Summit, I’m consistently blown away with how generous you have proven to be over the past two years. When we began our “All-In” initiative in 2012, we pledged together to give over $30 million toward the mission of God at our church. We still have a few weeks left in December, and I think we can get to $33 million.
As a church, it has always been a joy to me that we give so much of our money away to missions. We give toward missions opportunities directly, as we recently did by helping to re-launch ReCity, an organization that serves the most disconnected youth in our community. We also give to the International Mission Board (IMB), the agency through which we send out most of our church planters.
Every year, the IMB has a special offering—called the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering—in which every penny goes directly to support the missionaries on the field. I challenged you this weekend, and I want to repeat it here: if we exceed our new goal of $33 million, we are going to increase our Christmas Offering by 50%–upwards of $100,000 above what we typically give.
That goes to fund people a church planter named Jesse, a close friend of mine working in India. Just last week, we got this report from him:
“This year our team has trained hundreds of national partners in a year-long Biblical studies program. We meet monthly with these men for teaching on Bible, family, and church planting. In order to graduate from this program, the men are required to not only pass the exams, but 3 of their disciples must also pass, and they have to start 2 new churches. In one district in the eastern part of our state, 18 of these program graduates have started 62 new churches in the last 3 years! We are seeing the book of Acts happen again right here in central India!”
God is calling some of us to go work with Jesse and others like him. But he’s calling all of us to give. For years my family and I have been saying that we want our largest Christmas gift to go to Jesus. We want to mobilize the church to bring the greatest news on earth to the very ends of the earth.
So join with me as we respond to God’s lavish generosity toward us. Ask God to help you grow in generosity of spirit. Set a benchmark for yourself. And then go for it! Open your hands and watch as he multiplies your meager “5 loaves” into something more than any of us can ask or imagine.
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