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Missions Programs See Giving Records Set

Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge (BGMC), Girls Ministries' Coins for Kids, and Royal Rangers' Master's Toolbox all broke records for giving in 2017.

In a missions-giving triple, Boys and Girls Missionary Challenge (BGMC), National Girls Ministries Coins for Kids, and Royal Rangers Master’s Toolbox each set records in missions giving for 2017.

For the first time in the history of BGMC, giving to the missions program exceeded $8 million, smashing that barrier with a total of $8,315,805.28 given in 2017 — a 6 percent increase over the previous record established in 2016.

“We are so amazed and blessed that the districts across our nation are really grasping the importance of teaching their kids about the lost,” states David Boyd, BGMC national director. “Not only are these kids caring and praying, they are finding ways to earn money and give it to BGMC.”

Boyd says that kids across the country are doing everything from selling crafts and cookies to sacrificing their own birthday money to help missionaries reach people with the gospel message. He notes that some children raised, individually, $1,000 to even more than $10,000 for BGMC during the year.

He also observes that 55 AG districts are showing long-term growth in giving to BGMC, with only six showing long-term decline. “God is truly moving,” Boyd says. “Many of our district leaders have the goal of 100 percent of their churches teaching their kids about missions through BGMC.”

Although both Coins for Kids and Masters Toolbox are BGMC programs — they’re total giving included in the overall BGMC giving total — they each have specific BGMC projects the money is designated toward.

For the first time, Coins for Kids broke the $250,000 mark, raising a total of $252,451.40 in 2017 for the National Girls Ministries’ Caring for Baneasa project (helping missionaries build a community center in Romania). This represents a 23.55 percent increase over 2016 giving.

“We were intentional about keeping the project in front of our leaders even more than last year,” says Mandy Groot, Girls Ministries national director. “And there is no denying that the contest with Royal Rangers and Master’s Toolbox invoked excitement and friendly competition. Our national Girls Ministries team even got slimed for Coins for Kids — and it was worth it.”

The 2018 Coins for Kids project is called Wonderfully Made. Groot says this project benefits Special Touch Ministries, a ministry that reaches kids with disabilities — physical or intellectual — for Christ and even helps trains churches how to meet the spiritual and physical needs of people with disabilities.

In 2016, Royal Rangers National Director Karl Fleig saw giving toward the Master’s Toolbox project exceed $100,000 for the first time. But in 2017, giving jumped by an amazing 81.98 percent to $185,038.38.

Across the nation young men are developing this heart to serve, reach, and equip others,” Fleig says. “Not only are we seeing this heart for missions in our Toolbox total but this past summer, after the devastation in Puerto Rico, we had an outpost in Illinois raise enough money to cover the charter and curriculum fees for the Rangers there. Then Rangers in the Southeast region of the United States raised $12,000 to send to help other Rangers in Puerto Rico. Our goal is not just to teach compassion and Christlikeness, but to model it in life and with our actions – mentoring. That’s Royal Rangers.”

The Royal Rangers are currently halfway through a unique two-year missions project called Catapult 700 — an effort to provides Royal Rangers training and resources in the Swahili language, a training center in Kenya, and plant 700 new outposts in Africa.

Mark Entzminger, National Children's Ministries director, is pleased by the increased passion for missions among children and churches.

What’s exciting to see is the team spirit that is catching on in the local church,” Entzminger says. “As people begin to link arms between Coins for Kids, Masters Toolbox, and BGMC they find not only are the needs of the missionaries met in greater ways, but more kids are getting a heart of compassion and that is what it’s all about.”

Dan Van Veen

Dan Van Veen is news editor of AG News. Prior to transitioning to AG News in 2001, Van Veen served as managing editor of AG U.S. Missions American Horizon magazine for five years. He attends Central Assembly of God in Springfield, Missouri, where he and his wife, Lori, teach preschool Sunday School and 4- and 5-year-old Rainbows boys and girls on Wednesdays.