God. That’s the only explanation James Martinez, a church planter in Brownsville, Texas can come up with when anyone asks about his church’s Annie Armstrong Easter Offering. “Here I am a church planter in one of the poorest counties in the nation,” he says. “And when we surpassed our offering goal, I just thought, ‘Look at what God is doing through this little bitty church.”
Brownsville, Texas, population 190,000, is a city on the U.S./Mexico border with a poverty rate almost double the national average. In 2020, Martinez, a Brownsville native, partnered with a local nonprofit to distribute food to families in need, and God used relationships formed during that time, along with gifts to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, to launch Ecclesia Community Church.
It should be no surprise, then, that a church born through acts of generosity ended up with generosity in its DNA. Ecclesia began with many new believers, and when James introduced the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering to them, he was overwhelmed by the church’s response. “We explained that we exist because of the generosity of other churches and individuals giving to Annie Armstrong,” James says. “And when the money started coming in, I thought, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’”
Everyone became enthusiastic about giving back — from new believers in the congregation who committed to setting up a recurring gift, to the elderly single women, to the kids in the children’s ministry. Now, the church has committed to giving more to Annie Armstrong each month than they did over the entire previous year.
“God has been so generous to us,” James says. “And now we can be generous and sacrificial back to Him. I love that.”