Have you been wondering how to incorporate mission education into your children’s program at church?
The North American Mission Board (NAMB) has a new resource that just might be the answer.
A new supplemental resource, known as Drop-In Mission Education (DIME), is free and available to be downloaded from www.namb.net/backpack.
"It is very, very well thought out," said Denise Coats, minister of children at Woodmont Baptist Church, Florence, in Colbert-Lauderdale Baptist Association.
Woodmont Baptist was one of nine churches in Alabama and 140 churches nationwide that participated in and completed the fall 2006 pilot program for this resource.
Mike Ebert, NAMB’s director of communications, said 84 percent of the churches in the pilot program said the leader materials met or exceeded their expectations.
About two-thirds of the 140 churches said they were likely to use the resource, he said.
Still NAMB’s "first priority is that Southern Baptists would use a mission education program for their church," Ebert said. "We feel they will gain more understanding of missions … and a drop-in option is not going to achieve what RAs (Royal Ambassadors) and GAs (Girls in Action) will."
Currently 5,000 churches across the nation purchase RA curriculum from NAMB, Ebert said, but reports indicate another 1,000 to 3,000 are doing RAs even though they are not purchasing new curriculum.
Mark Snowden, director of mission education at NAMB, said that while RAs will remain a top priority, "churches that are not using traditional mission education programs are asking us for help in teaching a missions lifestyle to their children."
"Drop-In Mission Education materials can be used in any ongoing children’s ministry a church has to offer," he said. "It’s a way a church can be sure the important calling of missions is conveyed to children from the earliest age. We hope the fact that it’s downloadable and free will give it a very broad use."
This resource can be used with a variety of ministries, such as children’s choir, Upward programs, Awana and TeamKID.
"There are 4,675 churches with Awana — that’s 400,000 boys and girls," Snowden said. "We have an opportunity to provide missions education lessons for those who aren’t going to hear it otherwise."
DIME offers a 20- to 25-minute lesson plan, a story, follow-up questions and ideas for props.
"It will be an asset for us," Coats said. "It is important to keep that missions focus in front of the children. They need to see how important the need for missions is."
She joined the pilot program after hearing about it from the Awana missionary that works with her church, Frank Hobart.
Hobart met with Coats and Woodmont Pastor Jerry Rea to discuss the then-1-year-old Awana program at Woodmont.
The main concern was that the program did not offer Southern Baptist missions education, Coats said.
Hobart mentioned the NAMB pilot program as an option for Woodmont, and by mid-October, Coats was trying it out.
After the pilot churches completed their evaluations, NAMB leaders held a meeting about DIME Jan. 19–20. Mission education representatives from 27 state conventions, as well as representatives from national Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU), were part of the group.
The final verdict was to unroll the DIME resource right away. While the Web page is still being designed, DIME items can be found on the existing Backpack Missions page on NAMB’s Web site.
Carol Causey, missions resource center director for WMU, said a "drop-in" resource can work.
While WMU’s focus for the children’s age group is GAs, WMU also offers Missions Moments, five-minute children’s sermons, and "Missions MatchFile," a quarterly book offering instructions for weekly children’s missions meetings. These can be found at www.wmustore.com.
"These are helpful tools for those who currently offer no missions education," said Causey. "They introduce them to the importance of missions and missions education programs."
Bob Fielding, director of men’s/boys’ missions education for the Arkansas Baptist State Convention, said he knows this concept works because Arkansas Baptists have been doing it for 10 years.
"We are helping churches who are never going to do traditional stuff," Fielding said, noting the resource has been online for about four years. (Sondra Washington contributed)
To acquire copies of Drop-In Mission Education, visit www.namb.net/backpack
To order Missions Matchfile, visit www.wmu.com/start
To order Missions Moments, visit www.wmustore.com
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