ARKANSAS Baptists have embodied the Southern Baptist passion for sending out missionaries to spread the gospel since the beginning of the missions movement – known as the Cooperative Program (CP) – in 1925. Arkansas Baptists have heard the cries of a lost world and given committedly through our churches, and this commitment to missions continues to deepen.
Arkansas Baptists have always sent a large portion of CP giving out of our state to support Southern Baptist missionaries in North America and around the world. For years, our family of Arkansas Baptist churches have together given one of the highest levels of “out-of-state” missions giving as a percentage of Southern Baptist CP gifts. We have been increasing our giving since 2008, and this year (2019) we have budgeted to give 47.80 percent of all CP gifts received to out-of-state missions.
During the 2016 annual meeting, Arkansas Baptist messengers voted to approve the new formula that will gradually increase our out-of-state CP giving percentage to 48.4 percent by 2022. We are now into the second year of this plan, which started in 2018, and giving is going strong. The privilege to send more missionaries and do more missions is possible because of you, Arkansas Baptists, and your commitment to send even more of your God-given resources out-of-state!
We focus our out-of-state missions giving in three areas: 1) giving to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) budget through planned budget giving; 2) promoting and administering CP missions to increase giving and participation by Arkansas Baptists; and 3) working to connect Arkansas Baptists with SBC missions strategies.
Please stay connected with our cooperative efforts through our website absc.org/out-of-state-missions for more details about how your missions giving, through your Arkansas Baptist church, directly fuels sharing the gospel around the nation and world. Or if you haven’t already, commit with us to give and go to share the gospel through Cooperative Program missions!
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