UTD: From pocket change to real sacrifice

Raising money for Go Now Missions is a part of Baptist Student Ministry culture. Each year, we set a goal and raise money to help send students on trips across the world to participate in various mission projects.

Kinsey ClineWe do all sorts of fund-raisers—sometimes involving crazy activities—to reach our goal. We hold fund-raisers at local restaurants. We do boys versus girls or small-group competitions—often with prizes, often involving food. We’ve sponsored bake sales. And each Wednesday night, we pass around a jar in which people can drop donations.

Once each semester, we hold a Wednesday night worship gathering set aside to focus on missions. This spring, we invited Robert Hooker to speak about his experience as a missionary—specifically relying on the sacrificial giving of others to support his ministry.

We have noticed that while the fund-raisers help us collect some money, it really is not enough to meet our goal. The jar receives pocket change, but it’s not sacrificial giving. Robert challenged the students to consider how they could give sacrificially, and he gave them some practical examples. He suggested they give up one meal a week and give the money they would have spent to missions. He urged them to use their talents to raise money. He suggested they live more simply in order to give more generously.

This month, we held a competition to “make a cake” on the heads of the losing staff members—our director and part-time intern versus the two campus missionary interns. Students put money into appropriately labeled jars. The “winning” team had the ingredients for baking a cake poured over their heads. Before Missions Night, we had raised probably around $100. The night Robert spoke, they gave around $300. The next week, $1,300 was placed in those jars—all from just 50 students present at Wednesday night worship! 

We don’t expect that $1,300 will be donated weekly from now on—although, if that is what God chooses to do here, we won’t complain! But we know that the message Robert presented was taken to heart. Several of our students have told us about their decisions to stop eating out as often so they can give more to Go Now. Some have built it into their budgets. Some have used the money they have made from part-time jobs or other opportunities to support missions instead of using the money for themselves. 

We are seeing a shift from missions support coming from pocket change to true sacrificial giving. Our students are seeing the biblical basis for supporting missionaries and the eternal impact their money can have when it is used to spread the gospel.

Kinsey Cline, a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, is serving with Go Now Missions as a campus missionary intern at her alma mater’s Baptist Student Ministry.