MBC Sunday School kits available to church planters
By Allen Palmeri
Staff Writer
November 15, 2005
OSAGE BEACH–The Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) Sunday School department unveiled a church kit for church plants Nov. 5 that is the first of its kind within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).
The kit is the product of about 1½ years of preparation by Sondi Scroggins, Preschool/Children’s Specialist on the MBC Sunday School Discipleship Team, and her assistant, Pam Jeffries. It was showcased during the Saturday morning session of the MBC Church Planters’ Retreat at Tan-Tar-A Resort, Lake of the Ozarks. MBC Church Planting Director Jerry Field explained that the goal is to get 20 kits in the hands of his people.
Scroggins said that just about everything a church planter would need to minister to preschool and elementary-school age children will be in the kits. In other words, it will be Sunday School in a box, with items like puzzles, blocks, scissors, crayons, markers, construction paper, staplers, rubber bands, paint, paper towels, Kleenex, trash cans and trash bags.
“We’ve tried to think of everything that when you leave your vehicle to drive in you’re ready to go—just the basic things,” Scroggins said. “We’ve left room in all of the tubs so that you can add things to it.”
Field explained that each kit represents a $1,200 value. It would be too costly to provide the kits to every church planter, he said, but the power of the cooperative MBC is such that church planters will be able to go to Wal-Mart or Target and put together their own kits starting next year.
“Because of your Cooperative Program giving, we’re gong to be able to give, as a grant, to 20 church plants this $1,200 set,” Field said.
Church planters were given a covenant agreement and an application that they were asked to take home, read and sign, if interested. Chosen church planters out of the group that came to the retreat and indicated an interest in the kits will then be notified to come to a training time Feb. 11 at the Baptist Building, where Scroggins and Jeffries will offer at least three hours of training on how to best utilize the kits.
“This is a new segment of their work,” Field said. “It’s going to be an ongoing thing every year. You pray that when Sondi’s team puts in their budget request for 2007 that the powers that be smile upon this and make the funds available to them so that each year this can be made available to new church plants.”
As Scroggins and Jeffries continue to develop strong ministerial working relationships with church planters, they are ever aware that theirs is a pioneering enterprise that has yet to be explored within the broad and vast expanse that is the Southern Baptist Convention.
“We’ve already gotten about a half a dozen requests from other conventions for information of what’s in the con