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HOW TO GIVE

Give Through Your Local Southern Baptist Church Designate your gift for the “Hunger Offering”

Give Through Your State Baptist Convention

Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions Attn: Accounting Office

P.O. Box 681970 Prattville, AL 36068-1970

Please designate on your check that it is for World Hunger

Donate online: www.alsbom.org/hunger

Order promotional resources:

www.CooperativeProgramResources.org/hunger

For resources and World Hunger Fund offering envelopes contact: Lori Lockett

1-800-264-1225, ext. 233; 334-613-2304 e-mail: llockett@alsbom.org or jswedenburg@alsbom.org

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HUNGER SUNDAY STUDY BY: GHR

1. Can you think of a time when you felt like you were starving? Can you think of a time when you ate too much?

2. What emotions do you feel when you hear that there are almost 1 billion men, women, and children suffering from hunger around the world?

3. Read James 2:1-4. Where have you experienced poverty in your community? How can churches be guilty of showing favoritism as described in this passage?

4. How can we be guilty of seeing people in need as “issues”? How should the Gospel shape the way that we see those who are in poverty?

5. Read James 2:14-18. How does faith show itself practically in a person’s life?

6. Read Matthew 6:11, Matthew 14:15-21 and John 7:37-38. How did Jesus connect physical needs with spiritual needs?

7. How should God’s definition of “neighbor” lead us to care for hungry families living thousands of miles away from our church?

8. What actions can you take as an individual and as a church to meet the physical needs in your community and around the world?

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While you were reading this information, an estimated 36 children somewhere in the world died from malnutrition or starvation, the question now is ...

WHAT WILL I DO?

How can I help?

PRAY - Prayer is the most important way you can help Southern Baptists meet human needs. Please pray that through these ministries, many will receive physical assistance and also seek and find our Lord.

ACT - Lead your family, Sunday school class or small group to organize a food drive, serve at a local hunger ministry, or provide for a family in need.

GIVE - The generosity of Southern Baptists allows missionaries and ministries to immediately minister and meet human needs as they occur. Promote giving in your church to benefit hunger relief.

How Is MY dollar spent? When a dollar is contributed to the Hunger Offering the first 25% will be used to feed the hungry in Alabama by assisting associations and designated churches with food pantries. The remaining 75% will be placed in the Global Hunger Fund.

The Global Hunger Fund divided with 80% to the International Mission Board for overseas hunger projects while 20% is sent to the North American Mission Board to support hunger projects in the United States and Canada.

Because personnel and volunteers are already in place, and promotional expenses come through other budgets...

100% of your gift is used to minister to the hungry in Jesus’ name

A dollar in…a dollar out to help hungry people!

No other relief organization can make this promise!

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Nourishment for the body and soul

God's Word is clear that we are to minister to the poor and needy as part of our Christian lifestyle. Caring for those in need is an opportunity and a privilege as well as an obligation. We must not view it in any other way.

Hunger continues to be one of the greatest problems facing our world today. There are many causes. Natural disasters and human-made catastrophes have a devastating effect on food production. Poverty is increasing once again. Won’t you prayerfully consider how God would have you participate in this important ministry to feed the hungry?

The primary focus of the Hunger Offering is to assist Southern Baptist missionaries throughout the world in their attempt to end malnutrition. Missionaries use human-needs projects to help people obtain food and practice good health habits.

Each project also includes an evangelistic witness to facilitate church planting—the very focus of missionary efforts on the field. It is an intentional combination of “loving God and loving neighbor” (The Great Commandment: Matt. 22:37-40).

Examples of hunger projects: senior citizen feeding programs soup kitchens, hospitality houses, Baptist rescue missions providing and stocking food pantries food in disaster situations when disaster funds are not available, or

not adequate agricultural education on how to grow food clean water wells

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All human needs projects: have an intentional spiritual strategy and share the Gospel have Southern Baptist personnel who are a part of the community

or remain in contact with the community being served involve local input and expertise to help personnel assess needs

and establish goals that make sense culturally, economically and efficiently

have accountability measures

Most of us have our kitchen cabinets and refrigerators brimming with food. Do we give the issue of hunger and malnutrition the attention it deserves?

Southern Baptist missionaries and volunteers are offering nourishment for the body and soul. Every Southern Baptist can have a part in those ministries through gifts to the Hunger Offering. In fact, we can be assured that God expects us to do just that. He expects us to demonstrate an urgency to pray, to give, and to minister on behalf of those who are hungry – both physically and spiritually.

Through your generous gifts to the Hunger Offering, you are providing missionaries the resources they need to feed and educate the needy of practices to help them become self-sufficient.

The Hunger Offering, through which 100 percent of the donations flow straight to the hungry, serves missionaries in Alabama, North America and internationally.

100 percent of your donations go toward hunger needs. Nothing is taken out for administrative or promotional costs.

As Christians, we are called to reach out to those in need. God will honor your gifts and the greater blessing will be yours.

"…and if you offer yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness, and your night will be like noonday. The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land, and strengthen your bones. You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters never run dry." Isaiah 58:10-11

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AROUND THE WORLD Millions of people around the world are touched every year with food for their bodies and the “Bread of Life” for their souls through ministries funded by the Southern Baptist Hunger Offering.

An estimated 1 billion people do not have enough food to be healthy. Every day 25,000 people die from hunger-related causes… that’s 1 person every 3 and a half seconds. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.

IN NORTH AMERICA In many ways, America is the land of plenty. But for 1 in 6 people in the United States, hunger is a reality. Right now, approximately 49 million Americans are struggling with hunger, and 17 million of those are children. More than 42 million people, or 8.1 million families in America, are without enough food every day1

In the most recent year, more than $1 million was provided to more than 1,000 hunger ministries. Also, 4.5 million meals were provided using hunger funds and more than 21,000 professions of faith were reported through hunger relief ministries in North America.

IN ALABAMA Alabama has the 2nd highest food hardship rate in the nation (Food Research & Action Center Inc) 19.2% of Alabama’s population is food insecure.2 That means 919,670 Alabamians were "food insecure," or struggled to afford a nutritionally adequate diet.

Feeding ministries in Alabama: There are 46 feeding ministries in Alabama with 6,936 volunteers who provided 10,812 meals and food for 79,286. The 3,071 workers who are trained in evangelism led 28,457 evangelistic encounters resulting in 286 professions of faith and 90 baptisms.

1 https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/financial-condition-and-health-care-burdens-people-deep-poverty. 2 Feeding America, Map the Meal Gap