Is Awana YM Appropriate for Every Church? From the Hangout

During a recent Google Hangout (now available on YouTube), Awana Youth Ministry Director Jeremy Pettitt was asked if Trek (our middle school program) and Journey (our high school program) were appropriate for every church. Here is a summary of his response, but see the video to get the whole gist.

Trek and Journey is definitely appropriate for most churches, and we have personally seen it working well in lots of different kinds of churches. What Awana is committed to is serving churches by creating resources and providing training to help you serve your students well.

Having said that, Trek and Journey might not be appropriate for two specific kinds of churches.

First, more liberal churches who don’t have the same commitment to biblical inerrancy that we do might not be comfortable with the way that Trek and Journey are designed to get students to push hard into the Scripture. We definitely have an evangelical commitment to the Word of God with a very specific, evangelical hermeneutic that treats Scripture as inerrant and applicable for life today.

Not every church would be thrilled with that.

Second, some churches hire a full-time youth pastor with the idea of having that person create their own scope and sequence and write original lessons – and some youth pastors thrive on that. What Awana provides with Trek and Journey is a complete scope and sequence and specific lessons that are built around that.

That’s what makes it so valuable for churches with volunteer youth leaders. We provide both the resources and the training for those without a Bible degree and those who may even be new to the world of youth ministry.

We have seen Trek and Journey work well in churches with full-time youth pastors, especially in cases where that pastor is gifted in pastoral care and engaging with students and does not want to sit in their office and write lessons all week. They appreciate the structure Trek and Journey bring to their teaching.

In addition, some full-time youth pastors build their own teaching around the structure of Trek and Journey, using it as a foundation or supplement. But Trek and Journey might be less appropriate for youth pastors who expect to build their own scope and sequence structure into the youth curriculum.