Verse-a-Thon Works!

“You mean that I’m going to help reach 30 kids for Christ!” My 10-year-old daughter was excited she was making such a big impact for God’s Kingdom, and I couldn’t have been more proud of her.

When our Awana club announced a Verse-A-Thon to raise money for reaching kids around the world, my two daughters weren’t very enthused. They love Awana, but they don’t always love memorizing and saying verses. (Can anyone relate to that weekly struggle of getting your children to spend time in their handbooks?) They were also nervous about asking others to sponsor them with pledges.

Verse-a-Thon is a creative fundraising tool in the Awana GO™ resource library. The basic concept is that children ask family and friends to sponsor them for reciting as many verses from memory as they can on a specified club night. All funds raised go toward reaching children in other parts of the world who need support getting a club started. Every $10 reaches a child with the gospel and provides her with lifelong discipleship through an Awana club at a local church.

This very simple concept has had incredible results for our club and made an even greater impact on my daughters. The last three years, our club has raised money for Awana during a designated Missions Month. Each year we did some sort of coin drive with a challenge to see which team or group could bring in the most coins. On average, we raised about $10 from each child in our club. It was exciting to think that our club of 30-40 children was reaching 30-40 more children in another country. With this year’s Verse-a-Thon, we’ve been able to raise nearly 10 times as much! Can you imagine? Our club is now helping to reach over 300 more children for Christ!

Perhaps explaining the impact on my daughters will help you understand the synergy and significance of this new approach. The past three years, my daughters have participated in our club’s fundraising efforts by doing a couple of chores to earn money and by raiding my coin dish. This year, they had to tell other people about the challenge and have the courage to say how many verses they were going to try to recite from memory in one club meeting.

After their grandparents jumped at the opportunity to sponsor them, they were excited to contact aunts and uncles and then to go around to members of our church asking for support. Now we’ve all been approached about fundraisers, kids selling chocolates, magazines and other stuff we don’t need, but when a child tells you that he or she is going to hide God’s Word in their heart so that other kids can have the chance to hear the gospel, you jump at the chance to sign up.

My older daughter (5th grade) set a goal of memorizing 10-20 verses and my younger daughter (3rd grade) was aiming for 20 verses. Knowing that reaching other children was on the line, they studied harder and with more motivation than ever before. As my fifth grade daughter was adding up her pledges and doing the math, she realized that if she said 20 verses, she would raise $300 and reach 30 kids. She was so thrilled that she thought of more people to ask for pledges and her sister followed suit.

This past week, my daughters recited their verses in the Verse-a-Thon. My oldest said 24 verses and her sister said 22! Together they raised over $900! Thanks to Awana Verse-a-Thon, my girls were empowered to use Scripture memory to reach 90 more children for Christ and to offer them a much brighter future. As their dad, I’m still beaming.