Angel Tree Helps Churches Build Lasting Ministry Beyond Christmas
When United Believers Community Church moved to the Hickman Mills area of Kansas City at Easter of 2011, serving the area where the U.S. Census Bureau counts more than 16 percent as impoverished was a priority.
Pastor Darron Edwards reached out to Ingels Elementary School, where Edwards said a third of the students have a parent who is either incarcerated or on probation. He described the school on Kansas City’s southside as “the poorest school in the poorest district in the state of Missouri.”
By enrolling in Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree program in 2012, Edwards connected with the school and community, building lasting relationships, learning of pressing needs and developing unique programs to address those needs year-round.
Monthly food distributions and boxing classes to teach students to handle conflict with more civility – as opposed to using weapons — are among the church’s outreaches.
United Believers served 327 families during last month’s Christmas season, Edwards said, and has expanded its community outreach to sponsor eight additional schools in Hickman Mills, assisted by a financial grant.
“We do a lot of wraparound services for Angel Tree families in the community, not just with Angel Tree,” Edwards said. “We’ve had several, several families unite with us over the years. We present the Gospel at every opportunity, but we try very, very, very hard to be the hands and feet of Jesus and allow our interaction and service to speak louder than our words.”
Long after the Christmas ornaments are put away and the last sugary cookie eaten, churches across the nation continue to reap benefits from Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree Program, an outreach that has served 12 million children of incarcerated parents as it embarks on its 50th year.
Prison Fellowship President and CEO Heather Rice-Minus not only promotes and oversees Angel Tree, but participates in the outreach as a member of National Community Church (non-Southern Baptist) in Washington D.C.
Angel Tree benefits the church, the community and prisons, Rice-Minus said, as those whom Angel Tree has served often become faithful church members and volunteers.
“It can be this beautiful opportunity to not just provide a Christmas gift on behalf of an incarcerated parent,” she said, “but really to move from just providing a present to being a ministry of presence.”
National Community Church still ministers to a family it met through Angel Tree about five years ago, Rice-Minus said.
“This year, we actually got the opportunity to take that family and drive from D.C. to North Carolina to visit their incarcerated dad,” she said. “They had not had the financial means to just make that kind of trip possible. So we were able to make that happen and got to be a fly on the wall for this reunion between mother, dad (and grandchildren) and they had not seen each other in person for 15 years.”
At Valley Baptist Church in Bakersfield, Calif., care division administrative assistant Adriana Andino has served as Angel Tree program coordinator for more than 15 years, corralling more than 100 volunteers to buy, wrap and distribute gifts annually.
Through Angel Tree, incarcerated parents sign up for the program, which buys presents for the children on behalf of the incarcerated parent. While churches are usually matched with children in their communities, individuals across the U.S. can volunteer to buy gifts for children who don’t live within reach of a participating church.
As the church calls each fall to verify whether children are still in need, or whether the parents are still incarcerated, Andino said, the church also discovers others in need, allowing the church to expand its outreach.
“Many times the incarcerated parent has children (in the home), but then that guardian of the incarcerated parents’ children also has their own children that they’re taking care of, in addition to the other children of the incarcerated parent,” Andino said. “So many times it could be one family who’s taking care of five or six or in one home. So we build that relationship of getting to know the guardian and then the children.”
The church distributes Bibles to families while delivering Angel Tree gifts to their homes, Andino said, further establishing a spiritual connection.
“When we ask Angel Tree to give us (the names of) these families, we ask them to give us families that are within a couple of miles’ radius of where the church is so that they’re able to come to church,” Andino said. “Some of the families that I’ve been able to work with and share the Gospel with the parents, some of the families are repeat families, because some of these parents that are incarcerated are on life sentences. So the kids, we get them every year.”
Valley Baptist served about 165 children in 2025, Andino said, but has served as many as 190 during a single Christmas.
Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree, which shares its name with a similar program operated by Salvation Army, served 275,000 children across all 50 states in 2025, Rice-Minus said. The ministry offers resources to help churches learn about Angel Tree and begin participating in the program, accessible here.
“It is not too early to think about Christmas (2026),” Rice-Minus said. “We would love for them to sign up now. They can come to our website and estimate how many kids they think they’d be able to serve, and we can start giving them those resources. But pretty much the deadline tends to be by October at the latest.”
Prison Fellowship has developed a new Bible study to help churches develop their own prison ministries, she said, as well as an annual conference to help churches network and collaborate in prison ministry innovations. This year, National Community Church will host the conference Sept. 15-16, with registration now open.
Edwards began supporting Angel Tree long before his current pastorate, having encouraged his children to give gifts to community children at Christmas. The childhood lessons have resounded as his children have grown into adulthood.
“What I taught them is that around Christmas, we stopped giving gifts to each other, and we started to be a blessing to the community. You know, we’ve been fortunate to be blessed, and we just didn’t want to just stack up gifts just to be stacking up gifts,” he said. “We wanted to go out in the community.
“That’s how I instilled that in them, and now they’re taking it forward with their own individual families now. So it’s great to see that legacy of generosity continue to be passed on.”
This article has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.