Love Offering 2006

This Sunday, November 12th, is Love Offering Sunday at Bellevue Baptist Church.

After all the information about the improvements and future expansions of the physical plant of Bellevue, there is a reference to funding for the Impact Ministry Center in Frayser, the only mention of any of the 2006 Love Offering going towards missions.

Now, let's look at giving by various churches across the SBC to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions. In 2005 Bellevue Baptist Church was 41st in amount given at $201,725.00. The list of the top 100 churches in total giving is here.

To put that into perspective, however, we need to look at the per capita amount given. For a church like Bellevue, reported to have 29,700 members, that's a paltry $6.79 per member! Even if just 10,000 members contributed, that's still only $20.17 per person. The list of the top 100 churches in per capita giving is here. Note that BBC comes nowhere close to making the cut.

Here are last year's designations for the Love Offering, and there's no mention of missions.

A search of Bellevue's website results in 0 (zero) records containing "Lottie Moon" or the terms "giving" and "missions" in the same article.

Considering the issues facing our church now and the information presented above:

1. Do you plan to contribute to the 2006 Love Offering?

2. Do you believe that recent Love Offerings have been wisely invested in Bellevue and in the ways they were promised?

3. What is your opinion of the amount given to missions? How does it reflect on our vision to "Send out Thy light and Thy truth"?

4. Estimates of the cash reserves of BBC range from $25-30 million, and this year's general budget receipts are estimated to exceed $30,000,000. How does this influence your opinion?

Please remember to keep your comments respectful of others regardless of whether you agree with someone's position or not. We can disagree without being disagreeable.

Thanks to "memphismom02" for the idea for this topic.