Adventure Club
Coming to AGC Wednesday evenings in August 2026!
Frequently Asked Questions:
Awana is a ministry that has blessed numerous children and families within our church for more than 20 years. We are extremely grateful to all those who have faithfully led in reaching kids for Christ using this curriculum. However, a couple of factors arose which brought about our openness to prayerfully considering if a curriculum change would be the Lord’s will for our ministry.
First, while our club has grown in attendance numbers, we have lacked significantly in volunteer leadership for the past several years. Our overall club director, Amanda Bondar, has been serving double-time as the Sparks Director. And this club year (25-26) will be the final ministry year for our beloved Mike Taylor – Cubbies Director, opening ceremonies leader, Grand Prix race coordinator. He will be retiring and moving out of state. Even if we continued with Awana curriculum, it would have to be restructured and would feel significantly different.
Secondly, we (Amanda with the strong support of our Elders) have a deep desire to improve the quality of our Wednesday teaching ministry in a way that better pairs with and complements what our kids learn on Sunday mornings.
Adventure Club is a biblically sound kid’s curriculum produced by Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California (previously pastored by the late Dr. John MacArthur). It is designed to be a fun and meaningful way for kids to learn the theological lessons of the Bible by studying various aspects of systematic theology in a simplified and unified manner. Covering a broad range of topics, Adventure Club brings deep theological concepts down to a basic understanding through the teaching of lessons, small group discussion, Scripture memorization, and songs.
Adventure Club will be a wonderful benefit to those children who also attend our Sunday Kid’s Bible studies. On Sudays we use curriculum from The Gospel Project for Kids, which focuses on Bible literacy and teaches the entire narrative of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, on a three-year cycle. Adventure Club, focusing on theological literacy, will teach systematic topical theology, also on a three-year cycle.
Foundationally, the purpose of Adventure Club and Awana are virtually the same. Like Awana, Adventure Club is designed to enable a partnership between the church and parents in the home as we seek to make disciples of Jesus Christ and raise up children who love the Lord and live in obedience to His commands. Also, Adventure Club couples sound biblical teaching with many of the same elements utilized by the Awana curriculum, such as:
- Parental involvement. Like Awana, Adventure Club provides student book that is designed to encourage parents to discuss weekly lessons with their children and help them to understand weekly Bible verses.
- Age-specific groups for age-appropriate instruction. Adventure Club organizes children into three groups. At Anchorage Grace we will have: Trackers (4s-5s-Kindy), Scouts (Grades 1-2-3), and Trailblazers (Grades 4-5-6).
- Scripture memorization. Adventure Club encourages both Scripture memorization and comprehension. Clubbers will have the opportunity to recite memorized verses linked to weekly lessons in order to earn various enameled pins that can be attached to their Adventure Club satchels. These pins are less like merit awards and are more like trading pins to collect and freely trade with friends.
- Club nights. Adventure Club has weekly club nights on Wednesday evenings which are similarly structured to Awana. There will be time for opening songs, games, large group teaching time, and small group discussion time.
Adventure Club’s content, paired together with our Sunday morning Bible classes, will, we believe, provide our kids with greater breadth and depth of biblical content.
In comparison, Awana’s content for Cubbies and Sparks focuses on a survey of Bible stories with some additional learning about missionaries and the order of the books of the Bible. While it is good content, it duplicates material we already teach in our Sunday Bible classes. The Awana T&T club uses a series of four handbooks. Each of them mainly focusing on who is God, the Bible, and who is Jesus. While also good and basic content, we at AGC desire to go deeper on those topics while also covering other major Christian doctrines that our church family is passionate about – such as who and what is the Church.
Adventure Club is a systematic and topical study of theology focused on sharing the gospel and making disciples. This is done through studying ten core doctrines of the Christian faith: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the Bible, Mankind, Salvation, Sin, Angels, the Church, and the End Times. These same study topics will repeat every three years.
Adventure Club is also a unified curriculum, meaning that all children will learn about the same theological topic each week, but in a manner that is appropriate for their age group. This is a benefit for parents who will now be able to have one weekly discussion with all of their children, no matter their age or club, since all children will be learning about the same topic and memorizing the same verses from week to week. (Younger kids will learn a smaller portion of the same memory text. Older kids will be offered an additional on-topic Scripture portion to learn.)
While at Adventure Club, children will be taught systematic theology broken down for their specific age level. This will be accomplished through a large group teaching time focused on the specific lesson topic, a central truth (catechism statement) and a clear presentation of the gospel.
Children will also memorize a Scripture verse each week that relates to the theological theme and during the small group discussion time learn how it applies to their lives. Games and music are also incorporated as a fun way to keep the children engaged and to encourage them to invite their friends to join them in the program.
Wanda Cline, will coordinate and teach the Trackers age group (4-5-Kindy). She is a beloved and long-time teacher of this same age group at AGC on Sunday mornings. For the older two groups – Scouts (Grades 1-3) and Trailblazers (Grades 4-6) – the large group Bible study will be taught by Amanda Bondar, our Kids Ministry Director. (She holds a Master of Divinity in Christian Education from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.) Small group discussion leaders will be trained and equipped Kids Ministry volunteers. The same small group leader will stay with their assigned group throughout the club year but then will change groups with each new club year.
Adventure Club is designed to run during the school year with a break in the summer months. At AGC we will begin in mid-August (a little earlier than previously with Awana) and finish mid-April.
Adventure Club for 2026-2027 (exact start date TBD) will run in the same Wednesday evening time slot beginning at 6:15. The youngest group (Trackers, ages 4-5-Kindy dismissing from the Chapel) will finish at 7:50 and the older groups (Scouts and Trailblazers, dismissing from classrooms) will finish at 8:00pm.
The overall cost for Adventure Club will be somewhat less that the current $75 per child yearly registration for Awana. Parents will pay a registration fee for the year and that amount will cover the cost of child’s handbook and award/trading pins.
Then as a separate purchase, only when needed, parents will purchase a child’s satchel and club t-shirt. The same satchel is for use by all age groups. The t-shirt color changes for each age group. Specific cost-related details will be determined and announced closer to mid-summer 2026.
