Awana
evangelical Christian nonprofit organization headquartered in St. Charles, Illinois, United States
Awana is an international evangelical Christian nonprofit organization in child and youth discipleship. The headquarters are in St. Charles, Illinois, United States.
History
In 1941, the children's program at the North Side Gospel Center in Chicago laid the foundation for the principles of Awana. Lance Latham, North Side's senior pastor, collaborated with the church's youth director, Art Rorheim, to develop weekly clubs that they believed would appeal to all children. Other churches became interested in the program and inquired about its availability. In 1950, Latham and Rorheim founded Awana as a parachurch organization. Rorheim served as president emeritus until his death on January 5, 2018.
The name is derived as an acronym of "Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed", taken from 2 Timothy 2:15. As of 2019, Awana claims to work with over 61,000 churches in 122 countries.
“Awana” enters the record as evangelical Christian nonprofit organization headquartered in St. Charles, Illinois, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Awana, evangelical and Christian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Awana” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Awana, evangelical and Christian provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4829795. VIAF identifies the subject as 5750149296203780670004. The Library of Congress control number is n2003109046. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1950, 2018 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Awana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.