission network sponsored by the Southern Baptist Missions Network enlists, trains, encourages and supervises the teachers, providing each child with books of Bible story lessons.   The total cost per child per year for this program is just $1.20.    That means that a church able to give $100 a month sponsors the weekly teaching of the Bible to 1,000 children!     Is that beyond the church’s possibilities?    $20 a month teaches 200 children, most of whom are won to Christ.

These three samples are just that:  samples of new ministry opportunities that may be either cost-free or low cost, but are already changing hundreds and thousands of lives.   Get in touch with the Church on the March missions network, ask questions, tell your story, find your special place in Christ’s Great Commission.

Open Four Schools to Weekly Bible Teaching

Church mission teams of ten or more volunteers can open from two to four new schools to have weekly Bible teaching as a regular part of the school curriculum.   American volunteer teams helped by Central American volunteers, conduct an entertaining introductory program, meet the faculty, and have Christ-based parenting conferences, with testimonies, for large groups of parents.   One team may minister to from 300 to 1200 children in a week’s time, and open the ongoing Schools for Christ project in from two to four different schools.   The cost per American team member is $895 plus approximately $500 for international travel.   When possible, the team may bring a donated laptop to a school that has no computer.   Some teams provide a soccer ball or volleyball for each classroom.

We are currently teaching 30,800 children weekly in more than 1000 classrooms…using volunteer national teachers.  This is changing the lives of children, families and whole communities.   We want to be reaching at least 50,000 children by next year and 100,000 two years later.   Where else can a church mission team achieve greater results than this—opening permanent on-going Bible teaching to children in spiritually dark communities?

Foment Prison Revivals

Thousands of God-called volunteers already teach, preach and witness in America’s prisons and jails.   Now, each volunteer has an opportunity to expand the outreach of his or her ministry tenfold or more by simply encouraging their prisoners to make disciples of their fellow prisoner through the Philippi Prison Ministry prisoner-led effort.   Just think:  outside volunteers typically have 90 minutes of teaching time a week with the prisoners who come to their classes.   Christian prisoners, by contrast, can and do have flourishing ministries 24/7 among all those who live in their dorms.   In the First Century, two prisoners came into the jail in Philippi and witnessed to all the prisoners and won and baptized the jailer and his entire family.   The evangelists were not outside visitors but inside prisoners!   That is now happening in Texas in this Baptist-led effort.

This movement has now spread to more than 50 Texas prisons and 20 federal prisons.  In it, prisoners take simple, interactive story-based Bible studies back into their dorms and share them with fellow prisoners.  In the process prisoners are saved, including many prisoners who found Christ while teaching others!   Free materials and Bibles are provided to prisoner-led Bible study groups, that range from two prisoners to more than 20.   Outside volunteers continue their current ministries, whatever they may be, but introduce the Philippi strategy to their students and sign up students to receive the free materials.   As the prisoners teach and win fellow prisoners in the dorms, the weekly classes of the outside volunteers grow in attendance and spiritual power.

The Philippi Prison Ministry is led, in Texas, by the Baptist General Convention of Texas.   Churches with members ministering in jails or prisons are urged to contact the BGCT’s Department of Organic Churches, Rev. Mario Alberto Gonzalez, through this web page.   This ministry, in just one prison, can mean dozens of prisoner baptisms each year by the church.