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The partnership between the Kentucky Baptist Convention and Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union is a wonderful example of impacting lostness through cooperation. In addition to mission camps, missions education, and hands-on mission work, the WMU labors intensely to promote and ensure the success of the Eliza Broadus Offering for State Missions that now totals more than $1 million each year. The offering funds KBC Mission Board ministries, local associations, state missionaries, and a host of evangelistic initiatives to resource vital Kingdom ministries.
More than 100 years ago, Eliza Broadus led Kentucky WMU to promote taking an annual offering for state missions in KBC churches. At that time, Baptist churches in Kentucky had already been working cooperatively for more than 75 years but had not been collecting a special offering to be used exclusively to do mission work within the state.
Eliza moved to Kentucky with her father, John A. Broadus, when she was 26 years old. Her father not only baptized Lottie Moon during his years as a pastor, but also became a member of the founding faculty of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and served as the seminary’s second president. He is counted among Southern Baptists’ most esteemed preachers, theologians, and leaders.
Eliza’s mother, Maria, died at the young age of 26. Eliza, at the time a child only six years old with two sisters, formed an especially close relationship with her father. She later followed him to Kentucky upon the relocation of the seminary from Greenville, S.C., to Louisville. She never married.
Eliza served in many roles with Woman’s Missionary Union at the state and national levels. She was widely known to have a heart that burned for the cause of worldwide missions but also understood the need for her neighbors to hear the gospel. Thus, Kentucky Baptists are proud to have our state missions offering named in her honor.
Today, the Eliza Broadus Offering provides vital support for church planting, evangelism, and mission work in Kentucky. The lives of unborn children are being saved by crisis pregnancy centers funded by EBO. Inmates are hearing the gospel, trusting Christ, and being baptized by local churches through ministries funded by EBO. Women in the “adult entertainment industry” are being shown a pathway to freedom and salvation by ministries funded by EBO. Extra support is being provided to local associations, church plants, collegiate ministries, Disaster Relief ministries, and a host of other gospel-centered works in our state.
The Eliza Broadus Offering is an opportunity for Great Commission and Great Commandment giving. Will you join my family and be a part of what God is doing through these ministries by giving through EBO this year?