National Woman’s Missionary Union is building a craft stick houseboat to help teach children about the Cooperative Program.
The project coincides with a unit lesson of Missions Journey: Kids, a missions discipleship curriculum for children in grades 1–6, and is geared toward showing children how and why Southern Baptists work together to tell people everywhere about Jesus.
“It’s all to teach about the Cooperative Program and working together and how we’re better together,” Arkansas WMU President Laura Bramlett said.
WMU’s goal is to have 47,000 craft stick units that will make up the floating houseboat — one to represent each church in the Southern Baptist Convention. To help reach that goal, they invited mission discipleship groups of all ages to lend a hand.
Bramlett was one of several Arkansas Baptist women who gathered on a recent Thursday and Friday for a Together We Glue event at Hebron Baptist Church in Little Rock. Approximately 25 Arkansas Baptist women and children glued craft sticks together to be part of the houseboat. Participants wrote the name of their church on the units they made.
Once groups have mailed (or delivered) their craft stick units to National WMU in Birmingham, the completed houseboat will be unveiled in November 2024 to coincide with the Missions Journey: Kids unit on church planters in South America. The International Mission Board church planters receive U.S. partners at their floating house to help them engage an unreached people group with the gospel.
“Focusing on missions work both here in the U.S. and throughout the world, Missions Journey: Kids will captivate your children’s minds and hearts as they learn about the different avenues Christians use to share the gospel with the nations,” the WMU website said.
For more information on this project, visit “Craft Stick Houseboat and the Cooperative Program.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Mary Alford and originally published by Arkansas Baptist News.
