Hail Awana

Growing up, I can remember liking Awana. What's there not to like about games, singing, listening to stories, reciting Bible verses, and buying cheap toys with Awana dollars? I really did enjoy it as a kid because Awana is designed to appeal to kids, to what kids want. Its professed purpose is to "reach boys and girls with the gospel of Christ and train them to serve Him." I just think they go about it in an ineffective way.

The rewards system operates like this: you take the book they give you, learn the verses, recite the verses to your leader, and collect points which translate into Awana dollars which you can spend on stuff at the Awana store which happens two or three times a year. I think this method of positive reinforcement undermines the goal of Awana. Kids are taught that if they learn verses they will receive a reward. Obviously for a kid the real goal is to get the reward. If they have to learn the verses to do so, they will. This system makes the Bible verses second priority.

And that's not all. I've noticed that kids hardly remember the Bible verses anyway. I set records when it came to who could recite the most verses in one sitting. But I can't tell you what those verses were about. I was too fixated on the material reward to the extent that I didn't really learn the verses. I read them to myself and then tried to regurgitate them back at the listener. And in regurgitating the Bible verses, I didn't end up learning them.

It also ended up being a competition, almost, to see who could say the most verses. Extrinsic motivation is good, but not when it comes to learning verses. There shouldn't be a competition to see who can say the most verses because that distracts from the goal as well. Recently, I was watching how the leader of Awana at my church was introducing the teams and the number of points each had. It was very clear that the teams who got the most points were cheered on more.

The way the Awana song goes also seems to indicate that the purpose of Awana is not what it claims. Part of the song goes, "Hail Awana on the march for youth. Hail Awana holding forth the truth." so I guess it's Awana that is teaching the truth not Christ. Well he is mentioned in the passage of the song that says "our Savior following with steps unfaltering." The grammatical structure of the song and the way it's sung originally led me to believe that our Savior was following us (I was just a little kid). If you look at that entire sentence of the song, you can see that we are following our Savior, but that wasn't especially clear to me growing up. I don't really know what the real purpose of Awana really is or what the effect is. It didn't do much for me. To me, it seems like Awana is too focused on the Awana program and not the goal of that program.