Thoughts about "Offer Them Christ"

At the beginning of the campaign individuals were asked to submit personal statements on why they believe this Capital Campaign is vital to our Conference.

Barbara Wendland, Temple Texas

To keep the United Methodist Church alive, vital, and able to carry out God's purpose in the future, we must effectively reach today's younger generations. One important way of doing this is to reach college students. College is a time of life when many people re-evaluate their beliefs and their church participation" so it is an especially important time for the church to have significant contact with them. Yet unlike local-church congregations, our Wesley Foundations have no specific group of church members to rely on for financial support. It must come from the Annual Conference instead. For these reasons, our support of our Wesley Foundations is essential and urgent.

Most church analysts agree that starting new congregations is the main way in which churches make new disciples of Jesus Christ. Like the cost of Wesley Foundations, this effort has no group of church members except the Annual Conference to depend on for the necessary funds. The need for funds for this purpose is especially great because starting a new congregation usually requires buying property, building a start-up building or paying rent for a temporary meeting place, and paying the salary of an organizing pastor. To obey Jesus's commandment to go and make disciples, we must furnish the funds necessary for starting new congregations.

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