It is rare that a church is able to hang on to the 25 year old tradition of an annual eight-day, Sunday-to-Sunday missions conference. The age of multi-tasking, super-busy lifestyles, and multimedia entertainment shortened attention spans require other approaches. “Less is more” may apply here. Quality may be more important than quantity. It is of great advantage to keep a consistent diet of missions information and opportunity to learn and grow in missions through many means throughout the calendar and ministries of the church.
With the challenges of modern culture and time-sensitivity before you, your Missions Team should plan for missions events to complement your congregation’s needs. We’ve already presented a scope of possible purposes for a special missions event. So, let’s first consider the single, once-a-year event.
Most churches now hold an annual weekend mission “conference” or “celebration” event. It is a key time to have supported missionaries present. Special events fill the agenda from Friday evening through Sunday evening of the weekend. This seems to be a reasonable minimum.
Some churches have a special Sunday for missions emphasis programming and platform time once per quarter. There may be good reason in your church annual calendar to take advantage of other key events to emphasize or supplement missions education, training, or stimulus, e.g.: evangelism or Bible conferences, outreach campaigns, community service projects, etc.