Tri-Area Baptist Association

The IMB Connect Campaign: A Mission Opportunity For Your Church
(All links below are in red)

What The IMB Connect Campaign Is About

Any good Southern Baptist knows there are two primary ways that we support our Southern Baptist missionaries around the world.

The first way is through our churches giving through the Cooperative Program. Churches give a percentage of their budget each month, send it to their state convention to support Southern Baptist work in their state, and then pass a portion on to the national organization to support work taking place stateside and around the world to support our missionaries who are actively spreading the Gospel and taking the Good News to the nations.

Because of the Cooperative Program, the living expenses for our missionaries are taken care of. Their salary is provided for and their benefits are provided for.

However, the expense for their ministry is  not covered by Cooperative Program dollars. That's where the second means of support comes in: the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. 100% of the money received through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering goes to help with ministry expenses for our missionaries.

But the International Mission Board has informed us that it's gotten to the point where the Cooperative Program and Lottie Moon are not quite enough to fully and adequately support our missionaries like they deserve to be supported. They still have ministry
expenses that, sometimes, go unprovided for. That’s why they’re encouraging a third means of support, and that's through direct partnership with local churches.

So we have put together a campaign for your church to conduct to help New Mexico churches identify missionaries who have New Mexico ties, that you might want to partner with in a direct way.

We've had a wonderful response from our New Mexico IMB missionaries, who are very excited about the possibility of partnering with New Mexico churches. We’re hoping that our Tri-Area churches are equally as excited about partnering with these IMB missionaries from New Mexico.

How To Lead The IMB Connect Campaign In Your Church

The IMB Connect Campaign is a way for you to connect your church directly with an International Mission Board missionary with New Mexico ties. Below are the steps to follow in carrying out the IMB Connect Campaign in your church.

Step 1: Prepare your church for the campaign. On the Video Resource Page, is a video explaining the campaign. You can share this with your missions committee, Women on Missions group, Deacons, or your entire congregation to help them understand what the campaign is about.

Step 2: Select a time for your campaign. Since one of the possibilities for partnership is to budget a monthly amount to send your missionaries by way of support, it might be good to schedule your campaign at a time when your church is putting together the budget for the next fiscal year. Otherwise, any time that is best for your church schedule will work. The campaign is designed so that you can do as many weeks as you want to use to acquaint your people with as many missionaries that you want them to know about.

Step 3: Select your missionaries to feature for your campaign. Eight missionaries with New Mexico ties have recorded a brief, 3-to-6-minute video about their ministry and how a church could partner with them in a meaningful way. You may share as many of these videos as you want with your congregation. You may watch these videos by going to the Video Resource Page.

There are seven ways in which a church might partner with one of our missionaries, and in their video, the missionaries will mention the ones that would be most helpful to them. Those seven ways are:

1. Prayer. Every missionary would welcome having a New Mexico church faithfully, intentionally, praying for them, their families, and their needs on the field. Please do not minimize the value of partnering directly with a missionary in this way. Each missionary is prepared to share prayer requests with a partner church.
2. Send monthly financial contribution. A church might want to budget a set amount to send to the missionary monthly, to provide them with funds for their ministry needs on the field.
3. Receive general love offering. A church might elect to receive a special love offering for a missionary that they can use as needed toward their ministry expenses.
4. Receive a love offering for a specific need. Sometimes, a missionary has a special project that requires financial support, such as a camp or some other event. In this case, they would be needing a certain amount of money to fund whatever the special project or need is. A church might receive a special love offering to help underwrite the expense of such a project.
5. Send a team to help with a ministry project. Another way a church might help with a special ministry project is to send a team to assist with the project, like a team to help lead a soccer camp, for example.
6. Send a team to offer general help. A missionary might simply welcome a team coming just to help with week-to-week activities on the field. In this case, the team would not know exactly how they might be used until just before or when they arrive on the field.
7. Sponsor a BSU team (if possible) for the summer. If it’s possible to hook up some BSU students with a missionary, a church might sponsor one or more BSU students to assist them on the field for the entire summer.

4. Print as many response cards as your congregation will need. You can download master copies by going to the Response Card Download Page. Notice that there are cards for each Sunday in your campaign. You may print these off on an 8 & ½ by 11-inch sheet of paper and cut it in half. Card stock is not necessary. Insert the response cards for each Sunday in your bulletin or hand them out to attendees before your Sunday morning worship service.

How to use the cards in your service.

1. Explain what the campaign is about. Explain how, while the Cooperative Program (this is a great time to promote and educate people about the Cooperative Program, by the way) and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering help provide for the basic needs of our missionaries and enable them to remain in their host country, many of their ministry expenses are not funded. Ministry expenses are often covered through direct gifts by individuals or churches. Explain that you will be watching videos of IMB missionaries with New Mexico ties, that are open to a partnership with New Mexico churches like yours.
2. Explain the purpose of the response card. Explain how you are asking the people, as they watch the missionary’s video, to indicate on their response card how the missionaries say a church could partner with them and which method of partnership they believe your church could best participate in. Ask them to indicate on the card how the missionary identifies themselves in the video (explain that some cannot give their names for security reasons) and to sign their name to the card as well, so you might know who is interested in what partnership possibilities. They are to then check which of the seven partnership possibilities they would support their church doing to help that missionary.
3. Explain how your church’s missionaries will be selected. Have the congregation turn in their completed response cards. Then, using your Women on Mission group, or Mission Committee, or some other similar group, tabulate the results. The missionaries with the most total check marks is an indication of how God is speaking to your people about who your church should partner with.
4. Explain how the partnership projects will be pursued. The group who tabulated the total check marks to determine the missionary the church will partner with, will then examine that missionary’s cards to see which partnership ideas seemed to have the greatest interest from the congregation. These projects will be pursued by appropriate action.

5. Follow-through on the partnership projects selected by your church.

Steps to follow-through:

1. Report your church’s results by completing in the IMB Connect Campaign Report Form. 
2. You will be contacted by a member of our IMB Connect follow-up team. They will consult with you on how to move forward in your partnership with your missionary, providing you with necessary contact information, so your church might move forward in partnership with your selected IMB missionary from New Mexico.

Questions?

Call Dave McFadden at 575-607-5495 or email him at nmdomdave@gmail.com.