Thanksgiving Offering – November appeal
2011-12 THANKSGIVING OFFERING | GOAL: $100,000.00
PLEASE GIVE AS GENEROUS AN OFFERING AS THE LORD ENABLES YOU TO GIVE.
PRAY – PURPOSE – PLAN – PREPARE – PERFORM
[Please read 2 Corinthians, chapters 8-9]
We started emphasizing our need to stabilize our monthly General Fund giving back during the 2008 Spring Conference. We called it MONTHLY GENERAL FUND SOLVENCY. Our goal was – and is – to increase our monthly General Fund giving to supply at least the $44,000.00 we need each month just to provide our missionaries with their salaries, standard expense accounts, hospitalization premiums, and Mission Sheets correspondence with you, their faithful supporters. We call those commitments ESSENTIAL MAINTENANCE TRANSACTIONS [EMT, for short], or TIER 1 disbursements.
We knew when we introduced that emphasis that it might jeopardize some of our giving to the Thanksgiving Offering. We hoped and prayed it would not, but we knew that possibility existed. We still continue to pray to God – and appeal to you – that we maintain equal and simultaneous focus on both our MONTHLY GENERAL FUND SOLVENCY and our THANKSGIVING OFFERING.
We also need a very generous Thanksgiving Offering to supply all the other “TIER 2” disbursements we have committed to our missionaries from the General Fund. Those disbursements amount to an additional monthly average of $5000-6000 per month.
I have just received and processed our offerings from October. Our giving to the General Fund during October was down significantly. I have just done the preliminary calculations for our missionaries’ monthly deposits. I will need to make an additional deduction of $10,545.55 from what I would ordinarily deposit to their accounts. I will do that by deducting an amount that is proportionate to the offerings they receive designated to them by name.
We deeply regret having to do this – but the funds to supply the commitments we have made to them are not in the checking account. We will barely make it through the next two months with the few dollars we have remaining from last year’s Thanksgiving Offering.
WE KNOW THAT YOU ARE GIVING WHAT IS BEING GIVEN – and we bless and thank God for each one of you and for each one of your offerings. We know that we are appealing to the same ones who are doing the present giving. And, we also know that many of you are struggling to make all your own ends meet…and not too successfully, either. We pray for you – that our God will provide all your needs according to His riches in Glory by Christ Jesus.
• PLEASE CONTINUE TO PRAY TO GOD TO GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO GIVE. Review “AN APPEAL TO PRAY IN CONCERT” from the September issue of the Mission Sheets – and on this FaithWorks page, September archives.
• PLEASE CONTINUE TO REMEMBER THAT, HUMANLY SPEAKING, WE ARE ALL OUR MISSIONARIES HAVE TO SUPPORT THEM. Every missionary needs a committed and faithful support base. There are many good, Godly, and faithful missionaries serving our Lord all around the world – and every one of them needs sufficient support. THE MISSIONARIES SERVING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BFM HAVE NO OTHER SUPPORTERS BUT US. We must be faithful to them.
• PLEASE CONTINUE TO GIVE TO THE GLORY OF GOD. Keep your focus on God’s Glory and pleasure! God is glorified when His Gospel is preached to all the nations and peoples of the world. Jesus Christ receives love, worship, and honor when sinners are saved and brought to God. God is pleased when we share His heart to tell everyone in the world about His Glory. God’s pleasure and joy is “Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy!” [Psalm 67.4]