The J.M.A. was started nearly 150 years ago by Joseph Blake as a movement to educate children about the world church and to raise money which was used in mission overseas. Today the money is divided between the Overseas Division, which receives 80% of the total, and the Home Mission Division, which receives the other 20%. Overseas the money is used to support the work of missionaries and in the form of direct grants to projects concerned with medical and social work, education, evangelism, and agriculture. The Home Mission's income helps to support weaker churches in rural districts and inner city areas; it helps to maintain chaplains in universities, the Armed Forces, prisons, and ministers in new towns. Industrial missions and the provision of factory chaplains are also part of its responsibility.

Acocks Green has a long history of J.M.A. involvement. In 1917 the Belmont Row circuit decided that the J.M.A. members of each church should compete annually far a circuit shield. Of recent years the shield has been awarded on the best set of marks derived from the winner of a circuit quiz and display centred each year on a different Third World country; the best percentage increase in cash raised over the last three consecutive years, and the number of J.M.A. collectors out of the total Junior Church attenders. In this way the smaller churches are not penalised by their lower numbers. Out of a possible sixty-eight times, the circuit shield has been awarded to Acocks Green twenty-six times.

In 1983 and again in 1984 Acocks Green received a letter from Mission House congratulating the J.M.A. members for being one of only twenty-two churches in the country who had raised over a thousand pounds in the course of the year. In 1985 the total raised was £1200.

The raising of money is only one of the aims of the J.M.A. They have a threefold promise: 'I promise to learn, pray and serve so that people all over the world may know and love Jesus.' Acocks Green J.M.A., can be justly proud of its achievements.

Mrs. Barbara Evans is the third member of her family to hold the office of J.M.A. secretary, her son and daughter, Tim and Jackie, also held the same post. Since the 2nd World War other secretaries have been Margaret Mead, David Sharratt, Edna Young, W. Jones and Freda Stagg.