Many Resources Available To Teach Children About Cooperative Program
By Nikki Riley
April 2007
What is the Cooperative Program? To learn the answer, today’s children expect adventure, excitement, color, and hands-on involvement.
What are the church’s options for learning about the Cooperative support system for implementing the Great Commission? Prepared, prepackaged learning materials are available from WMU, the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board.
Regular, intentional lesson plans about missionary jobs, mission places and unreached people groups with ideas for hands-on missions experience can be found in Children in Action, Girls In Action, Missions Friends, Royal Ambassadors and some TeamKid curriculums. Seasonal church-wide mission study curriculums are available at least twice per year.
Downloadable information from Web sites such as:
- The official Cooperative Program Web site at http://www.cpmissions.net/2003/default.asp
- The International Mission Board at http://resources.imb.org/index.cfm/fa/store.search.cfm
- Children in Action at http://wmucia.com/index.asp
- Kidzplace, the North American Mission Board’s Web site for children, at http://www.kidzplace.org/site/c.chJKJXOAJlH/b.327171/k.D27C/About_Us.htm
- Girls in Action at http://gapassport.com/
These Web sites offer churches information and activities useful both for teaching and for creating customized lessons.
Leaders choosing to create or customize local and global missions learning experiences should consider these guidelines:
- The content must reflect the purpose.
- Instructions should be offered orally, written and demonstrated.
- Find a way to make the activity easy enough for first graders yet challenging enough for sixth graders.
- Keep a hands-on experience plan flexible enough to make adjustments but not so flexible that no one understands what to do.
- Involve as many adults as possible. Involve a new adult each time.
Creating games or enriching games with learning material can result in a rewarding learning experience. Consider these possibilities:
- Missionsopoly — Make each property a missions location and write Risk and Community Action cards reflecting the dangers and responsibilities of SBC field representatives.
- Missions Trivial Pursuit — Write question cards based on information from Missions Mosaic or the prepared missions curriculums mentioned above for the categories of Missions Map, Careers/Jobs, Unreached Peoples, etc.
Hands-on involvement can be creative as well. For example, have children make “Thank you Bags” for personnel at your local airport. Fill the bags with candy, hand sanitizer, tissues and a gospel tract. Deliver them as a group, handing them out personally. Airport personnel are very important in the lives of Cooperative Program personnel.
Take children to the place of business of a local Christian professional and be shown first hand what the job involves. Somewhere on the field, a CP missionary is doing this job.
Between already prepared materials and the creativity of church children’s leaders, every child in a Southern Baptist church should be able to answer the question, “What is the Cooperative Program?”
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