At last year’s annual state baptist convention meeting, Sandy Wisdom-Martin, the WMU executive director, came up to me and said that I was a “rock star.” I think I blushed and she just kept gushing because last year we got a dozen CABA churches using their mission discipleship materials. CABA actually paid the subscription fees for Mission Journey Kid leader guides and activity kit.
It was easy to tell Sandy that although I appreciated her kind words, that I really did think that every church should be using mission education.
When I was the director of the Mission Education Department at the North American Mission Board back in 2006-08, our team did two radical things to try and improve mission education in Southern Baptist churches.
My two assistant directors and I traveled to AWANA headquarters in the Chicago area. We requested and received the permission to mail “Backpack Missions” to SBC churches using AWANA. Backpack Missions was the brainchild of Kenny Rains.
The first year was a test. We experimented with what several leading SBC churches using AWANA would find of interest. We provided a generous honorarium to those churches for being the guinea pigs.
The next year we rolled out Backpack Missions as a 10-to-15-minute missionary emphasis that any church could use. That year, ACP reported that mission education jumped five percent in SBC churches. It halted a 15-year decline in missions ed in churches. The effort lasted about two years before it was stopped and I was moved into NAMB’s church planting group to develop materials for church planters.
The second radical thing we did was create a Scope & Sequence. The team took 52 issues that I identified that should be taught in missions. The Mission Ed team broke the issues into age-specific groupings that we could teach in Baptist Men and Royal Ambassadors, a mission education program for boys.
Up until that time, missions education merely told the stories about what missionaries did. The missionaries were not chosen because of an educational priority, but as a way to promoting missions in general. Baptist Men and RAs were educated as a secondary priority.
With the Scope & Sequence in hand, the team identified an issue such as Islam and then identified missionaries working among, say, Muslims. We taught how to evangelize Muslims while the men and boys learned about the missionaries doing it. By making that subtle shift, it became a way to teach not just promote missions.
When I left NAMB in 2012, Baptist Men and RAs was given to the WMU. And to their credit and at my request, they gave me the copyright to the Scope & Sequence. I have since shared it with the WMU to augment their own.
Missions should be, dare I say must be taught in our churches. We don’t need to know about a continued lineage of heroes that we can look up to as if we need reassurance that our gifts to Annie, Lottie, and CP are important. Southern Baptists desperately need to disciple their members in missions. Kids, teens, and adults need to know how to navigate the safe and the dangerous, the comfortable and the uncomfortable, the lost and the saved.
When speaking to an executive director in another state, I complained that Southern Baptists do not train children how to work inner city. Children needed to know how to take mass transit, help with feeding and clothing ministries, and touch the lives of children who worry about their next meal. With raised eyebrows, the man said, “It’s dangerous for kids to go downtown!” I shot back, “But we train children to go on camping trips with snakes and bears in the woods.” Then he said, “But they’re trained to do that.” Exactly. And that’s the role of intentional discipleship among children, teens, and adults for continuing community engagement, our association’s theme this year.
At this time only the WMU has the role for missionary discipleship. Mission Journey Kid is a starter kit for boys and girls to learn about missions. The WMU now has curriculum for RAs and GA, too. Missionary speakers, like me, do exist. We just need church leaders to have the vision to disciple, send out, and keep doing it to the glory of God.
--Mark Snowden serves as director for the Cincinnati Area Baptist Association
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