Four Ways to Teach Your Kids About Missions
The story of God’s heart for all people and all nations is woven from Genesis to Revelation. We see it revealed in the promise Abraham receives in Genesis that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The theme continues unwaveringly through Scripture until finally, in Revelation we observe “every nation and tribe and people and tongue” gathered before the throne and the Lamb. God’s heart for all people is a riveting story and one that we have an incredible opportunity and responsibility to share with our children.
Oftentimes, when sharing stories of men and women from the Bible, the focus is on the wrong things. When I was in Sunday school, I learned all the traditional songs and I knew all the Bible stories. Sunday school was my introduction to God. But, my Sunday school lessons often focused on the greatness of men and the things they did instead of the greatness of God and all He has done for humanity. God still led me to see that His Word is full of stories of the kingdom and covenantal expansion, like of Abraham and the Israelites being called to a new land. In the New Testament, I hung onto God divinely orchestrating people to go and move about and be where they needed to be to hear or share the gospel. The Holy Spirit fills in gaps and teaches us all things, leading us to understand. As it says in Isaiah, “I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
Even though my Sunday school lessons could have been better, they are what the Lord used to draw me to Himself and open my eyes to His heart for all people. When we teach the children in our care this story of God’s great love for all people and when the church equips parents to talk with their kids about God’s heart for the nations, this is good and holy work. This encourages in them a heart for the nations, which hopefully will lead to a desire to obey God’s Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. In his sermon, “Jesus and the Children,” Spurgeon spoke about the spiritual instruction of children this way: “Who knows what glory God may have of them? Heathen lands may call them blessed. Whole nations may be enlightened by them!” Train the children, for they are arrows that will go out into the nations (Psalm 127). How can we accomplish this beautiful task? Here are some ideas modeled by families I know.
Trace Missions Throughout the Word
Consider talking about God’s heart for all people in family devotions whenever the passage opens that door. When we recognize God’s relentless pursuit of outcasts who did nothing right and held no worthy merit of their own, we begin to recognize God holds this same passion for all people who do nothing right and have never heard the gospel. He wants them for His own. “Truly, I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35). We find these examples everywhere in Scripture, from the lineage of Jesus to the Court of Gentiles in the temples. Once we begin noticing God’s passion for all people, we can’t unsee it. When we point these things out to our kids, they will begin to naturally look for those themes too.
Don’t Afraid of Rabbit Trails
Make moments for meaningful rabbit trails. When we read the story of Daniel to our kids, a quick and simple rabbit trail might be, “Hey, did you know Nineveh is in what is now Mosul, in the country of Iraq? There are many people groups, speaking different languages, who live in Mosul and are waiting to hear about Jesus for the very first time. Let’s pray for them and the missionaries God will send to them.” Rabbit trails like these are powerful additions to story time, connecting our spiritual heritage to the work the Spirit is still doing in the hearts of men. It will help children see this important theme woven throughout Scripture: God loves the nations.
Pray for Missions and the Nations
“First of all, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people… this is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth” (1 Timothy 2:1-4). There are still many unreached language groups. An unreached language group, simply put, is a people group that lacks access to the gospel in their native language. Your family or church can choose each month an unreached language group to focus on and pray for.
In church context, this could be as simple as a few factual lines in a church bulletin which draws attention to the need for the gospel in a specific place, spoken prayers from the pulpit, or teens praying in youth group. In our home, we pray for an unreached group of people each month, with each child taking a turn to pray. There are often interruptions with our smallest people, but we have been floored, time and again, at the heartfelt prayers for people thousands of miles away that come out of the mouths of faith-filled kids and teens. Some basic simple prayers we pray are for the specific people to have an opportunity to hear the gospel and for God to stir the hearts of his people to send and to go where the gospel has not yet been heard.
18th century theologian William Law noted, “There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.” Prayer binds our hearts to the people and purposes we are praying for. It binds the hearts of kids and teens to those things too.
Expose Your Children to Different Nations
Constantly expose your children to missions. Consider hanging a large map to pinpoint where the people we hear about and pray for live, as well as the missionaries your church supports. If your church hangs artwork, consider hanging art that represents God’s heart for all people as described in Revelation. Perhaps it could include people who do not look like your congregation or places that do not look like where you live. These are practices we have brought into our own home, where a map with red pins hangs is displayed and different nationalities move through the artwork on our walls. This brings up all sorts of conversation with our kids about clothing, culture, geography, and spiritual beliefs.
As parents, when you read an interesting article about a far-off place or see a video of daily life that differs from your own, share it with your kids. Those things can be used as a jumping off point of looking up what language and culture are like in those places and if they have heard the good news of Jesus. Consider playing music in your home that comes from other lands and talking about the people there. My family loves the reminder it provides that heaven is destined to be multicultural and that “his name will be great among the nations” (Malachi 1:11).
Conclusion
If Scripture is woven with this theme of God’s redeeming love for all nations, people, tribes, and languages, then we can be challenged to make our teaching, prayers, and family culture reflect that message. Children deserve a better story than, “be brave like David,” or “be obedient like Esther.” They need stories infused with the truth that God carries an incredible love for lost people and they have an important role to play in this redemption story he has written.
There are many resources about missions. My company, Wonder Letters, is created for kids and families. It focuses on one unreached people group a month. Each letter comes with a map, talking and prayer points, fascinating facts, and an activity. Our related website, Missions for Kids, offers free teaching resources for churches and families.
Missionary.com also has a lot of resources. Gospel Ambition: A Prayer Guide for the Unreached spotlights the world’s most remote, unreached peoples, many of whom have never met a Christian or seen a Bible, rallying readers to pray for those who have not heard. Missionary.com also has brief biographies of different missionaries, videos about missions, and more. For more resources, reach out to the Missionary team here.
Discipling our families to embrace God’s heart for the nations doesn’t require perfection but it does require intentionality. As we pray and choose how to go about this, we can rest in God’s sovereignty that makes use of even the simplest questions, moments of prayer, and conversations with our children, planting seeds that will grow over the years. We must “tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and His might, and the wonders that He has done” (Psalm 78:4).