November
General Superintendent
Max Edwards
12, 2024
Hello friends. A few of you have asked our offices some great questions about our denomination-wide missions giving plan, and they have served to remind me that I’ve been unintentionally confusing. So let me start by THANKING YOU deeply for your commitment to Global Missions, and specifically to EMC Missions. Judy and I love to invest in EMC missions, and I am humbled and grateful for your gifts to our missions partners through the EMC HQ office.
Please allow me to clear up the confusion I may have caused.
In terms of our seasonal encouragement to give to EMC Missions, we are right on the threshold of the “ANNUAL NOVEMBER MISSIONS OFFERING.” Some local churches annually invite an offering either before or after Thanksgiving Day, and send that offering to our Global Missions department at our headquarters. This offering promotion is open through both November and December, even though it is called the November Missions Offering.
The November Offering has been a fixture in the EMC for many, many years, and I encourage every single EMC member and church to participate in the coming weeks.
The confusion surrounds my recent writings about a return to a traditional practice of bringing a missions offering to our regional conferences in the Spring (formerly District Conferences, now Journey Sessions). What I haven’t been clear about is that this will simply be a different way to promote and participate in our Springtime “Resurrection Offering.” In recent years, we have promoted a second EMC missions offering in the Spring of the year, partially because we now have FIVE Global Missions Conferences. For the first 60 years of our existence Mexico was our only affiliated global partner, but since 2006, we have added four more Global Conferences.
So … You will continue to hear from me about a “Journey Missions Offering,” but it is NOT an additional offering, but rather just a new way to approach the “Resurrection Offering” we have received over the last few years. I very much want us to give sacrificially, both as churches and individuals, targeting a much higher goal so that we can make a greater impact in the world for the sake of the Gospel and our Savior, Jesus Christ. I hope this clears any potential confusion. � You will continue to hear from me about the Spring, but for now, let’s give attention to the November offering, out of thankful, and bountifully blessed hearts and lives.