By Paul Chitwood
President, International Mission Board
The 2020 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering goal is $175 million. That number is significant because 2020 marks the 175th anniversary of Southern Baptists sending workers to the nations.
The annual offering makes up almost 60 percent of the International Mission Board’s revenue and helps to support 3,535 missionaries and their families. Going back to 1888, the year Woman’s Missionary Union launched the offering, Southern Baptists have given over $4.7 billion through the offering.
Simply put, our company cannot exist without the Lottie Moon offering and this year’s offering goal is a God-sized goal. We’ve never had a $175 million dollar offering goal and never had a $175 million offering. Last year’s offering, the third largest in history, was $157 million. The largest Lottie Moon offering ever was $165,798,000. That falls almost $10 million short of this year’s goal of $175 million. [Read more…]
Editor’s Note: Charlie and Shannon Worthy are the featured missionaries on Day 6 (Dec. 4) of the Week of Prayer for International Missions (Nov. 29-Dec. 6). The Worthys have strong ties to Tennessee with family in both West and Middle Tennessee. Charlie Worthy is a graduate of Union University in Jackson. They worked closely with Tennessee Baptists during a partnership with IMB personnel from 2010-2017. Two of their four children are attending a Tennessee Baptist university this fall — Micah at Carson-Newman in Jefferson City and Emma at Union in Jackson. They are currently on stateside assignment and will be living in the Woman’s Missionary Union missions house on the property of the Missions Mobilization Center in Mount Juliet until next summer when they return to the field.
On Sept. 15, 1887, a diminutive woman named Charlotte Digges Moon, known to Southern Baptists as “Lottie,” sat at a rough hewn table in a modest hut in China and penned a letter that would forever transform the Southern Baptist Convention.
