Money & Missions

How we spend our money is a direct reflection of where our heart is focused.

How your family views money and possessions is intrinsically connected with how you view God’s priorities in life. As Christians, we should have the perspective that everything belongs to God: all of our time, all of our talents, all of our life decisions, and yes, all of our money.

I believe it’s important to teach our children about God’s principle of tithing (giving 10 percent of our income to Him), but even more importantly, we need to instill in our family that 100 percent of everything in our lives belongs to God. This principle is much easier caught—by our example—than taught by our words.

Even if your family never lives in a foreign country, you’re still called to be fulltime mission-minded followers, and to participate in expanding God’s kingdom—both locally, and throughout the world.

As Hudson Taylor, the famous missionary to China, often said,
“The Great Commission is not an option to consider,
but a command to obey.”

There are many ways your family could raise extra money to support international mission projects. Here is a list of activities commonly used by children’s churches, youth groups, and short-term mission teams.

The time will come, however, as your mission-commitment grows, when “occassional” fundraising efforts won’t be enough.

 A true mission-minded family simply needs to earn and save money, step out in faith and trust, and manage (or “steward”) those resources according to what’s most important . . . for God’s kingdom-purposes, and for eternity.

Easy Ideas to Rai$e Money for Missions

• Have your children decorate a special container, perhaps with a photo, and begin saving coins for a specific mission project.
• Make a “thermometer” to chart a specific family mission goal, and put it on your refrigerator.
• Have a yard sale with all proceeds going for a specific mission project.
• Have each family member offer to do work for relatives or friends (such as housecleaning, laundry, child care, or yard work) in exchange for people donating toward a special mission project.
• Collect newspapers for recycling.
• Recycle aluminum (and go around neighborhoods to get even more).
• Organize a car wash; rather than charging a set amount, receive donations.
• Make and sell something, like a craft project or a baked item.
• Receive mission donations for after-church lattes and espressos.
• Have a “multiply your talents” project. Give each family member a certain amount of money with the mission-minded purpose of using this money, along with his or her talents, abilities, and creativity, for a specified length of time (perhaps two weeks, or one month) to raise money for a specific mission project. A child could use the money to buy gas for a lawn mower, to buy lemonade to sell on the corner, or to buy ingredients for a neighborhood bake sale. At the end of the designated time have each family member return the original money, along with the surplus he or she raised, and give it toward the mission project.

Remember, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

A great way to “earn money” for missions is simply to SAVE MONEY for MISSIONS. Instead of window-shopping through the malls, or overspending on too many Christmas gifts, stay away from the stores and be on-the-lookout for international mission needs and local benevolence projects.

Equipping Your Family for Harvest (mp3)

How does your family choose to “handle” October 31st?

In this month’s mission-minded family audio, Ann Dunagan teaches from a personal, historical, and biblical perspective. Your family will be encouraged to focus on what matters, as you remember the Lord and the lost.

“This is the day that the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it!”

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Harvest, Halloween, and Your Family

Equipping Your Family for Harvest (a mission-minded teaching)

FREE mp3 audio. (19 minutes) < < < click here
(link to Family Leadership Online – a media outreach of Harvest Ministry)

 

 

 

Recommended Family Mission Books

Family Missions Training

Operation World
Probably the best mission resource to help you pray for every country in the world.
It includes current information and statistics from a Christian viewpoint.

Window on the World
Also check out the new children’s version of Operation World. It’s an incredible full-color book with photographs and information on over 100 people groups and countries around the world!!!

Money, Possessions and Eternity
By Randy Alcorn: “Who wants to settle for fleeting treasures on earth . . . when God offers everlasting treasures in heaven?”

Evangelism by Fire
Ignite your fire for world evangelism with this dynamic book by Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke.

Bruchko
Exciting true missionary story about a young man’s perseverance to reach and impact a primitive tribe in South America for Jesus. This is a great book to challenge a young person who is beginning to sense the Lord’s call to missions.

Christian Heroes Then & Now – My favorite family missionary biography series, by YWAM Publishers.

Passport to the World – an A to Z language adventure – with full-color pages, an included passport, and “visa” stickers. Highly recommended for mission-minded families.

Is That Really You, God?
The inspirational story of Loren Cunningham, founder of YWAM. An excellent book, sharing not only the testimony of how YWAM got started, but also how to recognize the Lord’s direction in your life.

Daring to Live on the Edge
An encouraging book about the adventure of faith and finances. This is a great book for those just “stepping out” into full-time ministry, or for those the Lord is challenging to “step out” into a new level of giving to the Lord’s work.

Friend Raising
A very practical book about building a missionary support team that lasts.

Hero Tales
These are our favorite missionary biographies to read aloud to children. The stories are well written, and a perfect length for a family devotion time. (They’re also classy hard cover books that would look beautiful on your coffee table!)

Also recommended:

Evangelism by Fire
Ignite your fire for world evangelism with this dynamic book by Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke.

Jesus Freaks
This book is incredible. It shares story after story of Christians (both long ago, and in recent history) who were willing to surrender everything (even their lives) to follow Jesus. Inspirational and challenging for any age level, but especially appropriate for teens and young adults.

And (of course), Ann’s books: The Mission-Minded Child: Raising a New Generation to Fulfill God’s Purpose, and The Mission-Minded Family: Releasing Your Family to God’s Destiny.

Chapter 1 – The Mission-Minded Family

Releasing Your Family to God’s Destiny

(Here’s a sample chapter for you to enjoy from Ann’s book, The Mission-Minded Family)

If you enjoyed the chapter (or if you’ve read the book), let me know what you think. And how can we encourage others to be more mission-minded?

Blessings to you and your family!
Ann

Hand Commands Explanation

QUESTION: Hi I am a children’s ministry director in South Africa and am busy teaching on God’s laws. I would love to use the Hand Commands too. Please could you email the basic outlines, as you did for Virginia in New Zealand? I would be so grateful.

Here you go!!! Included here are the hand motions from my book, HAND COMMANDS – The Ten Commandments for Little Ones (unfortunately, no longer in print), to assist you in helping your children to easily memorize all of God’s Ten Commandments, in order.
Blessings to you all! ~Ann Dunagan

Commandment 1:

I AM the LORD your God…

(Hold up one finger, like a big #1 and a giant Capital “I”)

You shall have no other gods before Me.

(Now shake your finger, as if saying “No, No, No!”)

Commandment 2:

You shall not make any idols to bow down to and worship.

(Hold up two fingers together, and make them “bow” up and down.)

Commandment 3:

You shall not take the Name of the LORD in vain.

(Hold three fingers up to your lips and say, “SHHH.” – Watch what you say – especially when you are speaking God’s HOLY and wonderful Name!)

Commandment 4:

Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.

(Hold up two fingers on each hand, joined together like a steeple. – “On God’s special day, where do we LOVE to go?” – God wants us to have quiet times with Him – to rest and to listen for His voice.)

Commandment 5:

Honor your father and mother.

(Have child give a “high five” by lifting up their hand and clapping someone else’s hand up high. You need to give you dad and mom a big “high five!”)

Commandment 6:

You shall not murder.

(Hold up six fingers, pointing one finger like a gun into the palm of the other five. – “bang-bang” – God doesn’t want us to hate other people, or to want to hurt them.)

Commandment 7:

You shall not commit adultery.

(Hold up seven fingers – 2 + 5 – and say, “It’s a family!” –  Here is the husband and wife…and over here, their handful of kids! – however many blessings, kids are a handful!!! God wants moms and dads to be married and to always love each other with thoughts and actions pure . . . and He wants ALL of us to keep our thoughts and actions pure.)

Commandment 8:

You shall not steal.

(These hand motions are a little “tricky”! Hold up eight fingers: 5 on the left, 3 on the right, then quickly ‘bump’ your hands together and switch to 4 fingers on each hand. “Did you see that? That right hand just ‘stole’ a finger from the left hand!”)

Commandment 9:

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

(Hold up nine fingers. Then, say with a ‘sarcastic’ tone, “Nine is close enough to ten, don’t you think? Let’s just call it ten. What difference would it make? What’s wrong with just a ‘little lie?'” –  NO!!! God wants us to always tell the truth!)

Commandment 10:

You shall not covet.

(Hold up ten fingers and pretend to “grab” in front on you as if saying, “Gimmie-Gimmie! I want it!” – Don’t be selfish, or “want” things that belong to others.)

These HAND COMMAND motions are from Ann Dunagan’s book, Hand Commands – The Ten Commandments for Little Ones – published by Kregel Publications.

For assistance with these hand motions, please take a look at the 2nd week of the 40-Day Mission-Minded FAMILY CHALLENGE videos, Day 6 (Commands #1-2) – Day 7 (Commands #3-4) – Day 8 (Commands #5-6) – Day 9 (Commands #7-8), and Day 10 (Commands #9-10).

NOTE: Sadly, Hand Commands – The Ten Commandments for Little Ones is no longer in print, and is not currently available. However, since there has been significant interest, Harvest Ministry is considering publishing this book, perhaps, in the future.

The Power of Praying Together as a Family

We all know–at least in our heads–that praying together is important.

As Christians, we’ve all heard how powerful is is to pray together as a husband and wife, and how important it is pray together as family . . . but why is it often so hard? Is is worth it to press-through the challenge? How many of us honestly wonder if our our prayers, and the simple prayers of our far-from-perfect family, can really make a difference?

It’s actually that very gut-level of honesty within a family, and our knowledge of each others’ inadequacies, that makes praying together so powerful.

You can’t be fake when praying with your family; you have to rely on God’s forgiveness and His righteousness through the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Praying Together as a Christian Family

If we could comprehend, deep in our spirits, the true power of prayer, we would all pray more–and the difference would radically impact our lives and the lives of those around us.

James 5:16 tells us, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”

We want our prayers to be effective, but what does it mean to stand “righteous” before God? It’s totally standing and relying on Jesus Christ and HIS righteousness, not coming to God based on our own “good works” or efforts!

As a family, we’re very aware of our differences and our faults. We’ve all sinned, and we need to acknowledge that no one of earth can stand blameless before our perfect, holy, and awesome God. No matter how good we try to be, our own works are nothing but filthy rags in His sight (see Isaiah 64:6). To pray effectively as a family, we need to grasp the importance of the “fear of the Lord.” We need to realize how powerful and mighty He is.

Self-efforts are like Filthy Rags . . .

• Teach Your Kids about Prayer with Filthy Rags:
  The next time you come across an extremely dirty rag in your house, use it an opportunity to share an important lesson with your kids. We may think our own self-efforts help us earn “Brownie points” with God. But, to Him, our human works are as worthless as stinky rags. If we try to earn favor with God-instead of trusting in Jesus-it’s like collecting yucky rags. The more they pile up, the more they stink and mildew.

But we are all like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away.

Isaiah 64:6

3 more family prayer ideas:

• Take a Prayer-Walk: As you walk around your neighborhood, take time to quietly praying for each neighbor, and seek God for ideas on how your family can be a light for Jesus.
• Make a Poster: Have your children make a “Ten Most Wanted” list or poster. Have them think of ten people who need Jesus. These can be relatives, neighbors, famous people, or the man who works at the convenience store. Use this list or poster to remind you to pray for these people to come to know the Lord.
• Use a Map: Put a small world map on your refrigerator, and use this area to display newsletters from missionaries you support, along with current international news updates. Pray regularly as a family, perhaps around the dinner table, for specific world needs and for people you know who need the Lord.

Power in prayer is by Christ’s righteousness!

In prayer, each of us must come to God in an attitude of total surrender and humility, keeping our hearts clean and open before Him. Through the cleansing sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, every mom and dad, and boy and girl, can pray as a “righteous man” before God. Because of Christ’s forgiveness and righteousness, even your family can come before God with boldness and authority to effectively intercede on behalf of others.

Click here for more Mission-Minded Family articles about PRAYER.

This article by Ann Dunagan, is an excerpt from her book, The Mission-Minded Family – Releasing Your Family to God’s Destiny (IVP – InterVarsity Press). It is also a featured article on The Christian Post’s “Better Parenting – Better Families” blog.

Are you called to GO, or to GIVE?

Raising Missionaries – by Laurel Diacogiannis

“We didn’t make a plan to raise up missionaries; we made a plan to raise up children who joyfully love and serve our Lord. Whether He calls them to the military, to missions, to teaching, to the pastorate … it doesn’t matter. Really … ALL we have wanted for our children (career wise) is for them to love and serve the Lord in whatever they might do. And, that’s exactly what they are doing.” – Laurel Diacogiannis

Raising Missionaries

We are honored to feature this guest article, written by speaker and writer (and good friend) Laurel Diacogiannis of A Journey of Faith. Jim & Laurel Diacogiannis are mission-minded homeschooling parents of a dozen children, including two adopted children from Ghana, West Africa.

Recently, someone asked me how I have raised up 3 children who have chosen to live overseas in service to the Lord.  (I have one child serving the Lord in Argentina for the next 2 years; one in Jordan for the next 2 years; and one currently in India as part of a 6 month missions outreach.) This woman went on to say that it is exciting when even one child from a family chooses such a personal journey … but for 3 to choose a similar journey was quite unbelievable for her.

No, we did not tell our children, “When you grow up, you should be a missionary.”  We did not focus all of our homeschool curriculum on missions (which would not at all have been a bad thing, it just wasn’t something that we thought of).  So, what did we do?

1. We demonstrated an active, everyday, personal walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The heart of a true missionary must come from such a daily, vibrant relationship with the Lord, that they absolutely know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are called into missions work.
2. We trusted God for financial provision, when having 13 children and a teacher’s salary don’t match up on the budget spreadsheet. Our kids know that the Lord will provide for their needs.  They grew up learning how to pray, and how to trust God for the outcome.
3. We talked about and read about missionaries … ordinary people doing extraordinary things for God. One year, each of the children that knew how to read (7 kids that year, I think), read the Trailblazer Books or Christian Heroes Then and Now series (both from YWAM Publishing) for their homeschool history course.
4. We watched videos of missionaries. The Gladys Aylward story (The Inn of the Sixth Happiness) was our first, I think.
5. We went to hear missionary speakers. Cassie told us at age 10 or 11 that she wanted to go to India, after hearing (and meeting) K.P. Yohannan.  (And, that dream came true when she was 21, after previous trips to Haiti, Senegal, and The Gambia.)
6. We supported missionaries. (We have supported Gospel for Asia, K.P. Yohannan’s ministry for over 15 years.)
7. We took our family on Mission Trips. In 2001, we took all 9 children to work in inner-city Los Angeles for 10 days.  We weren’t afraid to take them to the ghetto, to work at a church there.  In 2006, we took all 10 children to New Orleans for 2 weeks.  Just the other day, Elijah (who was only 4 at the time) asked me, “Mom, do you remember when we went to New Orleans and gave all the presents to the kids there?”  We didn’t buy our children any Christmas Presents that year, but not one ever complained … they were filled with joy to be giving presents to the children in New Orleans.

Seriously, we didn’t make a plan to “raise up missionaries.” We made a plan to raise up children who joyfully love and serve Our Lord.  Whether He calls them to the military, to missions, to teaching, to the pastorate … it doesn’t matter.  Really … ALL we have wanted for our children (career wise) is for them to love and serve the Lord in whatever they might do.  And, that’s exactly what they are doing.

While we have 3 young adults serving the Lord overseas, we also have 3 young adults serving the Lord here on the homefront.  And, we have 7 younger children, still at home, that we are raising up to follow the Lord, follow their dreams, follow their passions, and to be excited wherever it may be that the Lord leads them.

This article is an excerpt from “What Does the Future Look Like for Our Children?” — originally published on Laurel’s blog – “I’m Ghana Adopt.”

For more about raising mission-minded children, and having a mission-minded family:

The Mission-Minded Child – Raising a New Generation to Fulfill God’s Purpose

The Mission-Minded Family – Releasing Your Family to God’s Destiny

FREE – The 40-Day Mission-Minded FAMILY CHALLENGE

Mission-Minded Passports

Are you considering international travel, or taking a family mission trip?

 

Click here for a fun article on Mission-Minded Families: 

Passports for Missions:

Craft Passports
Just for Fun!

Real Passports
Just in Case!

 

FREE Homeschool File Folder Charts

How to Make File Folder Charts for the

Teaching With God’s Heart for the World Curriculum

To my homeschooling friends:

For those of us who are committing to teach our children, we’re all in our last remaining days of summer . . . and our final chance to prepare for a new school year. (Although one thing I always keep in mind is that I don’t need to prepare for the whole year at once . . . I just need to stay a day or two ahead of where we’re going!!!)

Here in our household we’re gearing-up for a super year . . . with hopes and feelings of expectation that this year may be our best homeschooling year ever! And I’m really excited about it!!!

For those who will be utilizing the Teaching With God’s Heart for the World curriculum, I wanted to share a specific teaching tool that has really helped our family.

Kids Keep Focused, Diligent, and On-Task

One of my biggest continual challenges with homeschooling life . . . is that we have continually have LIFE going on!!!

There are many people who give homeschooling a “try” for a year or too; but sometimes, despite the best of intentions, many homeschooling parents realize the commitment is simply “not working” on a consistent basis. I’ve heard many homeschooling moms share genuine feelings of concern and inadequacies, feeling that they’re “cheating” their children of consistent instruction (because these moms know what’s “really” been happening at home). A homeschooling parent may attempt to stay consistent with his or her teaching plans . . . but sometimes their best efforts can lead to burn-out . . . or quitting . . . or too much stress on the family . . . or maybe “persevering” in the decision, whether or not the kids not getting the education they need.

Let’s face it.

There are times when our best intentions and wonderful “teaching plans” are interrrupted. How can our children’s home education continue . . . even if we get an urgent phone call, or if there’s a little one who needs immediate attention, or if our husband has a specific job he needs us to do, or if we have a time in our lives when God is focusing our passions in other areas?

I love teaching and training our children . . . but I also know how my personality works (and I’ve come to recognize my weaknesses).

I tend to focus my thoughts and attention in concentrated whole-hearted “spurts.” I get extremely passionate about things (whether that’s life, or a hurting family, or rescuing orphans, or helping with a specific project at church, or writing a ministry newsletter, or meeting a book deadline) . . . and that focus can be good . . . but it can also be very distracting to our homeschooling.

Despite this, I’ve come to “rest” in the fact (for our family) that homeschooling is God’s will and His purpose for our lives. For us, it has been tremendously successful, both educationally and spiritually for our “big” kids; yet even so, I still deal with inward questioning and times discouragement. We’re now in our 18th year of this journey, and we believe we’re called to continue homeschooling our children . . . for the long-haul. And day-by-day, we continue to rely on God’s grace to follow Him.

When I feel like throwing-in-the-towel if things aren’t working, I simply know that I need to seek the Lord for help and wisdom. If God has truly called us to homeschool (which for us, I believe He has) He will show us the way.

In the forward to my new book, The Mission-Minded Family, I really appreciate what longtime homeschooling pioneers and ministers, Greg & Sono Harris, wrote. They said:

“God is too good and too wise to give us conflicting obligations. Every obligation from God is perfectly compatible with every other obligation that comes from God. Not only are our obligations to family and missions compatible, they are mutually supportive in His purposes.”

For me personally, my biggest homeschooling need is how to keep my children working and independently motivated, especially when other things are happening. I know that I need an on-going “structure” that is well planned, yet also completely flexible (even at the last minute) to flow with our family’s life and with the needs of our missions work and ministry.

In the midst of really praying about this, I woke up one morning with a “picture” in my mind of this little weekly “To-Do” Chart.

I spent a full day figuring-out an ideal homeschooling week for my kids . . . and then broke it down into sixty 20-minute sections. Our family usually does only about 4 full hours of homeschooling each day (not counting daily athletic training, extra reading, art projects . . . and all that other “real-life-learning” that takes place all the time). I love keeping the big picture and vision in mind (of where we’re going), and at the same time, I know that my kids need concentrated education in reading, writing, language arts, history, math, science, geography, and Bible training . . . to get ready for God’s purpose.

I’ve come to realize that (in reality) I can usually only “consistently” devote about an hour or two of actual “Homeschool Teaching Time” with my kids each day (some days are better and I really “pour my heart” into our homeschooling . . . but other days are really full, and I can’t even do that. So for us to homeschool, my husband and I need to know, that no matter what, our kids will be self-disciplined and successfully progressing on their studies).

Okay. So let me show you how our “how-to” chart works:

Last year, our charts were made with simple hand-written cards; but this year, I wanted to make sure that our weekly and daily plans would fit with the Teaching With God’s Heart for the World curriculum.

So I created some pdf files (which you can print out for FREE here) with these sixty 20 minute learning goals.

We cut-out these printed cards I made and then taped them to colored pieces of construction paper (rectangle pieces – 1.5 inches x 2.5 inches) with clear packing tape to keep the cards sturdy.

For each child, we used: 15 red cards (for spiritual training), 11 yellow cards (for math), 5 orange cards (for science), 14 blue cards (for language arts), 15 green cards (for social studies).

And the kids have been helping make these cards, and their individual files. This feminine-looking file folder is Caela’s (age 10). Mark (age 12) and Philip (age 7) have identical cards, but their file folders are black-and-green and black-and-blue with cool-looking masculine checkers. The whole project only costs about $1 per folder . . . and a little bit of time (but it saves SOOOO much time later on!!!).

How to make the folders:

We take a sturdy file folder, and cut-up the pockets to make new 9 new pockets: four little square pockets (on the left side) to hold the entire week’s schedule in main categories, four long pockets (on the right side) for each child kid to “lay out” his or her daily goals, and one long pocket (on the bottom-left) to place each card after the assignment has been completed. We use packing tape to hold them on.

(By the way, I found it helps to put about 15 cards in each square-category pocket before taping it on, to make sure the cards “fit.”) The daily “hour” pockets can be totally flat.

Our four main categories are:

• God is #1 (Prayer, Devotions, and Bible)
• Math and Science (“Teaching Time” and “By Myself”)
• English (Literature, Grammar, and Writing)
• Social Studies (History, Geography, World Missions, Music, and many international cultural ideas to keep things fun!!!)

So, here’s an example of how one of the kids can “lay-out” a day. They need to include 3 cards from each category each day, but they plan their own schedule (which teaches self-motivation). And I can make sure that the areas which require my “Teaching Time” can be arranged (and adjusted at a moment’s notice) to adapt to my schedule. I usually prefer to keep my “Teaching Time” during the 2nd hour (for one-on-one teaching, like math and grammar) and 3rd hour (for all-together family teaching, like devotions or history).

A huge benefit of this system is I know that if I can’t get to a “Teaching Time” on a paticular day, I simply tell the kids to rotate those cards back into the category pockets and to replace with with their “By Myself” cards. We know we’ll get back to those “Teaching-Time” cards before the week is over.

While the kids are working on the “By Myself” cards, I can be working on things I need to do, such as laundry, or household jobs, or getting lunch together, or working on ministry office jobs. I’m still available for questions, but the kids know that they need (as much as possible) to keep working as hard as they can on their own.

As each one completes a 20 minute assignment (and we continually use a kitchen timer to keep everyone working diligently), they transfer that particular card to their “DONE!!!” pocket.

These cards will then remain in this “DONE!!!” pocket until the following week.

For our family, this little homeschooling tool has really helped; and I believe it will really work well with this particular curriculum. I wrote Teaching With God’s Heart for the World many years ago; and since that time our homeschooling (and ministry) has adapted and changed, and I believe it’s also “matured” and become more relaxed and fruitful.

I think this change will help make this year-long curriculum more practical, easier-to-follow, and more of a blessing for the dynamics of your family-life.

Hope this will be a blessing to you!
(And I hope you and your family will ENJOY these last few days of summer!!!)

In His Love,
Ann

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