How To Adopt A People

The following seven "steps" are condensed from the Adopt-A-People Campaign website How-To Page.  We give them here as a summary to get you started, with the prayer that you will adopt a people in South East Asia.  Look at our Maps and Peoples section for people!

1.  Get Informed.  The web is your friend!  Learn all you can about unreached peoples, missions, the Great Commission.  Share it with others interested in missions in your church.  Learn all you can and pray for wisdom and insight into what you can do to reach the unreached peoples of our world.

2.  Involve Church Leadership.  Communicate your knowledge and ideas to your pastor or leaders or whatever committees your church may have for missions.  If your church is not much involved in missions, ask your pastor if you can start a missions committee or group to pray for and get involved more in the Great Commission.

3.  Contact Mission Agencies.  Find out what your denomination is doing about unreached peoples.  Find out what others are doing as well.  (Contact SEAMIST!)  Pray for guidance from the Lord.  The Great Commission is your responsibility, the ends of the earth is the goal.  Ask the agencies for information about what groups need adoption.  (See our pages!)  Keep gathering infomation while you pray for guiadance.

4.  Select The People Group.  Pray, and choose ONE people group to work on.  If you have different ideas, then get all the info you can about the groups you are considering.  Pray and ask for advice from your pastor and church elders.   Pray and get direction from the Lord until all on your "committee" are agreed.  Then share your decision with the church leadership for their blessing and approval.

5.  Notify the Missions Agency and Formally Adopt.  They will likely be overjoyed at your decision and will begin giving you more information about the people group you are adopting.  Hopefully they will send you photos and other resources you can use to get others in the church more involved.  There may be some kind of agreement you will make or a church service where you pledge to do all God enables you to do for this people group.  It is always good to "make it official" as a church in a special event.

6.  Serve The People Group.  Appoint someone as the "advocate" for the church to the people group.  His responsibility is to keep the church involved as much as possible.  Get everyone praying.  Gather funds for supporting workers.  Involve and inform everyone in the church as much as possible as to what is going on with your people group.  Find ways to get the gospel to the people group.  Be creative.  Stay informed about progress, find out what others are doing, encourage other churches to adopt the group...  in short get as involved as you can and stay involved until the people group is reached!  It may take years, but just keep working at it.

7.  Enjoy the Blessings.  Over time, you and your church will be blessed.  Missions awareness will increase.  God's blessings will flow as you pray and give.  People from your adopted people group will come to Christ sooner or later, churches will be planted, and the Great Commissions will be fulfilled.

If you are interested in adopting a people group in South East Asia, SEAMIST would like very much to be a part of the process.  Just ask....!

Check with Adopt-A-People.org for much more information about all this!

The Seven Aspects of an Adoption - Long version