Wednesday during the Coordinating Council meeting, CBF Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal told council members if receipts don’t increase for the CBF Offering for Global Missions, then field personnel may have to be called home. Read the ABP story.
The CBF Offering for Global Missions pays for the salaries, benefits and ministry and operating expenses of field personnel. The goal is based on the line item in the Global Missions budget for those expenditures, which was $6.1 million for this year. And if the goal isn’t met, most likely the Fellowship will draw upon undesignated gifts to make up the shortfall in giving to the CBF Offering for Global Missions. This has been the case in all the other years the goal has not been reached.
But Daniel is correct. We could decide one year that instead of taking from undesignated, we will call field personnel home. My question to Fellowship Baptists is “Would you be more motivated to give because of drastic talk like this?”
Would you give to the CBF Offering if we brought field personnel home?
My good friend and a global missions advocate without peer Janie Sellers of First Baptist Church, Abilene, and a former missionary, said in the meeting she thought churches would respond if we used more dire messaging. She said ““I believe when we start speaking in those kinds of terms to our people, they will respond above and beyond what we think they will do.”
Let me know what you think. And if you want, you can give online now to the CBF Offering and show your support!
I don’t think dire messaging sells. I tend to think that most Fellowship Baptists would prefer to see salaries cut, positions eliminated and partnerships altered here in the U.S. before field personnel are brought home.
In the absence such drastic measures, I think dire messaging won’t be received well by global missions advocates.
To some, dire messaging may indicate that the CBF is seriously ill. Those who take stewardship seriously might think twice about giving their missions dollars to a perceived dying organization.