On the way to the sea: Our offerings have a long journey!

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 to the whole world.

I point out that this great body of water–which at the time I first wrote this–was flowing a couple 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 across the country to Eastern Montana.

Similarly, 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.

Then I had an epiphany, one of those moments when you realize there’s far more to this than seemed obvious at first.

I was worshiping at Williams Boulevard Baptist Church, up the street from where I lived in Kenner, Louisiana.

That morning, the church received two offerings. The first, in the middle of the service, went for the regular ministries of their church. The second, at the end, was being sent to our International Mission Board for recovery work in two countries that had suffered devastating earthquakes.

I dropped a few dollars into the second offering and something occurred to 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.

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What to do when God gives you a burden for something

When the prophets Nahum, Habakkuk, and Malachi stood up to preach, they began with the words, “The burden of the Lord.”

That was a dead giveaway this was not going to be a sweet little devotional filled with funny stories and touching vignettes. The men of God were about to drop a heavy load from their hearts into the laps and onto the shoulders of their audiences.

It took me a long time laboring in the Lord’s vineyard to figure something out. The burden God gives His preacher for some problem, some people, or some cause is every bit as much a gift from Him as the blessings of salvation. And it becomes my starting place.

Starting place for what? I’m glad you asked.

The burden God gives you, pastor, is your beginning point for three things….

1. The vision God will give you for your work begins with a burden.

I like to think of the time we wrestle with a problem (i.e., the burden) as the equivalent of digging downward for the foundation of a mighty building. The deeper we dig–the more the problem burdens us, the longer we struggle with it, and the more it pains us–the greater will be the structure that eventually gets erected there.

You’ve seen the signs: “Watch this site. A new office building will be erected here.”

Well, post one of those signs on the burden God has given you: “Watch this site. A new visionary structure will go up here.”

What is your burden, pastor? What bothers you most in your community, your church, your world? What robs you of sleep at night and will not leave you alone?

–For Bill, a seminary student involved in our church, it was a run-down trailer park near the airport where he had spotted a number of needy and neglected children.

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What to tell the missionary speaker in your church

Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you and how He has had compassion on you.  (Mark 5:19)

When I learned my friends Missionaries Tim and Iracema Kunkel were returning to the States for a time of rest and recuperation, and would be sharing in SBC churches, I made a suggestion.

“Tim, when you speak in a church, don’t just deliver a missions sermon, the kind I or the  host pastor might give.  You have a unique  opportunity to tell us something about God’s work in South America we don’t know.  Tell us what you have seen. Give us your stories.  Tell us which scriptures have made a world of difference in your life and ministries.”

It takes a certain amount of nerve, I know, to instruct veteran missionaries on how to do what they do best: preach in churches. And yet, as a longtime pastor who has pretty much seen it all, I want the speakers to be as effective for the Lord as possible.

In the late 1970s I served as a trustee of our denomination’s International Mission Board and have made mission trips overseas, working with missionaries.  We love missionaries and give generously to support their work.  As pastor, I was always delighted to have them speak in my church.  But–and this is my burden–I’ve seen it done poorly and seen it done well.

Here was Tim’s response to me…

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Why we must have denominations (or fellowships or families of churches)

A pastor in New Hersheybar emails me. “Pastor McKeever, I read your articles. We need your help.  We are a struggling community of small churches trying to get established, trying to get financial support, trying to get our ministers educated. Can you come help us or send cash?”

Well, maybe it’s never worded exactly like that, but that’s the gist.

How to know.

Is this guy for real, and is this a genuine opportunity to make a difference for the Kingdom of God?  Or is this fellow preying on the (so-called) rich Americans who are burdened with lots of spare cash and zero discernment?

I tell him to contact our International Mission Board at www.imb.org.  If we do not have missionaries in his country, we surely have a department with responsibility for his part of the world and someone in that office will be delighted to hear from him.  Maybe someone there will know somebody who can assist him.  And once in a while, we have a “representative” or “consultant” (as they are frequently called these days) living right there in his village.

Usually, that’s the last I hear from this fellow. Whether I discouraged him or exposed him is impossible to know.

I’m thankful for this denominational agency for a thousand reasons.

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