Practical Ideas for Cultivating Missions Awareness

This resource helps missions leaders cultivate missions awareness by equipping their congregations to embrace a sent identity and see life through a missional lens. It provides a wide range of creative ideas across church life—worship gatherings, facilities, media, leadership, small groups, equipping classes, prayer gatherings, children, students, and local community engagement—intended to spark contextualized action rather than serve as an exhaustive checklist. Leaders are encouraged to download the accompanying “Worksheet for Cultivating Missions Awareness” to assess their church’s current missions engagement, set goals, and identify three to four concrete next steps to implement in the coming months.

Churches have the opportunity to cultivate missions awareness by helping their members deepen in their sent identity and see life through a missional lens. Here are some practical ideas to facilitate this growth. Rather than serving as an exhaustive handbook, this list is designed to stir creative ideas for your particular church context. 

Before reading this list, download or print the “Worksheet for Cultivating Missions Awareness In Your Church” to assess your church’s current missions awareness and document aspirations for the future. You will be left with three to four concrete steps to take over the next few months.

1. Worship Gatherings

What are people seeing and hearing in your church’s gatherings?

• Sermons - At minimum once per year, consider preaching a sermon centered on God’s heart for all nations. Know your teaching schedule and encourage your teachers and preachers to focus on global missions where appropriate.

• Songs - Sing songs in different languages or songs that missionaries from your church are singing around the world.

• Pray for Current Events - Pray for current events happening around the world—natural disasters, wars, persecution, etc. 

• Pray for the Nations - Pray for the nations and specific missionaries from your church. Consider rotating through different categories, like specific missionaries from your church, unreached people groups, or the persecuted church.

• Liturgy and Benedictions -  Write out Scripture passages or liturgies for your pastors or worship team to use during the service and as you finish the service. Translate these into different languages.

• Commissioning - Each time you send a missionary, have a commissioning service. 

• Invite a Missionaries’ Influence - As highly connected missionaries come back, allow them to share about their ministry in a service, small group, or equipping session.

• Share Video Updates - Gather video updates from the field to share in a church service.

• Facilitate Video Calls - While technology can be tricky, look for ways for missionaries to be able to call into a service, small group, or equipping session. 

2. Facilities

What are people seeing around your church building in regard to global missions?

• Strategic Map or Signs - Displaying a world map in a highly visible part of your church building can help cast a vision for global missions. Find unique and creative ways to share your missions strategy and relationships on the map. 

• Prayer Cards - Have security-conscious prayer cards for your missionaries available near your missions map and/or in your church offices. 

3. Media 

What are people seeing, hearing, and reading through your church’s digital communications?

• Social Media Account - Run a social media account that provides reminders of global issues, or consider adding missions-focused content to your church’s general social media accounts. Consider hosting live events to facilitate online discussions and/or share updates about your missionaries.

• Website - Have at least one page on your church’s website that describes your church’s vision for missions.

• Church Newsletter - Create a regular global missions newsletter or incorporate regular updates in your church’s general newsletter.

• Receive Updates from the Field - Provide a pathway for members of your church to receive updates and pray for the missionaries sent from your church. Consider creating a form that allows church members to sign up for missionaries’ prayer updates. 

4. Leadership

How are the decision-makers in your church (elders, deacons, staff, etc.) coming to greater understanding of and desire to participate in global missions?

• Book Study - Facilitate a book study with key decision-makers in your church. Consider studying the Book of Acts or books like The Sending Church Defined by Upstream, You Are Sent: Finding Your Place in God’s Global Mission by Nathan Sloan, Finish the Mission by John Piper, or God’s Heart for the Nations by Jeff Lewis.

• Vision Trips - Take key leaders on vision trips to other ministry locations to give them a firsthand experience of global missions.

• Missions Team - Create a missions team involving decision-makers in your church and give them real responsibility in directing your church’s vision for engagement in global missions.

5. Small Groups

How can you utilize small group communities to cultivate global missions awareness?

• Monthly Missions Focus - Provide opportunities and resources for small groups to regularly pray for your church’s missionaries. Small groups could “adopt” a missionary to pray for or use a general prayer guide resource developed by the church.

• Book Study - Facilitate studies of missions books like the ones mentioned above.

• Missionary Visit - Have a missionary visit a small group when they are back on furlough.

6. Equipping Classes

How could you utilize Sunday school classes to cultivate global missions awareness?

• Equipping Class - Create a global missions class that teaches members about global missions. 

• Utilize existing material like Xplore: Discover God’s Word, God’s World, and God’s Work by the Center for Missions Mobilization and Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.

7. Prayer Gatherings

How could you infuse prayer for global missions into regular prayer gatherings?

• Missionary Profiles - Create missionary profiles that highlight missionaries from your church and their unique prayer requests.

• Pray for Nations or People Groups - Choose a nation or people group to pray for. Utilize sites like:

  • Joshua Project

  • Prayer Cast 

  • Operation World

  • Finishing the Task

  • The Traveling Team

8. Children

How can you help the children in your church understand God’s global mission as seen in the Scriptures?

• Missions Focus Month - Facilitate an annual global missions focus for your children’s ministry. Provide opportunities for them to get to know missionary kids and families. Provide reading materials and resources for parents to discuss with their children at home.

• Videos from Missionary Kids - During your missions focus month, have some missionary kids record and share a video about their life overseas.

• Missionary Biographies - Provide a list of missionary biographies for parents to read with their children. The YWAM series “Christian Heroes” is a great place to start.

9. Students

How can you help middle school, high school, and college students become more aware of and involved in God’s global mission?

• Exposure Trips - Have a regular rhythm of two- to fourteen-day learning trips that give students the opportunity to witness, experience, and participate in global missions opportunities.

• Missions Study - Facilitate a book study with students through books like the books mentioned above.

• Virtual Missions Trip - Ask your missionaries to join a virtual call or film videos sharing about their life, community, and ministry overseas.

10.  Local Community Engagement

What are some local opportunities that could help your members develop a heart for the nations?

• Festivals and Holidays - Watch your community calendar for local international festivals.

• International Clubs - Allow international clubs to utilize your church building for their festivals, holidays, or club meetings. 

• Visit Religious and/or Cultural Centers - Arrange a visit to a temple or a mosque, and consider inviting the leader of the temple or mosque to speak with your group to help them better understand that worldview.

• City Tour - Find places to visit that have high populations of first generation students, immigrants, or refugees. Invite one of them to speak with your group or lead parts of the tour. 

Next Steps

The journey toward sending well happens one step at a time. Here are three ways you can continue moving upstream:

1. Create a cultivating awareness calendar for your weekly church gatherings. Make it a starting goal to include an element of missions awareness one time per month in those weekly gatherings. That might be through a full sermon about global missions, a bullet point in the sermon, a video, a missionary sharing from the stage, or announcement about a missions event. Calendar out one year of monthly ways you will cultivate awareness in your weekly church gathering.

2. Download the “Worksheet for Cultivating Missions Awareness in Your Church” to brainstorm your own cultivating missions awareness ideas.

3. Check out the Sending Church Elements Cohort to begin your journey through all the Sending Church Elements (theupstreamcollective.org/cohorts).