Since the early 1990s, when he co-founded the grassroots ministry House of Faith, Kevin Reynolds has saved a special piece of paper that has proven to be prophetic. With House of Faith nothing more than an idea at the time, the document outlined Reynolds’ vision: first, that the ministry would reach children, then expand to include youth and, eventually, families. As of last year, the ministry touches all three groups.

HOF each year delivers the Gospel to 1,800 elementary school children in 15 locations in San Angelo and the surrounding area through its Backyard Bible Club. 321, at HOF’s building at 321 Montecito, is held every Monday evening for 350 middle and high school students. Last year, the ministry began the third phase of Reynolds’ plan with parenting classes.

The Bible verse 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 is an apt description of HOF’s humble beginnings, he said. The verse states,

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”

“House of Faith is not a national organization that came to San Angelo,” said Reynolds, HOF’s executive director. “We birthed it here. We found out after it started that, years before, there had been faithful (servants) of the Lord who had been praying for some time (because they) were seeing kids in the community and neighborhoods and knew they were not in a church or hearing a faith message. They would pray and ask the Lord to bring someone to do that. We like to say House of Faith, to a degree, is the answer to somebody else’s prayers.”

Reynolds and co-founder Rachel Beaver, now retired, attended the same church and worked together in youth ministry. Juvenile probation was Reynolds’ day job. “I’d see these teenagers that were 15, 16 and there were gang-related shootings, and it was just horrible. It would just break my heart,” he said. “Rachel. …would relay that to God in prayer, and He started to reveal things to her. He gave her a vision of a building, and in that building there were children learning about Jesus, and on the other side of the hall there were parents learning to be better parents.”

Beaver’s visions eventually came to fruition, starting with Backyard Bible Club, held for neighborhood children in the yard of a home in the barrio. The first Backyard Bible was Jan. 27, 1994, and 63 kids attended.

“The one spot (where Backyard Bible Club was held) became two, and the two became four, and the four became eight,” and eventually 15, Reynolds said. Other Backyard Bible Clubs have since sprung up nationwide, using San Angelo’s as a model.

While Reynolds delights in the ministry’s spread, he also experiences regular faith builders in his own back yard – pun intended. Just last year, Reynolds made the difficult decision to not take kids to summer camp, something the ministry had been doing for more than two decades, due to a lack of funding. “Three days later I got a phone call from the HEB Foundation,” Reynolds said. “They wanted to foot the bill for us to get the parenting initiative started in San Angelo. We had dabbled in family ministry by doing one weekend a year (for families at HEB Foundation Camp in Leakey), but they provided an opportunity to expand from one weekend a year at their place to regular ongoing parenting education here in San Angelo. Had we been going to summer overnight camp with the kids, we would not have had the capacity as a ministry to begin a new ministry to the parents. The (partnership with HEB Foundation) enabled us to do that.”

Upon hearing the news, Reynolds said he took out that old piece of paper and, crying, read it aloud. “I had written down before we ever started that we would (help) families,” he said. “It was amazing because it was like I was watching this 24-year-old prophecy unfold before my eyes. It really has been exactly like the plan He showed us all along.”

For more information on House of Faith or any of its programs, visit www.hofministries.com. The ministry is a nonprofit, and all its programs are free. To donate, go to www.hofministries.org/donate/give-now/.

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