Teen earns top AWANA award for Bible memorization

Scott Swanson

TJ Baham has gone where no others have in the local world of Bible memorization.

Baham in March completed the AWANA program, in which participants can memorize up to 2,008 Scripture verses. That’s what he accomplished to win the only Citation Award ever presented by the AWANA program at Community Chapel. He received his plaque on June 5.

AWANA, which stands for “Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed,” from 2 Timothy 2:15 in the Bible, is a weekly club held in local churches that emphasizes the gospel message of the Bible, study and memorization of the Bible, and activities such as games and theme nights to keep things fun.

AWANA started in Chicago in 1950 and has grown to more than 12,000 clubs across America and another 13,000 in 98 foreign countries.

The program serves children from toddler age through high school. Firiel Severns, who has led Community Chapel’s program for 12 years, said this year’s club had about 80 children involved, down slightly from previous years in part due to the fact that there weren’t enough leaders to offer a Cubbies program for 3- and 4-year-olds.

She pointed out that while Community Chapel hosts the program, participants and leaders come from a variety of local churches.

“It’s a community club,” she said. “We host it because we have the room. Probably only half the kids are from the Chapel.”

She noted that the AWANA program is about more than just memorization. Participants go through books that have two parts – memorization and a section in which they study the Bible, looking up verses and answering questions.

“It requires a great deal of work,” she said. “The older they get, the harder it gets. It’s tailored toward their age.”

Baham, 18, has been involved in AWANA since kindergarten, and has persevered as his life has gotten busier.

Home-schooled until the 10th grade, for the last year he’s taken a full college class load at Linn-Benton Community College, competed in four sports at Sweet Home High School, where he’s currently a senior on the track team, and works weekends at All-Star Pizza.

Memorization became part of his life, he said, though he had to fit it in.

“With my schedule, I had to learn six verses a week,” he said. “But with procrastination, with my schedule and stuff, it turned into six a day. I had to work around meets for swimming and track.”

Baham said as he moved up, the emphasis changed.

“When you get into high school, you’re more studying it than memorizing it.”

The time it takes him to memorize a verse varies, depending on the length, from “five minutes for an average-sized one to 30 minutes to an hour for a whole passage” of six or seven verses, he said.

“If the verses are scattered – not in a passage, it takes a little longer.”

Severns said most participants drop out after they reach junior high, as other activities complicate their schedules.

Baham, though, continued, she said, becoming an official leader in the boys group and continuing to progress through the books on his own.

“For him to be able to do sports, go to school, work – to balance all of that is pretty amazing,” she said.

Baham said he decided early on that he wanted to earn a Citation Award.

“I was striving for it a lot in grade school,” he said. “As I got closer and closer, it was something I learned, to just do it.”

He said he’s used a variety of methods, over the years, to memorize Scripture.

“For me, if I’m short on time, if I have someone there to help me, I say it to them and they tell me what words I’m missing. Sometimes I’ll write it, especially if the grammar is a little off. Most of the time, I’m just reading it and trying to say it to someone else.”

He said he can’t repeat most of the verses he’s learned word for word, “but the general concept is there. If I re-read it a few times, I can (rememorize) it easier than I could the first time.”

He said he learned the entire 13th chapter of I Corinthians, one of the more famous in the Bible, “in an hour on a bus.”

As a sixth-grader, he said, he once recited two years’ worth of memorized verses – nearly 100, from Genesis to Revelation – in one sitting.

Baham actually finished his AWANA program on a missions trip with three dozen other local high-schoolers to Mexico over Spring Break.

He said the trip opened his eyes to the meaning behind some of the passages he’s memorized.

“When we went to Mexico, I was learning the perspective of loving people this way. The whole 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians tied in real nicely there.”

After graduating from high school, he plans to major in physics at Virginia Military Institute, then receive a commission as a Navy officer.

“Physics will get me any job I want in the Navy,” he said. “I plan to get my commission, then after the Navy, I’m hoping to get into NCIS or FBI. I’ve kept my record clean.”

Severns said it took a lot of perseverance for Baham to finish the AWANA program.

“He’s really smart, but I think it’s mostly just drive,” she said. “He just really wanted it. He never lost sight of that.”

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