How do you prioritise your giving? There are so many needs in our world, so many great causes, how do you decide which you will financially support? Often our first giving goes to causes, people or organisations we are personally connected to. This could be though a challenge we have faced, people we know, a charity we have been involved with. Other organisations get our discretionary giving, which is usually one off and not as substantial.

In our mission giving, we will as a church follow the pattern of priorities we tend to use in our personal lives. We support our own people first. This means we partner in their discernment, their calling, their resourcing, their support. Currently, this includes the Ames and Milner family. We have agencies we will prioritise, of which Global Interaction is our preferred mission agency for two reasons: they exercise best practice mission, and they are our Baptist mission agency. We will support aligned mission agencies such as those which support our people in global contexts and agencies which support mission areas we are invested in as a community. Finally, we will choose to be as generous as we can to those serving globally. At our discretion, according to need, we will give as we can.

May Mission month is part of this pattern. During the month we will profile opportunities for Global Interaction, and our missionaries. My long-term hope is we expand our Global mission support, resourcing and sending. If you have a passion for such efforts, do let me know. If you would like to read more regarding recommendations for our mission giving, let me know and I can send you a draft guideline we are working on.