Chuck Lawless on the Why of Lottie Moon

This week is the week of emphasis and prayer and fasting for foreign missions and Lottie Moon.  The Lottie Moon Christmas offering will be taken up Sunday and many are unaware to who Moon was or why we take this offering up.  In brief, this is an offering that goes to support foreign missions.  As one who has been overseas a couple of times doing mission work, I have seen how these funds promote the spread of the gospel overseas.  If we truly believe in the gospel, then we ought to take this offering more seriously than we do.  If we really love the unredeemed, then we will give.

Recently, Southern Seminary professor Chuck Lawless wrote an article in the Baptist Press on the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and why it is so important.  After sharing with the reader a number of stories and testimonies of lives changed by the gospel, Dr. Lawless writes:

We have seen firsthand the changing power of the Gospel around the world, and those experiences remind us that Lottie Moon dollars are still making an eternal difference.

What keeps me awake at night, though, are those who have never heard or who do not yet believe. More than 6,000 people groups around the world have no Gospel witness. By some estimates, as many 3.5 billion people have never heard the Gospel. Some 6 billion people are lost without Christ.

Six billion lives at stake, and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering provides almost 55 percent of the IMB's annual budget to engage this lostness. Clearly, Lottie Moon still matters.

Six billion people right now are lost and going to hell.  How can we sleep at night knowing that we have done nothing about that?  We are ambassadors of Christ.  We therefore have a message to declare and we ought to take that message, and the Lord of that message, more seriously.


Baptist Press (Chuck Lawless) - FIRST-PERSON: Why Lottie Moon Matters

Treasures in Heaven and the Great Commission: An Important and Timely Sermon

Throughout the week I listen to countless sermons and lectures on whatever text we study on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Sunday School, or Wednesday night.  I am now sitting in my office studying for Sunday morning and find myself listening to an important sermon by Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Dr. Al Jackson on Matthew 6:19-24.

What makes this sermon important isn't just the great exposition of the text but also with how it applies to the Great Commission Resurgence.  The GCR is an Southern Baptist movement to take the gospel to the nations.  The title of the sermon is The American Dream as an Obstacle for a Great Commission Resurgence.  So if you have an extra 40 minutes I encourage you to listen to this sermon and think seriously about the text and how it applies to our giving to the Cooperative Program and missions.  Will we store up for ourselves treasure and earth which are temporal or treasures in heaven (and sow the gospel among the nations) which are eternal?



Al Jackson - The American Dream, an Obstacle for a Great Commission Resurgence from Southeastern Seminary on Vimeo.

Find it Here Media Campaign

One of the first, if not the first, advertisements from the Kentucky Baptist Convetion promoting Find it Here has been released. We will be participating in the KBC's attempt at reaching every home in Kentucky with the gospel. Here is the ad:

How Much Do You Hate Others?: The Necessity of Being Fishers of Men

Tomorrow morning we will be looking at Matthew 4:12-25. In the middle of that passage is the famous account of Jesus calling on Peter and Andrew to "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." Sadly, most of us want to follow Jesus, but not surrender to him. The following video is a gut check. It is sad whenever an atheist has a better understanding of the Great Commission than Christians: