I Led Thirtysomethings through Missions Discipleship and Learned 3 Things
I am at a very large Southern Baptist church. Sending missionaries is normal for us. The church website currently lists six short-term missions trips, not to mention dozens of opportunities listed for local missions. My small group made up of 6 couples and 9 children under the age of 8 even participates in outreach events throughout the year.
My point is this — according to everything I have “heard,” my thirtysomethings coed small group at church should be one of the last places I expect to see successful missions discipleship. We aren’t a group of the senior women. This isn’t the children’s ministry. Young families are “too busy” for missions.
I’m glad I didn’t listen to these reasons and pushed forward.
What We Did
On Wednesday, November 13, we gathered for our normal meeting at 5:30 p.m. Per usual, we gathered together for a meal in one of the church common areas. At 6:25 p.m. the couples dropped their children off at their respective nursery or children’s ministry. And at 6:30 p.m. the adults walked into our room, where I had a table of Central Asian snacks prepared, various textiles laid out (borrowed from my co-worker who served in this region of the world), and authentic music playing. We enjoyed a few bites and drank tea for 10–15 minutes, spent about 35 minutes going through Missions Traveler: Central Asia, and ended the hour in prayer with my church’s missions pastor.
What I Learned from this Experience
1. After I explained missions discipleship from the Bible, they understood the goal and began to engage with the material.
Though I tried to prepare them as much as possible before we met, the idea of studying Central Asia is not intuitive unless you have seen and experienced missions discipleship before.
When everyone walked in, they heard, smelled, and saw things they were not expecting to be in the room. They slowly made plates of baklava, pistachios, dates, and Turkish delight. They asked a lot of questions. One couple did not partake of any food. It was “too much” for their palates.
While everyone remained polite, it wasn’t until I explained what we were doing from the Bible that they loosened up and really began to engage with the food, textiles, and information on the slides.
Here is how I explained the basis for missions discipleship from the Bible. The slide asked, “Why are we studying Central Asia?” The answer read:
- Because of Paul’s model in Acts 17:22–23
- Because of Paul’s logic in Romans 10:15
- Because we want to raise up more Pauls
- And because we want to love our missionaries and do our part of “sending” like we read in 2 Corinthians 1:8–11 and Philippians 4:14–20
I encourage you to stop right now and read each of these passages because I believe they all have something to teach us about prioritizing learning about missions. However, 2 Corinthians 1:8–11 (NIV) is significant. Notice the link between learning about missions and praying for missions:
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”
This passage created a “lightbulb” moment that evening, and the difference in engagement was tangible. This group had never done missions discipleship before, but now everyone understood that learning about the things our missionaries go through helps us support them in prayer.
2. I invited our pastor to contribute, and it made a big difference.
I mentioned earlier that I announced a few times before we met that we were going to be studying missions. I even arranged for my church’s missions pastor to be in attendance and give us some real-time prayer requests from some of our missionaries. Even I did not imagine how God would “connect the dots” and make this an incredible hour for my small group.
I sent the pastor the slides I was using, so he knew we were studying Central Asia. Not only did he contribute meaningfully to the maps, trivia, and images we discussed from Missions Traveler: Central Asia, but he also took the time to connect what we were learning about a specific people group in Central Asia to prayer requests from our missionaries trying to reach these specific people. We practiced exactly what we read in 2 Corinthians 1:8–11. This information was no longer simply information, but it was a weapon we could wield in prayer against the challenges our brothers and sisters were facing around the world.
3. My small group is excited to do this again.
As well as this experience went for one hour, it was still only one hour. Adults can be polite for one hour. Do they want to do it again? Will they ask for more? Maybe the biggest surprise of the evening was how quickly they caught the vision and responded positively to the opportunity to do something like this again.
What if the Easiest Place to Start Missions Discipleship Is with Adults?
I think many of us are intimidated to start missions discipleship in the adult contexts of our churches (i.e., Sunday School classes, Wednesday evening programming, or a special event on Sunday evenings a few times per year). After all, these aren’t the “traditional” areas like women’s and children’s ministries where we have seen and experienced missions discipleship. But what if these are the easiest places to start? Are you overlooking your Sunday School class? Give your Sunday School leader a break one week and teach the International Mission Study. I am confident you will be just as pleased as my small group was.
Zach Pratt is the marketing strategist for WMU.
