Last Sunday, Back Bay Church in Saint Martin, Mississippi, became the first known Southern Baptist church to offer cryptocurrency as a method of giving, according to Baptist Press.
Reverend Adam Bennett, a Gulf Coast native in Mississippi who has been working full time since 2005, introduced cryptocurrency as a donation option, along with more traditional channels.
Church members donate through cryptocurrency
“It’s not normal [in churches] today, but could be in the future as more people become interested in cryptocurrencies,” according to Bennett, a self-described tech expert who, in addition to Bitcoin (BTC), decided to include Ethereum (ETH), as well as Bitcoin Cash (Biosafety Clearing-House), stable currency DAI, Dogecoin (dog), Litecoin (LTC) and US dollar currency (USDC) as a donation option.
“I talked to a few other people in the church who deal with cryptocurrency, and it turned into a discussion about it,” Bennett said. Baptist Press.
Then I did some research and found the Salvation Army to accept it. I researched their platform and ended up deciding to use a different platform for ours,” he continued, while encouraging others to do their own extensive research before they followed suit.
“One of the reasons Back Bay does this is because I’m an early adopter and like to be on the cutting edge of things. But we also have other people investing in cryptocurrencies. We want to take some of our assets that we have invested, see that they are valued and give them to church work,” Bennett explained. While emphasizing that his church is indulging in cryptocurrency at this point.
Cryptography and missionary work
“It is an asset. So if someone wants to donate to our church as they would a piece of land, they can do so,” said the early adopter, who believes that cryptocurrency can help provide assistance in countries with troubled or temporarily disrupted financial systems.
“There are already non-profit organizations that use digital currencies to transfer value from one country to another,” he said, adding that “transactions in some third world countries cannot be done quickly and inexpensively.”
Bennett noted that these nonprofits use cryptography to obtain effective funding for projects such as building wells.
“For missionary work, we have people in some of these areas,” he said.
“We can get them money quickly, in a matter of minutes or even seconds, for a very small fee of maybe hundreds of cents. Then they will then switch to whatever currency they need to make transactions on the ground.”
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