Lionheart Children’s Academy is making a transformative impact in the child care industry for Christ! By partnering with local churches, we utilize their facilities during the week to provide full-time, quality child care for working families. Our mission is to reach children with the Gospel at a critical age of spiritual growth and development. Research shows that if a child does not establish a spiritual foundation in Christ by their 13th birthday, the chances are they never will.
Driven by this knowledge, we are passionate about sharing the Gospel with children and laying a solid spiritual foundation. Through our church partnerships, we are witnessing entire families transformed by the redemptive power of the Gospel!
Lionheart is a non-profit Christian organization dedicated to excellence in early childhood education. We are passionate about equipping children to become world changers and supporting working parents with quality, affordable care and education. By partnering with like-minded churches and utilizing their space during the week, we establish a strong sense of community among families.
Over 16 million children under the age of five are in some form of child care in the United States. Ninety percent of child care companies are secular. This means that millions of children are spending more than 40 hours a week in child care without a spiritual impact. By partnering with local churches, we utilize their facilities during the week to provide full-time, quality child care for working families. Our mission is to reach children and families with the Gospel at a critical age of spiritual growth and development.
Our heartbeat as a ministry is to reach unchurched families with the Gospel, and we do that through providing excellent child care in partnership with like-minded churches who provide the facilities. Lionheart recognizes that basic needs must be met before people are receptive to the Gospel, and child care is a basic need for most families in our country.
With our neighbors’ eternities at stake, we operate with a sense of urgency and passion for what we do. With that in mind, you can see that growing rapidly is central to our mission, but it’s also something we need to get right. In our first decade of operation we’ve proved that our model can work both from a business and a spiritual standpoint. With each new opening, we’re inviting more families into the church every day, and ultimately into the Kingdom by planting seeds of the Gospel. Together we can impact the next generation for Christ!
More than a decade ago Apartment Life founder, Stan Dobbs, received a vision from the Lord to take back the child care industry for Christ and reach children with the Gospel before their 13th birthday. We consider ourselves a businesstry (a term coined by Stan), in that we are a ministry at our core, but also a business. We’re covering our expenses, but need support to continue to grow.
Ninety percent of our annual financial needs are self-funded, because Lionheart uses our business model to operate academies with increasing financial efficiency. Ten percent of our annual costs are invested in identifying, launching and developing new academies and church partners. We have proven that we can grow rapidly. The average new academy costs $500,000 and Lionheart has built the infrastructure to efficiently add 3 new academies every 6 months. Each academy would serve an additional 120-200 children.
We believe the local church is called to help people find and follow Christ. Lionheart supports the local church by providing financial resources through a portion of the tuition revenue. In our first decade of operation, Lionheart has distributed more than $5M back to our church partners to help with their mission.
As the largest evangelical Christian child care provider in the country, we currently serve 3000 children and their families; More than 50% of those families identify as unchurched.
Spiritual work happens daily in our academies, as our teams are intentional about planting seeds of the Gospel and using every opportunity to connect families to the church. In the last ten years, we’ve made more than 30,000 Gospel presentations, 150 have accepted Jesus as their Savior and 55 have been baptized! Last year, more than 10% of our school-aged children accepted Jesus!
Organization name
Lionheart Children's Academy
Causes
Education - Early Childhood
Operating Budget
$10,000,000 or more
Counties Served
Collin, Dallas, Grayson, Tarrant
BIPOC Serving
Black or African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latinx, Other
BIPOC Leadership
Neither/None
Address
1300 Harwood Rd Unit 210663