R e V o L u T i O n A r Y T e N d E n C i E s: 27 Ways Your Church Can Be Rope Holders

Sunday, May 17, 2009

27 Ways Your Church Can Be Rope Holders

What the Local Church Can Do:
1. Have a well-written missions policy.
2. Have a functioning missions committee.
3. Have a faith promise giving program for missions.
4. Have men's and women's groups with a focus on missions.
5. Have a missionary couple/family to lead Vacation Bible School and have a "penny march" to help raise money for them.
6. Have visiting missionaries speak in the Christian school chapel and Bible class.
7. Have a missionary speaker for Christian school camp.
8. Encourage the Christian summer camp where your church kids attend to have a missionary speaker.
9. Provide lodging and opportunity for service to graduating Bible college students who plan to go to the mission field. This will give them valuable experience before going on deputation.
10. Provide lodging during the summer for MK's (missionary kids) attending Christian college and help them find summer jobs.
11. Provide housing and transportation for missionaries on furlough, especially those sent out by your church.
12. Give generously to visiting missionaries (even if you can not take them on for support, you can still help them on deputation or furlough with a good love offering).
13. Help the visiting missionary with maintaining their automobile, etc. Provide them with an oil change. Check to see if they need tires or other auto work, then get together with several church members and pay for the work.
14. Maintain a missionary "closet" of good used clothing items, etc. for visiting missionaries on deputation or furlough to take what they need.
15. Have something special for missionary children when their parents are visiting your church.
16. Organize a missions trip for interested church members.
17. If the church has a Christian school, have the Senior Trip be a missions trip.
18. Send a construction team to help a missionary with a project on the field.
19. Have a section of the Sunday bulletin dedicated to missions (a quote by a missionary, statistics, etc.)
20. Pray for your missionaries. During prayer meeting, summarize the ministry of the missionaries who wrote that week, tell their specific prayer requests, and pray for the missionaries.
21. Communicate regularly with the missionaries the church supports.
a. Have members of the church "adopt" a missionary family for a year and communicate with them (including E-mail) to encourage them and to keep them informed of "back home."
b. Send them birthday and anniversary cards, "care packages," news about the church including the church bulletin, a photo(s) of a special church event, etc.
c. Also encourage young persons to be pen pals with missionary children of their own age.
22. List the missionaries which the church helps support in a special section of the church directory.
23. Maintain a church Web site with a special section on the missionaries the church helps support including mail and E-mail addresses. If the missionary or their sending agency or church maintains a Web site, provide a link to it.
24. Have a church missions bulletin board where prayer letters, etc. are posted and where there is a world map indicating location of the missionaries the church helps support.
25. Make missionary biographies available for purchase or for lending from a church resource table/display rack.
26. Have an annual missions conference or a missions emphasis month (this can include such events as an International Dinner, having missionaries send E-mail messages of greeting to be read at the conference, and having a missionary call during the conference and it arranged so that all in the church can hear the conversation).
27. Have pastoral leadership (preaching on missions, public invitations to surrender to full-time Christian service, using stories relating to missions as sermon illustrations, mentioning special missionary prayer requests and praying for them publicly, regularly having missionaries visit to present their field of ministry, etc.).

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Revolutionary Tendencies is an on line collection of my discoveries, thoughts, convictions and my understanding of what it is to be an "m". At present it is a place where I will be storing various "m" ideas and resources. I'm sure that as time goes on it will come to include much more but for now that is what it encompasses. You are welcome to read whatever might be of interest to you. I prize your opinion, so please feel free to offer any input that you think might be of value. May His Name be known among the nations!

Proselytism vs. Evangelism

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What is a Rope Holder?

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