- Pray for missionaries as a family. Keep a list of missionaries near the table to talk about and pray for at meal times.
- Read missionary biographies to your children. Expose your kids to the captivating stories of Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, William Carey, Glayds Aylward and other missionary pioneers.
- Draw the whole family into supporting missionaries financially. Teach your kids from a young age that being a good steward of their money involves channeling resources toward the cause of Christ in missions.
- Find your child a missionary kid pen pal. Many children of missionaries around the world would be delighted to get mail from a child their age in their parents' culture. Your child (and the whole family) will learn valuable insights about living abroad through the eyes of a child.
- Entertain missionaries in your home. Inviting missionaries over will be as much of a blessing to your family as to the missionaries.
- Take risks as a family. Volunteer in your community, look for opportunities to serve, take your teenagers on a short term mission trip.
- Affirm and nurture qualities in your children which could serve them on the mission field. As your children grow in knowledge and skill, encourage them to think about how they could use their gifts in missions work. Then, if God says, "go", release them!
- Teach your children to be world Christians. Go out of your way to make them more aware than the average Kiwi/Aussie Christian about geography, world history, and the plights and perspectives of people across the globe.
- Read missionary prayer letters to your children. Ask them questions and look up facts on the Internet.
- Use missions fact books and resources such as Operation World, the Joshua Project, and Voice of the Martyrs etc.
This list was sent to me by my Aunty in NZ. I am thankful to my parents who implemented most if not all of the above ideas with our family and instilled a love for missions in our family (we didn't have the Internet back then). We often had missionaries stay in our homes. I read many missionary biographies, wrote to missionaries, and the chance to go and hear a visiting missionary speaker (with a slide projector show) was considered a treat. Thanks Mum and Dad.
To everyone in Australia and NZ reading this: there is such a huge world out there! 1000's died in Burma and China this month. Don't let our kids suffer from the disease of affluenza - where my biggest problem is the fact that these shoes are not the latest style and my play station 2 needs upgrading to the new PS3. And good general knowledge is knowing the names of the latest movie and sports stars.
There is more to life than this!
