"World Champions" - A Creative Initiative for Children from the Lord of the Rings Country

New Zealand | OM International

They’re all stars of the show in WORLD CHAMPIONS!--A children’s programme that is taking New Zealand by storm!

Last year, Operation Mobilisation New Zealand's Shirley Booth, a qualified primary school teacher, decided to put together a monthly newsletter to encourage and challenge Christian children to get involved in God’s world.

“World Champions” was born. Now, hundreds of children around the country get a new issue each month, complete with country information, games, a memory verse, and ideas on how they can be World Champions through “Praying, Giving and Going for it!”

The next step was to take World Champions on the road. So, after months of planning, a team went to churches, Christian schools and children’s groups around the country, presenting the message that nobody is too young to be involved in God’s world! Over a thousand children have seen this programme since February 2005, and many more children’s groups are getting on board.

Response to this free programme has been very positive. Children are excited to learn that missions is not just for adults, and their teachers write back to report that participants are still praying for the world. “You gotta pray, you gotta give, you gotta Go For It!” they chant, weeks after the programme.

After one session in Auckland, children bombarded team members with ideas of things they could give to others to show them God’s love.

“You could give them clothing, food and drink, love and kindness.” suggested Maria, 12, and Lauren, 7, added, “You can give earrings, bracelets, jewellery and colouring-in pens!”

A big focus of the World Champions programme is the 10/40 Window, the part of the world where the least evangelised people live. Children are challenged to pray for workers, and many have indicated that they will continue praying. One church is still remembering countries through use of a game from the programme.

Now World Champions is going worldwide, with its own website launched on June 1st. Although the focus of the site is on children in New Zealand, any English-speaking child can look at the website to find great ideas for becoming World Champions!

“It’s so exciting to see God using World Champions,” enthuses Shirley. “It all started because most missions activities we could find for children involved not much more than writing to missionaries - something most kids would never be interested in doing! It was like there was an underlying perception that one can only get involved in missions as an adult. Now we see so many kids getting excited about showing God’s love to everyone around them, and sharing the Gospel as well. This has turned into something more than a missions resource for kids. - It’s like discipleship training, getting children to take their faith seriously.--But in a fun way!” she adds with a grin.

Check out the World Champions section at OM  New Zealand’s site, www.omnz.org.nz.

Credit: OM International
© 2005 OM International