How To Develop A Mission Minded Family

How To Develop A “Mission Minded” Family Recently, we had the opportunity to hear a young couple present their call to missionary service in Siberia. Our hearts were moved by their personal testimonies and their presentation about that mission field. One of the most striking things to me was to hear the wife share that her call to be a missionary was directly related to the training she received in her home as a child. It was there, through her parents’ heart for world missions, that God implanted the desire to someday be a missionary. Now, as a wife, mother, and registered nurse, she and her husband are ready to move their family to the field as soon as the Lord provides the means. Listening to this young couple reinforced for me the importance of helping families develop a heart for missions in the home. The following is a list of some practical suggestions for your use. 1. Have a heart for missions yourself. Be a good example to your family by developing and sharing your own personal interest in missions and missionaries. Very few influences will have a greater impact than your consistent, personal example. 2. Promote missions in your home. Make missions and missionaries a priority focus in your family. Read about them. Talk about them. Communicate with them. Use every means available to keep missions and missionaries before your family. 3. Develop missionary prayer cards. Keep missionaries visible to your family. Allow your children to make their own cards. Include a picture, information about the missionaries themselves, their field of service and their work. When they can see the missionaries they are praying for, and know of their specific needs, it makes prayer more personal. 4. Pray for missionaries regularly and personally. Pray for them by name, by need, by field of service, by ministry, etc. Be very specific when you pray for them. Keep a record of answered prayers. This will help your family get to know the missionaries and see how the Lord is working in their lives. 5. Write regularly to the missionaries as a family. Missionaries are no different from the rest of us - they love to receive personal mail. Allow each member of your family to contribute something to the letter. Tell about the everyday happenings in your home. If you have e-mail, use it to communicate with missionaries who also have e-mail. 6. Support missionaries financially. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6:21). Teach your family the value of faithful, regular financial support for missions. Encourage them to put money aside to give to specific missionaries. 7. Entertain missionaries in your home. Opening your home is opening your life to missionaries. On the personal level, they can have a great impact on your family. Remember that Hebrews 13:2 tells us that we may be entertaining angels without knowing it! 8. Actively participate in your church’s missions program. Does your church have a missions prayer group, support group, fellowship group, or committee? Do you have opportunities to attend missions conferences? Your active involvement will tell your family where your heart is concerning missions. 9. Read missionary biographies with your family. True-life stories of real missionaries and their experiences on the mission field are great motivators. They demonstrate God’s leading and prove His power in the most trying and difficult situations. 10. Prepare “missionary love boxes” together. Choose items that will be practical and useful for every member of the missionary family. Write and ask them for suggestions if you do not know them well. 11. Develop in your children a burden for lost souls. Take them along when you pass out tracts, preach the gospel at the local mission or engage in other outreach activities. Let them witness first-hand a lost soul getting saved. 12. Encourage your teens to go on a short-term mission trip. Everyone we know who has gone on one has said it was a life-changing experience. It may cost some money, but it will be worth it. The short-term mission experience need not be in a far-off land. 13. Adopt your own missionary family. This will make missionaries very real and personal to your whole family. And it may lead to visitations and short-term mission opportunities. 14. Make audio and/or video tape messages from your whole family. Send them to the missionaries. This makes your family real and personal to them. Get your whole family involved, even the pets! 15. Send good books and magazines to your missionaries. Write and ask all the members of the family what kind they want. They do not have to be new. 16. Take a family trip to a mission field. If you can afford this, it would be an unforgettable family experience - both for your family and the missionaries. But remember to go willing to work, not just sight-see. If we want to see the younger generation become the missionaries of tomorrow, it will have to begin in our homes. Mom and Dad, you hold the key. The extent of your commitment to be a “missions family” will have the greatest influence on your children. The harvest truly is plentiful, but the workers are few. Will you pray for God to raise up missionaries right out of your own family? By Jack Palmer