Growing up in a Southern Baptist Church in Louisiana, every year of my life I’ve heard the names Annie Armstrong, Georgia Barnette, & Lottie Moon. These are the name sakes of special offerings for the National, State, & International missions efforts of our convention. Each of these three ladies were real people who devoted their lives to missions & inspire us to do the same today. Many Southern Baptist never get to see the impact of giving to these special offerings, but for me it’s personal. As a church planter, I’ve personally benefited from the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering & Georgia Barnette State Missions Offering & can say with confidence that people are in Christ today, because of the generosity of our churches to support missions efforts through these offerings. Now, I’m working as Church Planting Strategist in Louisiana & I get to attend the meetings of the Georgia Barnette Committee (which is made up of Pastors & Lay leaders from churches across Louisiana) where money is granted & I read the monthly reports of church planters whose ministries depend upon money from the GBO fund. What all does the GBO cover? Looking back over my notes from last years Georgia Barnette Committee Meeting, here’s a few areas of influence:

• LA Baptist Children’s Home Sanctity of Human Life & Pregnancy Resource Ministry
• New church startup grants across Louisiana (currently 75 projects receiving funding)
• Compassion ministry sites across Louisiana (currently 57 sites receiving ongoing funding)
• French & Spanish evangelistic Radio programming
• Literacy Missions across Louisiana
• Multi-housing Ministry across Louisiana
• City Care Effect in New Orleans
• NOBTS Extension at Angola State Penitentiary
• Evangelism at other state prisons
• Outreach to African-American collegiate students in south LA
• Summer Collegiate Mission Team (GOLA)
• Disaster Relief Supplies & Equipment
  
• The Mission Builder program which builds & renovates first unit buildings for new churches.
• Grants to new ministries & churches for first unit land & buildings.
• Port Ministries in New Orleans, Gonzalez, & Baton Rouge.

You can see the 2016 Budget Allocations HERE. As you can see, the Georgia Barnette Offering makes a huge difference all over Louisiana. Check out this years promo videos HERE to see a few of the stories behind the works supported by GBO. The summary video is below. Looking forward to seeing the impact of this years offering in reaching people & meeting needs in the coming years.