An assessment of mission education participation among Southern Baptist churches in West Virginia

This research is a mixed method study concerning mission education strategies among churches in the West Virginia Convention of Southern Baptists. The study asked churches who had submitted an Annual Church Profile consecutively for years 20022012 to identify the importance of mission education in the local church and their involvement in including an intentional mission education strategy. The researcher gathered information and assessed the impact the inclusion of a mission education strategy had on a local church's involvement in missions. The survey asked the churches that identified an intentional mission education strategy to provide a description of the strategy, their involvement in North America and international missions and church planting. The research also compared the total Cooperative Program giving and Great Commission giving of churches that employee an intentional mission education strategy with those churches that did not identify an intentional mission education strategy. The study revealed churches with an intentional mission education strategy are more likely to be engaged in the mission of God through sending mission teams, sending full-time missionaries, planting churches, and experience an increase in mission giving per capita.;Keywords: mission education, missions, church planting, discipleship.