A Black December?

I confess. I was one of the millions of internet shoppers on Black Friday scouring adds looking for fabulous Christmas gift bargains. And I found some. Click! It was bought. With help from desperate, arm-chair shoppers like me, retailers hope their balance sheets will show black ink (a profit) instead of red ink (a deficit).

And, while Americans dream of a white Christmas, we missionaries are praying for a black December. The Southern Baptist Lottie Moon Christmas offering supplies half of our entire year’s budget for overseas missions. It’s a lifeline that current economic hardships threaten to cut. But please don’t let that happen.

Thanks to the leadership of Bro. Jerry Rankin and others, we are witnessing unprecedented worldwide church growth. For the past 10 years, the IMB’s priority has been initiating Church Planting Movements among all the world’s people groups. We have moved from traditional to biblical church models, from program emphasis to prayer emphasis, from church buildings to house churches, from seminary training to on-the-job training, from ecclesiastical leadership to non-paid, local leadership, from an institutional focus to a stronger evangelistic focus.

The results have been nothing short of incredible. Your missionaries are now working to facilitate church planting movements among 1,159 people groups, 93 of which were newly engaged this past year. In the past months, we have seen 11,000 new outreach groups, more than 500,000 baptisms, and more than 24,000 new churches!

During the past month in Asia alone, a couple saw more than a hundred come to faith among their unreached people group, 500 new believers were added among migrant workers in a large urban center, a whole village came to faith in a rural area, and two separate people groups witnessed their first believers ever. On our island during the past year, we have baptized 100 new believers and seen more than a dozen house churches born. The fields are, indeed, “white for harvest”.

But we need a black December to keep it going. Because of a faltering economy, Southern Baptists may be forced to draw down our overseas missions force in 2010 by as many as 600 missionaries. Current missionary medical and retirement benefits are having to be reduced. Our trustees learned that $7.5 million will need to be pulled from contingency reserves to balance the budget, leaving only six weeks of available reserves in case of major unexpected expenses.

So this December, while you dream of a white Christmas, would you help make our December black!

I’m dreaming of a black December,
Just like the ones I used to know,
With our churches giving,
and the gospel living,
in hearts, that help God’s kingdom grow.

I’m dreaming of a black December,
With every prayer both day and night.
May your days be merry and bright,
as you help shine forth the gospel light.

Hey, I know it’s corny, but you get the point. May you have a blessed and merry Christmas.