KANSAS CITY – Tower View Baptist Church in Kansas City found a way to make going back to school fun for students as well as giving parents a little breathing room. Since 2011, Tower View serves the community with a “Back to School Bonanza.”
“We are located in a working class neighborhood,” Darin Smith, pastor, said. “We want to provide help as these families get their children ready for school. We use the North Kansas City school supply list for elementary and middle/high school students and prepare 1,000 bags of school supplies. Our event is like a block party for the community and we had 2,000 people attend.”
“We make it a carnival atmosphere,” Judy Braden, event organizer, said. “We have a bounce house, popcorn, hot dogs and games. The prizes for the carnival games are the small items like erasers, rulers and children just love it.”
Both Braden and Smith emphasized the spiritual sharing during the event. “In addition to the school supplies,” Smith said, “we share the gospel in several ways. Since we are a diverse neighborhood with pockets of Arabic, French, Spanish and some different African languages, we are in partnership with Midwestern seminary to provide gospel tracts in different languages.”
Tower View also built the gospel into the online registration. “We always require registration for the event,” Smith said, “but this is the first year that we offered an online registration. When they register, the gospel is a direct link. The gospel page hits were through the roof, so they are reading it before they come.”
According to Braden, an evangelism team is set up to share during the event. “As part of our volunteers,” she said, “we set up a group to just visit with the people in the community. We want them to know we are here and we care about them. They sit with parents and it is the opportunity to plant seeds.”
Braden said the planning for this event began early in the year. “We start as early as possible,” she said. “We have a planning team of about ten, but for the day, we have about 80-90 members of the church volunteering. We also have volunteers from some of the area schools, because they know how important this is.”
“We hear every year about how critical this is for the neighborhood,” Braden said. “We serve a lot of blended families with five to 10 children. They depend on us to supplement what the children need for schools.”
Volunteers work all year to gather the correct items for the children. “We must contact the schools each year to find out what the need is,” Braden said. “We send out letters for donations and identify contacts to help us,” she said, “but, 90% of the school supplies and hygiene items come from our members and our outreach budget.”
“We’ve learned to be thrifty shoppers,” she said. “We also partner with other groups and people to come in to provide community resources. If it benefits the children and it is a family-centered program, we will use it. We want it to be a positive event for all of the students.”