AWANA Clubs as a Bible curriculum – Part I

When we first started homeschooling, my daughter was involved at church with AWANA Clubs on Wednesday nights. We had planned Bible curriculum with our year, but we scrapped the Bible memory parts to concentrate on AWANA, which requires a lot of Bible memorization.

When DS started Kindergarten, we were well into the swing of AWANA, so we just kept going with it.

Now our plan is changing. We will probably not continue with AWANA next year. AWANA Clubs are a great ministry, but we are finding it is not working for our family. Basically, we feel it is a commitment of time that could be better spent in some other way.

I’m going to discuss why that is, but I do first want to say that we have only participated in the AWANA program at one church, our home church. I can only speak for what I have seen there. Other programs may be run differently, but the curriculum and plan is the same across the board.

First the positive: We loved the fact that Scripture was the main emphasis of the AWANA program. There are some crafts and nature activities, but this was not really the point of the club. I do not agree with some who say that AWANA is like a Christian version of scouting. It is not like scouting at all, except that the kids can work for patches and the like.

We loved that AWANA is very sound, doctrinally. It basically presents the plan of salvation, and does not compromise on this.

We loved that AWANA is fun, and our kids look forward to it. It does not require a lot of sitting and being lectured.

We love that AWANA is an outreach ministry. At least in our church, this aspect is emphasized.

So these are some of the positive aspects of the program. Tomorrow I will begin to tell why our family is prayerfully considering dropping AWANA Clubs from our schedule.

(Reposted from my HomeschoolBlogger page 6/13/08)