teaching missions Archives | Being Confident Of This

Much Ado about Missions: Week 2 Wrap-up

July 26, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 2 Comments

We’ve reached the end of week 2 of our Much Ado about Missions blog-hop series, and I can’t believe how quickly it has gone! If you missed the Introduction, be sure to read it, and if you missed Week 1, all about teaching missions in the home, you can find the links here.

This week we focused less on what to do within the home and more on missional experiences your family can participate in within your community and even the world. We choose to be intentional about making the most of such opportunities so that our children will develop God’s heart for the nations. In case you missed any of this week’s posts, I’ll share them here. I shared about missions experiences for the whole family in The Missions Experience. Sarah shared about making the most of holidays with Holidays and a Higher Purpose. Angie shared about involving your children in reaching your community in Get the Kids Involved.

In week 3, we’ll focus on the power of prayer! You can find Monday’s post right here at Being Confident of This, Wednesday’s post at Love Notes, and Friday’s post at My Four Monkeys.

Thanks for joining us in our endeavor to become more missions minded in our homes and families. I hope you have found inspiration to do the same in your own homes, whatever your “family” might look like. 🙂

In the meantime, consider what some of the most unreached peoples (now reached, Praise the Lord!) have to say about reaching the lost:

Does your heart hurt, too?

Jen 🙂

Much Ado about Missions: Week One Wrap-up

July 19, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 1 Comment

We have the final post in our Much Ado about Missions blog-hop live now, so I thought I would put all of the posts together here on a summary page for easy access. If you are new to the blog-hop, please be sure to start with the introduction. It contains important information that all believers should be aware of, and it explains the heart behind this blog-hop. 🙂

Much Ado about Missions Week One:

Introduction – they why behind it all

8 Resources for Teaching Missions in the Home

The Missional M&Ms

Teaching Missions with Crafts

In week two, we’ll be discussing ideas for experiencing missions and serving outside of the home, so stay tuned! Monday’s post can be found at Being Confident of this, Wednesday’s post can be found at Love Notes, and Friday’s post at My Four Monkeys.

Thank you for joining us in making missions a priority!

Jen 🙂

Much Ado about Missions: 8 Resources for Teaching Missions

July 15, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 27 Comments

As I mentioned in my last post, Global Missions has really been on my mind and heart recently, so I’ve joined forces with two amazing bloggers to do a series of posts on developing a missions mindset within the home.

This week our focus is on ways to teach or emphasize missions in our own homes.

When I began researching for materials on missions to use with our four children (ages 4 through 13) in the home, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of options available! I’ve compiled a list of favorite finds to share with you all.

8 Resources for Teaching Missions to Kids

*This post makes use of affiliate links. For more information, please visit Being Confident of This’s About page. Thank you for supporting the ministry of this site!

1. Growing Up Wild DVD series –is about a family of missionaries living in a tribe in Indonesian Guinea. This DVD series is unique because the missionary children are the ones narrating and introducing topics rather than the adults.

The Wild brothers even have their own blog! So far, we have only watched the video clips available on the website, but we plan to purchase or borrow a DVD or two from this series. This method of teaching missions works well for antsy learners. 🙂

2. Caravan Friends website – is about the peoples of Asia – a country in the most unreached sector of the world. I love this website for teaching missions, and so did my four children (ages four to thirteen)! It is colorful and aesthetically pleasing. The characters they have created help teach children about different areas of Asia, and my children really connected with them.

The videos were interesting to watch and after watching one only twice, my seven-year old was spouting off facts about the people groups there. The stories are easy to read and not too long. In fact, I had our seven-year old read several to his younger siblings and he was able.

The website also includes resources for parents and teachers who are teaching missions, such as printables, coloring pages, and other suggested activities (seriously, check out the activities tab for some amazing ideas), etc. This would be the perfect site for someone wanting to lead a class on Missions for children, for a free homeschool curriculum resource, or for Children’s Church, Sunday School, AWANA, Vacation Bible School, etc.
3. Trailblazer Books by Dave and Neta Jackson – we just discovered this series of books and so far, the kiddos love them, even our thirteen-year-old son! 🙂 This series doesn’t solely focus on missionaries, but also on other Heroes of the Faith, such as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther, etc. Each biography is told from the point of a young, fictional narrator.

Right now we are nearly finished with the Samuel Morris story, and we have requests to read more of it nearly every day. It’s one book that I have actually been tempted to read more of on my own, even! Our four-year-old twins will usually only sit for one chapter at a time, but older children could easily read several chapters. I was happy to find that amazon carries used copies of volumes that contain 5 stories each! We bought several volumes for less than $20. The volume pictured below features Harriet Tubman, but it also has 4 other biographies in it. 🙂

4. Kids on Mission website – this website is put out by the International Missions Board of the Southern Baptist denomination. Kids on Mission offers a subscription that will provide you with a quarterly release on DVD. However, according to the website, if you are willing to download the files from the internet directly, you can access them for free! Under the prayer tab, there are even prayer requests from missionary kids themselves. What a unique resource for teaching missions. 🙂

5. New Tribes Mission – is the organization that my parents worked through as missionaries to Papua New Guinea (PNG). On their website you will find individual missionary pages and newsletters, as well as general information. While this website is designed for adults rather than children, I included it because they often upload new videos from various tribes around the world. I know my children enjoy seeing what it’s really like on the mission field or hearing about missions from tribal people themselves.

*One note of caution: not all stories are appropriate for all ages. Be sure to preview the videos before showing them to your children. Also, NTM publishes a magazine full of brief missionary stories that we often read to our children. This resource, NTM@Work, is completely free. All that is required of you is to go to the website to sign up for it! 🙂

6. Torchlighter DVD series – is very similar to the Trailblazer books in that it focuses on missionaries and other heroes of the Faith, but in a dvd format rather than a book format. This series features people like Corrie Ten Boom, Augustine, and others who help spread the Good News.

Our kids’ favorites so far are the Amy Carmichael story and the Jim Elliot story. Each animated feature is about 30 minutes in length. What better way to learn about missions than to hear the biographies of those who suffered for the faith, but impacted the world because of it! 🙂

7. Windows on the World – is a curriculum that focuses on specific people groups, and their culture and beliefs. Some of the information is factual in nature, but there are also stories about the people who live there and ways for children to pray for that particular group. This is an amazing resources for teaching missions with a global perspective.

8. Missionary Stories With the Millers – This book of short stories about real life events that missionaries have experienced was recommended to me by a friend and is on our wishlist! These stories are shorter in nature and would be easier for younger children to sit and listen to.

As I shared previously, I sometimes struggle with the question of “Am I doing enough?”

But I know that this is a good start, to teach my children of the great need. (It doesn’t hurt for me to learn more about the various people groups in need, either!)

Who knows?

We could be raising the next generation of missionaries right within our own homes!

The next post in the bloghop can be found over at Love Notes . Sarah shared more about engaging our children’s hearts in missions in Missional M&Ms!

If you have a tried and true resource for teaching Missions at home, would you please share with us in the comments? Thanks!

Jen 🙂

Also sharing this post with: Hive Resources, Grace and Truth

*This post makes use of affiliate links. For more information, please visit Being Confident of This’s About page. Thank you for supporting this blog!

Much Ado about Missions Series: Global Missions

July 11, 2013 by stultsmamaof4 25 Comments

Since I spent the majority of my growing up years as an MK (missionary kid), global missions is a subject close to my heart.

But lately, I’ve been plagued by questions of “Am I doing enough?” and “What else can I do?”

So what’s the big deal about global missions anyway? We’re all called to be missionaries where we live, right? Yes, we should be sharing the gospel in our homes, with our neighbors and co-workers, and so forth as is commanded in scripture.

The big deal about global missions is that nearly one-third of the world’s total population remains unreached, meaning these people have had little to no opportunity to hear the message of salvation! These people groups often live in fear of evil spirits or gods and sometimes even participate in horrors like witch-burnings and ritual killings as a result of those fears. Some are trapped by societal boundaries of caste systems or governmental boundaries such as communism.

While we here in America are blessed to find churches on many street corners and bibles not only in our own language, but also in a plethora of translations, our overseas friends are not.

Even driving down the highway, we often see crosses or billboards proclaiming God’s truth. And with the rise of the Internet, the possibilities are further increased! Those unsaved relatives, friends, and neighbors might not know Jesus personally, but most of them at least know of Him.

Source of info: The Joshua Project

But for a tribal man, woman, or child in an unreached location, the gospel message is simply not present. By some estimates, the ratio of American churches to unreached people groups is 140:1.

One hundred forty American churches for every one group of people still waiting to hear the Good News! Are you as surprised by that number as I am?

What Parents Can Do about Global Missions

As a church planter’s wife, I know the unsaved are with us here too, but the need for these unreached people groups is even more urgent yet often more easily ignored.

They have no neighbors who believe, no Bibles to read, no billboards, no Internet, no gospel tracts, no revivals, no churches, no outreach ministries… nothing to connect them with life-giving Good News!

We have a responsibility as Christ-followers to reach out to the unsaved on all levels – within our families, our local communities, our countries, and yes, even our world! Let’s not forget our overseas brothers and sisters who are without hope.

We must be involved with global missions in some way (even if we can’t physically go ourselves), and we must teach our children the importance of reaching the unreached, whether they live nearby or halfway around the world. Not to be “good” Christians or to pat ourselves on the back but because…

People.

are.

dying.

without ever having even a single opportunity to hear of the Father’s great love for us, without a chance to experience true freedom.

Please take a moment to view this powerful message from the Joshua Project. I promise it will be worth your time! Be sure to watch it to the very end – the last few seconds are important.

You Should Know (English) Video by MUP.ORG from Mustang International on Vimeo.

So, what can we do? We may not all be able to go at this point in time, so how can we reach out beyond what is comfortable to us? How can we foster a missions mindset in our homes? I’ll be honest with you that I struggle with these questions. What exactly does the Lord require of me and our family in regards to missions?

I don’t have all of the answers, even for myself. My husband is a pastor and much of our “missions” work occurs right here in our neighborhood, but I am convinced that I must not forget that there is a world of dying, unreached people out there, as well.

I hope this bloghop series will answer at the least a few of those questions for us and for you, our readers about our role in global missions.

In addition to my own posts, I’m very blessed to have two other bloggers join me in this missions series, as we attempt to answer some of these questions.

My sister Sarah, from Love Notes, not only grew up on the mission field, she also elected to return to PNG (Papua New Guinea) for a while during her single years. Currently, she and her minister husband serve at a church in Ohio, as well as at the local city mission.

My blog-savvy cousin Angie, from My Four Monkeys, is a homeschooling mama of four. Angie writes all over the web for companies like Tommy Nelson and Alex Toys, as well as on her own blog. She also serves faithfully in her local church, alongside her husband.

We are excited to share with you some amazing materials and methods for teaching missions in your home or in your church, as well as ways to experience missions as a family, and even ways to pray specifically for the most unreached people groups of the world.

The first post, 8 Resources for Teaching Missions in the Home, is live now!

Jen 🙂

Read the series by clicking the images below: