Missions

Below, we have included a table showing the different missions lessons that we have written. As we write more, we will update this table to link to them.

Year	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
2013	God's Sheep
	Lesson: Feeding the Sheep Teen Discussion Questions	Lesson: Where the People Are Teen Discussion Questions	Lesson: Lost Sheep of Israel Teen Discussion Questions	Lesson: Unwatched Flocks Teen Discussion Questions	Lesson: A Shepherd's Priorities Teen Discussion Questions
2011	Running the Race
	Skit: Missions Marathon I Lesson: What is a Missionary?	Skit: Missions Marathon II Lesson: Why Do We Send Missionaries?	Skit: Missions Marathon III Lesson: What Does a Missionary Do?	Skit: Missions Marathon IV Lesson: Where Does a Missionary Go?	Skit: Missions Marathon V Lesson: Who Can Be a Missionary?
2010	Following the Footsteps
	Missionaries Trust God	Missionaries and the Bible	Missionaries Share the Good News	Missionaries and Prayer	Missionaries and Service
2009	Fishing for Christ
	Goin' Fishin' Missionaries go where the people are. Missionaries need consent to come. Discussion Questions	Fishin' Gear Missionaries must be prepared and equipped for missions. Discussion Questions	The Right Bait Missionaries look for opportunities to interest people in the good news. Discussion Questions	Reel 'em In Missionaries must present the gospel to unbelievers. Discussion Questions	Now What? Missionaries disciple new believers, plant churches, and train pastors. Discussion Questions
2008	Equipped for Missions: What Missionaries Need to Do the Work
	Training for Missions (Nigeria: Samuel Ngum) Teen Version Discussion Questions	Called, Approved, and Sent (Barnabas and Saul) Teen Version Discussion Questions	Opportunity: Invitation or Contact (South Whitley, IN: Marvin Meeker)	Prayer and Financial Support (Paul) Teen Version Discussion Questions	Preparation and Planning for Missions (Uberlandia, Brazil: Project Timothy) Teen Version Discussion Questions
2007	The Importance of Missions
	Beautiful Feet People need to hear the good news of Jesus God asks us to do missions Teen Discussion Questions Map: Cameroon (showing Abong Mbang and Baktala, far to the southeast of Ki-Yon)	Credited to Your Account Missions is valuable for the sending church Teen Discussion Questions	The Power of God It is more important to teach the good news of Jesus than anything else (e.g., cultural norms). It is more important to start churches than to do physical works. Teen Discussion Questions Maps: Brazil (showing Uberlandia and Araguari), Uberlandia Neighborhoods	God Chose the Weak Sending missionaries is important for all Bible-believing churches, of all ages, in all countries. Teen Discussion Questions Map: Cameroon and Nigeria	Where the People Are We should send missionaries wherever there are people who need to hear the good news of Jesus. Teen Discussion Questions Map: Vermont (showing Burlington, Morrisville, and Rutland
2006	What is a Missionary? Be a missionary where you are.	Not Available (We used material for which we do not have redistribution rights.)	Church Planting Churches start from people who believe.	Good News (Covers the gospel.)	Beginning of Our Church History of Galion GBC Churches grow when people bring their friends.
2005	None Available. (We used guest speakers this year and have no written lessons to share. Sorry.)
2004	Dresden Missions is hard work. Missionaries need financial support.	Blümberg Missionaries hope to eventually produce indiginous local churches. Why missions is important.	Keyon church Missionaries sometimes have to learn foreign languages. Sending missionaries is important even for a new church.	Keyon practorium How pastors and missionaries get training. Why pastors and missionaries need good training.	Vermont Missionaries try to start churches. Getting more people to church is something anyone can do.

I want to be clear that we encourage each local church to rewrite or modify the missions lessons each year to use examples from the missions works supported by the local church wherever possible. While the specific missionaries and their particular endeavors are not the point of the lessons, nonetheless we feel it is best to take examples from the missions supported by the local church, for several reasons. For one thing, it makes the examples seem more concrete and real to the children, especially if some of the missionaries in the examples have visited the church. Showing photographs of the missionaries standing next to people the children know, such as the Pastor or other adults in the church, makes them seem more like real people. Furthermore, even in cases where the missionaries themselves have not visited the church, the children (at least, the ones who attend the church regularly) are still more likely to have heard the names of these missionaries and fields before if they are ones that the church supports, as they may have been mentioned from the pulpit, in Sunday School, at prayer meetings, or various other times. This increased familiarity makes the examples stick better in the mind. Finally, we like to have the offering moneys collected at Bible School go to support a missions work outside the local church. We collect offering at Bible School because we want to teach the concept of giving in a concrete way, but imploring children with offering contests and bucket scales and team competitions, especially in a context like Bible School wherein many of the children are from outside the church, might, if the money were going into the local church, raise questions of motivation. We feel that sending the money to a missions work outside the local church eliminates this concern. By using missionaries that the church supports as examples in the missions lessons, it is possible to correlate one or more of the missions lessons with the project that the offering money will go to support.

With that said, we try in our lessons to teach the concept of missions, and various related concepts that go along with it. Indeed, the details of particular missions concerns tend to change over time so that whatever specific things you might teach children at Bible School now will probably be obsolete by the time the children grow up. It is far more important to teach the children to understand and value missions work in general. Consequently, our missions lessons cover conceptual points, and as such parts of them are sure to be reusable, so that when a local church sets out to write up their own missions lessons for Bible School, it is not necessary to start from scratch. It is our hope that many of these lessons we present here, while they may not be suitable as they stand for use in each local church, may be able to be adapted by other local churches for their own needs.

Lastly, we are aware that these missions lessons are not very polished, compared with some of the other materials.