The First Awana Night of the partnership…

I should have updated this sooner, as our first night was this past Sunday and this is now Thursday.

I was stressing a little more than usual as the evening approached. I like to have a lot of the admin stuff complete and I received registrations from the other church on Friday. I had a regional Awana traiing I was assisting with on Saturday so my time was limited. So on Friday afternoon/evening, I entered the registrations into our recordkeeping software database. If any registrations were received Sunday, they were to e-mailed to me so I could enter the information. Sunday came, and I had 5 registrations e-mailed to me and then a little later, a 6th one came. Sunday afternooon was spent adding the information into the database.

Okay, I hear some of you saying, why the urgency? I wanted to be sure that all the children who had been registered were in the database, so when I printed out the attendance sheets and they checked in, they would see their names on the sheet, not just the kids form my church. This was vital to me to help establish and show that it was a true partnership. Their children and parents would know they were a part of the club. It also helped me to prepare for the night, knowing how many children to expect and how to organize the night with the leadership I had and all of the “first-time” children. Knowing that was a huge asset.

The night went well as people from both churches arrived, not knowing where to go, or exactly what to do. Our church because it was the first time they were entering the facility and not knowing the routine of the night and the other church because this was a new ministry for them.

We had plenty of entrance booklets for Sparks and both T&T clubs, but we were a few short on Cubbie Bear Hugs (all my fault, I forgot to order them and then miscommunication with the Cubbie director – my wife). But all went well. Both myself and the children’s ministry director there felt the night went well.

I did order more supplies, but Awana is running behind on processing and shipping orders. I just checked and they are being “fulfilled” now and so I will probably receive them early next week (after club night), but not to worry, I contacted another church nearby who had extra material that I could borrow until my order came in so I am good for Sunday night, minus some things that Awana has on back-order.

So the first night went well and now I work on getting things “established” and kids in uniforms with handbooks. Then we’ll settle down some and really work on the partnership of the club.

These are exciting times!