Christmas and Missions

Every year at Pleasant Ridge, our missions emphasis overlaps with Christmastime. For good reason, Southern Baptists collect a Lottie Moon Christmas Offering®. Taking a cue from the Methodists of her day, the great Southern Baptist missionary, Lottie Moon (the offering’s namesake), pointed out to her own denomination how Christmas, the time of giving, is an appropriate time for giving, specifically, to world missions! And so Christmas and missions have long gone hand-in-hand for Southern Baptists!

But missions and Christmas overlap, not just because Christmas is a great time for giving, and specifically for giving to missions. Christmas and missions overlap theologically, as well! For one thing, as my friend David Bass reminded us in a sermon many years ago, Jesus, in His incarnation and earthly ministry, was the great missionary – leaving His home in heaven, and going on mission to lost and dying people who needed the good news! That’s what missionaries do, isn’t it? They leave home, and go on mission to some needy place, for the sake of the gospel! And that is what Christ did in entering the womb of Mary and the world of men! He was the greatest missionary! Christmas is about a missionary journey!

And not only that; not only was Christ’s coming to earth a mission trip, in itself … but it was the foundation and impetus for many centuries more of missionary endeavor; many centuries more of getting the gospel to the far reaches of the planet. The angels, at Christ’s birth, announced “good news of great joy … for all the people” (Luke 2:10, emphasis added). And Micah prophesied that the child of Bethlehem “will be great To the ends of the earth” (Micah 5:4, emphasis added). Wrapped up in the incarnation, in other words, is the expectation of world missions; the expectation that the news of Christ will get out, the world over!

In fact, we sing this expectation every year, too, don’t we? “Joy to the world”, Isaac Watts taught us to exclaim … because Jesus “comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found”. And, to “our long-expected Jesus,” Charles Wesley has taught us to cry, “hope of all the earth Thou art.” The birth of Christ, as John W. Work Jr. has taught us, compels us to “go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere” (emphasis, through this paragraph, is added).

And so I urge you to always keep these two things together – Christmas and missions. Let the thought of Christ’s mission to this desperate and needy world set your sights, and prayers, and desires, and generosity on the parts of it that are still desperate and needy for the “good news of great joy” which comes only in Christ!