This week, the International Mission Board announced that the 2015 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (the IMB’s primary source of funding) raised $165.8 million. That is the largest total in the offering’s 127-year history, and it’s not even close. The previous record offering was in 2013, with $154 million. For the mathematically impaired, that’s a $11.8 million dollar jump. Wow.
Those numbers are a cause for celebration. Under the leadership and vision of David Platt, the IMB has had to make some difficult decisions in recent days. We’ve all felt the sting of having to pull hundreds of missionaries from the field for lack of funding. So to see Southern Baptists respond by giving more towards missions sends a signal: we want to see this change.
We at the Summit have been enormously blessed by the ministry of the IMB. They remain our primary channel for sending our international missionaries. In the past 10 years, we’ve sent out 210 people through the IMB to serve in 32 different countries. Before the end of this year, we’ll be sending out another seven families. Four out of five of all the people we send through the IMB go to the “10/40 Window,” that area of the world with the least access to the gospel message. Without the assistance and funding of the IMB, we simply couldn’t send like we do. And I know that’s true for countless churches throughout the country.
Seeing our Lottie Moon giving increase also offers a challenge as we move forward. We believe that the next wave of missions will be carried forward on the wings of business, because what exists as only a “window” for professional missionaries is often a wide open door for businesspeople. That means that some of how we think about raising up and deploying missionaries needs to evolve also. A huge opportunity has opened before us, if we have the courage and creativity to consider nonconventional methods to advance the Great Commission. There are already some encouraging developments here, and we need to see them continue.
I saw a great example of this though my dad: he worked for thirty-five years for a large, American-based textile corporation. In his last few years before retirement, he volunteered to oversee the construction of some new plants in East Asia. There he was able to rub shoulders with businessmen I would never have been able to get close to had I gone as a missionary. My dad led one of those businessmen to Christ. His “mission trip” didn’t cost the church or the IMB a dime. In fact, he got paid to do it.
I believe that God has already placed in his church the skills necessary to penetrate the most unreached parts of our world—and that many of those skills are in business. That’s why, at the Summit, we’ve started to encourage people to take their work overseas as a part of missions. We have 65 people in the pipeline now who are preparing to move their lives overseas through business in order to partner with IMB missionaries. We also are beginning to talk with many of our retired members about giving the first two years of their retirement to join a team overseas. And we’ve long been hounding our college students to give one summer and the first two years after graduation to serving on one of our church planting teams. We tell them, “You’ve got to get a job somewhere. Why not get it where God is doing something strategic for his mission?”
You see, God has made each of us good at something. “Finding the will of God” means discovering that thing and leveraging it for God’s mission. As we say at the Summit, “Whatever you’re good at, do it well for the glory of God, and do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God.” The question is no longer if we’re called, only where and how.
So, again, an increase in missions giving is cause for great celebration. It’s also a promise from God about what he wants to do in our future, and an invitation to follow him into that future. But that means new, humble, gospel-driven, and mission-focused thinking. So let’s ask for more than we’ve “asked or imagined” (Eph 3:20–21) up to this point, believing that God desires to give it, and let’s risk everything for the God who promises to fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power (2 Thess 1:11-12).
