and I was telling her I'm not completely hip to my kids participating in Awanas (which they currently are) because although they do memorize their fair share of Scripture, each portion of the Bible they are learning to retain is out of context - taken one verse, or even just a piece of one verse at a time.
Recently, I've started to believe it may be wiser for us to memorize whole sections, even entire chapters of the Bible rather than individual verses to really glean (at least better) understanding of what God is trying to communicate.
{Isaiah 58 was our first semester goal. It went surprisingly well. Much easier for all of us than I expected!}
We talked about Philippians 4:13 as an example. I'm not super comfortable encouraging my kids to quote that verse to ace their spelling tests, with or without studying, or to give them courage to jump off the high dive. It was Paul speaking specifically about learning to be content with abundance or scarcity - that was not about me, Tisha, being able to accomplish any old thing I set my mind to for any old random reason....it just doesn't work like that.
Then, tonight that friend sent me this link to read. In my opinion, he hit that nail smack dab on the head. Which made it SO STRANGE that we were JUST discussing this very thing. Don't you love when stuff like that happens? It is definitely worth the read.
*Please, feel free to take this opportunity to share with me how amazing awanas is.* ☺
6 comments:
Well Tisha - I spend about 2 hours with our Sparks each Wednesday night. I have 6 at my table learning to say those passages and one of my jobs as their table leader is to put those passage in context and not just memorize for the sake of memorizing just to get shares for the store! We try very hard to accomplish this goal at our church as I am sure your kids leaders do also. Some of our Sparks do not have the benefit of a Godly home so this is "all" they get from week to week! I think Awanas is a great tool and worth every minute I give it - and we need more workers - last week we had 30+ Kindergarten thru 2nd graders!!!! Aunt Linda
I grew up in Awana...we're talking Cubbies to AKX (the highschool stuff).
and my kids are not in it ;-)
OH! and not because I'm bitter....but because I'm with you -
and to put in another two cents on the issue -
I thought the verses/concepts/portions to memorize were sooo dumbed down...
just to add fuel to the fire.
I FINALLY made it on your blog (although in reference) I am completely honored and humbled. :)
amen and amen!!! I also don't like that they do the pledge of allegiance every week - leave it to me to stir up controversey. ; ) Seems to me, though, that as believers, the only place we should pledge allegiance is to God.
we took a book for the beginning of this year (James) and memorized a lot of verses from the book (though not long passages - we need to try that).
i know absolutely nothing about awanas, and i probably don't know much about the bible either.
but i wanted to thank you all the same for two things:
1) the link to my blog post. you've sent a lot of people my way. i appreciate it.
2) for making me think about how to do memory verses with my kid(s) a little further down the road. my daughter turns one tomorrow, and i need to be thinking about these things. thank you.
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