In 2005 Dwight and Kristi Krauss were sent out from their home church “New Song Community Church” as missionaries to Mexico where they found a big need in children’s ministry. Many churches could not afford to purchase curriculum for Sunday school or Vacation Bible school, and the children’s ministry leaders were not trained. Children were often playing during the church service and were not following a systematic program that discipled them. That first year Kristi started writing curriculum and providing training for teachers while Dwight began a printshop to print the curriculum.

At the end of that first year, 90% of the teachers and leaders did not remain in children’s ministry! They either quit or were “promoted” to another area of the church. Some were moved by their pastor into women’s ministry, and others became the youth pastors. Some became discouraged and quit altogether. And so, the following year the process began again to train more teachers and children’s ministry leaders, starting over with all new people.

Dwight and Kristi continued writing curriculum and training teachers for the next decade, while traveling and managing the print shop. Over the years they celebrated many milestones – from serving 1000 churches in Mexico – to starting a website and providing the curriculum and training online. Many wonderful people joined the team. Although the print shop was growing and had started providing books to Guatemala and Venezuela in addition to Mexico, the website was growing at a much faster rate.

In 2014, God asked us to open our eyes to the rest of the world, and our leaders realized we could easily translate the curriculum and training into other languages.

If the current trends continue, none of the top 40 unreached people groups will be more than 10% Christian by 2050. For every dollar of Christian resources, less than one penny is directed at reaching unreached people groups. This is especially so in children’s ministry, as it is often seen as the least important area of the church.

So, the large task began to translate into many languages our 10 years of original curriculum and training, with a special focus on the unreached areas of the world. We provide systematic curriculum so that teachers are actually discipling children to be completely devoted followers of Christ.

In 2021 our leadership decided to change to a fully digital focus. By this time, the website had grown to 100,000 downloads a month, with over a million downloads every year, while COVID-19 had caused people in Mexico to fully stop ordering printed books. Printed materials would never again come close to the exponential growth the website was experiencing, so we decided not to re-open the print shop. We are thrilled to help people print our curriculum as they need in their country and language, giving full copyright printing permission.

We believe that children are important because they are the future of the church.

We believe that to reach these children, we need teachers and leaders trained and equipped.

Equip & Grow serves together with churches and other organizations around the world so that the local churches have the support, training, and curriculum they need for real discipleship in their children’s ministry.