November 1977
"I'll Show You Which Ones"
(Judges 7:4b)
One fact of which we became acutely aware during our brainstorming session was that the size of our staff was almost back to where we had started the year before. By November the wonderful summer volunteers had all left. Now that we needed to begin to work on more than simply raising funds, we had almost no one to do the work!
It is true that 35 or 40 people worked at the Center every day. But more than half of these were the staff of other organizations on campus. All shared our concern for the unreached, but each organization was doing its own thing. The burden of buying the campus for the use of all rested on the shoulders of what we came to call our "central staff." But buying the campus was only one of our jobs. We also had to work on mobilizing thousands of churches, figure out how to mobilize and train thousands of students in missions (especially those studying in secular universities) and coordinate the research that was being done on our campus. Because central staff numbered only about 15 at that point, we were truly in a crisis. Somehow we had to get more staff, staff that would come to stay.
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It wasn't that people didn't want to join us. Every week we received interested inquiries. But when we told them that we followed the missionary pattern of direct support, many backed away. Except for those who already had been missionaries, those who were older were unwilling to appeal to churches and friends to support them in this missionary venture. As a result, those who came tended to be younger. Usually they came with the attitude that they would give us two years, but then they planned to go overseas.
At first these young people came with very little support. Most mission boards, especially those whose principal work is in the U.S. (such as InterVarsity and Campus Crusade for Christ), accept candidates only after they have found adequate support. But the Center would never have gotten off the ground if we had followed that policy. That first summer I often wondered how our young volunteers survived without salaries or any other source of income. However they did it, by the fall of 1977 their savings were gone. They had nothing left.
Ralph and I certainly couldn't pay salaries to those who decided to stay; we were dependent on churches and friends for our own support. And considering the huge sums of money the Center had to raise merely to buy the campus, it seemed unreasonable for the administration of the Center, meaning Ralph, to also try to raise funds for everyone's salary. The time-honored missionary policy was that churches and friends respond best when they have personal financial ties with their missionaries. From the beginning we decided to identify with the mission agencies, even in this pattern of support raising. Consequently, our staff would have to find their own support, and do so quickly!
Support raising is scary for the uninitiated. It was scary even for us. If our staff were joining long-established missions or were going overseas, they would have had fewer problems. But they had come to work in a new, relatively unknown, U.S.-based operation. Would churches and friends
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give on a monthly basis to support them here?
Again we thanked the Lord for Prudence and her years of experience with Campus Crusade. She taught our staff all she knew about writing support letters, explaining our work to friends, and setting up special times to tell about the Center and its goals.
"It usually takes at least two to six months to raise your support," she told us. "We'd like to give all our staff members that much time, but we can't. There is no one to replace you while you are away. So we will each have at least a half a day a month to work on support letters and accounts. One at a time, we'll take off for more intensive support raising." So we began writing letters and talking to friends and church mission committees about our personal needs.
It seemed hard to believe that only a year before Ralph and I had gone through a similar experience. Because we were beginning to seek support at the very moment church mission budgets were being decided, Ralph wrote a number of his pastor friends special delivery letters, telling of our immediate need. I remember the elation we felt as some letters came back with sure promises of support. And also our dismay when we were told, "Sorry, you're too late." How I had wished back then that God would supply without all that frantic correspondence! I knew He could, but He didn't.
We came to find, however, that requiring staff to raise their own support was God's blessing in disguise. It helped us to know whom God had called to work with us.
Prudence carefully sorted out all who applied. Were they spiritually qualified? Were their hears given to missions? Or were they just looking for a job? She always told them, "We'll help you as much as we can in raising your support. We'll give you guidelines, supervise your efforts, and perhaps even approach churches on your behalf. But in the final analysis, you are the one responsible. You will have to pray and work hard, but we believe that if the Lord wants you here, He will verify this by providing your support."
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She then told them about Ralph's deepest concern: "You must enter into this in faith, not with your own needs uppermost in your heart. Remember that the Bible says, 'Give and it shall be given to you.' Instead of thinking about your own need, concentrate on giving your church and friends the thing that you have which is your most valuable possession — the conviction that God is moving in a new way in our world, clear out to the final frontiers, and that you and they can be part of His advance. Don't expect to receive financial help unless you truly minister in this way to those you approach."
With dismay, we watched some that seemed most desirable turn away. "You're not really serious!" they would say. "I can't imagine doing that kind of thing."
I could understand their reactions. We didn't say it would be easy.
The result was that many, initially interested in joining us, drifted away or sought well-paying jobs in Christian organizations elsewhere. As a result, we learned not to look at potential staffers with too much hope. They still had to pass all the tests before we could count on them.
The situation we were in reminded me of Gideon. When God first called him, he was just a young farmer, too scared of the Midianites to do his threshing out in the open. Yet, ironically, God called him a "mighty soldier." According to his own testimony, he was not thought of as a leader. In fact, he admitted that he was the least member of an insignificant family. But God was calling him to what seemed impossible, even for people more mature with greater prestige and ability. One thing only Gideon possessed: the knowledge that he could not do this alone. He would have to rely on God.
Gideon first tested God with his fleeces. Then God tested Gideon, first by arousing the wrath of the entire village, then by sounding the call to arms. This young upstart!
The Bible states that when Gideon sounded the call to arms, the united armies of Midian, Amalek and the other nations
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of the East were already mobilized in one vast army, "crowded across the valley like locusts — yes, like the sand upon the seashore — and there were too many camels even to count" (Judges 7:12-13).
How foolish it must have seemed to go against such a foe! Especially under Gideon! Amazingly, 32,000 responded to Gideon's call!
How Gideon must have praised God for those men! Perhaps, with God's help, they would win the battle. It would be tough. But maybe God would do a miracle. I'm sure he thought these thoughts.
But what did God say? "There are too many of you! I can't let all of you fight the Midianites, for then the people of Israel will boast to Me that they saved themselves by their own strength! Send home any of your men who are timid and frightened!" And 22,000 left.
Gideon must have sighed as he looked at the 10,000 who remained. "But the Lord said, 'There are still too many . . . Bring them down to the spring and I'll show you which ones shall go with you and which ones shall not' " (Judges 7:4).
Our staff had never been adequate to grapple with our assignment from God. Once that first payment was made, it seemed that even the few we had were leaving. And those who stayed, like Gideon's 10,000, still faced that unavoidable, crucial test of "support raising." If they were afraid to tell friends and churches of their need, if they really could not believe that God would bring in their support, then they also would have to leave.
The test given Gideon's troops was not illogical. Those who lapped the water like dogs were obviously not watching for the enemy. Our test, too, was quite logical: unless one can believe that God will supply his personal financial needs, how can he possibly have faith that God will supply $15 million to finish paying for a campus?
It took faith for Gideon to watch his recruits leave. It took faith for us too.
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It also took faith to work with what was left. We eagerly welcomed the talented young people who asked to join us. But they were trained to be engineers, computer scientists, nurses, teachers, and pastors — not managers, professional fund raisers, graphic artists and business administrators!
Yet God used them, and gradually He began to bring in a few more mature people with overseas experience. We were a motley crew, but out of that material God began to mold a team to do His miracles, miracles we would desperately need before we were through.
