TOGETHER: Give generously to support missions_92004

Posted: 9/17/04

TOGETHER:
Give generously to support missions

In this new century, Texas Baptists already have started 1,008 new churches. We are ahead of our goals and grateful to God for his blessings on our efforts to work with established churches in giving birth to new congregations all across our state. Hispanic church starts number 608 of these, and there have been new churches started in 18 different languages.

You are doing some of your best mission work when you give through the Texas Cooperative Program and the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. We have increased our commitment to new church starts through both of these missions-funding channels.

This year's Texas missions theme–“Plant … Water … Harvest”–comes from Paul's admonition to the Corinthian church that in God's economy of evangelism and missions, one person may plant a gospel seed, another may water the seed, but only God can give the harvest. But God does call us to plant and water, and he calls us to wait patiently for the harvest. At the appropriate time, God will send us into the fields to gather the harvest he has provided.

I have been in Happy, Alice and Pearsall this past week, talking with pastors and church members about our partnership in the gospel of Christ. Every time I go into the fields of Texas, I am renewed in my heart and stretched in my soul. Texas Baptists want to touch all of Texas and as much of the world as possible. There seems to be nothing too big or daunting that you will not, with God's help, set out to accomplish.

Woman's Missionary Union of Texas sponsors more than 30 Christian Women's Job Corp sites where volunteers are at work helping women who need job skills have the opportunity to accept a “hand up, not a handout.” Your gifts to the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions make this possible. The testimonies of these women who can now care for their children, who now take justified pride that they can achieve their goals, who have become mentors for others, who have found that Jesus really does make the difference in their lives will cause your heart to swell with gratitude that you had a part in helping make that possible.

One of the most exciting developments in our state mission strategy is to see our Texas Baptist institutions grow more and more involved in helping our churches do mission work. Texas WMU has taken note of these effective mission efforts and assigned some of the Mary Hill Davis Offering to assist our universities, hospitals and child-care ministries in direct mission activities. This collaboration is one of the ways Texas Baptists are going to be more effective in missions work than we ever have been.

I encourage you to be a part of all we are doing together by giving generously through your church to the Mary Hill Davis Offering.

While Texas WMU is busy with helping hundreds of mission activities come to pass across Texas, our Texas Baptist Men also are at work. Hurricanes have devastated much of Florida and the Gulf Coast in recent days. Our Texas Baptist Disaster Relief units were among the first to arrive, and they will continue to be involved as long as needed. The BGCT receives funds to aid in disaster relief. What you have given before made it possible for us to be there early, and what you give now will enable us to stay late and be ready for whatever comes. Every dollar given for disaster relief is used for disaster relief when you give it through the BGCT.

I thank God every time I think of you.

We are loved.

Charles Wade is executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas