The Adventures in Odyssey Club is Focus on the Family's subscription home for the Adventures in Odyssey audio dramas, fully voiced stories with original music and sound design that help kids ages 8 to 12 meet everyday questions through a Christian worldview.^1 The series first aired on November 21, 1987, and now includes more than 1,000 episodes.^2 Club membership unlocks on-demand streaming of that library plus members-only episodes, more than 1,000 devotionals, faith-building games, videos, and activities.^3
Families can search episodes by theme, build playlists, create up to eight household profiles, download stories for offline listening, and stream on more than one device at once.^3 The Club also offers customizable parental controls and closely monitored message boards, and U.S. members receive Focus on the Family Clubhouse magazine.^3 It works in a browser as well as on iPhone and Android.^3 Membership is subscription-based, with a free 14-day trial that needs no credit card.^4
The story behind it starts with Focus on the Family. Dr. James Dobson envisioned a high-quality drama series that would entertain and inspire families and give them a wholesome alternative to typical children's programming.^5 Creators Steve Harris and Phil Lollar set the show in the small Midwestern town of Odyssey, around Whit's End, a soda shop and discovery emporium run by John Avery Whittaker.^5 A 13-week test series, Family Portraits, aired in 1987, and the response led Focus to expand it into the weekly program that became Adventures in Odyssey.^5
Focus on the Family produces the series and states an evangelical confession: the Bible as the inspired, only infallible, authoritative Word of God, one God eternally existent as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the deity, atoning death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus.^7 Parents on the official site describe growing up with the stories themselves and, in one family, a 9-year-old daughter asking Jesus into her heart after listening.^1
