Ideas for Celebrating WMU History in Your Church

Here is a list of some of the ideas, events, and remembrances people have done to commemorate WMU historical anniversary dates in churches, associations, states, and the national office. Included are some new ideas as well:

1. Write and perform skits or monologues about beginnings, developments, and significant events in the history of the organization
   
   
2. Have parades of persons dressed in costumes from different time periods
   
   
3. Set up displays or museums (temporary or permanent) with items from previous and current WMU activities (magazines; pamphlets; award items like crowns, capes and jewelry; photographs; products like tote bags, offering banks, books)
   
   
4. Create and either sell or give away special memento items. Some of these might include: Counted cross-stitch picture of a centennial theme/logo (used as a small banner with dowel, or a bookmark, for example); specialty items ordered with same theme/logo printed on them (toothpick holder, key chain, visor or cap, T-shirt, coffee mug, sport drink bottle, plastic 'globe' paperweight, pot holder, note pads, pens/pencils, letter openers, post cards, picture frames)
   
   
5. Create a scrapbook or display existing ones
   
   
6. Create a Web site specifically to promote the anniversary celebration
   
   
7. Dinners/programs with special guest speakers, including missionaries, who will have interesting stories to tell from the past and who can inspire new interest in missions
   
   
8. For celebration events, create specialty nametags with different color ribbons attached, identifying each wearer with a particular group or achievement; for example, red ribbon for former members of Girls in Action; green for Girls' Auxiliary; blue for Royal Ambassadors; gold for YWA; purple for Woman's Missionary Societies/Baptist Women/Women on Mission members, and white or another color for missionaries or other honored guests. These are examples of ribbon colors and groups; others might be more appropriate. Some of the age-level insignia colors are repetitive: Both YWA and GA used green; GA also had gold, and white; Sunbeams used gold, also. The current Women on Mission logo is teal, not purple. WMS was purple, and the overall WMU colors are basically purple, or purple and white, or purple/gray/white. Specific information about logos and their colors and designs is available in the Hunt Library and Archives of WMU, SBC. Email archives@wmu.org or call (205) 991-4047.
   
   
9. Hold tours of significant places in the surrounding areas: for example, a building where mission activities were/are held or a church where the first WMU was organized. A tour could be combined with a luncheon or program, particularly in a church building (which might incorporate other ideas previously listed--see suggestions 1, 2, 3, 7 and 8).
   
   
10. Have a celebration "party" or "festival" with balloons, face painting, games, entertainment, horse-and-buggy rides, food, etc. Small amounts of money could be asked of participants in the different events, and the proceeds given to state or associational or national mission offering(s), or to a particular mission project or missionary family agreed upon in advance by the planning committee—you could even let Web site users cast online votes in advance for something like this, to create interest.
    
    
11. Promote and follow-up with the idea of churches sending teams of GA or Acteens "journalists" to the celebration events, to write "news stories," interview guests and participants, take pictures, and record with video or audiocassettes. This would create interest in the children and provide information to their churches after the fact. This would be another feature to present and manage through the Web site. Similar to suggestion 11, hold an art contest with age-divisions and specific requirements (what concept is to be depicted, what media are acceptable)—or put a black-and-white picture on the website that participants can print at home and enter in a coloring contest. Display all art at the 'big event' with ribbons attached to the winning entries.
    
    
12. Create a keepsake quilt, with pattern, that individuals can reproduce at their own pace, or produce one "official" quilt that participants in the celebration can add a few stitches to, with supervision, during the 'big event.' Include a combination bookstore and gift shop in one or more of the celebration events, featuring commemorative items (see suggestion 4) and current WMU and New Hope products.
    
    
13. Invite representatives from the state and SBC historical societies to be present and to inform people about what they do and the importance of preserving history. If people cannot be present, provide literature about these organizations-because if people interested in history are to be found, they are likely to be found at a centennial anniversary event.
    
    
14. Inform local news media of events in your celebration so they will be more likely to provide coverage and thus give airtime to the event and to mission work.