Bringing Lottie Moon to Life

Churches start something a certain way and then do it that way forever. It’s the old, we’ve always done it that way before syndrome. In this fast-paced society we live in,

If you keep doing the same thing you have always done, you will not get what you always got.

The above is one of what I call my Brooks Mantras. It contradicts the thought that there is only one way to skin a cat. This is especially true when asking people for more money for another offering. Since we pass the proverbial plate every week, we are used to offerings. Yet, if we are not careful, we can make the offerings so mundane and boring they become ineffective. It’s one reason why I am such a huge proponent of communicating life change with giving. Doing so makes giving come alive.

With the Lottie Moon Christmas offering, we have an opportunity to show the value of a gift given to International Missions. To accomplish that, we must make missions come alive for our members. How do you make the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering Come Alive?

By not doing what you have always done. Why? One reason is because you have competition for your members’ end-of-year gifts. Every non-profit organization in the world is emailing, texting, and snail mailing your members. Those appeals are well crafted for maximum effectiveness. If your message is going to be heard above the roar of all that, it needs to grab your audience’s attention.

When we do the same thing, the same way, week after week, our people get numb. They tune us out. They respond in an almost robotic way. From time to time, it’s good to mix things up to get people’s attention. This is true as it pertains to our offering time. It’s especially true of annual offerings like the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. You can’t put up a poster announcing some monetary goal and be effective. The faithful few will respond, but what about the younger generations? If our approach to the Lottie Moon offering is business as usual, we are missing out on a great opportunity. How can we better engage people?

Bring Lottie Moon to life! No, not Ms. Lottie herself. We need to bring the offering named after her to life by telling the stories of the life change the offering is making. People love stories. They love stories with happy endings. The Gospel is the greatest story ever. Nothing motivates the heart more than a compelling story of life change. The best way to motivate your people to give generously to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering is by telling the story of where those dollars go and what they do.

The resources to bring Lottie Moon to life can be found on our MBC webpage in the WMU section at https://mobaptist.org/wmu/. There you will find helpful material and a link to a video worth showing the Sunday you kick off your Lottie Moon offering push. You can go straight to the link here at https://mobaptist.org/lottie/. This video brings Lottie Moon to life in a way that will rally your members to give generously. While at that site, scroll to the bottom of the page, where you will find this link to all of IMB’s resources for the Lottie Moon Christmas offering at https://www.imb.org/generosity/resources/lottie-moon-christmas-offering/.

By bringing Lottie Moon to life, you will raise more money for international missions, but you will also be raising up the next generation of members fully committed to the advancement of The Great Commission. Let’s bring our story to life!