Children in your missions discipleship group have interests and hobbies. These might be sports related, like soccer, or music related, like piano. They might be creative and enjoy working with their hands, or they might love to game.

The possibilities are as endless as the uniqueness of kids in your group. No matter what kids enjoy, each interest or hobby is a perfect avenue through which they can share Jesus with others! 

Children’s Missions Day (CMD) 2025 will be held on September 20. The theme is Go!

The purpose of this year’s CMD is to help kids in your group explore sharing what they know about Jesus with others through their interests or hobbies.

Here’s a quick guide to help you plan and execute your group’s CMD project — help children learn how to DO missions!

Think About Interests and Hobbies

Before we can do missions, we have to know with whom we are sharing the gospel. Introduce CMD: Go! to your group and help children think about things they enjoy doing. Then, help them think about people they meet when they do those things they enjoy. Use a whiteboard or a big sheet of butcher paper to list the interests and the people. Remind children that God loves each of the people they mention. Tell them God has placed those people in their life for many reasons, and one reason is for them to know God loves them!

Plan Your Project

Encourage children in your missions discipleship group and their families to participate in planning the CMD outreach project. Use the hobbies and interests children provided to narrow down to whom your group will minister. Once your group agrees (or you make an executive decision), help children think about how they might minister to them. This might mean collecting specific items, cleaning or organizing, or painting or building something. Whatever you decide as a group, make sure kids will have ample time to say or express to the people they are ministering to: God loves me, and He loves you, too!

Lead

The Bible verse for CMD: Go! is: “Now you will tell everyone about what you have seen and heard” (Acts 22:15 NIrV).

You may have some children who have made a profession of faith and possibly even been baptized. And you may have others who are unchurched or are new to missions discipleship. So how do we help children “Go” and practice living on mission, no matter their level of understanding?

One way is to help children understand that being a witness means sharing what they have seen or heard. Remind them about Bible stories about Jesus they have heard: these are excellent ways to share what they have heard about Jesus. Or, more simply, perhaps they saw a beautiful rainbow and it brought them happiness — God is the Creator, and He has made good things for us to enjoy.

Ask for Help

Encourage people in your church congregation to play supporting roles by providing supplies, transportation, and encouragement this year during CMD. Help children create posters for CMD: Go! to place around the church, share with the congregation on a Sunday morning what they are doing and how the church can help, or encourage them to personally ask Sunday School groups to pray for or give to support their project.

Execute

Did you schedule your event in advance? Have you sent home permission slips? Do you have enough drivers? If you’ve planned everything out, then it’s time to have FUN!

Gather your group for a time of prayer before you leave for doing missions and remind children to tell people, God loves me, and He loves you, too! And then let the Holy Spirit do the work that only He can do as your group completes their project.

Remember

You are merely planting seeds for a life lived on mission. Each missions discipleship group meeting, each Children’s Missions Day — even the activities and projects you think were a complete bust — all help children see the beautiful life of grace and mercy God has called His followers to live as we share the good news of Jesus with our community. Trust Him! And have a great Children’s Missions Day!