April - June 1977
"My God Will Supply All Your Needs . . ."
(Philippians 4:19)
It hit us all like a ton of bricks. We had been working and praying so hard, trying to get the legal option to buy, that we almost forgot the next step. Now it hit us: "We have less than six months to raise $850,000, the first part of the $1.5 million needed for the down payment. What shall we do?"
There were pitifully few of us on staff, and most were part-time volunteers. None of us had any experience in raising large amounts of money. And, as Ralph cautioned us, we knew we couldn't start appealing for funds without first getting public backing from well-known people. That would involve Ralph in endless phone calls, hundreds of letters, and all of us in much, much prayer.
Ralph's plan was simple. He drew up a list of 45 mission leaders. He wrote them all a letter. As soon as some responded, he sent another letter — one each week, listing those who had responded. In about twelve weeks all but three had agreed to be "consultants." This term was suggested to him by Leighton Ford, who said, "I can't give my name for a Board of Reference, but you can list me as a 'consultant.' "
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It took all of May and into June to line up these consultants1 — people whom others trusted, who would vouch for us when asked about our project.
Meanwhile, I was worried about the money. How could we possibly get $850,000 to come in by October? Every Sunday at church friends would question, "How is it going? How much money have you raised?" I appreciated their concern, but as the weeks went by and Ralph was still spending most of his time lining up consultants, I wanted to avoid them. The time was getting short; how we knew that! How could I answer that we had not even started raising funds? Yet whenever I expressed my anxiety to Ralph, he only answered, "We have to get our consultants first. We don't dare move ahead without their backing."
I don't know what we would have done without Prudence. She had come to Ralph's office at the seminary the year before, admitting somewhat apologetically that she wasn't a great typist. But she had been told that Ralph was looking for someone to organize him. She thought she could do that. Prudence was truly God's gift to us. She was office manager, public relations director, personnel manager, social hostess, chaplain — all at the same time. If we needed something, she "just happened" to know someone or something about it. Best of all, she was a person of faith, unafraid to tackle hard things.
But she was also human. Just how much can one person carry? I was working every day alongside Ralph and Prudence, but the job was just too great, even with those wonderful volunteers who came for a few weeks or months at a time.
One Saturday in early June of 1977, Ralph was working alone in his office while I tackled the accumulated undone tasks at home. The office phone rang and Jack McAllister, one of his newly-named consultants and a well-known mission executive, called him with a host of suggestions, all good. About halfway down the list, Ralph stopped him, cold.
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"Those are great ideas, but how can we implement them?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Jack replied. "Haven't I just told you?"
"One thing you forgot. I have no staff. I've just finished typing a letter to our consultants. While I'm talking to you, I'm stuffing envelopes and licking stamps. And then I'll drive this mailing to the Post Office. I agree that I should do all you suggest, but I just can't!"
There was a shocked silence on the other end of the line, then, "Listen, brother, I'll put in the mail right now a check for $3,000. That will pay for a secretary for you for awhile. And when that is gone, I'll send some more. Now, can you find a good secretary?"
That was how Jane came to us. As May progressed, our winter part-time volunteers left for summer jobs or summer studies, and the Lord filled their places, usually with seminarians or college students, often from far away. We had never heard of most of them, and we wondered how they knew of us. Gwen came from Minneapolis after learning of us through a mutual friend; she became one of our third daughter's closest friends and later maid of honor at her wedding. In Boston our oldest daughter and her husband, in seminary at Gordon Conwell, saw "Star Wars" one night and said, "What are we doing here when there's a great battle in progress in Pasadena?" and came to join us.
Also coming from Boston were Hal and Liz Leamon and Dave and Debbie Bliss, chiefly through the influence of our long-time friend and outstanding prayer warrior, Dr. Christy Wilson, then a professor at Gordon Conwell. Ralph had known him since the first InterVarsity missionary conference held in Toronto in 1947 and as a young seminarian had been instrumental in encouraging Christy to accept a position of teaching English in long-closed Afghanistan.
It seemed to me most inopportune for Ralph at this time to go off to the Midwest to speak at a conference. But from
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that contact we gained another very valuable helper — a young businessman in the audience who dropped all to come and help out for "two weeks" and stayed three months!
When Ralph spoke at a church in San Diego, we got another much needed volunteer — Jeff, who only happened to hear him because he was visiting his grandmother there.
Most of these new staff were short-term helpers: we called them our "90-day wonders." And they were wonders! They helped in all sorts of spots and in all sorts of ways. Young people who had never written anything more important than a term paper were busily at work on publicity brochures, newspaper releases, pamphlets and seminar programs.
It was a time of stretching for all of us. At times, Prudence, Ralph and I felt like Moses with his motly crew. We had people from everywhere, from all sorts of churches, working at tasks they had never attempted, under the direction of people who had never managed others. Could God bring anything out of such chaos?
You'd better believe it!
Chapter Thirteen || Table of Contents
1. Some of the early ones to agree to be consultants were Jack Frizen, Executive Director of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association; Harold Lindsell, then editor of Christianity Today; David Howard, the organizer of the famous Urbana Student Missionary Conferences and now Executive Director of World Evangelical Fellowship; Donald McGavran, founder and Dean Emeritus of the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary; George Peters, Professor of Missions at Dallas Seminary; Waldron Scott, then Executive Director of the World Evangelical Fellowship; J. Christy Wilson, Professor of Missions at Gordon Conwell Seminary and formerly pastor of the only Christian church in Afghanistan; Donald Hoke, Director of the newly established Billy Graham Center and organizer of the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization; and Leighton Ford, now head of the Lausanne Committee but then a member of the Billy Graham team.
