Hosting a Local Church Missions Conference Ideas
Author Unknown

Preparing for your next missions conference? Here are some good ideas we have heard about..

All Scripture to All People
There are nearly 7,000 languages in the world today, with the entire Bible translated into 438 of them. This service is designed to help us understand how that might feel and to consider how God might use our unique gifts and skills to participate in His plan bring all Scripture to all people in a language they can understand.

Host an international dinner
At a dinner sometime toward the end of the missions conference, spread out the missionaries at different tables and then ask a person (not the missionary) at each table to share something they learned about the missionary or their ministry. To facilitate discussion, there might be a small sheet of general questions on the table.

Get families involved with a Missions & Me (M&M) workbook
Great for children’s ministries. The church chooses six projects and makes up a children’s workbook with each project. The church hands out the books seven weeks before the mission fair; the children work on them and hand them back on the Sunday prior to the fair.

Missions & Me (M&M) project.
The director of children’s ministry comes up with the curriculum each year and ideas can be recycled. The church chooses six projects and makes up a children’s workbook with each project. The church hands out the books seven weeks before the mission fair for the children to work on them and hand them backing on the Sunday prior to the fair. Each project focuses on some mission-related topic:
* specific missionary
* specific country/continent or culture
* types of religions in the world
* Bible study on the theme verse
* Whatever!

Books are checked each Sunday and the child gets a pack of M&M’s for their completed activity. At the Mission Fair, the books are given back and the child receives a certificate and Mission Dollars (amount depends on number of completed activities, up to $10), which they can spend at the book table or on other trinkets that missionaries have “for sale” at their tables. (The church makes up their own paper money; and it has to be used during that year.) This gets families involved and brings out a huge family turnout at the Mission Fair. The Fair would not be nearly as successful if they did not do the M&M project.

Minister to your missionaries
On the Sunday after your missions activities, host a debrief luncheon with just your missionaries, pastoral staff and missions committee. Give an encouraging devotional. Allow for good quiet discussion, pray as they go on their way.

Concert of Prayer
Congregations are often told that they are the senders, the ones to give and to pray. Yet frequently, apart from passing the offering plate and poorly attended Wednesday evening prayer meetings, Joe Pew-Sitter has no clue how to be involved praying for missions. Every other year, Calvary Church holds an all-church concert of prayer during Global Missions Week. All other Wednesday night family ministries become part of this all-church event in the sanctuary.

Readers Theater on missions
This is a program for a church that has a large number of missionaries come together for a conference. Instead of introducing individual missionaries, they are involved throughout the entire service. The morning’s message is a Readers Theater style of presentation. Everyone’s role is important in communicating this message.

Scavenger hunt
Great for children’s ministries. Have missionaries send in the description of an item or two from their display table that children can check off from a list. Print up some “missions bucks” for the kids to collect either from the missionary, or from a cashier based on found items and then allow the kids to buy items from the store, or better yet from the missionaries who came prepared. Gifts can include interesting candies or global snacks, small cultural icons, pencils or pens, small books, etc. This gets the kids involved and they often sweep their parents into the action.

The above article, “Hosting a Local Church Missions Conference Ideas” was written by Author Unknown. The article was excerpted from www.send.org website Feb. 2018.

The material is copyrighted and should not be reprinted under any other name or author. However, this material may be freely used for personal study or research purposes.

This article may not be written by an Apostolic author, but it contains many excellent principles and concepts that can be adapted to most churches. As the old saying goes, “Eat the meat. Throw away the bones.”