What Is Royal Ambassadors?
RAs is a Bible-centered, church-based, Southern Baptist missions education organization for boys in grades 1-6. Here at JABC we go to 5th grade as we follow the school system with 6th grade being middle school, they are in our youth program. RAs was established in 1908, so we are 105 years old. We pray for missions, we support missions, and we work on mission projects in our local community. The video above tells a bit more about our history.
Before I continue, I want to share some statistics with you to illustrate why programs like Royal Ambassadors are important for our young boys:
Statistics on Fatherless Children in America
Find out what's happening in Easleyfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Source – www.about.com article, 2013
- Young men who grow up in homes without fathers are twice as likely to end up in jail as those who come from traditional two-parent families.
Find out what's happening in Easleyfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
- 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.
- 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.
- 71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes.
- Kids living in single-parent homes or in step-families report lower educational expectations on the part of their parents, less parental monitoring of school work, and less overall social supervision than children from intact families.
- 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes.
- Boys who grow up in father-absent homes are more likely that those in father-present homes to have trouble establishing their gender identity as a male.
- In a longitudinal study of 1,197 fourth-grade students, researchers observed "greater levels of aggression in boys from mother-only households than from boys in mother-father households.
- Children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes. Almost twice as many high achievers come from two-parent homes as one-parent homes.
- Only 13 percent of juvenile delinquents come from families in which the biological mother and father are married to each other. By contrast, 33 percent have parents who are either divorced or separated and 44 percent have parents who were never married.
- The likelihood that a young male will engage in criminal activity doubles if he is raised without a father and triples if he lives in a neighborhood with a high concentration of single-parent families.
I’m not saying that we need to be replacement dads in all the single-parent homes in our community, but it is vital that programs like Royal Ambassadors grow and become an outlet for our community’s young males. Additionally, after citing the statistics I mentioned earlier, we just strive to give boys something else to do and hopefully lead as many of them to Christ as we can or at least provide a Godly environment for them for a few hours a week.
How do we go about this here at Jones Avenue Baptist Church
WMU, Women’s Missionary Union, has laid out everything for us on their website. Their link along with other helpful links are listed at the end of this article.
The RA portion of the WMU website has manuals that you can print out that will guide you in the right direction. There are supplemental Bible stories, mission activity suggestions, links to buy vests, patches, pins, and other items for the boy’s achievements. There is just a treasure trove of information on the website. So I printed up every bit of it and created manuals that I go by.
We have three types of meetings here at JABC: Weekly meetings, Monthly Friday night meetings which last 4 hours, and quarterly Friday night lock-ins which last a total of 16 hours including sleep time.
Weekly meetings - Wednesday night every week we follow the curriculum in the RA Leader magazine which the boys follow in their RA World magazines. We meet from 7-8pm, however, recently we’ve opened our gym at 6pm for an hour of open gym time beforehand so they get the thought of playing out of their minds so they can concentrate on our lesson and craft. This works great. Depending on how the boys have paid attention and how well they were behaved, sometimes we provide snacks at the end of class if there is time.
Monthly Friday Night Meetings - Each month, we have a Friday night event which lasts for four hours in which we do much the same things as Wednesday nights, just a little more expanded. We have a lot of open gym time and play games that sometimes will be native to areas across the globe. We have a simple dinner like pizza, do an expanded Bible lesson, an expanded craft, etc… The boys just love it and have a ton of fun.
Quarterly Friday Night Lock-In – Once a quarter, we have a lock-in in which is an expanded version of a regular Friday night event. We have just started these and have had only one, but it worked out great. Friday night went the same as normal, except instead of the boys leaving at 10, they changed into sleep attire and got in their sleeping bags, popped some popcorn and enjoyed a family oriented movie on our overhead projection and sound system that is located in our gymnasium. It was really like being at the old drive in movies. Then after sleeping, we wake up for breakfast, have a morning devotional, and more gym time as their parents come pick them up. The one time we’ve done this, the boys had a ball.
We also have gone on a few events during various days in the week. Recently we went to “Meet the Greenwave”, in which the boys got to mingle a little with the high school football team. We’ve had a father-son bowling night also.
Weekly Lesson Plans
Just like with school teachers, in order to follow the lesson plans correctly, you may have to get creative and sometimes spend some of your own money to provide things for the activities that are a part of the lessons. We all know that church budgets are tight, so you will have to go out on your own for some things. I look at it as an investment in my community. We'll talk about fundraising in a moment.
The RA Leader magazines really have all the instructions you need to do your lessons. There are memory verses, monthly virtues to learn, and the RA World magazines have some puzzles in them for the boys to do. I also print off random puzzles, mazes, and Bible quizzes to give them whenever time is there for them. Each week we read stories of missionaries around the world in which we learn about and pray for.
You can work with your church WMU leader to make sure you have what you need to progress your RA Program.
Recruiting More Kids and Leaders
Recruiting is very important for the sustainability of RAs. There are two types of recruiting fronts, within your church and outside your church.
Within your church – It is unlikely that every boy in your church that falls within the RA profile age range is participating in your RA classes. So the first place and easiest way to grow your numbers is within your own church. Once you get most, if not all, of the kids in your church involved, then you can focus on visitors to your church. Anytime you have a visiting family come to your church, reach out to them and give them some information about RAs. Invite them to sit in on a class to see what goes on.
Outside your church – Once you get a hold on recruiting within your church, going outside your church and pull in some kids from your community. This will prove to be more difficult, but not impossible. First with family, friends, neighbors, etc spread the word about RAs and that you are involved. Prepare literature, pamphlets, displays, etc about RAs and have them ready to hand out at ALL of your church functions where non-church members will attend. Be ready to talk about it at all times. Every mission project and event that you do as RAs, take information with you to hand out to people when they ask you what group you’re with.
As your RA program grows it is also important to recruit other men within your church to help out where needed on a week to week basis. As a standard operating procedure, background checks should be done on all persons that are working with minors.
Here are a couple of extra ideas to help with promoting RAs. Create a facebook page for your specific church’s RA program and be active in posting about everything you do so your facebook friends can help you spread the word and see that you have something exciting going on. Our facebook page is a combined page with our GAs, Girls In Action. If you are really committed, you can create a free website through any number of free web builders, or if your church will help pay for one, a paid web builder. If your church will allow it, have the church website either attach that website’s link, or have RAs mentioned somewhere on their web page, perhaps in the children’s ministry section.
Fundraising
It’s likely you will have to do fundraisers of your own to create the funds to progress your RA program. Whether it be car washes, yard sales, selling typical fundraising items, etc… do whatever you can to get what you need to progress the RA program. What we’ve done here recently is combine our efforts with the GAs and our youth program on fundraisers and split the funds amongst us. However, we do have some plans to do some fundraising ourselves.
RA Olympics
This is a wild idea and dream I have to get multiple churches together for the benefit of our respective communities. In an Olympic style format, or like the old field days we had at school where we earned ribbons, we have activities, events, cookout, etc..., that the churches will compete against each other in but also will fellowship together to benefit a pre-selected cause.
Conclusion
Personally, I have grown as a Christian from being involved in RAs. I still consider myself new to the program, but the impact I see it has on our young boys just motivates me to do more and to keep it going and expand it in our church. I encourage you if you are new, or if you are an RA veteran to keep this program alive and have it thrive in your church. You never know what kind of positive impact you might make on a young boy’s life who needs some positive influences in his life.
If you start up RAs in your church or are already teaching this wonderful program, please contact me so we can connect and maybe work together on some joint RA ventures in the future. Also, I would like to add that our classroom is open for anyone who would like to stop by and see what our classes are like. I am anxious to learn from others too.
Till then, may God bless you and may all your church programs be successful and lead people to Christ! :)
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
Helpful Links
www.royalambassadors.org – RA portion of the WMU website. It has loads and loads of information for you.
www.lifeway.com – Has some RA items for sale such as vests, RA flag, and giveaway items to help promote RAs.
www.wmustore.com – another resource to buy items needed for RAs such as membership cards, patches, pledge posters, etc…
www.campmccall.org – Website for our local RA Camp which is north of highway 11 off of highway 178. Camp is a big selling point for kids and parents to be involved in RAs.
www.wix.com – free web builder we chose to build our website
www.royalambassadorsjabc.wix.com/royalambassadorsjabc - our website that may give you additional ideas.
www.facebook.com/RoyalAmbassadorsjabc - our facebook page that may give you some ideas. Please like it and maybe share some of your ideas with us!