NASHVILLE, TN (ANS) -- For nearly 60 years, Awana has been a leader in children’s ministry, helping churches and parents worldwide raise children and youth to know, love and serve Christ.

An Awana club

Based in the Chicago area, Awana is the only organization with fully integrated evangelism and discipleship programs for ages 2 to 18 that actively involve parents, church leaders and mentors. Each week, more than a million children and youth, 250,000 volunteers and 300-plus field staff take part in Awana in the U.S. and internationally.

Awana works with churches from nearly 100 different denominations. It began as a children’s program at the North Side Gospel Center in Chicago in 1941. Lance Latham, North Side’s senior pastor, collaborated with the church’s youth director, Art Rorheim, to develop weekly clubs that would appeal to churched and unchurched kids, lead them to trust Christ for salvation and grow them in enduring faith and service to God.

I caught up with Awana President/CEO Jack D. Eggar, at the recent NRB 2009 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, and I asked him where the name Awana came from.

“Awana is an acrostic and it comes from second Timothy 2:15, approved workmen and not ashamed. Therefore, it's Awana,” he said. “We have a passion for children and youth that they will grow up to know, love and serve Jesus Christ.

Dan Wooding with Jack D. Eggar at NRB 2009 (Photo by Michael Ireland)

“So we believe with all our hearts that in this day and age it’s still possible to raise up children that they will become modern day Joseph’s; men and women with integrity, with character who walk with the Lord and know His word in all circumstances.”

I then asked him how the organization began and he replied, “It actually started in Chicago many years ago at the famous Gospel Tabernacle under Paul Reiter, who was greatly influenced in his youth by D.L. Moody and he became very passionate about children's ministry. We would like to think that we're an outpouring of that very passion.

“In fact, Paul Reiter was a strong leader who believed in Jeremiah, 30:3, with everything he had and that is ‘call unto me and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things thou knowest not.’ So Awana is an outreach ministry we are in almost 20,000 around the world today and we help them impact their community with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

When asked how this was done, Jack Eggar said, What we do is we start club ministries we help the churches train up their leaders to reach out to kids. You know kids are easy to reach if you take the time to listen to them and do some fun things. In fact if you do fun things with kids you earn the opportunity to share the gospel with them.

“So we train churches and leaders in those churches to start up ministries to children and youth. And these kids have such a wonderful time that they become our ‘little fire evangelists’ and they reach their friends. Churches that use Awana find very quickly that they have more kids running around those facilities than they know what to do with.

“Now if the church is outward focused and desirous to impact its community then they will build bridges to the un-churched moms and dads of these kids. So a lot of kids are coming to Christ and then a lot of moms and dads are also coming to Christ through these ministries.”

What sort of fun do they have at these clubs?

“We have an evening, for example, within the typical Awana program, where they'll spend an hour and a half to two hours and in that time they'll do three things. One is they'll have a fun and game time. Another one is they'll have a handbook time where we are teaching biblical theology they're learning Scriptures. They're also memorizing Scriptures. And then there is a counseling time and that's where they sing everything from silly songs to hymns to everything kids love and then somebody gets up and shares the Word of God with them. It is a very kid friendly format.

“In the game or fun time they can do everything from games to doing zany things. In fact we do all of this inside of a church regardless of what kind of facilities they have. They can have a gymnasium or they can be in just small rooms. The games are designed for kids to have maximum fun. They begin to work with one another they grow in their friendship with one another and we really create a strong community of children and youth within a local church.”

I asked Jack Eggar how Awana dealt with children from divorced families and he replied, “There are so many children today who are growing up in a tumultuous world and they are struggling with their own identity because they look at their parents and if their parents aren't getting along or they're coming from a divorced home, or there are inconsistencies in the home, these kids don't really know which way is up often times.

“So we train leaders to be very conscious of the needs of children and we teach our leaders how to really love those kids and ‘tune in’ with them.

“One of the first things we teach Awana leaders and, by the way we have over three-hundred-thousand trained Awana leaders around the world today, is to really zero in on the hearts and the minds of these little kids. They do not speak down to them in a condescending way. We teach our people that these kids in just a couple of years they're going to be grown ups just like us and in God's eyes we're all children any way.

“So they speak in love but they also speak in integrity to these children; and they help these children gain perspective in those ministries and they're able to reach out to them in a way that perhaps children never experience at home.
“Imagine with me children coming from a home where they never receive any praise. Parents hardly spend any time with them. Certainly most often the father does not provide any spiritual counsel or direction. He does not mentor his children. So we try to well we try to accomplish several things.

“One, we try to bring these kids to a knowledge of Christ so that we can have now a foundation in which they can grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. But we do one more thing, we really try to reach out to these parents. If we can bring parents to Jesus Christ and help them grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ then that family nucleus has the wherewithal to raise strong children who are going to be modern day Joseph’s.

“So we act as a marriage broker between the church and parents. We try to bring them together so that the church stops acting like a spiritual surrogate parent thinking that it has the responsibility to raise up kids in the way they should go, and the parents stop dropping their kids off at church and heading to Starbucks for their Latte.

“We really try to get churches and parents to realize that we're in this together.”

I then asked Jack Eggar how Awana was dealing with the new technology that kids today are using.

“That's a great question, Dan,” he said. “In fact, we're scrambling like all the other ministries. Technology is changing so quickly and you are dead on children don't watch much TV today. They are gaming on their computers.

“I got on Facebook some months ago and I already have hundreds of friends and I'm thinking that is an amazing world of networking. You know out there in cyber space today there are magnificent opportunities but there are some horrible pits and there are some dangers. And our kids are high-tech today. We older folks can hardly relate to the world that they're in.

“I mean, every day, all day long on my Blackberry, people are throwing me text messages and I'm scrambling to keep up with all of that technology. And kids it's just part of the day they're naturally in tune with it. So how can we remain relevant? So the church has to remain relevant to kids who are so high tech and prone to focus on that stuff? It's not that this technology is bad or evil; it can be used for evil; but it's just technology. These kids are a bit different than they were back in the fifties.”

He concluded by saying, “Please pray for Awana because we are embarking on one of the most extraordinary ministries I've ever heard of and that’s our prison ministries. People may not realize but in the United States alone we have two point three-million people incarcerated and they've got millions of kids and their kids statistically are seven times more likely to go to prison themselves and the peers they run with and we have learned of a way to bring inmates and their children together for a day of reconciliation. By the way, that's entirely biblical. You know in Second Corinthians chapter five we are told that ‘in Christ we're new creatures.’ But then Paul goes on to say and he has given us the ‘ministry of reconciliation’ and if we Christians do anything right let us be good reconcilers. Let us bring people to God.”

For more information on Awana, go to www.awana.org

Note: I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

Dan Wooding, 68, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma of 45 years. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS); and US Bureau Chief for the Missionaries News Service (www.missionariesnews.tv) and Safe Worlds IPTV’s Faith, Hope and Charity channel. He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC., and now hosts the weekly "Front Page Radio" show on KWVE in Southern California and which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. The program is also aired in Great Britain on UCB UK and Calvary Chapel Radio UK. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloidtotruth.com. E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com.