TOGETHER:
Missions offering provides lenses for 'seeing Jesus'
___Many impressions have been made on my heart in these first 19 months of service to you as executive director.
___I have been impressed by the strength of our churches, as measured by the devotion of pastors and laypeople to God, to one another and to people all around them. You can see it in the eyes of people as they gather to worship and reach out to one another. You can feel it
| |
CHARLES WADE
Executive Director
BGCT Executive Board
|
as people bring their offerings of presence and money, determined to be faithful stewards of everything in their lives.
___I also have felt deep admiration for the mission spirit of our people. I have spoken often about reaching out to all the people of Texas--about our churches beginning to look like the communities in which they serve, about putting our arms around Texas and hugging this state up close to God. I have been blessed by your eagerness to make a difference in people's lives for Jesus' sake.
___Last year, our churches baptized 65,000 people. More than 7,000 young people made professions of faith in Christ at our summer camps.
___Through Baptist Student Ministries, about 1,000 college students came to know Christ and thousands from our churches were strengthened in their faith during one of the most critical times in their lives. About 350 of these college students served as summer missionaries, and countless others worked in local missions projects and ministries that resulted in more than 2,000 professions of faith.
___We have started 164 churches in the first eight months of the year, mostly in predominantly Hispanic, African-American or ethnic communities.
___To provide trained leadership for all our churches, Texas Baptists are investing heavily in theological education at Hispanic School in San Antonio, Truett Seminary in Waco and Logsdon School of Theology in Abilene, as well as at our Baptist universities and multi-level educational centers around the state.
___Texas Baptists have a broad vision of missions. It is about helping people come to know Jesus Christ, starting new churches and doing God's work in our communities and around the world. It is about calling out the called and equipping them for service where God wants to use them.
___Your offerings and prayers and God's blessings have made all this possible. Through the Cooperative Program giving of churches, with God's help, we all have been a part of each of these victories in the lives of girls and boys, women and men.
___Through the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas missions, you and your church have the opportunity to add an essential extra to help all these ministries happen. Our goal this year is $5,750,505. With it, we can provide scholarships for more ethnic students to prepare future leadership for Christian service. We can start churches all across Texas. We can support ministries that change hopelessness to usefulness. We can make a daily and an eternal difference in human lives.
___Please allow me to challenge you and your church to give more this year to the Mary Hill Davis Offering than ever before. It will enable people to see Jesus through the prayerful ministry of Christians who are passionate about their calling--the calling to go into the world as Christ came into the world, so that life could never go back to being the way it was.
___We are loved.
___
The Baptist Standard
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC ) and around the world.
Contents/ Masthead / Why We're Here / Links / Archive / E-mail us/ SUBSCRIBE!/ Signup for FirstLook
|