{"id":1269,"date":"2010-12-02T05:00:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T12:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1269"},"modified":"2010-12-02T05:00:13","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T12:00:13","slug":"budgets-cp-lottie-moon-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1269","title":{"rendered":"Budgets & CP & Lottie Moon, Oh My!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Largest Indoor Christmas Tree in America at the Galleria Mall in Dallas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With three boys in our home\u00a0— ages 11, 9 & 5 —\u00a0there is one question that continually gets asked this time of year.\u00a0 If you have young children or grandchildren — or if you remember when you were a kid — you know\u00a0what that question is:\u00a0 “When is Christmas?”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Christmas always arrives on December 25.\u00a0 When I was my boys’ age, it seemed like it would never get here.\u00a0 As I have grown older,\u00a0Christmas (and the end of another year) comes much more quickly.\u00a0 It was just last year that I spent my first holiday season in New Mexico.\u00a0 Actually, it was three years ago — time flies when you’re having fun!<\/p>\n

As a pastor, the holiday season also offers\u00a0the mores:\u00a0 more busyness, more stress, and more food!\u00a0 From Christmas musicals to holiday parties to Chrismas Eve Candlelight Celebrations (two this year), every weekend in December\u00a0is jam-packed with Christmas activities.\u00a0 If I didn’t know any better, I would think that all of this busyness (at Christmas and throughout the year) contributes to the burn-out of so many pastors, but that’s a post for another day.<\/p>\n

As if the normal Christmas-time activities were not enough, December also brings with it new church budgets and an annual missions offering.\u00a0 This Sunday, we will\u00a0vote on our church’s 2011 church budget and we\u00a0will\u00a0begin in earnest to emphasize\u00a0the\u00a0SBC’s\u00a0Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions (100% which goes to support our missionaries in the field).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like\u00a0most Southern Baptist churches that still practice some form of congregational polity, our entire congregation will vote to approve the budget.\u00a0 And, like many of our sister SB chuches in New Mexico and throughout the country, the coming year’s budget will reflect the economic conditions that have affected our members and, by extension, their giving.<\/p>\n

In the midst of an economic downturn, it would be easy to “rob Peter to pay Paul.”\u00a0 We could, like some other churches (larger and smaller) in the SBC, scale back our support of missions and ministry\u00a0by lowering\u00a0the percentage of our\u00a0undesignated receipts in 2011\u00a0that\u00a0we give through\u00a0the Cooperative Program.<\/p>\n

That approach would\u00a0certainly\u00a0“free up” more money to “invest” in our church’s ministries and missions, even allowing us to fund and support our “own” missionaries, as is common among some of the largest churches in our convention.\u00a0 However, it would, at the same time, “divest”\u00a0from our church’s cooperative ministries and missions, as\u00a0we have witnessed from\u00a0some of the largest churches in our convention.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have\u00a0always thought that the money that our church and thousands of other Southern Baptist churches give through\u00a0the Cooperatative Program\u00a0was being used to fund and support OUR ministries and missionaries.\u00a0 When the churches of the SBC give through the Cooperative Program, we are supporting ministries and missionaries throughout North America and the world.\u00a0 My church may not be as affluent and independent-minded as some churches that have called and sent their own missionaries outside of the SBC mission boards, but my church cooperatively funds thousands of\u00a0its own missionaries each through NAMB and IMB.<\/p>\n

How can that possibly be the case?\u00a0 It’s called the Cooperative Program!\u00a0 It may not\u00a0sound as glamorous as “Great Commission Giving,” but, as one former SBC President said,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Baptists\u2019 best bounce for their Baptist buck is through C.P. [the Cooperative Program].\u00a0 With the Cooperative Program, everyone can. Your dollar works seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, all around the world, non-stop — even when you\u2019re snoring, asleep, it\u2019s still working.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think Bobby Welch is right!<\/a>\u00a0 By giving through the Cooperative Program, our church — and thousands like it — are being good stewards of the financial resources that God has entrusted into our care.\u00a0 Just because our church gives through CP does not mean that we can’t participate in other Great Commission opportunities (we do), but why try to go it alone when we can do much more together with our fellow Southern Baptists through our cooperative missions endeavor?<\/p>\n

Those who have followed my blog know that I support the Great Commission, but continue to oppose what has come to be known as the GCR.\u00a0 It would be easy during these hard economic times to use opposition to the GCR or to the “vision” (we’ve been told that people give to “vision”)\u00a0of NAMB, IMB\u00a0or\u00a0their leaders to cut back on giving through the Cooperative Program and the\u00a0Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong mission offerings.\u00a0 Even though others have taken that approach in the past, in a word, that would be wrong!<\/p>\n

You see, our church is not\u00a0supporting a vision.\u00a0\u00a0Bethel Alamogordo, through CP and the mission offerings, \u00a0is partnering with thousands of other Southern Baptist churches to continue funding and supporting the current (and future) missionaries who are fulfilling the Great Commission\u00a0in our own backyard and around the\u00a0world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These are\u00a0OUR missionaries.\u00a0 Some are serving in dangerous and remote places.\u00a0 Regardless of who is casting the vision in Nashville,\u00a0Richmond, or Alpharetta and, regardless of whether our church personally\u00a0supports the\u00a0GCR, we will\u00a0not abandon those on the mission field.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Now, more than ever, our missionaries need our help to\u00a0penetrate the lostness in North America and to take\u00a0the Gospel to the ends of the earth!\u00a0 Sounds like the Great Commission to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With three boys in our home\u00a0— ages 11, 9 & 5 —\u00a0there is one question that continually gets asked this time of year.\u00a0 If you have young children or grandchildren — or if you remember when you were a kid — you know\u00a0what that question is:\u00a0 “When is Christmas?”\u00a0\u00a0 Christmas always arrives on December 25.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,35,37],"tags":[92,128,172,187,3372,260,433,457,623,728,3392,3393],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-missions","category-religion","category-southern-baptist-convention","tag-annie-armstrong","tag-baptists","tag-bobby-welch","tag-budgets","tag-cooperative-program","tag-cp","tag-gcr","tag-great-commission","tag-lottie-moon-christmas-offering","tag-north-american-mission-board","tag-religion","tag-southern-baptist-convention"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-kt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}