Create a culture and provide simple ways to help kids and youth develop a global mindset and pray for the global church.

Children are exposed to the global world more then previous generations. Through technology, travel, food. etc.

Louise Hannem, Team Lead of Global Discipleship for Canadian Baptist Ministries, recently shared in a training with some our pastors that,

“Teaching our children to be global disciples is not an event or a program, instead it is a million conversations and experiences, all rooted in an understanding of God’s mission.” She advises to start small so that as they grow and mature they can know for themselves how to respond to the bigger issues facing the world and our churches.”

Begin the conversation with your kids, teens and families in your community. Equip parents with conversation starters and ideas to begin to have these conversations and prayer prompts.

Following are a few simple ideas to start small and grow:

Learn about other cultures/countries through:

Food/Cooking: Try foods from other cultures, have conversations about the countries and places that these food originate in. Learn together.

Books: Include a diversity of books in your church library or in recommendations to families.

People: Who are the people in your church community that were born or lived in other countries? Invite them to share in your children’s ministry or youth ministry.

And through these experiences, invite kids, teens and families to pray for specific needs.

To specifically pray for the global church check out these resources:

Operation World is a great website that includes prayer resources to use, including an alphabetical country list to learn things to pray about. This is good for teens and adults but for kids, they have published a resource called Window to the World. This is a fantastic resource to learn about different countries and it includes some prayer prompts to pray specifically for that country and the church.

CBM has a lot of great resources including Prayerline for prayer prompts. You can read and adapt these for kids or use them with teens to pray for the different countries CBM is working in. Use some of the other resources they have available to create ‘Mission Moments’ in your ministry times so that kids and teens become more aware of the work and ministry of the global church.

Every Home for Christ has prayer maps available for free, including a kids version. Whether you use this or put a good quality map up in your church or ministry space, this can serve as a great way to invite praying for various countries from your whole church community.