FaithWORKS Report [December 2014]
PRAY AND PRAISE in this issue…
- MIKE AND BEVERLY CREIGLOW—PRAISE GOD for blessing seeds that started being planted 48 years ago in Vitória, a new building going up, and more souls added to the Kingdom of God! PRAY for these new believers and for the First Baptist Church of Vitória to grow strong.
- JOHN AND ALTA HATCHER—PRAISE GOD for His grace! PRAISE GOD for using their children in the Harvest of Souls. PRAY for them as they make more copies of “Meet the Holy Spirit”.
- JOHN MARK AND JUDY HATCHER—PRAY for Darren, Eva, and their newborn child. PRAISE GOD for believers in Tournefeuille sharing their faith with people they know! PRAISE GOD for new contacts and PRAY as they form relationships and witness to them.
- PAUL AND WANDA HATCHER—PRAISE GOD for safe travels to Michigan for the Thanksgiving Conference and for time spent with dear friends along the way. PRAISE GOD for His provision!
- NATHAN AND CARRIE RADFORD—PRAY for the hospital ministry as there are most often more babies and mothers than supplies. PRAY that the mothers would read the Gospel tracts that are given and be saved. PRAY that the Lord would send the right men to be part of their church planting ministry. PRAISE GOD for growth in their daughters this year and for sending a family with children around their age of their daughters that they can play with!
- SHERIDAN AND ANITA STANTON—PRAISE GOD for the Calvary Baptist Mission of Huánuco being organized into a church and calling a pastor. PRAY for their Pastor, Bro. Franz Coba, and the church as they embark upon this new ministry. PRAISE GOD for all He has done in the 32 years they have spent in Peru and for safely transitioning them back to the States! PRAISE GOD for the kindness of Berea Baptist! PRAY as they begin this new chapter in their lives.
- ROGER AND JULIE TATE—PRAISE GOD for Chloe! PRAY as they begin overcoming obstacles of the legal processes to adopt. PRAISE GOD for loving us when we were weak and frail and for changing our hearts little by little.
- BOBBY AND CHARLENE WACASER—PRAISE GOD for saving Ella! PRAY for God to give direction in planting churches in unreached regions. PRAISE GOD for the young men and women who are coming to their services and PRAY as they train them to be missionaries.
Block these dates and plan to attend…
2015 BFM WINTER CONFERENCE
January 18-21 | Sunday-Wednesday
PARK RIDGE BAPTIST CHURCH
Gotha FL [Orlando-area]
“SERVICE”
“With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men…” Ephesians 6.7
For more details, contact Pastor Ben Glover
BentonGlover[at]aol.com | 407.719.9861
We have begun our 2014-15 Thanksgiving Offering with $32,590.39 contributed during November. Last year’s Thanksgiving Offering total was $49,058.41, and it fell two months short of lasting through 2014. We are praying and hoping that many others of you are planning to contribute also.
We use the Thanksgiving Offering to fulfill the commitments we have made to our missionaries for all the other benefits and services that are not supplied from our Monthly General Fund Offerings. If the funds are not given to the Thanksgiving Offering, then we have to tell our missionaries over the course of the year that the funds are not available to give them the benefits that otherwise would have been granted. Please help us respond to their requests for help!
2015 THANKSGIVING OFFERING
Philippians 4.19
And my God shall supply all your need
according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.
We are in immediate need of your most generous Thanksgiving Offering…AT THIS MOMENT!
Matthew 6.8
…for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.
So, let me appeal to you on behalf of our missionaries – with all the wisdom and passion God will grant me – to respond to their needs with as generous a Thanksgiving Offering as God will enable you to give.
2 Corinthians 9.8
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you;
that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work…
Last year’s total Thanksgiving Offering was $49,058.41. It was given over six months, but I assure you, that’s OK! Your Thanksgiving Offering doesn’t have to be given during November! In fact, it will remain open for as long as you need it to be open!
THE THANKSGIVING OFFERING SUPPLIES OUR MISSIONARIES’ OTHER NEEDS THAT ARE NOT SUPPLIED FROM YOUR MONTHLY GENERAL FUND OFFERINGS.
Monthly General Fund Offerings
I know we have produced an attractive and informative brochure to explain how our Monthly General Fund Offering works. It is entitled “Caring for those who care for the world” and is available in PDF form on our website and also by requesting paper copies from the Executive Secretary. But, please allow me here to reiterate how we use your Monthly General Fund Offerings. The Essential Maintenance Transactions [EMT] that provide for their most basic living and ministry expenses are supplied from your Monthly General Fund Offerings. They include salary, housing and ministry expense allowances, hospitalization premiums, and Mission Sheets printing and distribution.
These total EMT disbursements add up to $43,300.54 every month. Only one month in 2014 [January] was the Monthly General Fund Offering sufficient to cover these disbursements. We supplied the following monthly deficits from February-March from the surplus received in January.
Extraordinary Estate Gift
Then, in April 2014, we supplied the deficit in the Monthly General Fund from the remaining portion of the extraordinary estate gift Ernest and Helen Palmer had left BFM in 2013.
Founders Day Offerings
By that time, you were giving your Founders Day Offerings from June through September. The special contributions you made to the Founders Day Offering [in addition to your faithful regular giving to the Monthly General Fund] supplied our missionaries’ Essential Maintenance Transactions over the next four months.
I repeat, all of these every-month basic living and ministry expenses are not provided for from the Thanksgiving Offering; they are supplied from the Monthly General Fund Offerings.
And, in the event that the Monthly General Fund Offerings don’t cover those Essential Maintenance Transactions – and we don’t have other designated funds to use – then we must reduce those standard commitments we have made to the missionaries that month by the amount of the shortage of funds. We had to enact that undesirable necessity in both November and December 2014.
BUT – THESE DISBURSEMENTS ARE NOT SUPPLIED FROM YOUR THANKSGIVING OFFERINGS. Let’s get back to the Thanksgiving Offering now. The Thanksgiving Offering supplies all the commitments and benefits we provide to our missionaries throughout the year in addition to the Essential Maintenance Transactions we have noted above.
Those benefits include:
- furlough transportation expenses,
- children’s education allowances,
- hospitalization deductible reimbursements,
- postage to mail the Mission Sheets,
- maintaining the Missionary Furlough Home in Lexington KY,
- and all the professional and legal services and supplies that are required to maintain all the activities that go on here in the States to keep their ministries going.
And, let me note here that in 2014, [1] we didn’t have the funds to disburse the Children’s Education Allowance benefit, and [2] we had missionaries who didn’t request reimbursement for their furlough transportation back to the States because they knew we didn’t have the funds.
AND SO – WE NEED THE THANKSGIVING OFFERING TO SUPPLY ALL THE OTHER COMMITMENTS, BENEFITS, AND SERVICES THAT ARE NOT SUPPLIED BY OUR MONTHLY GENERAL FUND OFFERINGS. I repeat, last year’s Thanksgiving Offering of $49,058.41 did not supply all the benefits we would have given during the year if we had received a larger Thanksgiving Offering – and what we did receive was exhausted before the end of the year.
Like Paul in 2 Corinthians 9, we are praying to God supply our needs with the means to give a generous offering – and also that He will plant and infuse the Grace into our hearts to give us the purpose, the willingness, and the joy to sow and reap bountifully [verses 6-8].
That is, after all, the way God Himself gives – and the way Christ gave Himself.
2 Corinthians 9.15
Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift.
OUR MISSIONARIES’ MONTHLY DEPOSITS REDUCED IN NOVEMBER
First of all, we want to thank each and every one of you who contributes to the monthly General Fund offerings. You are the ones who supply our missionaries’ essential needs each month to the degree we can fulfill them.
If you are not contributing to the monthly General Fund offerings, please, may we encourage you for the sake of our missionaries’ essential support to begin doing so – as generously as you can?
Again, during the month of December [as alson in November], it was necessary to reduce the modest amounts we have committed to our missionaries each month for their essential maintenance. The reason we had to do this is because our monthly General Fund support offerings were not sufficient to cover the full amounts of the modest disbursements we make to them each month for their salary and expense allowances. So, when the General Fund offerings are not sufficient to cover those commitments, then we must reduce the amounts of the disbursements we deposit to each of their accounts.
So, the effect was – we had to proportionately reduce the amounts we deposited in each missionary’s account for their salary and housing/ministry expense allowances. Our missionaries need and depend upon these modest commitments we make to their essential support needs each month – just like every one of us depends upon our basic essential income coming in regularly each month.
Please help us keep their monthly essential support supplied!
HOW CAN I HELP OUR MISSIONARIES TO RECEIVE THEIR FULL FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS EACH MONTH? Is it worth $1 a day?
Here is a simple way each one of us can help to assure that our missionaries receive the full measure of the already-modest commitments we have made to them each month. We are talking here about the Essential Maintenance Transactions that provide for their most basic living and ministry expenses like salary, housing and ministry expense allowances, hospitalization premiums, and the printing and distribution of their monthly newsletters.
EACH ONE OF US CAN GIVE $1 A DAY TO WORLDWISE MISSIONS THROUGH THE MISSIONARIES WHO ARE FINANCED THROUGH BFM. We realize that many of you are already personally giving way over that amount. If you are, we thank you! And our missionaries thank you! You can see who are maintaining our missionaries’ essential monthly needs by going right now to the Contributions pages and look at GENERAL FUND offerings.
But, our missionaries have so many more friends than these who are listed there! So, if you are not giving personally and regularly to the Baptist Faith Missions GENERAL FUND, then we encourage you to begin right now!
We can afford to give $1 a day – that is just $30 a month – to help our missionaries carry the Gospel of Jesus Christ into all the world. We are talking about what we spend to get a cup of coffee at your local Speedway, convenience store, or McDonalds. Many of us probably spend more than $1 every day without even thinking about it on far more temporary and less valuable pleasures – we consume it in a moment, and it is gone! When we give to finance our missionaries’ ministries, we are saving people for eternity – remember that!
You can give this offering a number of ways: [1] You can give through your church’s monthly offerings to the General Fund by asking your pastor/treasurer to simply add your personal contribution amount to the church’s offering from their treasury. [2] Or, you can give your offerings personally and directly by mailing your check to our Treasurer: Pastor George Sledd, P.O. Box 471280, Lake Monroe FL 32747-1280. [3] Or, simpler yet, you can go to our website www.baptistfaithmissions.org and click on the DONATE/SUPPORT page where you can give online by following the prompts. You can give either a one-time gift, or you can contribute manually every month, or you can set up your contribution to be an automatically recurring gift. “For the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God…” [2 Corinthians 9.12]
KROGER COMMUNITY REWARDS
All of you do not have Kroger stores in your locality – so this won’t apply to every reader. And if you do, not all of you shop at Kroger. But, if you do, you most likely have a Kroger Plus card to scan when you make your purchases to take advantage of in-store discounts and fuel discount points.
Some of you have also been participating in the Kroger reloadable gift card program. By depositing your money on the reloadable card and using the card to make your purchases, BFM received a ‘commission’ from those purchases.
Kroger has discontinued the use of the reloadable gift card. However, they have now made it easier to continue the benefit to your favorite Non-Profit Organization [BFM]. No extra steps. Simply register your Kroger Plus card online and choose BFM as your Non-Profit Organization. Then, use your Kroger Plus card as you always do and Kroger will direct the benefits to BFM.
We have posted all the instructions you need here. If you’re going to shop at Kroger anyway – and still get all the present benefits of using your Kroger Plus card – then we encourage you to add BFM as a beneficiary also.
(You can also download a printable Word document of the instructions with pictures here. Or a PDF here.)
BFM BROCHURES
We now have TWO very attractive and informative professionally-produced brochures. We want you to help us get these promotional messages into the hands of anyone and everyone who is interested in the mission work the Lord is accomplishing through the missionaries who are supported by your offerings through BFM.
(1) The first of these brochures is one that will introduce you to BFM and inform you about the basic principles by which BFM functions. (click here to view)
(2) The second brochure is just now ‘hot off the press.’ This one is entitled “Caring for those who care for the world,” and is designed to inform and explain just how essential the monthly General Fund is to the daily living and ministry needs of our missionaries. (click here to view)
Both of them are full-color, either 6 or 8 pages 8 ½ x 11 format, pictorial, and informative. Will you please help us distribute these brochures as widely as you can?
If you will send your name and mailing address to:
Dave Parks, 3985 Boston Road, Lexington KY 40514
email: daveparks[at]twc.com | phone: 859.223.8374 –
and tell us how many sets of these brochures you want – we will get them back to you by return shipping.
For now, you can access an electronic flip-through version of the new brochure by going to our website and clicking on the brochure cover.
Again, please serve as ambassadors for your missionaries by helping us get either single-copy sets to interested persons or bundles to distribute in our churches. The brochures will ‘speak for themselves’ – for our missionaries.
MISSIONARIES ON FURLOUGH
Please note the new address and phone numbers for John and Alta Hatcher and Paul and Wanda Hatcher. Their address is: 15905 Mercott Court, Clermont FL 34714. Their home telephone number is: 229-529-8497. John & Alta’s email address is: jhatcher[at]uol.com.br.
Paul and Wanda’s cell number is: 239-227-6551 and their email address is: rphatcher[at]gmail.com.
We encourage you to pray for them and correspond with them.
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