How do you teach your children in your ministry about missions? It seems that with the current “drop-out” rate of youth in the church, it is now more important than ever to cultivate a love for the gospel with our children. I try to discuss a significant missionary every now and then when discussion allows, but must confess that right now I am not intentionally teaching about missions work.
I know that there are quality missions curriculums available. Truth be told, I have found that simply reading a biography of a missionary is best for me as I will have more information to disperse at various times than if I were to “go by the book.” What do you think? How have you, if you have at all, been intentionally teaching about missions? What works best for you? Who do you highlight?
More Children's Ministry Ideas
10 Ways To Teach Children About Missions
The Desiring God blog has posted an article about helping kids love missions. Their ideas are geared toward families being missions minded with their...
How Do You Teach Kids To Be Saved?
This post launches a new feature called Children’s Ministry Think Tank. I have asked several friends in children’s ministry to join the project....
How Do You Teach Children To Pray?
Welcome to session #6 of the Children’s Ministry Think Tank. This time I’ve asked our contributors to share their experience of teaching kids to...
What Should I Teach On Easter?
If your church is like mine, then Easter Sunday will be a high attendance day in your Sunday school and Children’s ministry. We don’t...
13 Bible Stories You Must Teach Every Child
The average children’s Bible has about 100 stories. The real Bible has many more. Every story matters. But what are the basic stories kids...
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Terry,
How have you, if you have at all, been intentionally teaching about missions? What works best for you? Who do you highlight?
We intentionally teach our kids about missions by still doing RAs, GAs, and Mission Friends (for preschoolers) on Wednesday nights. We also do AWANA on Sunday nights. Wednesday nights work for us because I have an RA, Ga, and MF director who are very committed and do a great job at enlisting their workers and helpers.
In addition to teaching the kids about missions, we do a lot of same sex bonding. Our RAs have father/son campouts twice a year that are very well attended. Plus, they go see a NASCAR race as well. The GAs have Mother/Daughter tea banquets and both attempt to teach their respective genders how young Christian men and women should behave.
It’s also beneficial to get as many real life missionaries in to speak to them as possible.
Charlie,
I am not familiar with RAs, GAs, or Mission Friends. What type of programs are they?
Thanks!
I’ve been thinking about this a lot this summer. For those of us who are not going to do the traditional Baptist classes, especially urban church plants, we need to rethink building missions (especially international missions) into the lifeblood of our families.
I’m thinking about developing a program that runs like a Library Hour done at the local public libraries but instead have the focus be missions: a 10 minute missions video clip, read a book aloud to the kids, sometimes have missionaries tell stories, use beach-ball type globes to play games and pray for the world. Intended audience would be preschool-aged kids and their stay-at-home parents.
Anyone seen this done? Any other ideas?
Terry,
I’ve also found good biographies to be most inspiring and instructive, and suspect many if not most kids would, too (my daughter has). Interestingly, missions has been our children’s ministry focus over the summer months; we’ve had teaching from our children’s pastor as well as a few missionary/conversion testimonies.
Kristin, those programs have been around in Baptist churches for a long time, though they may be seen more rarely these days. Royal Ambassadors and Girls in Action are missions education organizations.
Hello eveyone. I have a GREAT program that gets kids really excited about missions. It’s free and can involve the whole congregation or just children’s church. It does not require any budget funds and has had a profound effect on not only the children in a congregation, but the adults as well. The name of the program is Change 4 Children. Check it out on our web site. http://www.childreneverywhere.org or write me at holly@childreneverywhere.org.
Directing our children hearts towards God is what we are all trying to do, let’s share ideas.
For the children,
holly
We do a missions project in our childrens church once a quarter. Usually, we alternate between “small” projects, those that can be done on one Sunday, and “big” projects, which take longer. A typical small project would be making cards to send to missionaries we have already learned about.
One of my favorite projects was when a Christian group in Sudan was taking up blankest to give to the war refugees, each of our kids used fabric markers and a flannel square to make a patch for a quilt that we sent. Another time we went through samartianspurse.org to adopt an orphan in East Europe for Christmas. We had the name and photo of our eight year old, along with a list of items we could send – toothbrush, crayons, socks – each kid signed up for one, and everyone contributed a couple of dollars to go toward buying a coat.
These are all small things that the kids can do, but they serve as both an encouragement to the missionaries, as well as making kids aware of missions by getting them actively involved.
correcton: the website was littlesamaritan.org, not samaritanspurse.org, although that one is pretty good too
Do you know of any missionary biographies/testimonies that you have used to read to your kids? Ones that the kids really loved?
I’m also particularly interested in missionary resources- if anyone knows any aimed at young children (picture books or rhyming books.) YWAM puts out some chapter books aimed at (I think) upper elementary/middle school kids. They also put out at least a few aimed at the younger children, but I haven’t used them with my kids. Besides that, I don’t know any really good missionary stuff for kids.
The Trailblazer series by Dave and Neta Jackson is pretty good for kids age 8-12. They’re fictional stories about kids that interact with real missionaries. For example, Amy Carmichael’s story was told from the point of view of the son of a British official in India.
A good website is worldteam.org. Click on resources and you can print off their Great Commission Kids newsletter. It’s printed quarterly, and has both missionary stories and activities.
Here are a few missionary biographies I’ve either read and liked or know of and think would be good: “Through Gates of Splendor” by Elisabeth Elliot; “Jim Elliot: He is No Fool” by Irene Howat; two books by John Piper, “The Hidden Smile of God” (with its section on the life of David Brainerd) and “Filling up the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton”; “On His Majesty’s Service: Helen Roseveare” by Irene Howat; “Gladys Alward, the Little Woman” by Gladys Alward and “The Small Woman” by Alan Burgess. Some of these books can be paraphrased for younger children. There is also a good animated video series called Torchlighters featuring the stories of Jim Elliot, Gladys Alward, and others that we have enjoyed (http://tinyurl.com/mdfd66) A comprehensive list of missionary histories/biographies would be just the thing, I think!