tell me the story of Jesus.
Since 1888 Southern Baptists have participated in Christmastime prayer and giving for international missions. Charlotte “Lottie” Moon suggested the offering only a year earlier in 1887 writing, “Is not the festive season, when families and friends exchange gifts in memory of The Gift laid on the altar of the world for the redemption of the human race, the most appropriate time to consecrate a portion from abounding riches and scant poverty to send forth the good tidings of great joy into all the earth.”
Lottie Moon committed not only her prayers and her money for the proclamation of the Gospel but her very life. When the girls she was ministering to in China were starving, she gave her own food to them and died from hunger and exhaustion on Christmas Eve 1912.
Today, we continue to honor her sacrifice with the annual Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Every dollar that you give this December in a Lottie Moon Christmas Offering Envelope goes directly to our missionaries deployed by the International Mission Board. Our Cooperative Program giving throughout the year covers all the administrative costs of the IMB. Therefore, every dollar of this offering goes directly to the needs of missionaries on the field telling the story of Jesus to the lost.
It’s a simple story, yet the most powerful ever told: the story of Jesus. Do you remember the first time you heard and believed? God has blessed Southern Baptists with unprecedented opportunities to share the Gospel, but new missionaries can’t go without churches’ continued commitment to give and pray. This Christmas, give generously to Elk Lick’s Lottie Moon offering so the lost can hear that same, simple story that changed your life.
December 2007
