April 24, 2024
Churches are encouraged to take part April 10 in promoting the engine driving Southern Baptist missions through the state, country, and worldwide – the Cooperative Program.
“The big question we’re asking this year is ‘How far will you give?’” explains Buck Burch, Georgia Baptist Mission Board state missionary for Cooperative Program – Giving and Stewardship. “If the answer is not ‘Beyond,’ then we’re not giving enough.”
Burch points out Ephesians 3:20-21 as the basis for that emphasis. In that passage, Paul encourages the church in Ephesus to focus on Christ, the one “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” in the scope of what can be accomplished to spread the Gospel. “The issue is this,” Burch points out. “This is God’s work, beyond what we can think of or do on our own.”
The Georgia Baptist Mission Board is providing free downloadable materials to churches for CP Sunday, including bulletin inserts, graphics, and an accompanying PowerPoint presentation. The theme for the materials is “CP/Beyond”.
In addition to the downloads at the Cooperative Program Sunday site, promotional videos like the one below can be used to teach churches about the impact of CP.
“CP Beyond takes a unique approach to relating how our giving takes us beyond our own tithe, beyond our local church, beyond our state borders, and beyond this generation,” explains the website for Georgia Baptist Cooperative Program.
In the PowerPoint file, four areas of Cooperative Program giving are explored. “Beyond/Me” connects with the individual’s opportunity to tithe through the local church, thereby connecting him or her to work being done nearby as well as elsewhere. “Beyond/Us” focuses on partnerships with nearby churches. “Beyond/Georgia” branches to missions throughout the world. “Beyond/Now” takes the message to generations past, present, and future.
The Cooperative Program is Southern Baptists’ unified plan of giving through which cooperating Southern Baptist churches give a percentage of their undesignated receipts in support of their respective state convention and the Southern Baptist Convention missions and ministries.
