November 1980
"Lord, Do It Again"
(Daniel 9:15)
"Would you like one of these buttons?"
The Fuller School of World Mission faculty had come well prepared to Billy Graham's Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland, in July, 1974. Pushing through the crowded halls between sessions, we'd watch for former School of World Mission students or missionary friends and press into their hands little red buttons which Dr. Arthur Glasser, our dean had secured. They said "World Missionary Conference 1980," a date six years off!
Two years before, in 1972, the outgoing president of the Association of Professors of Mission had suggested that it was time for another world level conference of missionaries, mission professors and mission executives. "The last one, as you know, was in 1910, and with all that has happened since, we have a lot to discuss."
Not since 1910, indeed! The telephone, the airplane, two world wars, the nuclear age, the computer — 1910 was like several centuries ago! Even more significant, most Western missions by then had outproduced their homeland sending base. (For example, there are today three times as many Baptists
Page 177
in India as in England!) And in that time mission strategy had gone through a number of significant changes. Could anybody doubt it was time to meet again?
But missions professors are not usually conference organizers. Neither are mission executives and missionaries. And though the interest in such a conference began to build up around the world, nobody did anything very effective to organize it. It could well be the most important conference in history, and yet it almost didn't happen!
Ralph was very concerned that the meeting actually take place. As Professor (at Fuller) of the Historical Development of the Christian Movement (a description of his own making) he knew a great deal about that earlier meeting. In fact, his final exams often asked his students to list how it was unique. The answer he expected was as follows:
1) It was a delegated meeting. Participants were not invited but were chosen by the mission agencies that sent them.
2) It was a working conference. The delegates didn't come merely to listen. They came to strategize together, to work out plans for finishing the Great Commission.
3) By design, no church leaders as such were present, only those who were also mission professionals.
4) The theme was "going where the gospel had not gone." Mission agencies working exclusively in countries where the Christian faith was well established were specifically not invited to participate in 1910. This caused some consternation, especially when none in Latin America were included. In 1910!
During the next four years after Lausanne, Ralph wrote several articles describing the hoped-for conference in 1980, and he watched anxiously to see if anyone would accept the challenge to help get it started.
Early in 1976, he approached the other faculty members. "My sabbatical is due this fall. How about letting me use it to help plan the 1980 conference?" he asked. They agreed.
Page 178
But the Lord had other plans. That spring He began to talk to Ralph about something far bigger and far more difficult than planning a world conference. And instinctively, Ralph knew it might cause misunderstanding. He took months to make his decision, and when we moved to start the U.S. Center for World Mission, all of a sudden we were very much alone, cut off from former associates and friends.
Under the circumstances, even I assumed that now someone else would have to plan the World Missionary Conference. Ralph couldn't!
That year he was the president of the American Society of Missiology, and in his presidential address he stressed the conference being planned for 1980. That fall he gave the keynote address to the triennial joint meeting of the IFMA (Interdenominational Foreign Missions Association), the two largest associations of mission agencies in the world. His address, "The Grounds for a New Thrust in World Missions," emphasized the unfinished task and again urged the need for a world level meeting of missionaries in 1980.
Still nothing happened!
In November we moved onto the campus of the USCWM. By December we had begun negotiations for an option to buy the $15 million property and become aware of the first flickerings of opposition from the Summit Lighthouse cult, renting most of the space on campus.
After much prayer, complicated legal procedures and stress, in mid-April (finally!) we had the option to buy. It required us to pay the first $850,000 on our down payment by September, only four and a half months away. And our staff numbered fifteen!
Obviously, we were incredibly busy. But Ralph continued to be concerned about that very strategic conference which, through inattention, seemingly wasn't going to be. As with the old adage, "What's everyone's responsibility is no one's responsibility," no one seemed inclined to take the
Page 179
lead. And time was rapidly passing.
Providentially, however, the School of World Mission at Fuller asked Ralph in the spring of 1978 to teach the main (mission history) course he formerly taught. After teaching it for ten years, he wouldn't need to spend much time in preparation, so he agreed. His classroom was packed; the seventy or so students were all experienced missionaries.
On the last day of classes, Ralph spoke about the 1910 World Missionary Conference and the need for a follow-up one that, like it, was strictly limited to mission leaders. His closing words were an all-out plea that at least one of those missionary students before him would take a two-year leave of absence in order to organize the conference suggested six years earlier for 1980.
"I'll stay after class to talk to anyone about it," he added. "If you feel at all inclined to help, please come and talk to me about it right after class."
Only one student came forward, and Ralph plunged into discussions of what would be involved. Leiton Chinn was not the one Ralph at first would have chosen. Quiet and rather deliberate in his manner, he didn't seem visionary enough to initiate something new. He had never before organized a conference of any sort. Could he manage a world level one? Moreover, since his mission, International Students, Inc., was not one of the "standard brand" overseas agencies, Ralph wondered how the executives from the other agencies would respond to him. Amazingly, however, just then his assignment was very flexible, and he was willing.
Years later Leiton confessed to Ralph, "After class that day I had already forgotten your plea and had no intention of volunteering. I had come forward to talk to you about something entirely different." Ralph was flabbergasted — and then laughed. The conference was now history, and more than anyone else, Leiton's willingness to help had allowed it to happen.
In just a couple of weeks, Leiton moved into an office
Page 180
we offered him on campus and had already called together a meeting of mission executives in the Los Angeles area. Larry Allmon, Executive Director of Gospel Recordings, Inc., became the head of this Steering Committee, which would be meeting almost weekly for a long time to come. Center leadership decided to loan a young couple just coming on staff to help out in Leiton's office. In no time they had the office organized, and in just a few weeks their letters began arriving in the offices of mission agencies around the world.
In the meantime, unknown to us at first, two other widely divergent groups thought that, in the evident vacuum of leadership, they themselves should volunteer to sponsor the proposed 1980 World Missionary Conference. One was the World Council of Churches, in one sense one of the indirect products of the 1910 conference. By 1978, however, the WCC had become so vastly different (both in theology and mission strategy) from the mission group that had preceded it that it would definitely be unacceptable as a sponsor to most evangelical mission leaders who might want to come.
The other group was the new Lausanne Continuation Committee representing the 1974 Congress on World Evangelization where all of us had passed out the buttons. Theology here was no problem, but its constituency was almost entirely churchmen, people with little connection to mission agencies. Even the individuals on their committee who were drawn from "mission lands" were church leaders, not people who had ever done missionary work. They had no experience in planting a church in a culture different from their own, certainly none where no church already existed.
By the time Ralph heard about these two other conferences, their leaders had moved far into the planning stages. The WCC conference would in no way overlap. From experience Ralph knew their topics of discussion would likely be justice and liberation — basically political concerns such as apartheid, guerrilla warfare in South America and Africa, etc.
Page 181
But we had dear friends on the Lausanne Committee whom we didn't want to offend. Yet those they had invited to come were mainly church leaders, not mission leaders delegated by their agencies. Because of this, we felt their meeting would be vastly different from the one so long hoped for, something which had not taken place since 1910. "Is it too much to ask that mission leaders be allowed to get together by themselves once every seventy years?" Ralph asked rather plaintively.
The Edinburgh 1910 meeting had been so historic that everyone, it seemed, wanted the honor of sponsoring the conference that would commemorate its anniversary. Before those who had proposed this follow-through meeting were really aware of what was happening, both the WCC and the Lausanne Committee had shifted the dates for their next world-level meetings back a year or more so they would fall in 1980, 70 years after Edinburgh. And they were a bit surprised to learn that some of the mission professors involved in the original suggestion in 1972 still felt it was necessary to hold a conference after the pattern of 1910 — namely, one composed of delegates from mission agencies with a special concern for unoccupied fields. But by then the other two groups had already announced their change of date to 1980.
It took some juggling to get three world-level mission conferences in one year. The WCC decided to meet in Australia in March, 1980. At first, the Lausanne Committee planned their meeting for January. (At that time the Edinburgh meeting was being discussed for July.) When the Lausanne Committee finally settled on June for their conference, the date for the Edinburgh Conference for mission leaders was moved first to August and later to November in order not to conflict.
Edinburgh's weather in November was not ideal for those coming from warm climates. Also, the frequent change of dates was confusing and, no doubt, hurt the attendance somewhat. Yet, being so exclusive in those it allowed to
Page 182
attend, Edinburgh II, as it came to be called, was nevertheless a success.
Less than a year before the conference was to begin, David Bliss of our Pat Boone concert days, got into the act. In the fall of 1977, he had gone with African Enterprise as a missionary to South Africa. The next time we saw him was at InterVarsity's Urbana Missionary Convention at the end of December, 1979. He had brought with him 25 South African students. Some were East Indian in background, some tribal blacks, some Afrikaaners, some British. Two were older — one a dear, deeply-spiritual black missionary to Madagascar and the other an equally wonderful seminary professor of British stock. After Urbana, as a group they came to the Center to take our month-long "Perspectives on the World Christian Movement" course.
While they were with us, the steering committee of the Edinburgh Conference met in our cafeteria. David was very excited about their plans. "Going to Urbana and then coming here has been a wonderful experience for these young leaders from South Africa," he told our son-in-law, Brad Gill. "Do you suppose we could somehow figure a way to get a youth contingent like these invited to Edinburgh?"
As the editor at that time of our Center news magazine, Mission Frontiers, Brad had been sitting in on the meetings of the steering committee. He also was deeply interested in this upcoming conference.
"Well, Dave, you know this is a conference for mission executives and missionaries. I'm afraid people like us just don't qualify."
"That's certainly understandable for the strategy working sessions. But it is our generation that is going to have to carry out the strategy planned by these executives," Dave insisted. "It seems to me that we've got to be there."
"I agree," Brad said, "but what can we do about it?"
"I know! Let's hold a simultaneous conference for students interested in missions." Dave suggested. "We could
Page 183
have our own sessions during the day and then join the other conference at night. Wouldn't that work? Even this late we could get mission-minded young people from all over the world to come. We'd have to lay out some strict requirements to be sure to get the right ones, not just young people interested in excitement, but I think it would be worth it. What do you think?"
"I'll tell you what I'll do," Brad answered. "I'll talk to the steering committee and see what they say."
They had barely eight months to get organized. Dave and his group of South Africans had gone back home, which meant that Dave and Brad had to work across an ocean, sometimes by long distance telephone, to pull the youth conference together. Unlike the larger conference, they had no mailing list to draw upon. To a great extent they had to depend upon the various student groups like InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, Navigators and their European, Asian and African counterparts to get the word out. Unavoidably and unfortunately, some key student groups, such as one in India, were missed.
Nevertheless, under far less than ideal circumstances with inadequate time and resources, David and Brad pulled together the first-ever International Student Consultation on Frontier Missions.
In order to ensure that only students dedicated to frontier missions would come, every application carried a "Statement of Purpose," which the applicant had to sign before being accepted. It was quite rigorous, some said too much so, but because of it, the group that came was a highly selective one, ready to work and pray in earnest.
Even with such a short lead time and so little help in organization, 243 sent in applications. Mainly because of expense, however, only 180 from 26 countries actually attended.
In a very critical sense, the conference of the executives was also a first: fully one-third of those in attendance were
Page 184
heads or executives of mission agencies founded in non-Western countries. As seen from today, one of the "scandals" back in 1910 was the fact that only a handful of delegates were citizens of non-Western countries. These were invited merely as observers, representing the national churches. Interestingly, one of them, Bishop Azariah of India, had already started two mission agencies and should have been there as a fully participating mission executive! Evidently, however, this thought never crossed the minds of those planning that conference in 1910.
It was not easy for many non-Western agencies to get to Edinburgh. Those from hot climates didn't have the proper clothing for Scotland in November. Mary Frances Redding of our staff begged or borrowed as many warm coats as she could find to solve that problem.
Then, there was the problem of expense. Many of those who came were able to only because of a small, last-minute miracle. Two months before the date of the two conferences Larry Allmon, Executive Director of Gospel Recordings and head of the conference steering committee, had dropped a birthday card to Anthony Rossi, former owner of Tropicana Orange Juice and one of the wealthy supporters of his mission. A couple of days later he was amazed to get a phone call thanking him for the card. "Do you need any help with anything?" the caller asked.
Larry took a deep breath and told him a bit about the Edinburgh Conference and its accompanying student contingent. He added that many of the delegates from the non-Western world couldn't come for lack of funds. "Maybe I can send you a bit to help out," this man said, and hung up.
A few days later, Larry came beaming into the office, waving a check for $100,000. Ten thousand dollars were given immediately to those running the student conference to help key student mission leaders to attend. The other $90,000 rippled around the world and probably doubled the delegation of executives from Third World countries.
Page 185
I'll never forget that first night in Edinburgh: the beautiful Scottish hymns, some so different from our own; the welcoming address from the mayor of Edinburgh . . . and then those flipping pages! George Cowan of Wycliffe Bible Translators brought a five-inch-thick stack of "fanfold" computer pages listing the tribes yet to be reached. He placed the printout on a stand, then gently tugged the first sheet, and the rest of the pages began to flip over, one at a time, automatically. For ten minutes, it seemed, those sheets flipped, one by one, down to the floor as he talked. I confess I don't remember anything he said, but the impact of those flipping sheets, each page representing 30 or more unreached people groups, was unforgettable.
Every day was full of exciting discussions on how to penetrate unreached cultures with the gospel. I smiled to myself when I saw Erik Stadell of the the early days on our campus go to the platform to pray. With the headquarters of his young mission agency now in Sweden, he participated mainly in the Youth Consultation. Still gangling, still beaming, still unpredictable, I wondered how the more staid British delegates would respond to him and his prayers. On one occasion, when asked to pray from the platform, like a cheerleader at a football game, he first led us over and over again in shouting the theme of the conference: "A Church for Every People by the Year 2000." And we all breathed, "May it be so, O Lord we pray."
The third or fourth day at Edinburgh, as Ralph and I came out of the meeting of the executives, we found our daughter Beth, Brad's wife, standing outside, looking very sober.
"What's wrong?" I asked Brad.
"Well, it's been sort of a hard morning," was his cryptic answer.
Just then I caught sight of our second daughter, Becky, and her husband, Tim. At that time Tim was our Center Coordinator at the USCWM in Pasadena. I hoped that his experience
Page 186
in management would give him an increased understanding of the dynamics of the Student Consultation so as to explain these sober faces.
"Whatever is going on?" I insisted.
"Well, we have a lot of things — feelings, really — to resolve among the students. The number of Americans here, more than twice as many as everyone else combined, is sort of overwhelming to the rest. Moreover, a lot of us are from the U.S. Center for World Mission, and Brad, of course, has a key role, being one of the planners.
"Also adding to all this is the fact that the students come from several different international student organizations, each with its own interests and fears. To weld us all together is not easy. And because Brad and David are in the limelight, they sometimes get a few barbs."
"Like what?"
"Well, you know, to Europeans, Americans always seem to rush in and take charge. They sort of resent that."
"But somebody had to call the meeting. Anyhow, David is from South Africa."
"But he's still an American, and they know that."
I thought of the long months of hard work both the Blisses and Gills had put in to make this conference a success. And I felt very sorry. "Missionaries go through this kind of thing all the time," I warned them. "In a sense, it's a part of culture shock. Sometimes the charges leveled against them are completely unfounded. But still they hurt."
Even so, it was a great five days (nine for the students).
Ralph planned to leave Friday noon, the last day of the executives' conference, because he was scheduled to speak in Philadelphia the following Sunday. I had to stay behind to take care of unfinished business in London left by the video cameraman. And I also hoped to visit the Island of Iona where scores of Celtic missionaries had trained in the centuries between 500 A.D. and 1000.
In the main conference, that morning was given over to
Page 187
evaluation. Had it been worth the time and expense? Had it really been that crucial?
The answer was a resounding "Yes!" Some added, "Why haven't we done this before? We should have been consulting like this all along. How long will it be before we can get together again? We simply must!"
There were two rather negative comments, which surprised me a bit. One delegate complained, "We don't have enough church leaders here." Another added, "Why aren't we discussing the problem of justice or the tensions that arise between the national church and the missionaries?"
"Who is that?" I asked the person seated beside me.
"He's a theology professor from somewhere here in Europe — Norway, I think."
If he's not a missionary or mission executive, how did he get here in the first place? I thought only mission executives or mission-related people were allowed. Doesn't he realize our only topic is unreached peoples? Can't he understand that the subject of church-mission tension pertains only to well-established fields, not to pioneering situations? He should have gone to the other conference in Thailand. That's where those other issues were discussed.
But I had to smile as I reflected on the situation. Before we came to Edinburgh, several of our missionary friends who had gone to the conference in Thailand had complained to us that at Pattaya the issue of the unreached peoples hadn't even come up until the very last day. Like our theology professor, they simply were at the wrong conference. They should have been at Edinburgh. In a sense, for the Norwegian theologian to participate at Edinburgh was like an interior decorator attending a conference of construction engineers. How could we talk of church-mission tension if there were not yet a church in that culture? And how could the ordinary pastor or seminary professor understand the problems of presenting the gospel in a relevant way to a culture, a people group, which had never heard? The problems
Page 188
were vastly different.
After Ralph left, I moved into one of the local youth hostels with Linda, our third daughter, whose husband had also had to leave early. The youth consultation still had two days to run, and remembering the early adjustments the students had to make to each other, I was eager to see firsthand just how they were getting along now. They were meeting for those last administrative sessions in the basement of a church a few blocks away from the convention hall where the older group had met. Paul Graham, a very gifted young leader from South Africa, was moderating. Brad Gill and David Bliss sat at a table taking notes and, I noticed, carefully refrained from imposing their views so that the students would participate more fully.
"We must meet together for another conference." It was the common feeling among them all.
"But when?" someone asked.
"Whenever the executives meet! There must always be a student contingent. That is very important," another replied.
And I thought, "Yes, it is. But just when will that be?"
Then the question naturally arose, "Who will call our next meeting?" All week long they had skirted around the problem of an ongoing structure of some sort, with authority to act. Some felt that to hold together and move forward, at least a skeletal organization was necessary. Others insisted that they had enough organizations already; one more would be one too many.
It was obvious even in that final meeting that vested interests still confused every issue. InterVarsity was there, with delegates from several countries; Navigators also and Campus Crusade. Also, several mission organizations and schools had sent fairly large delegations: the U.S. Center for World Mission, Worldwide Evangelization Crusade in London, Biola University. There were a number of capable seminarians — from Talbot, Dallas, Fuller and Gordon-Conwell, etc. Several students had come from secular schools, Princeton University and Penn State in particular.
Page 189
They were all agreed on one point, however: whatever resulted from their meeting should not be too closely identified with any one group. As the discussion progressed, I looked at Becky and Tim and shook my head. "How on earth are you ever going to get anything of value out of this confusion? And why is everyone so scared of organizing? Organization merely gives the ability to move; it doesn't mean control!"
"I know," Becky said, "but we have to work with what we have here, and this is it!"
Back and forth the discussion went. Whenever it got a little tense, Paul Graham, as moderator, would call for a time of prayer. It seemed to me that every hour or so they stopped to pray. "I wish people our age more often would solve their differences this way," I thought. "What a wonderful habit to have learned here."
Finally, after an hour or more, the group came to a decision: 1) they would not start a new organization, but 2) they would appoint an "advocate" to contact the mission executives for them and perhaps pull together another conference when the time came. "We'll each write several names on a piece of paper. The person who gets a unanimous vote will be our advocate," the moderator ruled. And Brad was elected.
I thought back to the distress Beth had felt only the week before and wondered how she felt about this. Her husband was suddenly being asked to fill a tremendously important role, in spite of the muddled title it carried. "Oh God, help them both," I prayed as the entire group spontaneously laid their hands on their heads, commissioning them to be the spokesmen for the group.
Gordon and Sherrie Aeschliman then offered to edit a newsletter to keep them all together, and that offer was gratefully accepted. Two years before, with Dave Dolan, a fellow student at Westmont College, they had started Today's Christian magazine
Page 190
(later called World Christian) and were well acquainted with the publishing process. As with Brad and Beth, the group laid their hands on their heads and prayed for them, and finally the meeting was over. It was time to go home.
_____________________
Years have passed since Edinburgh 1980. Those who attended the student consultation are no longer students. Many are missionaries, some in very sensitive areas overseas. Other are in the business world or in the pastorate somewhere. To try to track them now would be difficult.
Their zeal created a very influential annual missions conference in Pakistan, a well-known mission-mobilization student organization still in existence in 1994 (Caleb Project), a new scholarly mission society (Society of Frontier Missiology) and its accompanying journal, The International Journal of Frontier Missions. Some of the things the students began after Edinburgh 1980 fell by the wayside as they left school and took on other responsibilities. Perhaps the lack of a similar follow-up conference meant there was no one ready to pick up the baton, especially in the student world itself. Nevertheless, the influence of that conference on those students who attended has remained and continues to bear fruit in many ways today.
In some respects these five years have seen even more pronounced results among the mission executive delegates. It is hard to believe that as recently as 1980 only a handful of agencies consciously worked with unreached peoples. Today almost all are determinedly pushing into new frontiers. The task is not an easy one. Its very complexity requires new strategies and terms. Mission executives in 1994 speak of "non-residential missionaries," of "creative access countries," of "closure," of "tent-making missionaries." Some of the agencies, such as SIM International, are planning to double their missionary force in seven years in order to see that
Page 191
there will, indeed, be a church for every people by the year 2000.
The question most asked those last days at Edinburgh is still unanswered: how long will it be before there is another such conference?
Perhaps that is not the most important question. Perhaps more crucial is, What will it take to finish the task?
New winds are blowing, directly resulting from Edinburgh 1980. But that is another story under another date fourteen years later. The seed was sown at Edinburgh. The harvest has just begun.
________
The addresses and proceedings of the Edinburgh Consultation of Frontier Missions as well as the International Students Consultation on Frontier Missions may be found in Seeds of Promise, edited by Allan Starling (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1981).
