I recently received an inquiry from a pastor-friend who wanted to know if there were perhaps grounds for concerns about the organisation known as AWANA – ‘derived from the first letters of “Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed” as taken from 2 Timothy 2:15’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awana)
Then, in their own words – ‘For over six decades, the Lord has used the ministry of Awana to reach kids, equip leaders, and change the world. The unchanging truth of the gospel drives the same vision we’ve held all these years to reach children in every corner of the globe as we walk boldly into the future and continue to be used by God to help change the world’.
(https://www.awana.org/about/)
This is part of what my friend wrote to me –
Hi Cecil,
I have a question for you. Are you familiar with AWANA? We were approached about hosting it here as we did years ago, before my time. xxxx has good experiences with it but I’ve heard that they are embracing “spiritual formation” and are using books such as those by Ken Blanchard. Are you aware of this? Can you point me to any resources?
Then this was part of my reply –
Hi xxx,
… as regards resources for AWANA here are just two links of quite a few that are available on http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/search9.html
(just type in AWANA in the search box)
and that should hopefully be helpful –
https://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=19102
https://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/blog/?p=23653
There are also links in these articles to other posts about concerns with AWANA.
On the whole issue of ‘Spiritual Formation’ on my web site is this article
https://www.takeheed.info/pdf/2018/February/spiritual-formation.pdf
and at the end of the article I provide links to very helpful articles by my friend, Gary Gilley – articles that later were published as his book ‘Out of Formation’.
Cecil Andrews – ‘Take Heed’ Ministries – 19 July 2018