Last-minute Lottie Moon

Are you short on time to put together a presentation to promote the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this year? No problem! Whether you are the pastor or a missions leader, the IMB has designed several presentations below using these Web resources. Use them all, pick just one or mix and match.

Be sure your Lottie Moon Christmas Offering envelopes are in the pew racks!

These messages are core to any presentation:

• Southern Baptists send missionaries from their churches, through IMB, to go into the world making disciples in the name of Jesus. In that partnership, Southern Baptists provide the funding to send and support these missionaries and their ministries. The more resources they provide, the more missionaries can be sent.
• Because of your giving, missionaries and their national partners recently reported:
  • Nearly 1,700,000 heard a Gospel witness
  • More than 235,000 became new believers
  • 141 new people groups were engaged
• Every penny of the Lottie Moon offering supports nearly 4,900 missionaries.
• Meeting the $175 million goal would send more missionaries to the field.
• More than half the world’s people groups are still unreached and people are dying every day without ever having heard the Gospel.
• This requires sacrificial giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering – gifts that truly honor the Lord.

For more on the offering and why you should give, see About the offering.

Presentations for worship service

• One Sacred Effort
• After showing the video, follow up with points from presentation helps
• Jesus, hope of the World

Presentations for small group

• Whole-church experiences – videos and discussion questions

Week of Prayer stories

Go to the Week of Prayer home page for all the stories featured this year during November 30-December 7 (or anytime).

• Option 1: Create a short PowerPoint or slide show by downloading one picture of each Week of Prayer feature from the photo gallery at the bottom of each page. Begin your presentation by reading the first two paragraphs of the introduction on the Week of Prayer home page. Summarize the vignette for each Week of Prayer people as you show each slide.
• Option 2: Create a longer PowerPoint or slide show by downloading the entire photo gallery for each Week of Prayer people. Follow the suggestions above, but add information from the captions provided for each slide.
• Option 3: All the Week of Prayer profiles are illustrated on video which is located at the bottom of each page. Make your presentation a 30-minute video show! If you have plenty more time, you can combine the video with the photos mentioned above for an hour-long presentation.

All three options can be enhanced with short Lottie Moon @ Work stories that show specific dollar examples of how the offering is bringing the Gospel to lost peoples. These are especially appealing to children!

Whichever of the above three options you choose, consider ending your presentation with a slide of theOne Sacred Effort poster image with your church’s goal inserted. Match your church’s goal with an amount of missionary support according to average salary (e.g., if your church’s goal is $1,000, say “If we reach our goal, we’ll support one missionary doing ministry on the field for a week.”).

• $50,800 a year (average)
• $4,233 a month
• $977 a week
• $139 a day

(Reported March 2014. Support includes housing, salary, children’s education, medical expenses, retirement and more.)

Lottie Moon at Work stories

Go to the Lottie Moon @ Work home page.

• Select one or two examples of a specific ministry the Lottie Moon offering made possible and share with your audience. You could do this several Sundays.
• Remind your audience, however, that the most important thing the offering does is support missionaries themselves on the field so they can share the love of Christ and partner with nationals to plant churches.

End with this challenge: Think about what you spend on Christmas gifts for family and friends. Then consider giving your biggest gift to God through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.

Brief but powerful presentations

Even if you have only a few minutes to bring the Lottie Moon giving challenge to your church, you can still make an impact!

• Let IMB President David Platt bring an impassioned plea and challenge to your church.
• Bring in a virtual missionary speaker on video.
• Using the core messages at the top of the Last-minute Lottie page, show the population clock as a visual reminder that lostness continues to grow.

Need ideas on setting your church’s goal?

Don’t miss our bulletin announcements to reinforce your message in your church media and idea gallery for various activities churches have shared with us.