Giving to Viola Webb Missions Offering

August 2008

I was raised in a denomination other than Southern Baptist. One of the first things that I noticed when I became a Southern Baptist was the emphasis on missions. I found this unusual because I don’t ever remember missions being mentioned in the church in which I was raised. I initially wondered what all the fuss was about. Why were missions so important?

As I grew in my relationship with Christ and my understanding of the Bible, I came to see that a commitment to missions is at the very heart of our faith and the life of the church. I have come to see that actually the church has no real reason to exist except to carry the message of the gospel to our neighborhoods, our towns, our states, our nation and the ends of the earth.

We have come to that time of year where we are preparing to emphasize our Viola Webb Missions Offering (VWMO). Our goal for 2008-2009 is $205,000. This money will make a huge difference in what we can do as Nebraska and Kansas Southern Baptists to share the gospel in our two-state convention.

I first heard about this offering when I came to pastor in KNCSB in 1984. Several years later I became acutely aware of how important the offering is when I became part of Associational Missions Development Council (AMDC) in the Heart of Kansas Southern Baptist Association. Some people are not aware of it but half of the money brought in by the VWMO stays in the association where it is raised. The other half is used in critical areas of mission need throughout KNCSB.

While I served on the AMDC in Wichita, we used our part of the offering to carry out mission activities that our associational leadership thought was important for us to fund. We would have had no funds for many of these activities if it were not for our share of VWMO.

Since I have come to work on the KNCSB staff, I now have the opportunity to see how the monies raised by VWMO are used by the convention to meet critical mission needs around the convention. Again, many of these mission causes and the people involved in them could not be funded apart from VWMO.

I hope that, as your church promotes this offering in September or whenever your church chooses to do it, you will carefully and prayerfully consider how much you will contribute. You can make a huge difference in sharing the gospel throughout Nebraska and Kansas by what you give.

In this issue of the Baptist Digest you will find a special section featuring some of the missionaries that are funded through VWMO.

Thank you ahead of time for your gifts to VWMO!

Send this Column to a Friend






Past Columns

Return to top