Will the real Christmas in August please stand up?

An analysis

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s guests on “To Tell the Truth” are two missionaries ministering in completely different parts of the world yet serving on identical assignments. One is dressed in traditional Western clothing common in the United States while the other is wearing an interesting wardrobe that is more at home in Cairo, Egypt than Cairo, Georgia.

Georgia Baptists – and Southern Baptists nationwide – are being asked to support each of them through contrasting 30-day approaches. Which one is telling the truth and which is the imposter? Will the real Christmas in August please stand up?

 

It might take just such a scenario from the popular 1960s television program for Baptists to decipher this month’s solicitations coming from Wake Forest, N.C. and Birmingham, Ala. That’s because Georgia Baptists are being asked to support not one but two identically sounding campaigns in the same 30-day period.

What’s a game show host like Bob Stewart to do? One Christmas in August approach is 82 years old and the other is less than 45 days old. Both are worthy. But they have created a certain amount of confusion among the people who are being asked to support them.

And while the “imposter” campaign is not intentionally lying, as would be the case on the game show, its very name is causing a certain amount of confusion.

Ask most any Georgia Baptist what Christmas in August means and he or she will readily say it is a decades-old missions project coordinated and promoted by Woman’s Missionary Union™ to provide material needs for missionaries serving in North America.

The idea is similar to an old-fashioned pounding where church members helped subsidize the pastor’s salary by contributing a pound of “this” and a pound of “that” in groceries.

Being featured as a recipient of that annual project always brought both joy as well as fear and trembling to most missionaries; joy for the cornucopia of items they would be able to use in their ministry, and fear because they frequently were so overwhelmed with the generosity of Baptists that they had to seek additional storage space to accommodate the gifts.

If one thing rings true among the current divisions in the denomination, it is that Southern Baptists love their missionaries. What concerns Georgia WMU leaders is that confusion between the two emphases could dilute the effectiveness of the official, longstanding mission project. In the secular world it would be called trademark infringement. The outcome could also be called the law of unintentional consequences – a well-meaning effort to support international missions at the expense of North American missions.

The Christmas in August annual mission project has been around since 1927. But Southeastern Seminary President Daniel Akin, at the June SBC annual meeting in Louisville, called for a special IMB offering in August to help meet the shortfall in giving to international missions. The $141 million collected for the 2008 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering™ fell more than $9 million short of the previous year and has resulted in the number of missionaries being sent overseas.

But the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions™ is also running behind, according to media representative Mike Ebert.

“As has been the case with other SBC offerings this year, the 2009 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is down. During most years we continue to see significant giving to the offering even through the fall months, so we are praying that will be the case this year as well,” he told The Index.

What is unknown, and unspoken by Ebert, is what will happen if the IMB-focused August offering will cut into the Annie offering. Baptists traditionally try to place breathing room between appeals to avoid donor fatigue.

Georgia WMU Executive Director-Treasurer Barbara Curnutt voices the concerns of many who see danger in making a special offering request – especially in a major recession. While she fully supports international missions, she worries that North American missions would not be given the same opportunity to make up the shortfall in its offering.

“Why would we do this for Lottie but not for Annie when NAMB has not even closed its books on this year’s Annie offering?” she asks.

“Southern Baptists have a financial plan in place with three missions offerings, three excellent streams of income to do missions – Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions, Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions, and the Cooperative Program – that have proved to be the best approach.

“When we circumvent those with special offerings I feel we could be moving back to the societal missionary approach which plays favorites among our agencies. I feel it could hurt the giving to Lottie this December if the man and woman in the pew say they already gave in August and cannot give again. And, I am concerned about what we do next year if Lottie is down again. Do we take another special offering at the expense of North American missionaries?

“I think it will be a challenge for folks to give twice in this economy. I think we need to honor the funding channels that are already in place.”

Curnutt said she would feel far more comfortable with agency heads urging grassroots support for the Cooperative Program, whose funds are divided among the missions entities, rather than participating in special appeals for their agency.

A logical question would be what would happen if another agency decided to promote a special offering for a sister agency. For example, what if the IMB asked for a special offering for the Southern Baptist seminaries that are having their own financial hardships? The Richmond agency depends on the seminaries to train future missionaries and it would be a natural desire for those seminaries to remain financially healthy.

Just short of a decade ago the denomination appointed a Funding Study Committee to explore ways to provide more funding for those seminaries to increase faculty salaries. The committee, which dealt with the issue in the context of a shortfall in state convention budgets and state missions offerings, was concerned that faculty members with doctorate degrees were being paid less than some church student ministers.

Though no solution was immediately offered, the idea of calling for a special offering for the seminaries was not embraced. But now, eight years later, a seminary president has called for the IMB to receive just such special treatment. While the offering does not have the endorsement of the SBC Executive Committee, which tries to limit such special funding requests, it has gained a certain amount of traction in the denomination.

But will a special offering solve the IMB’s root problem of shrinking revenue?

IMB President Jerry Rankin seemed to share Curnutt’s sentiments about the call for a special offering. On August 5 he told Baptist Press that while additional gifts for missions are welcome, the special offering would not solve the long-term funding needs of his agency.

The national Woman’s Missionary Union auxiliary that holds the trademark shares the concern of diluting the Christmas in August emphasis, which benefits NAMB, with an unofficial offering of the same name for the IMB. It is the WMU that launched the national “pounding” for North American missionaries in 1927 following the lead of Sunbeams at First Baptist Church of Charlottesville, Va.

Kaye Miller, national WMU president, told The Index that “Christmas in AugustTM is a long-standing, annual missions project coordinated by WMU in which we encourage WMU members to send requested items to NAMB missionaries to help with their ministries.

“This project … helps [supplements] the funds raised through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering stretch further as children, youth, and others personally get involved in supporting our North American missionaries by sending needed supplies. It helps open doors for ministry opportunities for both WMU members and field personnel.

“We understand and appreciate the intent of some Southern Baptist leaders to encourage giving to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering this August. However, we are greatly concerned that calling the effort “Christmas in August” will confuse many in our churches since there is no offering associated with Christmas in August and it supports North American missionaries rather than international field personnel. The use of this name also infringes our trademark.”

Wanda S. Lee, executive director/treasurer of national WMU in Birmingham, Ala., also told The Index that the organization is naturally concerned that the goal of the Lottie Moon offering was not met and she understands the tough economic times many are facing.

“While many continue to focus on our nation’s economical plight, the real issue here is stewardship. Ever since WMU began the annual offerings that support international and North American missionaries, we have underscored the importance of supporting them so that missionaries can follow God’s call to service.

“More importantly, however, since our inception in 1888, WMU has instilled the biblical principles of stewardship in all areas of life. What is needed is an ongoing infusion of these principles through the teaching of the church through missions education. Then, and only then, will stewardship of our resources become a part of the fabric of our daily living.”

To further complicate the matter, the conflict between having a special missions offering for a national agency in August – just 60 days before most state conventions ask churches to dig deep to support the Fall state missions offering – concerns state convention leaders. Some fear that asking laypersons to dig deep and give sacrificially to an offering in August, and then turn around and do the same thing the next month, could undermine a state’s own missions efforts.

To paraphrase an old axiom, only time will tell if Southern Baptists begin to feel confusion in the special offering marketplace and if donor fatigue becomes a real issue from the grassroots level.