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Lottie Moon artifact donated to seminary’s missions center

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NEW ORLEANS (BP)–The Global Missions Center at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary recently received a piece of mission history. A friend of the seminary donated a roof tile from a school started in China by Southern Baptist missions pioneer Lottie Moon.

Philip Pinckard, associate professor of missions and director of the center, hopes the link to Lottie Moon will create additional excitement about global missions efforts.

“It is a great privilege and honor for the seminary to have a tangible reminder of the sacrifice and love of Lottie Moon to share the Gospel with those who did not know Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord,” said Pinckard, director of the Global Missions Center and associate professor of missions at New Orleans Seminary.

He added that the tile would remind those on campus of the continuing need to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

The Global Missions Center, launched in 2003, conducts missions research, provides training and resources, and works to reach un-evangelized areas of the world. The center also promotes long- and short-term mission opportunities among students and faculty members.

The donor, a committed Southern Baptist who wished to remain anonymous, was given the tile during a trip to China. The tile came from a schoolhouse started by Moon in Tengchow (now call Penglai) Shandong Province. Moon used the building, which is no longer standing, to train Chinese girls.

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A pioneer in SBC missions, Moon was appointed by the Foreign Mission Board to serve in China in 1873. Her pleas for financial support and additional personnel led to a mission offering around Christmas of 1888. Churches in the South gave enough money to fund three additional missionaries.

Moon gave her life serving on the mission field. Weak and in poor health after a terrible famine in China, Moon left for the United States in 1912. She made it to the harbor at Kobe, Japan, and died on a ship in the harbor on Christmas Eve 1912.

Each Christmas, SBC churches honor her memory by giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. The offering raised a record $136.2 million this year.

The small roof tile is displayed in the World Missions Resource Center in the John T. Christian Library at the seminary.
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