Southern Baptists’ gifts to the 2007 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions exceeded the national goal for the second consecutive year, with $59.3 million received, the most ever in the history of the offering.
Geoff Hammond, president of the North American Mission Board, shared the news with national and state Woman’s Missionary Union leaders at their mid-January board meeting at Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center in Talladega, Ala.
Hammond noted that WMU is a valued partner in the work of reaching North America. “We cannot do our work without partners. We can’t send missionaries without our partners.”
Presenting a large thank-you board signed by NAMB staff, trustees and missionaries, Hammond said, “We have gratitude to God for your hard work in getting the word out and teaching people about North American missions. Once again, we had the highest Annie Armstrong Easter Offering in the history of the North American Mission Board. Praise the Lord!”
In reaching the $59.3 million record, Southern Baptists exceeded the offering’s 2007 goal of $57 million by $2.3 million.
“We are so grateful to all those in our churches who support North American missionaries through prayer and giving,” said Wanda Lee, WMU’s national executive director-treasurer. “We also greatly appreciate the strong and thriving partnership we share with the leadership and field personnel of the North American Mission Board for the cause of missions.”
Hammond noted that one of the things he has learned in his eight months as NAMB’s president is that “Southern Baptists still love their mission boards because Southern Baptists still love missionaries.”
“The North American mission field is becoming increasingly difficult but wonderfully challenging,” Hammond said. “God is bringing the nations to be our neighbors. Increasing population, ethnic diversity and secularism characterize the future of North America. Engaging people with the gospel is critical. As never before, we want to be your North American Mission Board. We are focusing on missionaries and missionary things. We want to help churches do the kinds of things they could not do without a mission board.”
Showing a video on the work of Brenda Crim, a collegiate evangelism missionary in Anchorage, Alaska, Hammond painted a poignant picture of how gifts to “Annie” are used in his Jan. 14 comments to WMU leaders.
“Our missionaries do what they do so that men, women, boys and girls can know Christ,” Hammond said.
The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering accounts for 47 percent of NAMB’s annual budget, with 37 percent provided by church gifts through the Southern Baptist Convention’s Cooperative Program to jointly support more than 5,000 missionaries and their ministries with state Baptist convention partners.
The 2008 offering goal is $61 million, and the theme for the North American Missions Emphasis is “Live with Urgency.” The offering will be promoted in Southern Baptist churches in March, beginning with the Week of Prayer for North American Missions. The national mission offering was established in 1895 by Woman’s Missionary Union.