Archive for January, 2008

One of the goals of Awana is to keep it fun.  This seems to be a rather superficial goal, but only if we don’t understand the reason.  Would anyone want to do something that they don’t enjoy?  Of course not!  These children that we are reaching with the Bible and the love and grace of God would avoid us like the plague if they did not enjoy coming to Awana.

However, when these children (and adults as well) enjoy what is going on, they WILL be back.  This goes beyond the games.  During the lessons, try to keep things fun.  Last night at Bethany, KS our speaker grabbed the kids attention with juggling.  It fit with his message of being used by God.  The kids listened.  They loved it… THEY WILL BE BACK! 

Bible memorizing.  Can this be fun?  Yeah!  We’ve written the verse on balloons, one word per balloon.  Read the verse together then have a child pop a balloon.  Read it again.  Continue until each balloon is gone and the children are quoting the verse by memory because there are no words left on the balloons.  They loved it!

The only caution I have for our church and others is to not neglect the Word of God for the sake of fun.

Now, go have fun.

We are about half way through our first year with Awana.  Things have been great so far.  We continue to see new kids come out and are excited to see other kids continue to come.  God is certainly good! 

One struggle this winter has been winter sports for some of our clubbers.  Our community just recently lifted the ban on Wednesday night sports which has conflicted with some our clubbers.  We have purchased some postcards from the Awana website to send along for clubbers who missed to let them know that we miss them.  This has been a great tool for us to stay connected.  Our clubbers who are active with sports continue to work through their handbooks which allows them to fit right back in. 

We also are in the process of doing a mid year tune up.  Our wonderful commander (Angela) is going around with each group to make sure things are going good and addressing any issues our leaders may have.  Tonight she shadowed the Cubbies and already saw some good things and also some things that need refined.  We have great leaders who understand that this is a new program and we need to work some things out as we understand how a club night will work for us.

A great praise was that one of our clubbers accepted the Lord tonight!  That is what it is all about.  When the leader shared that they would now go to heaven to be with God the clubber was so excited they started to cry (tears of joy!)  What a great thing to hear. 

Todd and Angela Shoemaker