What is this Offering?
Every year Louisiana Baptists take up an offering dedicated to help fund missions and ministries around the state. The money received through the offering is used by God to transform the lives of people and churches in Louisiana.
Learn more about some of the specific ministries that benefit from this offering and how your gifts are allocated.
The offering is typically promoted and collected by the churches of Louisiana. But, if you are inclined to give an individual gift, you can do that here.
Georgia? Louisiana? Huh?
The yearly Louisiana Missions Offering is named in honor of Mrs. Georgia Barnette, a missionary to New Orleans in the early 1900s. Keep reading to learn more about this wonderful woman of God.
Who was Georgia Barnette?
What would you be willing to do to reach Louisiana for Jesus? That question must have consumed Georgia Barnette’s thoughts as she got on trains, carriages and canoes to do her part to win Louisiana for Jesus. This was her passion. In 1901 Georgia Barnette arrived at First Baptist Church in New Orleans. She was new to the region, but she fell in love with the city. Over the next few years, she worked with women all over the state to develop strategies to reach the lost for Christ. Georgia Barnette was the first Executive Director and Treasurer of the WMU, but, more than that, she was a vanguard ambassador of the gospel, seeking to spread the good news from Spring Hill to Golden Meadow!
Her Mission Continues
100 years later, the mission remains the same: to win Louisiana for Jesus. Over the past 100 years, we have experienced two pandemics, scores of hurricanes and floods, as well as numerous financial hardships. but the Great Commission is still with us. How can we expect to reach the world for Jesus without first reaching our home state? This was Georgia Barnette’s heart and we pray it is your heart as well. We pray that a hunger will consume the churches of Louisiana in such a way that we give passionately and sacrificially. It’s what Georgia Barnette would do. But in an even greater sense, it’s what Jesus did.
It’s at the heart of a story that Jesus told: A man wanted to celebrate a banquet. He invited his friends, but everyone was so busy with their own lives that they declined his offer and refused to come. Then he called out to his servants and challenge them to do something incredible. “Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.” That’s the heart of the Great Commission. We are his servants, and he’s inviting us to compel people to come into His house. What an amazing call. What an exciting adventure! Let’s start with Louisiana.