Missions Can't Be Taught in One Month a Year

Many churches set aside one month for missions: they hold a conference week, put up a bulletin board at the entrance, and take a special offering. After that, the subject disappears from the calendar until the following year. The problem is not having a missions month, but the emptiness that surrounds it. Churches do not become missionary because of events, but through ongoing formation. And information only fulfills its purpose when it produces formation: it is not enough to pile up data about countries, peoples, and statistics; convictions must be cultivated that last through the years, not just one intense week followed by silence.

This is precisely where Sunday school and regular preaching offer something no annual conference can provide: regularity. A teaching calendar spread across the year — a lesson here, a mention there, a testimony woven into another topic — gradually builds what one concentrated week cannot produce on its own. What forms a church is not the intensity of a single week, but repetition across the years. Moses taught this principle to the people of Israel: God's words were to be on their hearts and taught at home, on the road, when lying down and when rising up — not reserved for one special moment on the calendar (Deut 6:6-7).

This ongoing formation also needs room outside the pulpit, through simple, focused study and intercession groups. Generic missionary prayer, like “Lord, bless the missionaries,” does not sustain the work for long, because it lacks a face and an address. What sustains it is informed intercession, fed by genuine study of a specific people, field, or person. Small, regular groups tend to last longer than broad, complex initiatives. And it is precisely in these groups that many callings arise, as affection grows for what someone has come to know and has truly learned to intercede for. In this way, the annual conference stops being an isolated event and gains value also from what happens before and after it — what was planted in the preceding months and what will be reaped in the months that follow.

Missionary communication during the worship service also deserves the same care given to preaching. It should not be treated as a mere interruption or as a gap between parts of the service. Three simple elements can make that moment effective: clear information, a definite focus for prayer, and room for a spiritual response from the congregation. Regularity matters more than length. Three well-used minutes every week or every month can shape a church far more than twenty concentrated minutes once a year.

Today, digital communication has also become one of the main channels of contact between the church and the mission field. This demands, however, the same spiritual discernment expected from the pulpit. Not every missionary can be publicly identified for security reasons. Likewise, images of suffering or poverty must preserve the dignity of the people portrayed, never turning their pain into a tool of exploitation to stir emotion or boost engagement.

This ongoing formation must also reach the rising generations, and it should begin early. Missionary awareness does not appear fully formed in adulthood; it is built from childhood through patient repetition. With children and teenagers, what sustains this process is not the spectacular — one grand event held once a year — but the consistent. A children's class can learn the name of a missionary the church supports, pray for him regularly, and follow his stories over the years. What the church presents and repeats week after week gradually shapes the awareness of an entire generation, far more than an isolated campaign, however well produced.

In light of this, it is worth asking your church's leadership a simple question: is there today an annual calendar of missionary teaching, or just one concentrated month followed by silence? If the reality is the latter, one concrete step for this month is to talk with a Sunday school teacher and propose including a missions lesson in the next quarter — not as a separate topic, but as a natural part of the church's teaching. Another equally simple step is to suggest that a children's class adopt a missionary the church supports, learn his name and story, and begin praying for him regularly. Missionary formation does not necessarily require more events; it requires more consistency in what the church already does.