Lottie Moon Christmas Offering

Weekly Update – December 5th, 2024 

The Christmas offering that we as Southern Baptists participate in every year is named in honor of a woman named Lottie Moon.  On July 7, 1873, the Foreign Mission Board (now International Mission Board) of the Southern Baptist Convention appointed her a missionary to China. Lottie spent most of her missionary years in Tengchow and P’ingtu, China where she taught at mission schools and ministered to women. Through having immersed herself in Chinese culture, Lottie earned respect among many Chinese people and her missions work won many to Christ.

While in China, Lottie wrote letters to the Foreign Mission Board and Baptist women to plead for more missionaries and monetary support to continue and expand missions work among the Chinese people. From her persistent efforts grew the Christmas Offering, first collected by the Woman’s Missionary Union and given to the Foreign Mission Board to fund missions in China. In 1918 the Christmas Offering for China was renamed the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for China at the suggestion of a woman named Annie Armstrong. In 1926 the offering was renamed the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for Foreign Missions. (You can find more information about Lottie Moon HERE)

Now the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering provides the largest portion of the International Mission Board’s income (up towards 54 percent) and gives Southern Baptists a chance to support their missionaries through 100 percent of their gifts.  Since the offering’s inception, more than $5 billion has been given to the cause of international missions, with every penny you give used to support missionaries as they share the Gospel overseas.

Here are some results of the Lottie Moon Christmas offering from 2023:

• 67 people groups have been engaged
• 21,231 churches were planted.
• 102,417 people baptized
• 728,589 people who have heard the gospel.

There is still work to be done though:

4.6 billion unreached people in the world.

3,100 unengaged people groups

173,000 people dying daily without Christ.

Southern Baptist churches partner with their associations, state conventions and the SBC to do more through the Cooperative Program than they could ever do alone. This year the SBC has set a goal of $205 million for international missions.  This may sound like a lofty goal, but it is a goal that through the power of God, we as Southern Baptists can meet.  Our goal at First Baptist Church is $10,000.  Will you give for the sake of the gospel to spread all over the world?  I pray that as you prepare for Christmas this year that you will consider how you might partner with countless others in praying and funding international missions for the spread of the kingdom of God.

Serving Him with You,
Pastor Michael Nelson