Often, I like to use the Mississippi River as an analogy for the great torrent of offerings that flow from individuals into the church offering plates and eventually into the world.
I point out that this great body of water, which flows a couple of hundred yards below my house, is actually composed of individual drops that fell from the sky in a vast basin extending from Western New York State all the way to Eastern Montana.
In the same way, the hundreds of millions of dollars the churches of our denomination send to the fields of the world each year get their start from a child’s piggy bank, a widow’s pension and a young couple’s tithe.
Yesterday, I had an epiphany, one of those moments when you realize there’s far more to this than seemed obvious at first.
I was visiting a church not far from where I live. Although retired from being director of missions for the Baptist churches of metro New Orleans, they’re still on my heart and anything I can do to encourage one, I want to do it. Mark Tolbert, seminary professor and recent interim pastor of our church, is completing one year as the interim shepherd of that congregation and I do treasure this man. I wanted to hear him preach.
So, yesterday, I worshiped at Williams Boulevard Baptist Church in Kenner, Louisiana.
They received two offerings. The first, in the middle of the service, went for the budget, that is, the full ministries of their church. The second, at the end, was being sent to our International Mission Board for recovery work in Haiti and Chile, following their devastating earthquakes.
I dropped a few dollars into the second offering and something hit me.
Just as there are numerous locks and dams along the great Mississippi River, obstacles we might say, which the waters have to negotiate before they arrive at the sea, the offerings we place in the plate have a number of hurdles to overcome before they reach their destination.
Along the upper Mississippi River–from St. Louis northward–there are 29 locks and dams. Most were built in the 1930s, although a few have been replaced since then due to the larger and longer barges trying to get through those locks.
A lock is a device for allowing ships navigating the river to move higher (if they are going up the river) or lower (if descending the river) at places where the natural features of the river do not allow it. Without these, ships and tows could travel only so far before being forced to turn back.
The rain that falls around Lake Itaca, Minnesota, is said to form the headwaters of the Mississippi River. As it makes its way southward, that stream is joined by rushing torrents from the Ohio, the Missouri, and numerous other rivers and creeks of all sizes. Finally, perhaps a full week after its departure, that water flows past my house on the final 95 mile leg before spreading into the Gulf of Mexico.
Along the way, part of that water is diverted into dams and through locks before flowing onward.
And now to the offering.
Before the offering reaches the missionary in Tanzania or the Christian worker in the Philippines, like the waters of the Mississippi, it has to navigate numerous obstacles.
The first is the heart of the giver.
This may be the greatest obstacle of all (I’m tempted to make a bad pun about it being a “lock.”). As the offering plate makes its way down the pew, the worshiper sometimes struggles, trying to come to a decision. He writes a check for a certain amount. In most cases, only God and the church’s designated counters and the bookkeeper will know what he actually wrote it.
That church member’s faithfulness–his generosity, his love for God, his belief in God’s promises, his personal commitment to Jesus Christ–will determine a thousand things. Whether his church is able to meet its obligations this year, whether the staff will get raises, whether the children’s home in his state will be able to construct a chapel, whether the college can hold that conference, whether new missionaries can be brought on by the North American and the International Mission Boards–all depend on the faithfulness of the guy in the pew who wrote his check Sunday morning.
Mark Tolbert told the congregation yesterday that all the ills of the Southern Baptist Convention could be resolved if God’s people did two things: tithed and witnessed.
The second obstacle that offering will encounter on its way to the ocean, once it has been given in the worship service, is two-fold: the counting committee and the bookkeeper.
The outside observer may wonder why these are seen as possible obstacles. Veteran church members know why: not every counter is honest and not every bookkeeper is responsible. My brother was pastor of a church that discovered one of their longtime members, a trusted leader for decades, was taking home about one-fifth of every Sunday’s offering which he helped to count. I personally know of church bookkeepers who are in jail today for embezzlement.
One of our pastors told me he wondered why the associational records showed that his church gave nothing to the local ministries last year. “We have it in the budget,” he said. When he checked with the bookkeeper, she said, “I didn’t know who to send it to.” A few days later, we received a large check from that church.
I’ve known more than one church treasurer or bookkeeper who made a unilateral decision they would not send money away from the church regardless of what the congregation voted in the budget.
Pastors and laymen alike should double-check from time to time to make sure the instructions of the congregation are being carried out by those assigned to disburse the funds.
The third obstacle–in some ways, this should be the second–is the church’s own membership and the budget they have voted. Each year, a church will adopt a plan of spending for the coming year. A portion will go toward the national and international ministries of the denomination, depending on the leadership of the ministers and the will of the people. A church with little faith and great fears will keep an increasingly large proportion for itself.
The fourth obstacle is the state convention. The executive director of a state Baptist convention meets with his staff, then with a finance committee made up of members of the executive board, to present a budget to the annual meeting of the denomination in the fall of that year. In many cases in our denomination, the state offices will retain some 65 percent of all monies sent their way by the churches while forwarding the remaining 35 percent to the national denominational office.
In Louisiana, the state office is in Alexandria. Our executive director is Dr. David Hankins.
You would not want Dr. Hankins’ job. I have chaired that finance committee and have seen up close a tiny fraction of the headaches he deals with, trying to decide which agency will be fully funded, which gets a raise and which may have to cut back and even lay off employees. As with the local church, the vision one has for the work may matter little if the funds are unavailable to support it.
The fifth obstacle is the national denominational office, which in the SBC is called the Executive Committee, with headquarters in Nashville. Dr. Morris Chapman has served as its president for two decades or more.
Members of our churches (some are pastors, staffers, etc) are chosen annually in the June SBC meeting to serve as trustees of the various agencies of our denomination, including the Executive Committee. EC members then meet regularly in Nashville, conferring with Dr. Chapman on a myriad of issues that concern our work. And once a year, agency heads such as seminary presidents and mission board presidents appear before the EC to present their budget requests for the next year. Once the EC prepares the budget, it is presented in June to the full meeting of the SBC and adopted or amended (and then adopted).
The way the offerings are allocated in that budget is another obstacle–another lock or dam to negotiate–which this river of financial support encounters on its way to the ocean.
The sixth obstacle is the agency or mission board itself.
In the 1970s I served as a trustee of the International Mission Board. Along with every other entity in our denomination, this board–as with the North American Mission Board–prepares an annual budget to lay out the planned expenditures for the next 12 months. It’s a tough assignment, one that makes almost no one happy. If every mission station across the planet got all they were requesting in next year’s budget, the budget would be twice its size.
In almost every meeting during my time at the IMB in Richmond, we received staff recommendations for expenditures. “The Board requests that we allocate $100,000 to help a Baptist group in one country construct a headquarters building, a similar sum to begin a seminary in Asia, $2,000 to send a certain missionary to a conference, and $10,000 to pay emergency medical expenses for another employee.”
We dealt in big numbers, light years beyond our church budgets. But we knew where the money came from: the child’s piggy bank, the widow’s pension, and the young couple’s tithe.
It’s a holy stewardship.
There is a seventh obstacle: the mission station itself.
All missionaries assigned to one country or specific area are formed into a “station.” The details on this change from time to time, but basically, these people make the decision themselves on priorities and programs where they serve. They vote on their budget requests to the IMB and work together as a team.
And they have a bookkeeper, too. That may or may not be an eighth obstacle.
The final obstacle is the man or woman who purchases the supplies and spends the money that has streamed across the world to his/her place of service.
If we lived in a perfect world we could say that all these gifts flow unabated from the child, the widow, and the young couple and arrive unhindered and untampered-with on the mission fields of the world. But, as long as Romans 3:23 is still in effect, it’s not a perfect world.
So, next Sunday in your church, when the deacon prays before the offering something to the effect that “Lord, help us to use these gifts in a way that brings glory to your name,” he’s putting his finger on something mighty important. Basically, he is asking, “Lord, help us not to put obstacles in the way of these gifts arriving at those whom you intend to receive them, those who need them most.”
One final word of explanation.
We’ve treated the river as a metaphor for the offerings flowing from our hands into all the world. By no means, however, should this imply that the money retained in my local church to pay the light bill, buy supplies, and fund salaries is less important than that which ends up in Tanzania or the Philippines. The money that stays in Louisiana to care for needy children and educate our youth is holy, Christ-honoring, and necessary. That which pays seminary professors who are developing the next generation of pastors and missionaries and that which funds the church planter in Detroit or Tupelo, this too is critical and important.
As a Christian first and a Southern Baptist second, I determine to be faithful in my stewardship. Many, many years ago, my wife and I made the tough decision to tithe our incomes and more, and we have stayed with this commitment. We see this as basic Christianity.
As a Southern Baptist, I want to stay informed about the ministries and budgets of the various agencies that receive a portion of my tithes and offerings. I want to pray for them as they carry out the extensions of my own stewardship and responsibility.
Let us all determine to be faithful and speed the flow of God’s money on its way to its destinations.
After all, lives hang in the balance.