Book Review: Mr. AWANA

When my wife first told me that she wanted our kids to go to AWANA, I was skeptical. I hadn’t grown up with an AWANA program in my church, and everything that my wife had told me about the program made it sound like a gender-inclusive Bible Boy Scouts thing. Oh, MLAGW had certainly enjoyed her time in the program as a kid, and still kept most of the trophies she’d earned for Scripture memorization, but I just didn’t see the big benefit.

That was over eight years ago. Now, all five of my kids are somewhere in the program, and MLAGW has been teaching a class of Sparky girls (ages 3-5) for several years. I understand the benefits. It’s a social place, in the church but not officially a part of the church, where kids can have fun and make friends. For some parents, it’s a chance to drop the kids off somewhere safe and have a few quiet hours every Wednesday night. For some kids whose parents don’t attend a Sunday service, AWANA might be the only place they hear a Gospel presentation. The long-term benefit – kids who grow up with a head full of memorized Scripture – pays out eternal dividends.

But how did this massive ministry start? It certainly didn’t spring, fully formed, into thousands of churches around the globe. Mr. AWANA tells the story of AWANA, through the words and recollections of its founder Art Rorheim. From Art’s early recollections, to the ministries that laid the foundation for AWANA, to the growth of the program from a single club to a global ministry, Mr. AWANA provides a much better understanding of what this organization is, and why it’s so vitally important to today’s world.

Unlike a lot of memoirs, Mr. AWANA isn’t organized chronologically, but topically. An admitted side-effect of this is that some stories are partially repeated in different chapters. This repetition usually comes in the setup of a particular recollection, and is repeated for a different reason each time. However, it’s an effective way of clustering relevant entries, such as Art’s visits to various AWANA chapters around the world, into an appropriate group when the actual visits occurred over a span of multiple decades.

zser54Mainly, this book gave me a much better appreciation for the ministry that has played a profound impact in the lives of my wife and our children. It’s greatly increased my sense of gratitude to both the AWANA leadership and the workers around the world who keep this ministry going every week. Even more shocking, it’s made me question whether I should be trading my two hours of peace and quiet on Wednesday nights to instead help out with a class of screaming boys. I might be losing my mind.