Why YOU should participate in the Mission: North America Offering...

by Brad Ransom

Since Home Missions church planters receive their support from money designated specifically to their accounts, does the Mission: North America Offering even help church planters? The answer is an emphatic yes. Although the Mission: North America Offering is undesignated, the money funds projects and office needs that help us support church planters across North America.

Although it would be impossible to list all the benefits of the Mission: North America Offering, consider just a few as it relates to church planting.

The Mission: North America Offering allows office staff to provide necessary support including processing faith promises, publications, finance, the Church Extension Loan Fund (CELF), and much more.

It allows our directors to assist our team and visit church planters on the field for encouragement, as well as providing training and support. It allows them to recruit new church planters and represent the department at state meetings across our denomination.

Unfortunately, from time to time, church planters face deficits and struggling accounts. Money from the Home Missions general fund is often used to bolster deficit accounts and to sustain new church planters until their individual accounts are strong enough to support their needs.

Training is essential to success, and money received from this annual offering is used to provide a host of events and resources to sharpen the skills of our church planting team. Home Missions also provides a free biannual training conference (summit) to supply training and encouragement to church planters. Without funding, this event would be impossible.

The office staff provides a number of additional essential services and programs to help our field teams be successful in planting churches. Every dollar given to the annual Mission: North America Offering helps change lives and impact souls for the kingdom.

We value every individual and church that supports individual church planter accounts, but we also count on gifts to the annual offering to help sustain the general fund. What better way to learn the impact of the Mission: North America Offering than to hear testimonies from those who benefit from it the most, church planters:

• “The national denominational exposure that Home Missions provides for church planters is invaluable to us.” —Howard Gwartney, Arizona
  

• “I am so thankful for the church-planting Summit that our Home Missions Department puts together for us.” —Jeff Goodman, Arizona

• “The help [Home Missions] gives us through training and caring is basically like having an extra right arm in ministry.”—Chad Kivette, Tennessee
  

• “Words are inadequate to say how much Home Missions has helped our work, such as when we were in the red with our account, loaning the funds to build, etc. What a blessing they have been.”—Dexter Guin, Colorado
  

• “Our Home Missions Team in Nashville provides a support system that is crucial for our ministry. With them, we know we have a team who always has our families and ministries in the front of their minds and prayer lives.” —Josh Bennett, Arizona
  

We encourage every church to set aside Sunday, November 23, to promote and receive a special offering for Home Missions. Fifty church planters and countless numbers of others will be blessed by your generosity.

About the Writer: Dr. Brad Ransom is director of church planting for Free Will Baptist Home Missions. Learn more at www.homemissions.net.