OUR TEAM of SERVANTS: genea2genea is a dedicated group of people who love God and enjoy serving Him. Our servants’ in-depth knowledge and experience is grounded in formal education, vocation and life learning. We are pastors, ministry leaders, schoolteachers, professors, therapists, business people and social workers. Together we serve you by providing services to help you train your own kids, kids in your ministry and parents in your church.

THE IDEA for genea2genea grew out of the challenges one of our servants, Dawn Awrey, faced while serving at a youth center in downtown Chicago. As a new Christian and not having grown up going to church or ever working with kids, she had no idea what to do! And no one else around her seemed to know either.

Though the kids continued to come to the youth center for the fun stuff, they were not interested in God. No surprise there, as the messages they were hearing were not very interesting or kid-friendly. Dawn visited several churches and found kids’ and youth ministries in general were not very good. Most were boring or dull and didn’t really represent God or the Bible that she knew. 

"But how could that be?" she wondered. "God is awesome! The Bible is awesome! So we can't represent Him and His Word so badly!" Before long Dawn was convinced that it was her mission to figure out a way to teach kids that was awesome and exciting, like Him!

So she began to observe others who seemed to know how to reach and engage kids, and she learned some things. Then one day while she was watching someone deliver a particularly engaging, large group presentation for kids, a light went off, and she knew what to do! She saw how to make God’s message exciting and more relevant to kids—how to turn teaching kids about faith into serious fun! After that, she began to see kids in her ministry engaged and truly getting what it meant to have faith in God and to live for Him. Lives were changed.

By this time, Dawn had a child of her own. She wanted him not only to know God as his Savior but to live for God his whole life. She wanted his heart to burn for God and for him to pass that passion on to his own kids. Her hope was that even in the hardest of teen and college years, her own kids would not become statistics and turn away from God.

But not having grown up in a Christian home, she had no idea how to be a Christian parent. Though a logical source, the church proved to be ill equipped to offer much advice. So she turned to her peers. She began to watch closely the parents who were raising wonderful, godly kids and asked them questions. She read the Bible for wisdom about how to parent. She read parenting books, led a parenting Bible study for Moms, and she prayed.

Dawn’s kids will be the first to tell you that she and her husband are not the perfect parents by any means. But when she asks them, ‘What’s the most important thing we’ve taught you?’ they will say, ‘God.’ The couple doesn’t claim to have all of the answers, but they have discovered some things over the years that they believe can help. And from their experience as parents and in ministry, they’ve found learning from others is one of the best ways to learn.

Dawn and her husband have been blessed for many years to be able to serve God by helping kids, parents and volunteers grow in their relationship with God. Years ago she realized that God put her on this earth to work with kids and families. It’s the one thing in life that she says, she simply cannot not do. Having eaten, breathed, slept and dreamed it for years, she truly LOVES it! By developing genea2genea, her hope is that she can do what she loves and share what she has learned to help the next generation.