How to Rear a Missionary in Your Home

Since the advent of YouTube and Google, I feel like some of the most asked questions in internet search engines probably begin with two words – “How to…” I know that is the case for my internet searches. Sometimes it is something simple like how to check the tire pressure on a bike or maybe how to make banana bread. Sometimes it’s something that I need for a spreadsheet formula or some other computer need well beyond my personal expertise. I don’t remember a time that I had internet access that when I searched for a “how to” that the results didn’t come back with some kind of answer. Now we have the AI responses to add to the actual websites or videos to help us or maybe to confuse us even further. Today, I want to share some personal experiences along with some helpful hints for those of you who have influence over a child or young person in your life. I know this may, on the surface, seem a little out of my depth.

If you have followed my blog posts for any length of time, you will know that I am a 40-year-old single lady missionary. That’s probably not the “search engine” that you would go to first to ask a “how to” question when it comes to rearing your children; and, normally, I would agree with you. But I want to share with you some practical advice on how to rear a missionary in your home. See, I may not have any biological children, but I spend a lot of time with children and teenagers. I was once a child who was the recipient of positive influence from people who laid the groundwork for me to become a missionary. Don’t get me wrong here. You cannot call your child or anyone else’s child into missionary service. Only God does that following the model of calling Saul and Barnabas in Acts 13. But from my personal experience, I can wholeheartedly affirm that it was much easier for me to answer that call when the Lord issued it because my parents and other influential people in my life made the decision easy for me. So, imagine the search bar is blinking here, and you type the following – “How to Rear a Missionary from My Home.” Here are your search results.

1. Intentionally expose your children to missions and missionaries.
How is this supposed to happen? Notice I said it must be intentional. I can imagine that your church has missionaries who come to visit either to present their work for the first time or to update the church on the ministry God has given them. Make it a point to have your kids in those services and interact with those missionaries. Even better, volunteer to host them in your home or take them for a meal and include your kids in those conversations. I think this is what started my love for missions when I was a little girl. My parents always opened our home to the missionaries who came to our church. It was sad to me when we finished the Missions’ Apartment at the church because that meant these people from exciting places with cool stories about what God was doing in their lives didn’t stay overnight in our home that often. But my mom always had them in our home for a meal. No time of the year was more exciting to me than missions conference or missions’ emphasis times at church. As I grew older, Mom would allow my sisters and me to sit at or near the adult table and even ask questions in the conversation. She and my dad were intentionally putting missions before my sisters and me, and it made a difference in my life.

2. Incorporate missionaries into everyday events for your children.
One practice we had in our home when I was growing up was that we had a small gift bag on the table that had all the prayer cards from missionaries who had come through our church and home. It was a special bag to choose from the front of the stack two or three cards to bring out and remember as a family who these people were, where they were serving, and usually something about their last visit with us. Then we would pray for these people as we thanked God for our food. Then their cards were placed at the back of the bag for the rotation to continue. Think about it – that was anywhere from 6-9 missionaries that we prayed for each day. Often our conversations after that prayer time centered on something about those missionary families or individuals. It is one of my fondest childhood memories to remember those mealtimes talking about our missionary friends. In today’s age of technology, I am sure you could come up with something way better than a gift bag or basket, but I would encourage you to do something to bring missions into the normal, everyday aspects of your children’s lives.

3. Make reading about giants of the faith in missions’ history a norm in your home.
I was a reader as a child. I still enjoy reading a good book. Fiction is ok, but I really enjoy a book about a person’s life who did something for God. I remember there were probably two Christmases in a row where I got more books than anything as gifts. I found a series of books called the Trailblazer Series that told the stories of missionaries from years gone by and how God used them. Before I was 12, I am sure I had read the whole series at least once if not more, and I owned the whole series. That was the decision of my parents and grandparents to invest in those books for me. It was not the only thing I read, but I remember how impactful the accounts of people like Mary Slessor, David Livingstone, Gladys Aylward, and dozens of others were to my young mind. The Lord used these things to prepare my heart for when He called me to missions when I was only 14 years old. You can’t go wrong by investing in these and other good missionary biographies. I have known some families who read a book together or even listen to these biographies as an audiobook together. I believe God gave us the record of these people to learn from. This is a great way to lay the foundation in the hearts of young people. 

4. Visit a mission field as a family.
My family was never really a vacation type of family. We visited Grandma and Grandpa when we took a vacation, or maybe we visited the cousins and swam in their pool. But on almost all of the vacations I remember as a family, we visited a missionary along the way. These were not exotic vacations. One was in the hills of West Virginia. One was in Maine. One was in Nova Scotia, Canada. And one was in Barcelona, Spain. But each of these trips made an impact on my life. Talk to your pastor about Stateside mission works, and you could take your family to visit and be a help for a few days during your vacation time. Nothing wrong with taking a vacation, but I promise you that the impact on you and consequently on your children goes far beyond what you can imagine when you make the effort to take your family to minister. Those trips laid the foundation in my mind as a young lady that I did not have to be some spiritual giant to be a missionary. I just had to be faithful like the people who were serving in these unknown places with small groups of people God had called them to serve.

5. Speak often of wanting God’s will for your children, no matter where that takes them.
This was probably the one that impacted me the most when it came to my call to missions. When God began working in my heart about surrendering to missions, the last worry on my heart was how my parents would respond. They had lovingly told us for years that they wanted my sisters and me to do God’s will. If that meant going somewhere far from Mom and Dad, then that was what they wanted for us. At 14, I was not sure that I understood what a sacrifice that would be for them when I said I believed God wanted me to be a missionary. Maybe it became a little clearer for me when my parents sacrificed financially through my teen and college years to allow me to go on mission trips. I know it wasn’t easy for them to give up precious time with me as a young person so that I could go minister with missionaries in Mexico or Spain, and I know they could have used that money to help with my college tuition. But they trusted God and sent me anyway because they wanted God’s will for me, and they trusted God to provide which He always did! I think the clarity for me in understanding what it meant for my parents to say yes to God’s will for my life came into ultra-clear focus for me about 20 years later when we cried and hugged each other at the airport while I held my one-way ticket to serve the Lord in England. But there was never a doubt in my mind that because God wanted this for me, they were 110% behind me even if it hurt their hearts beyond explanation. Dear Mama, don’t miss out on what God could do with your little ones by holding on so tightly to them that you discourage them from doing God’s will. Trust God to lead and direct them and then to protect them wherever His will leads them. Hold them loosely but pray for them fervently.

I’m sure there are other things that I could share here, but I will leave it there for now. I know that not every Christian home will produce a missionary, and that’s ok. But even if your kids don’t become missionaries, implementing these things in your child-rearing will make them aware of the need and sensitive to missions in their lives and churches as they become adults. Isn’t that what we want for our kids? Where will the next generation of missionaries come from? Who will support them in going to foreign lands as God has called them? We must actively and intentionally put missions before our children. Failing to do so will cause us to fail in the perpetuity of missions for the next generation. Pray much for your children and the ones that you have influence on and see what God will do in their lives and in yours.

Did you find what you were looking for in that “how to” search? Maybe there are some other ways that you can foster the spirit of missions in your children besides what I have shared. Share with us here so that we can all learn how to better rear missionaries in our homes!

​How are you intentionally fostering a heart for missions in your children or the young people in your life?