As you may or may not have heard by now, our Journey curriculum for high school students is being completely redesigned for launch in the fall of 2016. We’re excited to share with you what we’ve been working on.
This process has been a labor of love for our Awana Youth Ministries’ team. It began over a year and half ago when we created the initial concepts for each of the four new books (one for each year). We wanted to shift the focus of Journey from simply facts and verses to a deeper understanding of the biblical truths and practices to which God has called all followers of Jesus. We concentrated on four major roles all Christians must fulfill (hence, four books):
- The first book, to be released in the fall, will be titled Disciples and will focus on the various concepts and practices expected of a person who strives to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. This book will feature Josh Griffin, Awana alum and high school pastor of Saddleback Church.
- The second book will consider what it means to hold firm to biblical convictions and still engage in humble dialogue with the culture around us. Sean McDowell, a leading apologetics and worldview author, has signed on to help us create this book, which will be released in the fall of 2017.
- The third book, coming in the fall of 2018, will explore ideas and methods of evangelism in order to help students share the Gospel more effectively. We are currently working to connect with the best author(s) on this topic and plan to collaborate with several voices to ensure that our students truly understand what it means to be effective witnesses for Jesus Christ.
- The fourth book will examine what it means to be a Christ-like leader. Using a variety of biblical principles and real life voices, this curriculum will challenge students to follow God’s calling and become the leaders He intended. Look for this final installment in the fall of 2019.
During the fall last year, our team embarked on a field test of our concepts for the new curriculum. The field test included nearly 1,000 students in about 50 different churches of various sizes, locations, ethnicities and economic levels. Their feedback was vital in helping us understand our students and leaders better. The new curriculum has been completely altered based on these final results. From the bottom of heart, we would like to once again say a public “Thank You” to all of those students and leaders that helped out.
While we have several months of work left on all of the final content, videos and artwork for Disciples, we can’t wait to show you a sample lesson in the next couple weeks!
To see a sample of our new Journey curriculum when it becomes available, and to receive other news about the release, sign up for our mail list at GetJourney.org.
