No. Plodder has not gone moderate.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's Lottie Moon knockoff is called "Offering for Global Missions" although I've often seen it promoted as "Global Mission Offering." I don't know if any of the phrases are trademarked as are Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong.
The blog title comes from the church I attended Sunday which was in the midst of promoting what they labeled "Global Missions Offering," a composite (and they explain this in their promotional materials) of the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, and Southern Baptists' World Hunger Fund. The church divides the total roughly 75%, 20%, and 5% respectively.
One offering. One time a year. Divided three ways. From what the pastor said, some give monthly to the offering.
The church is one of the larger IMB supporters and had a missionary speaker from the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention. He is in the states for a few months before returning to his place of service, Japan.
I am told that (a) this is a trend in the SBC, and (b) for this church, it yields a larger offering. I admit that this is the first occasion that I recall seeing this practice in an SBC church (this one would be a mid-mega church, about 1,000 in primary weekly worship).
I'm wondering how widespread this method is and what the rationale might be for it? I could see that it clears the church calendar of one major (Annie Armstrong) and one minor (World Hunger) promotional period. Sometimes Lottie and Annie are almost back-to-back, making for a long stretch of offering promotion.
I don't have any issue with this, just haven't seen it done this way.
SBC life used to be so simple; Lottie, Annie, a state missions offering, Cooperative Program. Not so much anymore: Great Commission Giving, composite offerings, direct offerings.
6 comments:
William,
Glad you haven't dropped out of church altogether :^)
Actually, in my last church, we had a similar "one-time" thrust. And, we were able to give more than normally.
On another note, I just put up a piece on the promo from the IMB. Why they chose the two men they did as poster boys defies reason.
Grace.
With that, I am...
Peter
SBC churches are developing a knockoff mission giving strategy of the CBF. Why not copy what others are doing if it is effective? Thanks CBF.
Yeah I don't think effective and CBF belong in the same sentence. Maybe the words weak, anemic, hilarious but not effective.
I make no criticism of the CBF's mission offering but merely observe that it copies the highly successful LMCO.
I only included them because of the similarity of the offering names.
I've seen in n a few other big churches. But I think it could also be effective in smaller churches who feel like they have another offering every time they turn around. As a pastor, I would feel better about heavily promoting one big offering than try to drum up support several times a year.
Our church has been doing a version of this for about 10 years. My father led one of the churches he pastored to do something similar about 30 years ago. The thinking in my father's church was that a single season of intense mission focus could not only increase giving but jump start the mission education (led by the WMU) process. Worked well.
What my current church does is combine all mission offerings into a single budget item that is funded via special offering envelopes (available all year in the behind the pew pockets). Each year, we establish a Lottie Moon goal. Once the offering reaches that, all other funds go to support the "heritage" independent Baptist missionaries (a legacy of the 2 decades our church was functionally independent), then the remainder supports our church's work with an unreached people group in South America.
No Annie, no Eliza (state offering), etc...
When I was chair of the mission team, I encouraged folks to give monthly to this budget and then sacrificially give at Christmas time. Seems to work well.
Post a Comment