The Desiring God blog has posted an article about helping kids love missions. Their ideas are geared toward families being missions minded with their kids. Here are the ten ways they pointed out. Click through to their website to get more details on each.
- Pray for missionaries.
- Read missionary biographies to your children.
- Supporting missionaries financially as a family
- Find a missionary kid pen pal for your child
- Welcome missionaries into your home.
- Take risks as a family.
- Encourage the traits that missionaries need
- Teach your children to be world Christians.
- Read missionary prayer letters to your children.
- Use missions fact books and resources
Reading this list reminded me how much work I need to do on this emphasis at our church and in my family. Missions is not top of mind in our small town. This year we’re actually doing our first missions emphasis week and we are getting the kids involved as much as we can.
How do you teach children about missions?
If you have a great idea about teaching kids about missions, leave it below this post as a comment. I’d love to hear your feedback.
7 comments ↓
We just completed 13 weeks of learning about missionaries in our kids church. Each week we were introduced to new missionaries around the world. In several cases we met real missionaries in person. In our final session we had a conference speakerphone call with a missionary on the field. The end result is a group of kids excited about missions not only around the world, but in their own neighborhood.
glen@glenwoods.net’s last blog post..Kids Play Photos: Hip Hop and His Famous Face
Children (and adults) learn by doing, so do missions. Take a mission trip to a region damaged by a storm or other disaster, invite and encourage parents to bring their child along with them.
Deliver goodies and thank you treats to area businesses.
Collect and deliver toys and clothes to shelters. Take the kids along with you when you deliver them.
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Glenn,
It sounds like 13 weeks would definitely give them enough reinforcement to get the picture. I didn’t think about doing a conference call. With Skype and other voice over internet applications that could be an easy thing to set up. Thanks for the ideas.
Brenna,
We’ve done some local missions project, like delivering goodies to Fire Department. But I hadn’t thought of taking the kids on an actual missions trip. That sounds like a great way to show them what it’s really all about. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Tony,
Teaching our kids that missions is across the street just as much as it is across the ocean is vitally important. Mission trips can happen when one goes to their local grocery store, retail shop, or even to the city park for some sporting game.
Children - the same as youth - are not just are missionaries of tomorrow. They can be missionaries today. They can make a difference. The same of course is true about them being leaders.
If we stop and look at some of the ages of individuals that God shared with us about in the Bible - we should encourage - not discourage our children being involved. Church is not a physical building as you know. We, His followers, are the church. We should be “on mission” wherever we are and go. Just as no one should “retire” from being a Christian… no one is too young to learn and share about the love of God.. Jesus.
Camey’s last blog post..Basic Needs. Tana.
I teach 1st - 3rd GA’s, that is how I found this link. It is a link listing and linking to many good missionary books and at the very bottom of the page, there are several that a free to download and print.
http://www.wmu.com/userfiles/file/childrensmissions/ReadingList.doc
The mission stories that I heard, as a girl in GA’s, were what made me want to DO missions, no matter where I was. I think reading these stories to your children or grandchildren can help shape their desire to love and help others. If I had it to do over, I would have required my children to read about 6 per year as part of their leisure reading.
I do read Voice of the Martyrs “Kids of Courage” newletter to my 7 year old grandson and he can’t get enough.
My husband and I are in charge of Family Ministry at our our Church. (Church of Christ, Porterville, Ca.) I co-teach our “Tweens” with emphasis on becoming Ambassadors for Christ. We also implemented a children’s mission project that we were told was like a program that friends saw when they visited family in Texas. With the Children’s help, we choose a mission project, we have a representative come and give a presentation about their mission. As part of the Sunday Service we sing a children’s song and all the children come forward and drop their coin into a bucket. At the end of the quarter, we have the representative come back and we give him a check for the amount collected. It has been such a wonderful part of our service, parents bring children up that cannot walk all the way through teens. The older members bring their coin and give it to the kids to drop in the bucket. It is such a wonderful introduction to missions and it can bring you to tears to see the children come forward.
Camey - Thanks for your comments and encouragement. I agree, we really miss out on a lot when kids are treated only as consumers of ministry and not participants in what God is doing.
Liz - Thanks for the resource. The GA’s is a great program with a strong tradition of missions education. I know a lot of churches that have replaced it with other programs but could never figure out why. I appreciate your feedback.
Sally - It sounds like a very moving experiences. I like the way it gets the children physically involved in supporting the project. Sometimes the best lessons are the ones we learn through doing. Thanks.
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