December 4, 2000
CBF offering urges getting personal with missions
___ATLANTA--The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is urging Baptists nationwide to "get personal" with missions this year.
___Promotion for the Fellowship's annual Global Missions Offering features the "get personal" theme as a way to illustrate the united focus CBF places on home and foreign missions.
___"Doing missions in my world doesn't have anything to do with geography. It has to do with whomever I come in contact," said Ann Tucker, a member of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, who appears in a CBF video promoting the offering.
TEXAS BAPTISTS participating in a recent prayerwalk sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in Middle East met this Kurd woman and her child as they walked and prayed.
___Wilshire is one of three Texas congregations that have put a personal focus on missions by adopting the Albanian people group.
___That led Wilshire members to travel to Macedonia to work with native Texan missionaries Shelia and Arville Earl, but it also opened the congregation's eyes to the global nature of missions today, said Minister of Missions Karen Gilbert.
___"What we've found here is that not only are Albanians living in Kosovo and Macedonia and Albania, but there are Albanians living in Dallas. And so we really have no borders as we minister to a people group."
___The Texas churches participating in CBF's Albanian focus--the other two are Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston and Trinity Baptist in Harker Heights--are part of a larger trend, according to Arville Earl.
___"We've seen an increase in the number of churches that have adopted (people groups), but we've also seen a major increase in their involvement and ways in which they have direct contact with Albanians," he explained.
___"The work of our missionaries and the work of our churches are the same work," added CBF Coordinator Daniel Vestal, former pastor of First Baptist Church in Midland and of Tallowood. "Our prayers and the prayers of people all over the world rise together as a sweet incense before God. We give money and time not just to send and support someone else, but to participate in what God is doing in all places of the world."
___Texas Baptists ranked first among all states last year in gifts to the Fellowship's missions budget. According to CBF records, 423 Texas Baptist churches gave $2.85 million to the Fellowship's budget. Texas churches gave an additional $1.07 million to CBF's Global Missions Offering last year.
___Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas ranked second nationwide in gifts to the missions offering. Four other Texas churches also were among the top 10 contributors to the offering--Tallowood, Wilshire, South Main Baptist Church in Houston and First Baptist Church of Amarillo.
___The financial contributions, prayers and personal involvement of churches in Texas and beyond are felt by CBF missionaries.
___"As I drove on mountain roads, or meandered through a congested city marketplace, I knew that you ... were on journey with me, actively involved in the events of each day," said missionary Tamara Tillman.
___"Because people give to CBF, for the first time in history, a Christian family lives in our village," said another CBF missionary who works with an unreached people group in southeast Thailand.
___This year's national goal for the Global Missions Offering is $5.5 million. Offering resources are available by calling (888) 801-4223, or at www.cbfonline.org.
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