Asking folks in the OPC to give $800,000 this year for the Thank Offering may seem like quite a stretch for many, but the needs of the OPC have grown despite the fragile economy. The Thank Offering is one of the most important ways congregations reach out to support the work of Foreign Missions, Home Missions, and Christian Education.

Currently, Foreign Missions sends out eighteen full-time missionaries to eight countries. Because of needs on the fields, they hope to send out an additional missionary each to Haiti and Uruguay.

Home Missions currently supports forty-nine church planters and regional home missionaries who seek to bring God's elect into the OPC. In 2011, Home Missions hopes to send out ten new organizing pastors. Typically, they send out twelve to fifteen church planters annually, said Ross Graham, general secretary for the Committee on Home Missions. Without additional funds, "we will have to scale our new church plants back to six to ten," said Graham.

Christian Education depends on the giving to continue to produce Sunday school and vacation Bible school materials; publish booklets, the revised Book of Church Order, New Horizons and Ordained Servant magazines; provide ministerial training courses, develop a new Psalter-Hymnal, operate the OPC.ORG website, and annually train about fifteen men to be pastors through internships in OP churches.

God is gracious and may stretch the hearts of those in the OPC to give generously beyond what they are able. With generous giving, the CCE would like to train five more men a year as interns. Home Missions hopes an increase in giving would encourage the OPC's seventeen presbyteries to be bolder in planning to start new churches, said Graham. For Foreign Missions, Bube said, "It will make it much easier for us to get needed reinforcements to the fields, especially in Haiti, Uruguay, and Ethiopia."

Most OP congregations will receive offerings over the next month that will be specified for the Thank Offering. If you would like to give directly to the Thank Offering, please mail contributions to: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 607 N. Easton Road, Building E, Willow Grove, PA 19090-2539.