God at Work Through Awana

Awana at Blue Ridge Bible Church is in its 15th year of “reaching boys and girls with the Gospel of Christ and training them to serve Him.” Over the past 14 years, our Awana program has touched the lives of:

816 children logging 2,172 clubber-years and 143,000+ Bible verse recitations
315 families
600+ parents
1,300+ visitors
288 directors and leaders logging 700 leader-years including:
53 Leaders-In-Training (older teens groomed to become leaders)
86 Patrick Henry College students
63 young adults
Hundreds of Romanian children and adults through our sister Awana Club run by missionaries, Adrian & Lavinia Dreana
1,500+ third-world children through our annual participation in Operation Christmas Child

Thousands of children and adults have been impacted by God’s work in and through Awana at Blue Ridge since it began 15 years ago. It plays a vitally effective part in our church’s outreach, discipleship, family ministry, volunteer training and leadership development efforts, aligning directly with Blue Ridge’s Mission, Values, and Vision.

What is Awana?

Spawned in Chicago 60 years ago, Awana is a fully integrated evangelism and discipleship program that appeals to both churched and non-churched kids, leading them to trust Christ for salvation and grow them in enduring faith and service to God.* Fun games, engaging materials and methods, and involved parents and leaders all come together for an exciting experience that helps shape kids for God’s eternal purposes.

Awana blends biblical instruction, evangelism, scripture memorization and tons of fun for kids ages 2 to 18 along with their families and entire communities while helping instruct parents, train volunteers and making a life-defining, long-lasting spiritual impact.

Today more than 1.5 million children and youth, 250,000 volunteers and 170+ field staff take part in Awana in over 22,000 churches from 100 different denominations in the U.S. and internationally each week.*

Its Philosophy

God intends parents to be the primary spiritual nurturers of their children. He designed the home to be the center of discipleship where kids are molded into spiritually-mature Christ followers and where parents and children grow together in faith, building stronger families and churches along the way.* Awana helps parents fulfill this calling.

The ages of 4 to 14 are the golden hour of evangelism. Research, anecdotal evidence and even common sense all clearly identify the childhood years as the window of opportunity for the greatest life-saving impact for eternity. For a large majority of people, if they do not respond to the gospel as a child, they likely will not do so later in life. All the ages of youth form the silver day. The teenage years as well provide a prime opportunity to evangelize. - Rock-Solid Kids, Larry Fowler

When parents and churches work together to teach God’s Word across kids’ formative years, they produce young adults marked by steadfast biblical faith and character.*

Its Impact

Today’s church is in crisis. The trends are troubling:

• Over half of all church-going teens abandon their faith after high school.
• As few as one in 10 possesses a biblical view of God and the world.
• Bible knowledge among college students has plummeted to all-time lows.
• The majority of children from Christian homes leave the church by age 19.*

Unfortunately, these are more than mere statistics. They represent millions of young people around the country. The crisis they face—and that churches and parents must confront—is all too real.*

By contrast, most kids trained in Awana continue to faithfully follow Jesus as adults.* Independent research demonstrates that young adults with 6 or more years of previous Awana experience are dramatically different from their peers:

• Church attendance – 92.7 percent of Awana alumni continue to regularly attend church as adults, and only 1.8 percent said they had dropped out of church since high school. By comparison, 36 percent of Americans surveyed by Baylor who attended church at age 12 said they are now unchurched as adults.*
• Belief in God – 93.7 percent of Awana alumni said they wholeheartedly believe in God as opposed to 65.8 percent of Baylor respondents.*
• Jesus and salvation – 98.6 percent of Awana alumni believe Jesus is God’s Son compared to 70 percent of Americans and 85 percent of Protestants. 93 percent of Awana alumni believe Christ is the only way to salvation. 69.6 percent of Americans believe many roads lead to salvation or do not believe in salvation.*
• Belief about the Bible – 94 percent of Awana alumni believe the Bible is God’s Word compared to 58 percent of Americans and 73 percent of Protestants. Awana alumni are also 3.6 times more likely than other churchgoers and Americans to read in virtually every case the Bible several times a week.*
• Church service – At 74 percent, Awana alumni were five times more likely than Americans polled by Baylor to serve their church 11 hours or more each month.*
• Personal evangelism – 70 percent of Awana alumni said they share their faith with friends at least once a month compared to 35.7 percent of the national average, 48.7 percent of Protestants and 59 percent of the most devoted churchgoers.*

Awana alumni were found to be more devoted to God, His Word and their local church than even the nation’s most committed churchgoers.* Why? The evidence indicates that consistent, long-term participation in Awana—accompanied by spiritual training from parents—reaps long-lasting results.*

By Earl Hall

* Content reprinted from material available on the Awana website at www.awana.org