The eternal impact of mission giving
is being highlighted in the 2008 North Carolina Missions Offering, received by
most churches in September.
A new Website has been launched as a
comprehensive resource including videos, prayer guide for the NCMO Week of
Prayer (Sept. 7-14, 2008) and a Bible curriculum for children for use in small
groups or Sunday School classes.
“We want to help children understand
very early in their lives the impact of God’s Word and its outgrowth of giving
through His church, and this guide is a first class effort by so many to do
just that,” said Mike Creswell, Baptist State Convention senior consultant for
Cooperative Program and NCMO promotion.
Resources have been mailed to North
Carolina Baptist churches. For further questions call (800) 395-5102, ext.
5547.
The NCMO funds North Carolina church
planting, ministries and partnerships with a 2008 goal of $2 million. Among
them, is the work of North Carolina Baptist Men in disaster relief, mission
outreach and partnerships.
“The NCMO keeps us moving and
growing,” said Richard Brunson, Baptist Men’s executive director-treasurer.
“Without this support from North Carolina Baptist churches, we could not
continue our ministry with the same ever-expanding focus which we now employ in
our work. North Carolina Baptists should consider the NCMO the lifeblood
for our ministry.”
In North Carolina’s rapidly growing
population church planting is a critical component in the evangelism strategy
of many congregations and of the Baptist State Convention.
“To effectively congregationalize
new believers is not only a command of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are
finding that the assistance we provide to existing congregations to develop a
church-planting mentality actually helps renew churches in their Great
Commission task of reaching their world for Christ,” said Mark Gray, BSCNC team
leader for church planting.
“Alongside the Cooperative Program
and the national mission offerings of the Southern Baptist Convention, the NCMO
stands as a vital source of intentional engagement with the culture of our
state,” said Creswell.
“The genius of the Cooperative
Program and the NCMO is the multiplication factor which brings together
churches from different regions of the state and forms a gospel alliance to
accomplish together what they could never do alone.”
“And not only that,” said Milton A.
Hollifield, Jr., BSCNC executive director-treasurer, “it provides the means
whereby this state convention can expand and develop new ways of accomplishing
eternal goals through a systematic method of research and development that many
other denominations do not possess.”
“Our focus as North Carolina
Baptists remains centered on the solid foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ
as revealed in the Bible,” Hollifield said. “But our providential advantage as
a convention of churches is the strength we hold together as we learn from one
another, grow together, and have the monetary means to actually reach out in
new ways of church planting, new associational partnerships, and attempt new
projects without the fear of compromising the solid stability that has come to
exemplify North Carolina Baptists. The North Carolina Missions Offering helps
us to do just that to the glory of the Lord.”
The theme of the 2008 offering
is: Eternal Impact: Impacted by Eternal Truth – Impacting for
Eternal Change. “This theme stresses our hope as grounded on Scripture –
the eternal truth of God,” Creswell said. “It both focuses our attention
on the never-changing Word of God and challenges us again to reach out in ways
which would impact our time with eternal truth.”