07 Oct Thank Offering: Focus on Short-Term Mission Trips

Jeff Bleijerveld, Director of Global Ministries

We’re preparing for this year’s Thanksgiving Missions Offering. Last year we raised $46,736 for our Antioch Fund to help support the mission efforts of our partner national conferences. This year the United States will focus on raising funds to support our short-term mission efforts. (Canada, our partner in Global Ministries, has its own focus this year.)

While Global Ministries creates budgets for trips, there are always cost overruns as a result of delayed flights, unexpected costs, emergencies, or just being asked by our hosts to do things we hadn’t planned. When these sorts of things happen, Global Ministries absorbs the expenses, since it’s pretty hard to ask for more money once the team returns home.

As a result, we have accumulated a sizeable deficit over the last few years—one we’d like to erase. In addition to wiping out our deficit, we’d like to build up an account to subsidize some trip expenses like medicines and supplies for medical teams, or to help small churches that might lack the base needed to raise funds.

Information is on its way to each of our churches. Churches have been sent a letter and order form for materials this past week. Bulletin inserts will be sent in the weeks prior to the American Thanksgiving in November.