Program Idea: MISSION CONFERENCE IDEAS FOR BIBLE SCHOOL
QUESTIONFrom: <TSWood1962@aol.com> Scott Wood

I am working at an interdenominational Bible School...organizing our next missions conference (Feb)... Anyone have any ideas?

ANSWER From: <mitch.arbelaez@cbn.org>
I would suggest an invitation to Dr. Howard Foltz, President and Founder of the Association of International Missions Services (AIMS). He has developed a seven hour seminar that can be modified to suit any type of setting dealing with missions. This seminar is titled Harvest Connection. If you send me a ground address, I could send you a brochure on this conference. This seminar contains a lot of good statistical analysis' of the world incorporating information from leading missiologists of today. It also has a very strong biblical basis for missions and does some excellent work with the text and how it brings forth the missions emphasis throughout the entire scriptures. If you are interested in this information, please E-mail me...

ANSWER From: NateWilson@XC.org
It may sound crazy, but I've seen a Bible College actually do this sort of thing before--with great results: Bus all the students up to the Heartland MissionsFest in Tulsa!

Another idea: When I helped plan the mission conference for my college, we got good results from a coffeehouse-type evening, where we invited mission representatives from a bunch of agencies and told them to "hang out" with the students for a whole evening. Snacks and light entertainment or a panel discussion with the rep's of some interesting issues can enhance the attraction for the students.

ANSWER: Robert Schroeder <100714.1660@CompuServe.COM>
AIMS has published a handbook wilth creative and practical ideas for planning a missions conferences. It also has a unique name "Palm Trees and Panty Hose" suggesting exotic and also everyday ideas and objects we can use for decorations etc. Categories include: Construction projects, Fundraisers, Using Video, Games, Plans, Diagrams, Ready-to-use Clip Art, and Sharing with the Congregation. The mailing address is: AIMS P.O. box 64534 Virginia Veach, VA. 23464

ANSWER From: <DMILLE777@aol.com> Dennis Miller
1.) We have purchased national flags, 1-2 a year for the last few years that have some significance to our church. Either they are from a country we have been to on short term/work camp, from a country that we have missionaries in, from a country that a speaker we had came from, or some other relationship. We have 14 flags so far. The main service at our conference we have a procession of the flags with bearers (sometimes in national costumes) as the flags approach the front of the auditorium the country name and some personal information is shared. People in the congregation say it is very moving and really respond to it.

2.) We purchase baloons from a local party store that have a map of the world printed on them so they look like world globes. We decorate profusely with them and as the pledges are tabulated we may let some go or do something with them for each $10,000 pledged or?

3.) We hang every banner that we have ever made all over the lobby to make a festive appearance whether they have anything to do with missions or not.

4.) I have contacted several mission agencies that have local representation and have asked them to put up their displays and then have 3-4 of them present their particular mission work during the SS hour for adults using our large fellowship hall.

5.) We have to concentrate on one main Sunday AM as we have had no luck drawing people any other time. Last year we arranged to have the state ACMC conference at our church in conjunction with a Scott Wesley Brown concert that we scheduled two years in advance. The ACMC conference was great but only 250 people showed up Saturday night for the conference and very few from our church. A $3000 investment.

6.) We use one Sunday night previous to the missions weekend to present every work campers, short termers slides etc. this seems to draw quite a few. Last year we had two young ladies go to Europe with royal servants, a work camp to Costa Rica, and our Pastor and his wife went to Bolivia so it was great.

7.) We had a Ghanian national come in and present a program about his country and way of life. Not a christian but educational for the children.

ANSWER From: NateWilson@XC.org
I agree with point #7 in the previous paragraph. When I was leading the student mission fellowship at Covenant College, we invited a student from India at the local university to come up and share why he believes in Hinduism. The meeting was packed out (and that was unusual for a mission-oriented meeting!), students were brought face-to-face with a belief system and a people group which had hitherto been only an abstract concept, and despite our fears of what could happen at such a meeting, the Indian didn't get lynched, and nobody converted to Hinduism.

I'd like to bring up another perspective on the mission conference theme. In offering suggestions for mission conferences, are we implicitly reccommending the annual mission conference without considering other options? In my local church, the mission team is working to provide a year-round emphasis on mission rather than making mission an annual focus. We're doing this by "drip-feeding" information on mission every Sunday into the bulletin or information table, scheduling a (10-minute) video or some other interesting mission thing right into the Sunday morning worship service once a month, scheduling missionary speakers to fill the Sunday school hour or the morning worship sermon slot periodically throughout the year, and recruiting people to do special projects throughout the year (care packages to missionaries, special prayer meetings, etc.). The aim of this is to make missions a regular part of life rather than a special annual event. There is some resistance, however, to this, due to the tradition of the annual church mission conference, so we're in the process of working out an equitable solution--perhaps we'll get to do a conference in addition to the year-round "drip-feed!".

Program Ideas FROM STUDENTS
The following creative ideas for missions activities came out of a seminar at the 1992 IVMF Campus Mission Workshops. The list contains mostly things that the students had actually done successfully at their Christian colleges.
-Skits (during chapel, lunch, dinner, etc.)
-Beginning of school: Participate in Freshman orientation, then sit in the registration line with sign-up list for people interested in your missions fellowship.
-Clothes: Get people in your group to wear different international costumes.
-Get the recruitment office to give you address lists of prospective students and send letters to them about the missions fellowship.
-Advertise over the local radio station.
-One-to-one strategy: Familiarize your committee with a missions presentation such as Jim Camomiles's Missions Accountability Project and have each committee member target one person each week to personally share the material with them and invite them to participate in world missions. Each week bring the committee together to hold them accountable to meeting with their chosen people each week.
-Posters/ banners/graffiti
-Advertise in school newspaper and in the weekly school calender.
-Stall News: put information from Operation World in the bathroom stalls
-T-Shirts: Have everybody wear old GO conference t-shirts on the same day to advertise for the next year's conference.
-Write things on chalkboards in between classes or even get professors to make announcements
-Organize a picket or take the college president hostage to get attention.
-Put announcements on door-knob hangers or bookmarks
-Take an hour to go door-to-door, inviting students in your dorm to participate in a missions project. Each executive committee member make a goal of bringing 5 new people.
-Wear name tags that say, "I'm going!" When people ask, tell them about your missions fellowship meeting.
-Hand out surveys in the dinner line with questions that would let you know who might be interested in participating in a prayer meeting, a summer missions project, etc.
-Advertise that you'll give $1 or a book to the first 20 people who arrive for your meeting
-Set up a book table of missions books in the middle of campus. Special deals can be got from the William Carey Library.
-Set up volleyball games or some other sports and maybe include hot dogs or watermelon. Advertise it as a missions fellowship event and then get the names of the students who participate and follow up on them.
-Have a "prayer call" several times in a day imitating that of the Muslims'.
-Co-sponsor an event with the official school activities committee to attract more student involvement, give it a missions emphasis (show missions oriented movie or do skits at a banquet or chapel, or sing missions-oriented music at a talent show)
-Joshua Walk (walk as a group around buildings on campus, praying for spiritual renewal of people in the buildings)
-Early Morning prayer group before breakfast.
-Geographical Prayer Groups: One prayer group that focuses each week on the needs of a different country OR several prayer groups, if you have enough people, each focusing on one continent throughout the year. OR Choose countries at randomthrow darts at a world map or make a giant cookie or cake decorated w/ a world map (pray for the country that is on the piece your are served).
-Have international students teach your group some folk dances from their countries.
-Christmas Party: have everybody bring a strange "white elephant" gift (wrapped) and exchange gifts.
-Get a team of 5 to 10 people to learn skits and talks from Caleb Project. Plan a tour over Spring/Fall break to do one-hour presentations in various churches and schools. The team could also do presentations "on call" on weekends for different churches or schools.
-Evangelism project: Rent a beach cabin and share the Gospel on the beach over Spring break or the first week of Summer. OR meet up with
-non-Christian internationals at your local university and hang out with them. Spend time with them communicating the Gospel.
-Coordinate an area conference for a few other Christian colleges in your locale on a Saturday afternoon: include prayer together, a meal, and sharing of ideas.
-Organize a couple of good chapels: schedule a year in advance, get people who have gone (or are going) on short-term missions projects to show slides and share testimony, use appropriate missions oriented Christian music or some combination of slides/video & music.
-Organize the musicians in the group into a missions-oriented band!

Program Idea: BIBLE FAST
The Sumer/Fall 1996 FINAL FRONTIERS has information on an intresting fund-raiser for Bibles in the country of China. "Statistics indicate that 90% of all believers in China have no Bible... Your congregation can stand with them in their need by participating in a Bible Fast...giv[ing] up their Bibles for one Sunday... China Harvest can provide bulletin inserts, autio visual materials, etc... At the end of your service, [you can] take an offering to provide Bibles for Chinese house churches... a three-way match with the Bible League and with Christians in Malaysia [has been arranged]. Those groups will match your donation, so that every $1 becomes $3... The Bible Fast is a simple tool, but it is powerful and strategic, both for your congregation and for millions of Chinese believers who are still waiting to receive their first Bible." For more information, contact AIMS China Harvest, P.O. Box 64534, Virginia Beach, VA 23464 Phone: 757-579-5850 Fax:-5851

FLAGS
TIDMORE FLAGS 923 Oxmoor Rd., Birmingham, AL 35209 Phone: 1-800-321-FLAG Fax: 205-945-1779 Here's a source for flags to enhance a mission display. Tidmore sells everything from flags of countries to 80-foot commercial flagpoles. Ask for their page of banner display ideas and tips. Here's a sampling of prices: 4x6-foot nylon Christian flag US$34; 183 U.N.-member nation flags (4x6 inches each) with wooden base $320, 60-foot string of 32 polyethyelene flags (9x12 inches each) $14; One dozen 12x18-inch muslin international flags $22.80

POSTERS
[I ran across a well-done colour brochure/poster with images and information on the Muslim world, entitled "Good News for Muslims." Here's what the publisher said about them:-NW] We also have 3 others in the same format, covering Latin America, Africa and Europe. We have 4 more in the pipeline, Unreached Peoples, South Asia, Media Ministries, and UK. These will probably be out in the first half of next year. They are available for =A31 each (or =A3100 for 100!), plus postage and packing. We don't have a US address, unfortunately. We are a UK organisation, and relate to the WEF through its Missions Commission. We are the UK equivalent of EFMA/IFMA. From: rtiplady@ema.co.uk (Richard Tiplady)

T-SHIRT
From: Gene Lee <gene.lee@prostar.com> ...We developed this shirt because of the vision that God has placed on our hearts for the unreached people of the World. The shirt is an outward symbol of this vision, you might say it allows us to wear our heart on our chest. So far we have made two shirts from a prototype image and I am working on the text for an information sheet that will go with each shirt that explains missions, the 10/40 window and suggests what an individual can do; prayer, giving time & money, short term missions, wearing the shirt to generate interest and open opportunities to witness, etc...

Currently we are offering the shirt to our home Church "Eastridge Christian Assembly" in Issaquah, WA. for missions promotion. We may create a follow-up sweatshirt, coffee cup, mouse pad and/or whatever else might be used to promote missions. We would like to offer the 10/40 shirt to other organizations. We can also do other custom designs targeting specific people groups with photographic quality for scanned pictures and high imagery, or non-photographic graphics for silk-screening when low cost and higher volumes are desired. As the doors open we will walk through, we don't have any experience with marketing whatsoever, we are just two people doing what we can for God's Kingdom.

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