A Worldwide Family

There are four annual offerings through which we express our connection to a broader family of Baptist Christians.  The America for Christ offering, received in March, supports Christian centers which offer a broad variety of services – educational, vocational, material -- in the name of Jesus; specialized ministries such as hospital, prison and racetrack chaplaincies; discipleship efforts, including campus ministry and resource development; information and encouragement to support peacemaking, justice seeking and responsible, informed Christian citizenship; a variety of intercultural ministries; and much more.  Go to www.nationalministries.org for detailed information.   

One Great Hour of Sharing, received in June, channels funds quickly to victims of disaster, and – linking up with Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples and other Christians through Church World Service – supports projects of sustainable development around the world.  American Baptists channeled over $1,000,000 of aid to victims of the Haiti earthquake last year, working cooperatively with American Baptist missionaries and Haitian Baptist leaders.  Today, monies are being received to meet the urgent needs in Japan.  Some of these funds are also used to address emergency needs that do not make the front page of the newspaper.

The World Mission Offering, received every October, provides logistical support, underwrites transportation and medical needs, and subsidizes educational expenses for the dependent children of the more than 100 commissioned American Baptist missionaries who are bringing their unique skills alongside of national Baptist leaders in over seventy countries, at the specific invitation of those national leaders.  Each region has special missionaries with whom the churches of that region are invited to relate directly.  These missionaries are our ambassadors in the name of Jesus to the global human family.  Go to www.internationalministries.org to read some of their stories. 

In December, we receive the Retired Ministers and Missionaries Offering.  This offering, administered by MMBB (the American Baptist Ministers and Missionaries Benefit Board), provides annual “thank you” checks to retired ministers, missionaries and their spouses, many of whom served faithfully for long years in hard places, with little financial compensation or security.  Many of these remain faithful workers in our local churches during their retirement years.

Each of these special offerings, plus the United Mission funds that support the ministries of each of our ABCUSA regions – camping, new church development, men’s and women’s work, ministerial development, congregational renewal – and the national leadership of American Baptist Churches, USA, express our connection to a national and global family of Baptist Christians resident in every state of our nation and every inhabited continent of our globe.  These United Mission dollars allow us to be united in mission.  Together we can offer authentic witness to Christ to the Nations in their own tongues and through their own cultures.  Together we can do what no individual congregation or national church can do on its own. 

American Baptist Churches, USA comprises more than 5000 congregations with more than 1.3 million members, and literally no ethnic majority.  The thirty-three regions of American Baptists express the “associational principle”, going all the way back to the Philadelphia Association of 1707, by which autonomous local congregations freely covenant together to do broader, shared ministry.   And in turn, the American Baptist Churches relate to the Baptist World Alliance, comprising 210 member bodies with 47 million baptized members in over 200 countries.  Together, we Baptist Christians represent such historic distinctives as the soul freedom of the individual believer, the autonomy – under Christ’s headship – of the local congregation, and the sufficiency of Holy Scripture to be our sole guide in matters of faith and practice.  

We do not pretend to be the only authentic Christian believers.  Around the globe there are millions who name the name of Jesus and express their faith through Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Charismatic and Pentecostal connections, and in new forms of Christian faith which we North Americans have no names for as yet.  We are not the only Christians, but we are – by God’s grace – one precious thread in the tapestry that is the Church, proclaiming and serving Christ until he comes again.                                                              

       Dr. David L. Wheeler
       First Baptist Church
       Portland, Oregon

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