Blog items tagged with "missions-ideas"

MISSIONS LIFELINE

When? Saturday, August 13

Where? Calvary Baptist Church, Greenfield, IN
                1450 W. Main Street

Time? 8:30 a.m. – 3:00

What is Missions Lifeline?

This missions event is for the entire family! It’ll be a day when you can meet our missionaries and learn how to engage your church in missions. You’ll experience a variety of breakouts that will help you discover ways to involve all ages in learning about and supporting missions efforts around the world.

Children (birth – 6th grade) will journey to the Philippines and learn all about how God is at work through our IMB missionaries serving there. They’ll enjoy crafts, snacks, games, and stories about the Philippines.

Attendees will be able to enjoy missions exhibits that featuring ideas for missions for the entire year. This is a fun-packed day so don’t miss it! For more information contact Allison Kinion at the state convention office.

To Register: Go to SCBI website. Registration is $5.00 per person and includes on-site lunch.

WMU Continues to Provide Quality Resources

Many age-level missions-related materials which can be viewed and ordered online at www.wmu.com Compassion Ministries offers a series of mini-online courses on refugees, poverty, human trafficking, and others. Online blogs and articles provide training tips, current information about missionaries, and project ideas. Training for Christian Job Corps is now offered online. WorldCrafts catalogs are available online also. Many resources can be downloaded and printed: Compassion Ministries Prayer Calendar, Starter Packs information and others. New “Missions in a Box” continue  to be produced. They are now available for Japan, China, and Nigeria. Especially written for families, these are excellent materials for families that home school or want to promote missions in their homes.

Creating Missions Awareness in Your Church

Creating Awareness for Missions Education:

  1. Displays – emphasize one part of missions education with a display. Go to www.wmu.or for current themes and information about WMU ministries. Gather display items to create a display that is not “flat” and distribute resource materials.
  2. Be present – attend missions events in your area and tell others about it...
  3. Promote state missions – Hand out information about upcoming missions events such as your state’s mission offering, annual meetings, and evangelistic events.

Creating Enthusiasm about Missions:

1. Share information about church planting efforts in your area, suggesting ways others can become involved in supporting the new ministries. Adopt a church planter!

2. Plan church wide missions activities and involve the entire family. Collect canned food r makeup food baskets for the holiday season.

3.  Help promote the special missions offerings: Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. Show videos from NAMB and IMB during worship services. Go to: www.imb.org or www.namb.net

Creating Mission Opportunities:

  1. Focus on special projects such as Christmas in August (go online to www.wmu.com for information) to motivate churches to participate on at least a quarterly basis in some type of mission activity.
  2. Search online for short-term mission trip projects and present them to the church missions team for consideration.
  3. Contact community agencies to find out about their current needs and plan several activities in your local area during the upcoming holidays.

Christmas in August

Pack a Box of Items for North American Missions

Are you looking for a missions project for the people in your church or small group? Christmas in August provides a simple way you can directly help a North American missionary.

Every year Woman’s Missionary Union partners with the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board to select missionaries who are featured in the national annual Christmas in August emphasis.  These missionaries provide a list of items they need for ministry and outreach.

Here’s how you and your church can participate:

  1. Pray - pray that this project will help our missionaries tell others about Jesus.
  2. Choose and Promote - select a missionary and tell others about the project giving them a list of items they can purchase. Use church newsletters, online information, social media and a display to inform your church/small groups.
  3. Gather - provide an in-gathering location as people bring their Christmas in August items. Crate a Christmas display to catch their attention (wrap a large open box in Christmas paper) and to hold items..
  4. Pack and Mail - organize donated items and mail following instructions found online at wmu.com/chirstmasinaugust

INDIANA HAS A NAMB MISSIONARY ON THE CHRISTMAS IN AUGUST LIST!

It would be great if Indiana Southern Baptist churches supported Chris Cook in Bloomington with Christmas in August donations!

Christ serves as lead pastor and church planter at Embassy Church. The church has ministries on the University of Indiana campus and in the large homeless community in the area. Let’s join together to encourage these ministries through our donations to Christmas in August.

Here are the items Chris requested:

  • $10 McDonald’s gift cards
  • $10 Kroger gift cards
  • Travel-size wet wipes, deodorants, dry shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste
  • Nail clippers
  • Large bandages
  • Wool socks
  • Wool gloves
  • Breath mints

Mail to:

Chris Cook
2419 E. Oakmont Drive
Bloomington, IN 47401

INVOLVING COMMUNITY GROUPS IN MISSIONS

Monday Missions Projects – Schedule a regular weekday morning for mission projects such as preparing healthcare kits for a crisis shelter, packing backpacks for needy school children, or stocking the shelves of the church food pantry.

Prayer Walking Upgrade – Ask adults in community groups to adopt an area near your church to do prayer walking: the neighborhood school, community facilities like the police department or city hall.

Benevolence Ministries – Some churches use benevolence funds as an opportunity to talk with recipients, counsel them, and share Christ. Decide as a group to volunteer a specific day once a month.

Adopt a Church Planter and Family – Community group members can introduce church planters to influential community leaders, politicians, business owners, and local craftsmen who may be of help to the planter as he and his family make community connections. Get current information on planters from SEIBA’s office.

Befriend a Church Planter’s Wife – Take her to lunch, remember her birthday, pray for her, and encourage her as she helps her husband establish a new church.

Friendship Food – Cook extra lasagna or ham and deliver it to a senior who is unable to get out due to illness or care giving responsibilities.

Be Creative in Outreach - *Bake cookies for a high school sports team who has a weekly meal in your church’s gym.  *Invite young mothers in the neighborhood to tea and share the gospel with them.  *Knit or crochet prayer shawls for patients or those grieving (patterns on Pinterest)  *Make receiving blankets for a crisis pregnancy center.  *Write to recovering wounded soldiers (address on Pinterest).  *Pray for missionaries on their birthdays (monthly list in Missions Mosaic Magazine. Order at www.wmu.com/curriculum).

The Best Thing Since Peanut Butter!

Missions Mosaic, the monthly missions magazine for adults, contains valuable information about current mission efforts, ideas for promoting missions offerings, testimonies from groups about their projects, a calendar of missionary birthdays for daily prayer, Bible studies, and spiritual growth in missions features.

The magazine is available in print or digital form and can be subscribed to by going to wmu.com/missionsmosaic.  Order your copy today and begin an exciting missions journey!

Missions While Social Distancing

Everything has drastically changed during the last several months, hasn’t it? Being involved in missions-related activities has not remained untouched. Following are a few ideas that might help you plan what you can do during this time.

#1 – Consider that contributions to existing ministries may be down. You and your group may decide to focus on purchasing needed supplies rather than volunteering as you’ve done in the past. Don’t abandon the ministry! Make a list of needed supplies, gather the items and ask a non high-risk member to make a doorstep delivery.

#2 –Quilting and sewing projects can be done individually. Knitting and crocheting for pregnancy centers are always welcome. Go online to Pinterest for sewing patterns.

#3 – Focus on what one person can do alone. Make a concerted effort to pray for missionaries (use Prayer Patterns in each issue of Missions Mosaic for specific requests and lists of missionaries on their birthdays). Writing notes of encouragement is a solitary activity. Cook dishes for someone living alone or families in crisis and make porch deliveries.

#4 – Begin a one-on-one online mentoring emphasis. Two women meet at agreed days and times; watch the enthusiasm for missions and spiritual growth increase!

#5 – Take advantage of national WMU’s online mini courses on WorldCrafts and Human Trafficking. As a group decide how you can help your church become aware of poverty and human exploitation issues. 

#6 – Encourage group members to listen to the podcasts by Sandy Wisdom-Martin (national WMU Executive Director) and special guests as they discuss a variety of topics of interest during this time of social distancing. Go to wmu.com and type “podcasts.”

#7 – Local projects: *homemade cookies for first responders   *birdhouses or posters for senior care facilities   *sidewalk chalk messages to delivery persons   *gift frozen cookie dough to neighbors to bake when wanted.

TIMELY MISSION PROJECTS

You only have to look around a corner here in our association to find needs that you can meet as an individual, family, or church. The pandemic has intensified many needs related to daily life issues, and at this time of year as the holidays near, we can extend God’s loving hands to others in tangible ways.

Consider these projects that your community group or family can do:

1. Contact Re: Center Ministries in Louisville about projects to assist the work done at the ministry center on Jefferson Street. Email Corey Bledsoe at: cory@recenterministries.org for information.

2. Hunger ministries in local communities face greater needs during colder months. Contact local agencies or SEIBA’s hunger ministry project leader through the associational office.

3. Provide food items for backpacks for children during school holiday breaks.

4. Prepare Thanksgiving food baskets for families needing extra help. Include special items for families with children.

5. Contact a juvenile facility or country jail about donating socks and other items if needed.

6. Create a neighboring movement in your church. Ask members to discover neighbors’ needs and meet them during the holiday season. Keep pandemic restrictions in mind and use limited contact and porch deliveries as you minister.

Fall Ministry Ideas

Now that some of the pandemic restrictions have been lifted, it’s time to make plans for reaching into our communities. The way we engage others and share Christ with them have changed, and we need to consider new ways of reaching out to others with the gospel.

Each of the following ideas can be adapted to fit your specific situation. The primary thing is to find ways to minister to others this fall!

1. Find an outlet for reasonably priced pumpkins (or find someone to  donate some) and put together patterns for pumpkin carving. Insert the patterns and instructions in baggies along with information about your church. Deliver them to porches in neighborhoods near your church. Make your flyers attractive, using colorful graphics. If your church has a fall festival, this is a great way to invite neighbors!

2. Using Mason jars, fill them with dry ingredients for soup. Attach the recipe along with a Bible verse and invitation to attend church activities. Distribute the soup jars to families whose children have attended children’s activities in the past. If your church has a ministry to older persons who are homebound, make some for them too.

3. The changing season presents several opportunities to work outdoors doing yard cleanup, raking, cleaning gutters, or painting. Make a list of jobs to be done and enlist families and students to participate. Perhaps your women’s group could make fall wreaths and provide door hangers and deliver them to the households where work is being done.

4. It’s not too early to begin thinking about providing food baskets for families at Thanksgiving. Contact community agencies for names of families needing help during this time of year. Be creative and think about the children in the family by providing coloring books and markers/crayons or a cookie mixture with decorating frosting and sprinkles. Be sure to include information about your church and special ministries you have for children. Include a family devotion guide that presents the plan of salvation.