This post was written by Jesse Smith during the Vantage Conference.
A little more than a year ago, Pat Cimo and the children’s leadership at Willow Creek Community Church began a journey of investigation. They began evaluating how (or if) their children’s programming led to life long discipleship. Pat visited with some of the college students and young adults that went through their ministry and inquired about what made the most spiritual impact in their lives. She knew that children needed to know what to do when things went wrong, so what ministry helped these young adults most?
Of course, if you know about Willow Creek, you will know that she hoped their answer would be Promise Land – the Sunday ministry at Willow. But it wasn’t, the answer surprised her:
Awana
At first, the Willow Creek team was skeptical. Awana, in their mind was too ridged to work in their model.
Yet they continued to ask what they were missing. These same young adults helped Willow understand that they had 3 blind spots:
Group Mentality
Everything was about moving children from one activity to another. Pat, they answered, “You have forgotten that kids are uniquely created to be on a journey with God. They need space and time to be in community with a personal God.”
Limited Discipleship view
An intentional and integrated discipleship needs 3 elements: trusting relationships, biblical knowledge, and application.
As we read through the stories of Jesus, we constantly see him moving from relationship to relationship – accepting people as they are. He knew that if he accepted people, if they belong, they would begin to believe and that their belief would change them.
Too often our ministries communicate: If you change, you can belong. But that won’t work because belief is what changes people and if they do not want to belong they don’t hear the message we’re sharing.
Lack of Personal Ownership
Willow’s volunteers owned the programming.
That sounds great, but it communicated that discipleship was the responsibility of the volunteers – that in the 90 minutes a week they had with a child, they could be the primary disciple maker.
Pat knew that parents have far more power and time to make a difference in a child life – they also needed to own the process.
But could Awana work at Willow?
Isn’t Awana too ridged?
Pat and the Willow team moved to investigators. They visited churches with Awana and began meeting with the Awana team. What they found was that Awana is changing. Gone are the days where red, blue, yellow, green are so important that you must say them in the correct order.
Awana simply wants your church to create a system that is best for the children in your church.
Willow Creek moved from investigators to students. They began learning, adapting, and tinkering with what Awana could be at their church.
And they became excited about a coming spiritual revolution. Awana will work in their environment.
It doesn’t look like a typical club….but really, a typical club doesn’t look like what it used to.
At Willow, it’s called Midweek for Kids. There are no uniforms. Mom & Dad have to stay in the building and they learn as well.
Awana is about heart change, not rigidity.
Awana is about opening the eyes of a child – about helping them see they story of God.
Awana is intentional discipleship.
