How to Teach Children about the Cooperative Program
The Cooperative Program is the financial fuel Southern Baptists use to fulfill the Great Commission. As each church gives what they can, added together, the missions and ministries of the Southern Baptist Convention and respective state conventions are able to accomplish big things for God.
It’s easy to teach children about missions by using our missionaries and what they do — it’s concrete, has a face, and we can even practice it in our own communities. It’s easily relatable to children.
It’s much harder to teach children about the Cooperative Program. Churches, entities, and money are all rather abstract concepts that adults, let alone children, struggle at times to wrap their minds around.
But the Cooperative Program is the way Southern Baptist churches advance the gospel at home and around the world. If our children are not taught why it works, how it works, and how their church is part of it, there is a risk it could become obsolete. And missions will suffer for it.
How to Teach Kids about the Cooperative Program
We have heard your concerns and have created a lesson to help leaders teach the Cooperative Program in a fun, interactive, and relatable way. It’s called The Cooperative Program: How Southern Baptists Work Together. Through the lesson, children will learn Christians in Southern Baptist churches work together to tell people everywhere about Jesus.
The Cooperative Program: How Southern Baptists Work Together gives you several options for teaching about the Cooperative Program:
- You’ll be able to share through a Bible story how it pleases God when we support the work of the church.
- There are applications appropriate for younger children and for older children.
- We have also included ways you can help your church and missions discipleship groups learn more about and actively get involved in doing missions and telling about Jesus.
- Finally, we provide a Family Missions Focus, which will help you equip families to reinforce what children learn about the Cooperative Program — even encouraging them to get involved with missions!
Sarah Murray is the design editor of children’s resources at WMU.
