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.
