The Good News Club

By James Fenkner, CFA

Bucking the Tide of Woke Ideology

On a warm May 15th evening, nearly 300 people converged upon Calvary Santa Barbara, united in fellowship and resolve to champion the Good News Club, a Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) program that stands as a fierce bulwark against the suffocating tide of woke ideology.

Led by the indomitable Sharon Jegottka, the Good News Club boldly defends faith, wielding eternal truth to counter a modern culture that twists reality to silence dissent and stifle inquiry. Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, delivered razor-sharp insights, exposing the urgent need to reclaim education from ideological overreach. In a world where dogma distorts truth, the Good News Club guides children toward faith and character with the fearless courage Martin Luther King Jr. extolled: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

Sharon Jegottka, Ministry Coordinator for the Child Evangelism Fellowship of Santa Barbara. Photo: author

The Good News Club faces a hostile landscape. Jegottka described how local Santa Barbara school districts have devised “new, creative ways, to remove us from our local public schools campus,” flouting a 2001 Supreme Court ruling mandating equal access for faith-based programs. Santa Barbara Unified School District, she notes, has been “the most challenging.”

Yet Jegottka, who retorted, “I love a challenge,” embodies the club’s tenacity. Last year, the program expanded from nine to 13 clubs—a 44% increase—and now serves schools like Aliso in Carpinteria and Adams, Cleveland, and Washington Elementary in Santa Barbara Unified. Fifty-nine volunteers, armed with “bibles and the sword of the Spirit,” teach children for 90 minutes weekly. Jegottka’s stories of children receiving Bibles—49 this year alone, with kids clamoring for more—drew cheers.

Explicit Parental Consent Required

Sharon shares a chilling anecdote from a friend who attended an educator’s conference where California’s State Superintendent of Public Education Tony Thurmond allegedly dismissed parental concerns about “wokeness” and vowed to double down.

By bringing the Gospel directly to our local public elementary schools as an afterschool program, Jegottka and her volunteers challenge the monopoly as well as the emptiness of secular dogma. The Good News Club operates through a deliberate registration process requiring explicit parental consent, ensuring transparency, and encouraging parental engagement.

Tyson Langhofer’s analysis illuminates why this battle matters. He identifies two ideological shifts undermining education. First, K-12 schools and universities have traded the pursuit of truth for “the pursuit of social justice,” prioritizing equal outcomes over facts. He cited Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s defense of the Green New Deal, where she dismissed critics by saying, “A lot of people are more concerned about being precise and factually, semantically, correct than about being morally right.” Langhofer counters, “We cannot know what is just until we know what is true.”

This shift leads to suppressing inconvenient facts, as seen when Fresno State Professor Gregory Thatcher erases pro-life chalk messages that state, “A Heart beats after 21 days,” a verifiable truth he deems offensive to his version of social justice.

“We cannot know what is just until we know what is true”, Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom. Photo author.

The second shift, Langhofer explains, is the belief that “speech is violence,” justifying physical aggression against dissenting ideas. He references a 2016 UC Berkeley op-ed claiming that peaceful dialogue with those deemed offensive is “a violent act.” This fallacy, he argues, threatens civil society: “If words are equivalent to violence… then civil society as we know it will no longer exist.” Langhofer’s cases vividly illustrate this danger. At Cal State LA, students blocked access to a Ben Shapiro event, shouting “No violence!” while physically restraining attendees. At Southern Illinois University, student Maggie Leone faced no-contact orders for sharing her Christian faith online, punished for challenging prevailing dogmas. Langhofer’s team secured victories in these cases, boasting a 91% success rate across over 435 lawsuits, proving that “when we have the courage to fight, we can win.”

Facing Resistance With Patience

Faith, as the Good News Club demonstrates, counters this chaos by offering a fixed foundation. Unlike woke ideology, which shape-shifts with cultural whims, faith roots morality in God’s word. Ten-year-old Mackenzie’s testimony—after learning John 3:16 by heart at the club—stirred the crowd. “The Good News Club helps me and many others grow in our faith,” she says, a quiet defiance of our broader culture that often mocks such convictions.

Moral clarity empowers children to question the lies Langhofer describes, where schools prioritize indoctrination over the pursuit of truth. Jegottka’s volunteers teach children to trust scripture over the internet or ideologically driven educators, fostering character alongside intellect. As Langhofer quotes Martin Luther King Jr., “Intelligence plus character… is the goal of true education.”

Langhofer’s insights cut to the core of the crisis: a “cancel culture” that, as he quotes Bari Weiss, aims “to send a message to everyone else: step out of line and you’re next.” He warned that the greatest threat to free speech isn’t government censorship but the “appalling silence of the good people.” The Good News Club responds with courage, exemplified by Jegottka’s vow to “not give up fighting for our children” and volunteers who face resistance with “Holy Spirit patience.” Langhofer lauds CEF’s mission, noting, “They’re helping to accomplish the true purpose of education by developing character,” grounded in the statement that “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

The club’s success—planting seeds of faith in children’s hearts—shows that courage and conviction can overcome woke ideology, Marxist power dynamics, and divisive cultural biases. Langhofer concludes, quoting MLK, “Human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes from the tireless efforts and persistent work of those willing to be coworkers with God.”

In Santa Barbara and beyond, the Good News Club’s faithful stand is a beacon, proving that truth, rooted in faith, is the strongest weapon against woke orthodoxy.

To learn more about Santa Barbara’s Good News Club, click here. To contribute to their mission, click here.

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