Mission Minded Families…Raising Mission Minded Children

Contrary to what some in missions have mistakenly thought, we do not have to neglect our family responsibilities in order to accomplish God’s will in our ministry to others.  Sacrificing our children on the alter of missions is very close to a modern form of Molech worship, which God continues to abhor.  The family is not an obstacle to ministry; it is a vehicle for ministry.  But like all road-worthy vehicles, the family must be maintained in order to go the distance and finish its course over a lifetime.  And it has been made for the road, not for the garage.  It actually becomes stronger and more effective as all of its members devote themselves together as a team for service to others outside the family.

One way of harmonizing the obligations of the family with those of mission is to think of each Christian as an ambassador for Christ and his or her home as an embassy of the kingdom of God.  An embassy has gates and schedules.  It serves its host nation from a position of strength.  It has God-given authority over all of its own interests.  But it is intended to be open and accessible by means of routine hospitality.  It exists to serve as a display of the goodness and wisdom of God’s ways.   ~Greg Harris

So begins the foreward to The Mission Minded Family: Releasing Your Family to God’s Destiny, a visionary book by Ann Dunagan.

Have you ever wondered how to reconcile raising children and being missions-minded?  I know we have.  I grew up in a very missions-minded church.  But most, if not all, of the missionaries we supported sent their children to mission schools to be raised by dorm “mothers and fathers” while their parents went to do the “really important work” of raising spiritual children for the Lord.  Even as a child, I felt bad for those kids.  And I was glad God never called my parents to leave me!

As new parents, my husband and I were members of a church where some of the leaders felt it was wise to limit the size of your family in order to be “more effective” in ministry.  Nobody would have ever put it this way, but the message that was communicated was that children get in the way of the “real work”.   It seemed to make sense from a pragmatic, Wemmick perspective.

Even as we have continued to get older…and our children have been growing up…we’ve struggled with how to approach missions with our children.  We love missions.  We are members of a very missions-minded church body.  But in trying to be careful not to swing that pendulum too far one way…we’ve erred by swinging too far the other way.

God is not calling us to win the world and, in the process, lose our families.  But I have known those who so enshrined family life and were so protective of “quality time” that the children never saw in their parents the kind of consuming love that made their parents’ faith attractive to them.  Some have lost their children, not because they weren’t at their soccer games or didn’t take family vacations, but because they never transmitted a loyalty to Jesus that went deep enough to interrupt personal preferences.

Excerpt from The Missions Addiction by David Shibley

Enter The Mission Minded Family and The Mission Minded Child, two exciting, inspiring and practically equipping books to help parents raise their children to have a focused vision of God’s plan for the world as well as their critical purpose within that plan.  And all while actually building the family unit rather than compromising it.

In The Mission Minded Family, Dunagan starts off by giving her readers a clear picture of what a mission-minded family looks like.  She sensitively broaches the issue of balance between family and ministry with wisdom born from experience.  The reader is then treated to a panoramic view of missionary history as Dunagan highlights several missionary heroes and their families.  These are great little vignettes to share with children as we seek to instill a vision for missions in their hearts.

The next section is jam packed with practical information/ideas/projects/stories to help your family keep missions in the forefront of your lives.  You’ll find everything from making a missions-minded family calendar to various ways to pray for other countries, people groups, and mission organizations, to methods of financially supporting, as a FAMILY, missions projects.  There are “object-lessons” sprinkled throughout this section designed to teach various concepts to children in easy to understand and unforgettable ways.

Finally, the book casts a vision for how your family can actually initiate and participate in missions right now, wherever God has placed you, along with a number of ways your family could potentially TRAVEL to another location to experience ministry together.  Want to learn more?  She’s got a list of great resources at the end for further study.

The companion book (which is actually the first book in the two-part series), The Mission Minded Child: Raising the Next Generation to Fulfill God’s Purpose, is designed to give you the tools you need to begin making missions an every-day-way of thinking for your family.

Missions is not an isolated “subject” to study, but an attitude and an exciting (although challenging) way of looking at our entire world!

pg. 13

You’ll find loads of biographies, poems, skits, book lists, and ideas that will enable you to incorporate the glorious and motivating vision of fulfilling God’s purpose for life into everyday circumstances and conversation.

I highly recommend these books if you are striving to cast a vision for your children that is greater than just growing up and staying out of trouble.  If you want your children to grow up excited about God’s plan for the world…and the part they’ve been uniquely created to play in that plan…then you will find these resources to be extremely helpful.

I’m pleased to be able to offer a set of these books to a subscriber of the Visionary Womanhood blog!  These two volumes are part of November’s giveaway resource package.  All you need to do to automatically be entered every single month is go to the sidebar of this blog and subscribe to VW via e-mail!  You’ll get the VW posts conveniently delivered to your e-mail box, saving you the time and trouble of blog hopping.

Instead of merely asking God to bless your kids, meet your needs, and fulfill your personal goals, seek God for how your family can bless others, meet others’ needs, and help fulfill God’s goals.  Rather than praying, “Lord, please bless our plans,” find and follow God’s plans–because God’s plans are already blessed!

Ann Dunagan, The Mission Minded Family