2019 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering

A partnership with an Alabama Baptist association has helped an IMB worker build relationships with the Americas' most unreached people group.

EAST ASIA (BP) -- Peter Station* lives his life chasing after cows, camels, and gers -- large, round, felt tents that seem to move more than they sit still. His country has more than a million nomadic people scattered across a land mass about half the size of the U.S. To say they're hard to find is an understatement, and to keep connecting with them once you find them is even harder. They're cattle herdsmen who live off the land, and what they need from the land is ever changing with the seasons. They pack their tents up on their camels and move as often as once a month.

IMB president Paul Chitwood shares specific ways Southern Baptists can pray for missionaries around the world, who are "on the front lines of pushing back the darkness."

MEXICO (BP) -- Kristin Luttrell says people ask her sometimes if it gets depressing to serve where she serves. It's a desolate place in Mexico with no medical care, no electricity, no phone service and no real education. The people work in the farm camps by day -- hot, back-breaking labor -- then head to the night shift at the packaging plants. When they get home, they sleep for a few hours and then get up before sunrise to make their family's food for the day.

A letter of encouragement from IMB President Paul Chitwood.

MARIETTA, Ga. (BP) -- Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., received a record $5.1 million in a single day for Great Commission causes, collected to honor outgoing senior pastor Bryant Wright and his wife Anne for 38 years of service. Receipts will be divided among the International Mission Board, the North American Mission Board and the church's ministry budget, said Clay Smith, Johnson Ferry's incoming senior pastor.

Audit reveals missions offerings error; GuideStone offers Secure Health for second year

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Southern Baptist church members gave $157.3 million to support international missionaries in 2018-2019, the third-highest Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions ever received. "Because you and your church gave through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, you are a part of reaching the unreached in every nation," said IMB President Paul Chitwood. "When you make LMCO a priority in your church, by God's grace, we see the numbers rise exponentially of those who meet Jesus for the first time, of those who follow our Lord in baptism, and of new churches planted."

J.D. Greear calls Southern Baptists to seek more than we've "asked or imagined" for global outreach through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions.

The legacy of missionary Lottie Moon in China, Paul Kim writes, "provides inspiration to future generations to fulfill the Great Commission."