Good News Club is a weekly interdenominational Christian program for 5-to-12-year-old children featuring a Bible lesson, songs, memory verses, and games. It is the leading ministry of Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), which creates the curriculum, translates it into different languages for use around the world, and trains instructors to teach it. The foundation has reported that in 2011 there were 3,560 Good News Clubs in public schools across the United States and more than 42,000 clubs worldwide. The Good News Club was the plaintiff in Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98 (2001), which held that the club was entitled to the same access as other groups, like the Boy Scouts, to provide after-school programs designed to promote "moral and character development" to Milford School's elementary children.
Curriculum
Good News Club follows a 5-year curriculum using lesson books and visual aids that describe and illustrate stories from the Old and New Testaments. In the United States, for example, the fall 2011 season featured six lessons from the book "Elijah: Prophet of the Living God" and six lessons from the book "Elisha: Prophet of the Faithful God." Other lesson books featured stories centered on the Biblical characters Daniel, Joseph, Joshua, Esther, Moses, King David, and the Apostle Paul. In all, the five-year literature cycle spanned approximately 120 lessons. CEF translates the curriculum into many foreign languages for distribution and use in many of the more than 170 countries in which CEF is active. In those countries, the curriculum cycle lags the English curriculum cycle by one year.
CEF's chief evangelistic tool is the "Wordless Book". CEF's version of the Wordless Book contains five colors: gold, black, red, white, and green, representing heaven, sin, Jesus's crucifixion, righteousness, and growth, respectively. CEF weaves the themes of the Wordless Book into each Good News Club lesson, breaking up each Bible story into sections from which it transitions into, and back out of, the various Wordless Book themes.
Explaining its approach, CEF states that "we are intentional about evangelism" and that "[a]ttention is focused on the lostness of the child without Christ." CEF also states that in order to appropriate salvation, man has a responsibility "to recognize and agree with what God has said about man's sinful condition, thus to see himself as a lost sinner." CEF also asserts that the same requirements pertain to children, because "[t]here are not two gospels--one for adults and another one for children."
CEF maintains a policy that all children attending Good News Clubs must first have written permission from a parent or legal guardian, who understand that the content of the club is taught from a Biblical worldview.
History
Formation
Good News Club has roots dating back to the early 1920s, when CEF's founder J. Irvin Overholtzer launched the "Children's Home Bible Class" movement in the Bay Area of San Francisco. According to his CEF-published biography, Overholtzer sought to reach five classes of children: “those completely outside the church; those in liberal Sunday Schools; those of other faiths and cults; isolated foreign or minority groups; and unsaved in evangelical churches.” At first, the classes were held in churches near public schools, and scheduled to start immediately after the closing bell, in order to "gather as many children as possible of grade-school age into the class." Later, the classes were held "in a good Christian home which had the respect of the neighborhood."
Initially, Overholtzer's Home Bible Class Movement spread slowly: to northern California, to Washington State and later to Chicago, Illinois, where Mr. Overholtzer gained the attention and support of leaders of the Moody Bible Institute, the Moody Church, and other area ministries. In 1936, the movement gained national credence when articles and editorials were published in the Sunday School Times, The King's Business, Moody Monthly, and Revelation. In 1937, Overholtzer and leaders of Moody Bible Institute, The Bible Institute of Los Angeles (now Biola University), and Wheaton College formally organized Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) at a meeting in Los Angeles, California.