Following a one-year boost in donations in response to layoffs and recalls at the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Missions Board, it appears that donations are again in decline.
Last year, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions was a stupendous $165.3 million infusion into our flagship SBC mission board which had been struggling financially with serious and continuing deficits. Over 1,000 personnel, mostly overseas workers, took the early retirement offers and reductions in personnel costs put the board on a sustainable path. That Southern Baptists gave over $12 million more to the LMCO in 2015 than 2014 was an added boost and a great help in restoring reserves and providing stability going forward.
Alas, it looks like the 2016 offering will drop back down into the $155 million range, perhaps a little lower and render the big jump from 2014-2015 an historical anomaly, probably a delayed reaction to the downsizing.
Good. The Christian narrative is false, and its ethics are cult-like and affirmatively harmful. It will be a happy day when SBC missionaries cease messing-up people’s lives in order to appease their own insecurities.