Thoughts From the Mission Field

Thoughts from the Mission Field - Parenting Like HannahAs the children in our church continue to learn about missions and sharing their faith, I thought I would ask a missionary friend of mine for some input. I had a pretty good idea about the characteristics a person needed to develop to be a successful short term missions participant. My friend, Donna has been on the mission field for years with her family in at least two different countries. I thought she would have good insight into the qualities we need to develop in our children if we truly want them to be missionaries.

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What Pop-tops & Chapati Teach Your Child About Missions

What Pop-tops & Chapati Teach Your Child About Missions - Parenting Like HannahA child in my class yesterday mentioned the word empathy. Empathy is different from sympathy because you actually try to imagine what it feels like to be another person. It takes a lot more work on the part of the empathizer – perhaps even a little more love. Empathy is important because I think it can make people more likely to want to share the Gospel with others who are totally different from them. It puts the emphasis back on the person and away from the difference.

Yesterday, the children in our congregation had a chance to learn about life on another continent. We changed our jungle room from the island of St. Vincent to Africa. A friend of mine, who has been on several mission trips to Kenya, was the source of our Kenyan bounty as well as the teacher of the center.

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Raising Missionaries

Raising Missionaries - Parenting Like HannahThe children in our church are learning how to be missionaries this summer. Now before you stop reading, your child doesn’t have to move to the ends of the earth and never see you to be a missionary. I am not sure when it happened, but at some point in Christian history, it seems we decided we could pay someone to do our mission work for us. Now, I am all for supporting missionaries who are willing to move to other countries and teach people about God. I just wish we all thought of ourselves as missionaries, just like the Christians in the first century did.

If you want to learn how to be a good missionary, start reading the book of Acts. It is full of stories about the first missionaries in the church. It teaches you not only the important things to tell someone about the story of Jesus, but different ways to find people to teach. It even tells you about the problems missionaries can encounter and how to handle them in a godly way.

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The Next Step in Dedicating Your Child to God

The Next Step in Dedicating Your Child to God - Parenting Like Hannah
Photo byDonald Kilgore
Perhaps Hannah and other godly mothers in the Bible have been your role models for years. You have studied the Bible in your home with your child ever since you can remember. Your family is regularly involved in serving God in a variety of ways. You teach your child God’s principles and how to apply them on a daily basis. Maybe your child is already a baptized believer and is developing her own faith.

Part of dedicating your children to God is teaching them how to share God’s Words with others. If Christianity is to continue to be a living faith, then we and our children will have to really begin spreading God’s Words just like the church in the first century did. This summer, I am working with the children in our church to help them learn not only how the early church spread the Good News throughout the known world, but how they to can be missionaries now and in the future.

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Stranger Danger and Evangelism

Stranger Danger and Evangelism - Parenting Like Hannah
Photo by Elliott Brown
It seems like every week there is another news story about a child who is kidnapped or murdered. Parents are much more cautious with their children than our parents were with us. Most of us have probably trained our children from a young age to be wary of strangers and to memorize the phrase “stranger danger”.

As Christians, though, God has made it very clear he wants us to entertain strangers and help those who are possibly out of our comfort zone. The ministry of Jesus made it very clear that God does not want us to reject people who are different or maybe even a little scary. Jesus definitely set an example by reaching out to all kinds of people who would have been considered undesirable by the religious elite. He even had a tax collector and a Zealot as two of his apostles.

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