2005 Facts about NAMB

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• Most North American Mission Board missions personnel are jointly funded with state Baptist conventions, associations and churches, and receive support from the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®. The 2005 goal is $55 million—100 percent of which will directly support missionaries and their ministries.

• Total gifts to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering in 2004 exceeded $53.8 million. Since its inception, more than $1 billion has been given through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.

• 44% of NAMB’s $120 million budget comes from AAEO and 36% from the Cooperative Program.

• NAMB’s primary responsibility is to assist Southern Baptist churches reach the United States, Canada, and their territories with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The agency provides assistance to churches, associations, and state conventions in church planting and evangelism, including soul-winning training, interfaith witness, and church and community ministries. Six priority emphases of NAMB are sharing Christ, starting churches, sending missionaries, mobilizing volunteers, impacting our culture, and equipping leaders.

• NAMB was formed in 1997, and is the successor organization of the Home Mission Board, which began in 1845, the Brotherhood Commission, and Radio and Television Commission. The national office is located near Atlanta, in Alpharetta, Ga.

• 5,126 missionaries, 2,400 chaplains (serving in military, institutions such as prisons and hospitals, and in corporate settings), and hundreds of thousands of mission volunteers (e.g., World Changers, Mission Service Corps missionaries) are seeking to reach the estimated 235 million unbelievers in the United States and Canada.

• Southern Baptists have a goal of starting more than 2,000 churches each year.

• Church and community ministries such as Alternatives for Life, literacy missions, Baptist center ministries, week day ministries, and immigration and hunger ministries, results in more than 33,000 professions of faith each year.

• The Strategic Focus Cities (SFC) emphasis for 2005 is New York City. Through SFC, which began in 1998, the cities of Chicago, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia and Miami have been sites of concentrated and intentional evangelism and church planting efforts. To date, the North American Mission Board’s SFC emphasis has yielded, 47,000 professions of faith, 336 church starts, and more than 40,000 volunteers.

• All six Southern Baptist seminaries and the Canadian Southern Baptist Theological Seminary have Nehemiah Project mission professors in place. Because of this partnership to mobilize new church planters, almost 900 church planter interns have been appointed to serve in summer, semester, and full-time capacities.

• About 24,000 youth and adults were involved in missions and ministry through 87 World Changers projects last year, leading almost 2,000 people to make decisions for Christ.

• 1,782 high school and college students answered God’s call as Summer, Sojourner, Innovator, and Semester missionaries last year.

• Nearly 29,000 people are trained in Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. In partnership with Baptist state conventions, more than 1 million meals are served annually to victims of disasters. In the past 10 years, more than 12 million meals were served in the name of Christ.