Setting up groups to pray for your church’s missionaries is very simple. This plan can be used in small churches that have only a few missionaries to support, or in large churches. Here are the steps we followed at Grace Church.

• Select a coordinator (someone who is interested both in prayer and in missions). Meet together a few times, along with your director of missions, to discuss the details of how the program would look at your church. Be sure to look at other churches missions prayer programs.
• Send Letters to your missionaries, explaining to them what you are envisioning.  Ask them to provide a list of those in your church with whom they have connections, people they thought might be interested in being a part of their AAM group. We also asked our missionaries to identify a potential leader for their group (someone who they felt was a passionate supporter—prayer or financial—of their ministry).
• Send a letter to each person identified by a missionary as someone who might want to be involved in the program. Tell them about the AAM program, and ask them if they’d be interested in being involved by making a one-year commitment to their missionary.
• After asking the Lord to raise up just the right leader for each group, contact each potential leader, and ask him or her to pray about leading a group. Provide him with a “job description,” so he will understand everything that is expected of him.
• When all the leaders are in place, develop an insert for your church bulletin, with a picture of each missionary and information about their AAM group, along with information about how to “sign up.”
• Bring leaders together for training. Give them materials on how to pray effectively for missionaries.
• Obtain prayer cards and recent prayer letters from each missionary.
• Prepare bookmarks for each missionary, with her picture and country of service. On the bookmarks write the words, I will commit to pray regularly for _____for one year, and a place for a signature and date.
• Promote the program in a morning worship service. Preferably in a service with a missionary speaker.

When we kicked off our AAM program, we developed a DVD, featuring interviews with each of our missionaries. It was shown on our “Kickoff Sunday.”  Our goal was to encourage involvement in the program by introducing our missionaries to the congregation and letting them communicate how much it means to them to have people partner with them in prayer. Packets were prepared to give to people as they signed up for AAM on Kickoff Sunday. Included in the packets were prayer letters, prayer cards, commitment bookmarks, a list of the missionary family’s birthdays and anniversary dates, information on how to pray for that missionary family, and dates and times for meetings. Each participant was encouraged to contact her missionary and have her name added to the missionary’s prayer letter mailing list. We painted, decorated and stocked a permanent missions information area in our lobby. Posters were made for the lobby and for the rest rooms (great advertising place!)

When Kickoff Sunday arrived, we were excited to see what God would do.  It was our prayer that many people would sign up to be a part of the program.  We set up tables where people could sign up, put inserts in the bulletins, showed the DVD and prayed that God would raise up a strong group for each missionary.

(If you are looking into setting up an AAM at your church and would like to receive a packet containing each of the items in bold print,  we’d be happy to send you one.  To cover our costs, please send $15 to Grace Church, 7393 Pearl Road, Middleburg Heights, Ohio, 44130, Attn: Sandy Frohnapple.)
--Mary Schaeffer