October 17, 2024
Lostness is growing every day. That is the reality that the International Mission Board wants Christ-followers to realize. “We will not ignore it. We won’t be silent. We won’t stand still. We will reach the nations, no matter the cost,” the IMB states on its website.
To reach the nations, every year Southern Baptist churches unite to collect the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. That offering supports missionaries to take the gospel to those who have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ.
The 2023 national offering goal is $200 million. Here is a look at the results of giving to the offering, as well as information about the offering’s namesake.
What do your gifts accomplish?
God’s work through the IMB in 2022 …
• 728,589 people heard the gospel
• 178,177 new believers
• 102,417 baptisms
• 21,231 new churches
• 67 new people groups and places engaged
• 146,026 people received leadership training
• 3,521 missionaries supported with comprehensive care
The cost of missionary presence around the world …
Housing for one missionary family in:
Rural Lesoto — $110 per month
Singapore — $2,500 per month
Japan — $3,166 per month
Language learning for a missionary couple in:
Hungary— $134 per month
West Africa — $1,231 per month
Mexico — $1,833 per month
What is the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering?
• 100% of gifts to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering go directly to missionaries.
• All administrative costs are provided through the Cooperative Program, investment income and other designated receipts.
• Since 1845, the IMB has partnered with churches to send missionaries to live and work among those around the world with little to no access to the gospel.
Who was Lottie Moon?
• Lottie Moon is the namesake of Southern Baptists’ international missions offering.
• Born Charlotte Digges Moon, Dec. 12, 1840, she missed required chapel services 26 times in high school before becoming a Christian.
• Lottie attended Albemarle Female Institute, female counterpart to the University of Virginia. In 1861, she was one of the first women in the South to receive a master’s degree. She stayed close to home during the Civil War, but eventually taught school in Kentucky, Georgia and Virginia.
• Lottie’s sister was appointed missionary to Tengchow, China in 1872. The following year, Lottie was appointed and joined her sister, turning down a marriage proposal.
• Lottie, just 4-foot-9, served 39 years as a missionary, mostly in China’s Shantung province. She taught in a girls’ school and often made trips into China’s interior to share the gospel with women and girls.
• Lottie had several nicknames in China — foreign devil, foreign lady teacher, heavenly book visitor and the cookie maker. Lottie baked cookies to win the hearts of the children and families who were frightened of her.
• Lottie led in the campaign to end the practice of bound feet. The Chinese believed small feet made a woman more beautiful, so girls’ feet were bound tightly with cloth. Girls with bound feet could hardly walk, and infections, gangrene, and even death were common side effects of this practice.
• Lottie wrote letters home detailing China’s hunger for truth and the struggle of so few missionaries taking the gospel to the 472 million Chinese in her day. She once wrote home to the Foreign Mission Board, “Please say to the (new) missionaries they are coming to a life of hardship, responsibility and constant self-denial.”
• At the end of her career, famine, flood and war encircled her China. Her friends were starving. In a final act of empathy, Lottie stopped eating and gave all her food away. When her friends realized the depth of her sickness, they put her on a boat to return to the United States. Lottie died at 72 on Christmas Eve while en route to the U.S.
• In 1918, Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) named the annual Christmas offering for international missions after the woman who had urged them to start it.
