MISSISSIPPI BAPTIST CONVENTION BOARDJIM FUTRAL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-TREASURER

PO BOX 530 • JACKSON MS 39205-0530800.748.1651 • 601.968.3800 IN JACKSON

$2,100,000

OFFERING GUIDE

THE OFFERING PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS WERE DEVELOPED BY:

MBCB WOMAN’S MISSIONARY UNION/WOMEN’S MINISTRIES

AND THE MBCB MARGARET LACKEY PRODUCTION TEAM

Cindy Townsend, team leaderWilliam Perkins

Tony MartinIan RichardsonMegan Young

“LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE BEFORE MEN, SO THAT THEY MAY SEE YOUR GOOD WORKS

AND GIVE GLORY TO YOUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.”

VISIT WWW.MBCB.ORG/MARGARET TO ACCESS MARGARET LACKEY OFFERING MATERIALS

OFFERING GOAL

2017

MATTHEW 5:16

ALLOCATIONS

MISSION VOLUNTEERS | $685,000Mississippi Baptists mobilized over 30,000 volunteers last year. Margaret Lackey provides training, travel assistance, and connections to Southern Baptist missionaries in North Amer-ica and around the world. A $500 gift sends a pastor on a vision journey. Contact Mike Ray or Cassie Munn at (800) 748.1651 ext 398 or (601) 292.3398.

CENTRAL HILLS | $405,000“Learning the ropes” of missions involvement is a key function of Central Hills Retreat in Kos-ciusko. Almost 5,000 campers were trained last year, and many made decisions for Christ. A $200 gift will cover expenses for a missionary speaker. For more information contact Don Gann (800) 748.1651 ext 339 or (601) 292.3339.

GARAYWA | $405,000“Put on the helmet of salvation!” Many girls did just that last summer at GA Camp. Your gifts help equip mission leaders for ministry. A $175 gift sends a girl to camp! Anne Wilson has more information (601) 924.7034.

COMMUNITY MINISTRY | $180,000Margaret Lackey grants help fund church-led mission projects in communities all across our state. Associational Missions Directors identify needs, design Gospel responses, and coor-dinate the activities. A $100 gift rents a block party trailer. Talk to your local AMD for more information.

CHURCH MULTIPLICATION | $175,000Almost two million Mississippians are unchurched. Margaret Lackey gifts help assess and train church planters, design innovative church multiplication strategies, and transform lives through forming new missional communities. A $250 gift provides the weekly rent for a new congregation to meet. Johnny Ervin has more information (800) 748.1651 ext 361 or (601) 292.3361.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE MINISTRIES | $65,000Jesus described true faith as “I was in prison and you visited me…” Margaret Lackey funds help provide visits for people in prisons all across our state. Your gifts provide teaching ma-terials for local leaders and seminary classes at Parchman. A $20 gift purchases a Free on the Inside Bible. For more information contact Charles Jones (662) 721.0264 or John Henry (662) 508.0293.

DISASTER RELIEF | $65,000When Mississippi hurts, Baptists care! Margaret Lackey trains disaster relief specialists who are ready at the sound of a siren to cook, clean, clear, and encourage the victims of disastrous events. A $150 gift provides 10 hot meals prepared by our volunteers. For more information contact Don Gann (800) 748.1651 ext 339 or (601) 292.3339.

LANGUAGE/DEAF MINISTRY | $40,000Margaret Lackey makes sure our non-reading and non-hearing neighbors have access to the Gospel. Your gifts helped train more than 100 leaders for ESL, ARW, and Chronological Bible Storying. A $20 gift provides the training workbook needed by volunteers. Call Cindy Townsend (800) 748.1651 ext 318 or (601) 292.3318 for more information about Language Minis-try. Call or text Jim Booth (601) 201.3361 for more information about Deaf Ministry.

CROSS CULTURAL EVANGELISM | $32,500Margaret Lackey recognizes 6 different language groups in Mississippi. The offering funds also help share the Gospel with over one million African-Americans. A $10 gift provides a foreign language Bible. Chris McNairy has more information (770) 814.1405.

CWJC/CMJC | $25,000Twenty-four percent of Mississippi’s population lives below the poverty line. Christian Men’s/Women’s Job Corps combine discipleship and job skill training to assist men and women. There are more than 20 CMJC/CWJC sites across our state. A gift of $20 provides What Ev-ery Church Member Should Know About Poverty, a resource for training ministry volunteers. Tammy Anderson (800) 748-1651, ext. 323 or (601) 292.3323 has more information.

COLLEGIATE OUTREACH | $12,500Through our BSU organizations, Margaret Lackey encourages international and ethnic stu-dents to explore the Gospel and meet Christian believers. A $25 gift helps host Gospel fel-lowships on major campuses. Contact Lloyd Lunceford or Jennie Taylor at (800) 748.1651 ext 301 or (601) 292.3301.

PORT MINISTRY | $10,000More than 5,000 international sailors visit Mississippi every year. Through port ministries in Pascagoula and Gulfport, Margaret Lackey offers a Christian witness and warm hospi-tality. A $5 gift purchases a Jesus Film that sailors can take home with them. Adrian Turner (229) 623.0103 has more information about the Pascagoula Ministry. Steve Mooneyham (228) 832.4311 has more information about the Gulfport Ministry.

GOAL: $2,100,000

“I was able to really connect with a couple of older ladies there,” she said. “They would take care of me while I was working, mak-ing sure I was wearing a big hat at all times to protect me from the sun, bringing me gloves to wear, making sure I had water to drink when I needed it. We laughed often at the amount of dirt I would have on my face and clothes. We would also laugh a lot as they tried teaching me random words of their language. We would sing and dance in between shoveling rocks into buckets. They were tons of fun.

“Our last night there, there was a party and a time to share. One of the local pastors we were working with shared a message and then had a time of invitation.

“During the time of invitation, every one of those ladies went forward! All I could do was cry and praise God for all He had done. Fifty people came to know the Lord that night. To see that handful of people respond, who

I had been doing life with for the past three weeks, who I had gotten to fellowship with and love on, who had become so dear to my heart, who were like family to me, was absolutely breathtaking. That night I saw God at work.

“Even though I couldn’t understand the message being preached, I could feel God’s presence! I never truly knew what it meant to let Him be your strength until someone placed a 110-pound bag of mortar on my back so I could carry it to the longhouse. I never had to let God be my strength until I was shoveling gravel at 3 p.m. in 100-de-gree weather and someone decides to burn a pile of trash … right beside my gravel pile. I learned that without God I am nothing but with God I can accomplish anything I set my mind to.”

The work of Missions Mobilization is funded in part by gifts to the Margaret Lackey State Missions Offering.

Doing life togetherKatelyn Oaks is a nursing student at Northwest Mississippi Community Col-lege. In the summer of 2016, she had the opportunity to serve in Southeast Asia for a month. Part of her responsibilities included working on a longhouse.

MISSION VOLUNTEERS

$685,000

“As a result of that he kept coming back to the BSU. He came back for one of our wel-come back events, and at one of the tables he saw a flyer for our fall retreat. He called me over and said, ‘Ashley – can I come on this fall retreat?’ I told him sure, that it was open to anybody. He had a great experi-ence, began to connect with some of our students who are involved in our ministry, and as a result of Deepak becoming in-volved in the BSU he developed a relation-ship with Jessica Turman, who is one of our students who is over our international hour now. A year ago, Jessica was scared to death of international students. At that fall retreat she began to build a relationship with him and because of that her eyes were opened to a whole new world.”

“Last semester I met Deepak the second week of school,” said Jessica Turman. “Out of all of his friends at the table at international hour he was the only one who wanted to

come on fall retreat. Deepak had never heard of Jesus or the Gospel. He didn’t know what the Bible was. He came with us that weekend and we poured our lives into him. I found a friend in him that I had not found in any other of the international stu-dents up until that time.”

“I am from the eastern part of Nepal,” said Deepak. “I heard that the people in the BSU were very helpful and ready to help. I asked for help from Ashley and that’s how I be-came involved in the BSU.”

“I’m so thankful for the opportunity I have to walk alongside these students as they make an investment in the lives of the in-ternational students on our college cam-pus,” said Taylor. “It’s because of people who choose to give to the Margaret Lackey State Missions Offering that help make that pos-sible. So thank you for giving me the oppor-tunity to share in this journey.”

A whole new world“One of my favorite ministry experiences happened just a couple of months ago and it involved a student from Nepal,” said Ashley Taylor, Associate BSU director at Mississippi State University. “His name was Deepak. He had been at Mississippi State a couple of years, and he came in the BSU in the fall semester because he needed help with his car that was in the shop and needed some extra money to get it out. I connected him with one of our local churches and we got him help.

COLLEGIATE OUTREACH

$12,500

“One of my favorite parts of camp is to show girls that there is a world waiting to know about God’s love. We share God’s love with campers through a variety of

activities, including worship, Bible study, and one-on-one times between campers and cabin leaders. We also have a ton of fun at camp, including swimming, doing

The time is now“At Garaywa this past summer (2016) we had 1300 campers come to be part of Garaywa Missions Camp,” said Anne Wilson, Missions Camp Director at Garaywa Camp and Conference Center. “Seventy of those were girls who made professions of faith for the first time. Thirty-five of them were called to missions.

GARAYWA

the zipline, being on the ropes course, and just playing games and being in the outdoors.”

“At Garaywa last year, I was able to serve for two weeks, and during that two week period we did this black bean exercise where we dumped black beans onto a world map,” said Jordan Ball, a summer intern from Louisiana. “There were 700 pounds of black beans, and at first I was confused as to why in the world we were dumping black beans. Anne Wilson told me later that one black bean represented 200 lost people. It spoke to me as I was dumping these beans into bins that symbolically I was holding these lost people in my hands. So the time is now. We must

share God’s message with the lost people of the world.

“Each Thursday night Garaywa dumped these black beans onto the map to show the campers the lost people in the world. One of the campers really responded to this mes-sage. She told the camp counselor that she really felt God calling her to be a missionary and talk to people about God’s message and God’s love.”

“Garaywa Missions Camp depends on the Margaret Lackey State Missions Offering in or-der to provide all of these awesome activities,” said Wilson. “It makes it so much more fun for the girls who come to camp in the summer.”

$405,000

“The diversity is sometimes overshadowed and undermined by the lack of its most sa-cred institutions. It’s a town that feels deeply churched but remains very lost and un-converted. It’s that brokenness that’s been

grabbing at my wife and me for some time. Finally, a couple of years ago, we went from prayer to an eventual decision to plant a church right here in the heart of our city – City Light Church.

Shining a light“Vicksburg is and always has been home for me,” said Brian Crawford, pastor of City Light Church, a church plant in Vicksburg. “It’s a small town, a historic town, but unbelievably a very diverse town. It’s a town of wounded and broken, a town whose smallness is sometimes reflected in the lack of op-portunities for those who are its least fortunate.

CHURCH MULTIPLICATION

“City Light Church stands on a very simple but very powerful vision. We exist to shine a light of Christ in our city, through the trans-formed lives of His people. We want to do that by using the perfect gift of the Gospel to speak directly to the unique brokenness of our city. We believe that in the Gospel of Jesus Christ brokenness is cured and we want to reflect that cure through a set of values that will place the Gospel on display and bring healing to the unique needs of our neighborhoods.

“One of the values we have is compas-sionate conviction. We want to insure that we cultivate a family of believers that care deeply about the truth of God’s word but care just as deeply about sharing the truth of God’s word in a way that God has called us to share it – with genuine compassion

and love for those who hear it. We aren’t interested in building a black church and obviously we aren’t interested in building a white church. We want to build a neighbor-hood church, one that in small ways reflects the unique diversity of all of our neighbors in this city.

“We simply could not have gotten this far, and certainly there would be no hope in us preparing to launch in a successful way without the Mississippi Baptist Convention 242 Network and certainly the Margaret Lackey State Missions Offering. This simply could have not happened had it not been for great Mississippi Baptists all over the state supporting the Margaret Lackey fund and giving to the fund and helping church plant-ers – and obviously, by default, helping the kingdom of God.”

$175,000