Your hope and prayer as a leader is to see each of your clubbers come to love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ. However, to grow in Christ, they need spiritual food. Often the only spiritual nourishment they get each week is at Awana, and if they are fortunate, a couple of hours at church on Sunday. That is good, but it is not enough to sustain a healthy Christian life.

• Did you know that anywhere from 50-90 percent of young people walk away from their faith once they leave home?

Church volunteers are riding a bike with one pedal — striving with all their might, but only achieving half strength.

The missing component is the parents … the God-ordained primary spiritual influence in a child’s life.

Parents need vision, confidence and the tools to take on their ultimate parenting responsibility. Churches need resources to encourage and help parents as they begin (or continue) the journey.

• Awana is introducing HomeBase™ to help churches and families work together to train up spiritual champions. We’ll introduce it to you in this issue of Awana Ideas.

We also introduce you to the new pre-Cubbies program called Puggles. Plus, we include some encouraging words you can use anytime for your clubbers.

Yours for kids,

Dale & Jodi

As a pastor, what do you think HomeBase will do for the families in your church?
I think HomeBase will help parents build strong family bonds with their children, whether it is around the kitchen table or in the family room watching a HomeBase DVD. I also think it will help create spiritual champions for future generations.

Would HomeBase help any young Christian family? Yes. I think it would.

How would a family who is familiar with the Bible benefit from HomeBase? I have noticed that my son, who is a pastor’s kid, and his wife, both seem to be much more intimidated about the thought of talking about God with their children than I thought they would be. The clips I have seen from StationBrakes™ (information below) appear to be just what my son will be looking for to turn his daughter on to the things of God.

What about a family where the parents are new Christians — could they comfortably use HomeBase with their children too?
My daughter-in-law comes from a high-church background. She is excited about her new life in Christ, but she is somewhat confused. I believe the new HomeBase products will help her and other parents like her who want to teach their children what is right, but are not Bible scholars.

How do you think HomeBase will influence your church?
I think HomeBase will give my church and other churches a new way to reach families for Christ.

You might want to look at HomeBase™ and become familiar with it. You can check out the Web page at: www.awana.org/homebase and sign up for e-mail updates.

God’s Grand Vision for the Home is a small book that introduces parents to the crucial discipline of family worship and practical ways to do it well. Written by a family pastor with five children of his own and 10 years of experience in youth ministry, it is filled with inspiring, practical content for your family and the families of your clubbers.

StationBrakes™ is the new, exciting, 3-D media-driven learning and discussion tool for family worship. Its desert characters are Tucker, an armadillo, Lilly, a gecko, Claire, a desert tarantula and Red, a rattlesnake. These colorful characters star in four short segments that engage and teach children key points. Watch a StationBrakes trailer now.

There is also a discussion booklet for StationBrakes. The overall topic is the gospel. With little preparation, a parent will be able to talk to their child about the Bible, God’s love, sin and our new life in Christ with the help of the 12 discussion guides.

HomeBase Presents: Awana Starts at Home
This book gives parents the reasons for why Awana does what it does, along with helpful information about the Awana program his or her child is currently in. Parents also benefit from an insightful section on parenting as spiritual leadership, and learn how to be the best “Awana parent” that he or she can be. There are also answers to parents’ most frequently asked questions about Awana.

Wow! Way to go! Super! You're special! Outstanding! Excellent! Great! Good! Neat! Well Done! Remarkable! I knew you could do it!

I'm proud of you! Fantastic! Superstar! Nice work! Looking good! You're on top of it! Beautiful! Now you're flying! You're catching on! Now you've got it.

You're incredible! Bravo! You're fantastic! Hurray for you! You're on target! You're on your way! How nice! How smart! Good job! That's incredible! Hot dog! Dynamite!

You're unique! Nothing can stop you now! Good for you! You're a winner! Remarkable job!

Beautiful Work! Spectacular! Great discovery! You've discovered the secret! You figured it out!
Fantastic job! Hip Hip Hurray! Bingo! Magnificent!

Terrific! You're important! You're sensational! Super work! Creative job! Super job! Fantastic job! Exceptional performance! You're a real trooper! Phenomenal! You are responsible! You learned it right! What an imagination! What a good listener! You are fun! You worked hard.

Puggles is the new program for your pre-Cubbies kids (usually older 2- and younger 3-year-olds) that presents basic biblical concepts:

• We are each a unique creation of God.
• God loves us very much.

Puggles learn simple lessons through teaching cards, activities, music and more. Puggles leaders have a leader’s guidebook to help them plan and direct Puggles time and communicate the lesson. Then parents — a Puggle’s first and best teacher — can step in to reinforce the lessons with take-home cards that include ideas to point out God’s work each day.

Here are some first impressions leaders have about Puggles from the Awana Puggles forum:

“The Take-home Cards give great suggestions for parents on how to incorporate that week’s topic into daily activities in the home. This is probably my favorite part of the program. It engages parents to be active in discipling their child.

The Leader's Guide is complete all the way down to snack suggestions that go along with that week’s theme. Example: Week One — God Made Light. Use regular and golden Oreos® as snacks and discuss how the golden Oreos® look like the sun that God made to give us light. I thought this was clever.” — David

“I think Awana made it [Puggles] so simple to run so it could be used for a variety of settings: club night, Sunday school, day-care time, etc.” — WW2er

Will you open up Puggles to the public, or just use it for your current Awana night nursery kids?

It has already been opened up to the public. I have faith that God is going to use it to introduce more parents earlier to the wonderful program that Awana is and the tool that it can be for them.” — Laura

“We have held a pre-Cubbies program for the past two years because all of our 2-year-olds wanted to be Cubbies. These little ones recite verses — even though you weren't sure what some of them verbalized, you knew by their eyes that they knew what they were saying. So, I didn't think twice about using Puggles. The best way to parents’ or grandparents’ hearts is through their children. They are better at getting the Word of God into their families’ hearts than adults. Do we have enough workers? Not really. But God provides every year.” — Commander Carol