It all started with an idea shared in March and now, 6 months later, Janet Brown and Ruth MacBean have produced mission & me? ready to be used in churches to excite, inspire and challenge children & young people and their families, to be involved in God's Mission. Although primarily designed as a six week course for 7-13 year olds, it can easily be adapted for use by other groups within church or school settings.
We believe that God's intention is that His church should be engaged in His mission, going into all the world to preach the Gospel, and even the youngest disciples in the church can be a part of that.
The mission & me? pack includes all the resources needed to bring it to life! There are craft ideas, PowerPoint presentations, songs and a large world map. There are also weekly take home activity sheets, to remind the children and give opportunity for the whole family know what's been taught. Weekly challenges “should you wish to accept them” for individuals, families... and teachers keep the lesson alive through the week.
After writing the lessons and preparing the craft ideas, the next step was to trial mission & me? which we did at Mickfield Evangelical Church in June and July. The group of young people (in this case age 8 -13) were very enthusiastic and joined in readily with everything. We started by answering the question, “what is mission?”, looking at a number of Bible verses and then learning about Carrie, who has worked for 30 years in Bible translation on a remote island. Each week we looked at different aspects of mission, including mission in the UK - both from a biblical perspective and using a modern day example. As we looked at doing mission in dangerous places, we were able to make use of a church member who, as a young child, was involved in bible smuggling in his home country of Romania; when we considered how mission involves the whole church working together as a team, we found out about the two families Mickfield supports in Peru and India.
After a few changes following our trial, and numerous spelling and grammatical changes, we are excited to see how mission & me? will impact churches around the UK.
As teachers, the final challenge for Ruth and Janet was to arrange a fundraising event, involving the children. So, “Bake Off” it was!
Some excellent baking followed by entrepreneurial selling in the village raised £82.50 to buy footballs and skipping ropes for Children for Christ Ministry (CFCM) Bible clubs in Malawi.
To get your copy of mission & me? Go to https://missionandme.wordpress.com. Together let's get our young people, their families and their churches excited and engaged in God's mission!
Janet Brown and Ruth MacBean are members of the Mickfield/Great Blakenham church partnership. Janet served with SIM for many years in several African countries and is currently on the Zambesi Mission Executive committee. Ruth spent 3 years in Malawi with ZM, and continues to work in the UK as an honorary representative. They are both experienced children’s workers.
