September 1983
"Victory In Disguise"
September 1st, 1983. For five years we had looked forward to this day when the balloon payment of $6 million would be due on the campus portion of our property. For five years we had prayed for the day when we would be able to "enter the land" and make the campus wholly ours. We had worked long and hard and had prayed as never before in our lives. And yet, when the day arrived, we were not ready.
It had been a constant struggle to make our mortgage payments of $175,000 every three months for five years. We had fallen behind several times, once almost to the point of foreclosure. But the Lord had miraculously brought us through again and again.
Because of that strain, however, it was hard to believe that God would really give us the $6.5 million all at once. We felt we had been in the wilderness and hoped that in the future it would be easier, somehow. But we had no idea how much work the Lord still had to do on us.
Though often tempted otherwise, over the years, we had continued to believe that if we gave first priority to Kingdom concerns, God would indeed supply all these other things we needed, money included. (See Matthew 6:33). Thus, our "fund raising" plans always included the larger Kingdom
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concern of mobilizing the church for new mission outreach.
We tried many approaches: our Hidden Peoples Chart, our Penetrating the Last Frontiers movie, articles in various magazines, radio interviews with missionaries, the Year of Vision program for pastors, as well as a heavy speaking schedule for some of our leaders. As vision producing programs, every attempt produced results, some much more spectacular than others. But they did not bring in the money we needed for our mortgage payments.
One idea, however, came close to a promise of not only spreading the vision but bringing us financial help as well.
In the spring of 1981, Pastor Vuta from Burma told our staff a fascinating story. Shortly after World War II his country had expelled all foreigners, including missionaries. At that time his tribe, the Lushai, were still unreached. But the Mizo tribe from India which, years before, had been reached by missionaries from Wales, had crossed the "closed" border to reach the Lushai.
Barely 25 years later, the Lushai were themselves taking the gospel north to other unreached Burmese tribes. "We already have 16 missionaries," Pastor Vuta proudly told Ralph.
Ralph was amazed and pleased. "Just how do you support them? Do they have to pay their own way?" he asked.
"We have the handful of rice!"
"What?" Ralph wondered if he had heard right.
"The handful of rice. Every meal our wives set aside a handful of rice for missions. At the end of the week the Women's Missionary Society collects the rice and sells it in the market. That's the way we support them."
"Hmm," Ralph thought. "I wonder how much a handful of rice is worth in their economy."
It turned out to be substantial, really a sacrifice because they were all poor. Unknown to himself, this humble pastor from a little known tribe in Burma became the inspiration for a new movement of prayer and giving in America.
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Increasingly Ralph was convinced that the answer to mission mobilization had to be something that daily impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Christians. If the Burmese Christians could give a handful of rice per meal, what could American Christians give? Bob Coleman on our staff suggested loose change, but was almost embarrassed to do so. For the Burmese, a handful of rice was a sacrifice, but the amount of loose change an American has at the end of each day averages about 27 cents, hardly a sacrifice except for the very poor. But it was a place to start. And asking for more might seem to threaten local church budgets.
"How can we inspire Americans to do even that much?" someone asked.
Just a few weeks earlier Ralph had spoken at a meeting of Navigator leaders in Colorado Springs and had picked up their customized version of The Daily Walk prayer guide. "Why can't there be a missions prayer guide, also used on a daily basis?" he asked himself.
Several weeks later we sent Brad Gill, one of our younger staff leaders, to confer with leaders from Campus Crusade, InterVarsity and World Vision about such a guide. Each was enthusiastic.
Bob Coleman, our Director of Planning, was thrown the task of design as usual. For several weeks in the fall of 1981, he and Koleen Matsuda, like him a Caltech grad gifted in writing, worked over the basic design and wrote the first issue of what they called The Daily Prayer Guide. Every day had an inspirational Bible reading, which looked at the Bible as a missionary book. The rest of each page was given over to a missionary biography, the exciting report of a new missions breakthrough, or the story of a Hidden People group still waiting to be reached.
The little booklet was good — very good, everyone said. But we now had the problem of Marketing. We knew how to sell books, but our goal now was nothing short of starting a
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movement of prayer for missions. Thus we were thrilled when first ten, twenty, then thirty or more denominations and mission agencies began to promote the use of the Global Prayer Digest (as it later came to be called), many requesting their own customized versions.
This development was very wonderful and really crucial. Meanwhile, however, the date for our $6.5 million balloon payment on the campus — September 1st, 1983 — marched nearer and nearer.
When we designed the Frontier Fellowship Global Prayer Digest, we had hoped that, as with World Vision's love loaf, the agencies or churches participating with the Frontier Fellowship Movement would help pay the start-up costs by sending the Center the first $15 collected from every new participant.
But to keep track of all this was a burden both for the participating agencies and our own little office, which was already overloaded by the task of producing the Digest. Almost immediately we discovered that this arrangement seemed to get in the way of vision sharing, so we decided to bear those expenses alone.
Among some groups the plan was immediately successful. For example, in its first year of participation, the Presbyterian Church (USA) received $120,000. That amount doubled the second year and continues to grow. This hardy group of evangelicals in the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship has a goal of getting 100,000 Presbyterians involved (that is, 1 out of 30 members), which will produce $10 million per year for outreach to unreached peoples.
What a thrill to know that through our efforts, a substantial number of dollars per year were being raised for new mission work! But it was a bit discouraging to realize that, once again, one of the programs we had initiated to help the entire missions cause would not likely help us! Who then would help us?
One day in April, Ralph said to our staff, "I think we're
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looking at this situation in the wrong way. Our problem is not to learn how to get but rather how to give — to give the most valuable thing we possess — hope!"
"Hope?" I thought. "That's what we ourselves need about now!"
He continued. "One reason why the church as a whole is so lethargic about missions today is that Christians have lost hope for the world. Just look at the newspapers."
I thought back to the suicide bomb which not long before had killed a number of marines in Lebanon. At the time my first reaction was quite typical: "What are we doing over there anyway? They don't want us. Why risk our necks?"
I really can't blame U.S. Christians for their lack of interest when all they know about missions seems so unrelated to the real problems of the world — the civil wars in Central America, the kidnapping of diplomats, the upswing of pornography and abortion! "Perhaps we ought to be grateful that they dutifully continue to support a cause they feel is rather beside the point," I thought.
"If we could just tell the churches why we have hope," Ralph added, "then I think they would be able once again to get seriously involved in missions. How many church people, for instance, know that since the Sandinistas took over in Nicaragua, the evangelical movement has grown five times larger, right under the noses of a Marxist government and against its wishes? Or, how many have ever heard of the missionaries working with the thousands of so-called "street children" of Manila? How many realize that there are entire communes in China which are now Christian? Or that entire villages of high caste Hindus are finding Christ in India? Do American Christians understand what a difference these facts are already making, even in the politics of these countries?
"We who are part of the staff of the U.S. Center for World Mission are very fortunate because we work where we find out the facts. But we owe it to the members of our
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churches to tell them, too."
It was that challenge which brought us once more to the drawing board. What sort of thing could we do that would not only bring a truly rejuvenating hope to American Christians but would also, we hoped and prayed, encourage them to help us survive as an organization?
Somewhat after the pattern of our earliest "Grapevine" (pass-on-able) letter, we decided to send out a brief, inexpensive "Invitation to Hope." On one side of the sheet it described some of the exciting things we knew God was doing around the world. On the other, we told what He was doing through our efforts at the U.S. Center for World Mission.
Ten of these letters were put in a packet so that a person who had already given to us could send copies to ten friends, inviting each one to embrace our hopeful outlook on the world. In a handwritten note added at the top, he then suggested that his friend register his own hope for what God was doing through us by sending us a one-time $15 gift. These letters were our only propaganda for our "I'll Touch Ten Campaign."
I'll never forget the massive work party it took to get all those letters ready to mail out. Everyone on staff (as well as a number of the staff from member organizations on campus and volunteers from local churches) worked all day long for three days in Pasadena's largest auditorium, which happened to be on our campus.
It was already into the summer, and the auditorium was without air conditioning. At least 100 people were seated around tables placed on the only level area — the basketball court in the center near the stage. Several of the young men were assigned as "runners" to keep each table supplied with "Invitations to Hope," envelopes, rubber bands, and explanatory literature which accompanied each packet of ten letters, all of which had to be bundled together before being packed into mailing boxes.
Staff mothers brought their babies and young children,
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and every now and then a child would laugh, or cry, or be caught up in the air by one of the single girls or guys. We were all one big happy family, singing as we worked, trusting that the Lord would bless our efforts. Every now and then the group around one or another table would stop to pray. These fragile letters were our lamps and pitchers (see Judges 7) that we felt the Lord had told us to use for our need.
For some years each of our Central staff has been assigned as the personal correspondent for a certain area of the United States (or the world, as the case might be). Thus, every person who contacts the U.S. Center for World Mission receives a personal letter from someone on staff. For several weeks previous to our work party, most of us had arrived at work at 6 A.M. in order to call "back east" on midnight rates to individuals from our own particular assigned areas. We were pleased at how many were eager to help with our "I'll Touch Ten Campaign." Eventually 500 offered to be responsible for an entire "Hope Chest" — a hundred packets of ten invitations each. That meant 500 x 100 x 10 — or 500,000 invitations!
Many pastors took several Hope Chests and encouraged their entire congregations to send our invitations to ten friends each, adding a personal note to each. Some individuals on their own passed out at least a hundred packets.
Besides bringing hope to people in the pew, the wonderful response from all over brought tremendous hope to us, right when we needed it most. The letters started to pour in, and we scrambled to answer our mail.
In just two months surrounding September 1st, we had 14,000 new donors and in addition had received enough unsolicited larger gifts to make over $900,000.
But it was a subdued victory in view of our need for $6.5 million. We were extremely grateful to all who had given, but I would be less than honest if I did not say that we were also very disappointed. We had wanted so much to be
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over the Jordan. Instead we merely stood on the bank, looking across. I think it is true that, deep inside, many of us had become tired of having to trust the Lord! We were tired of not knowing until the last minute if we would go under or not. We felt that we had had enough education in the school of faith. And it took us almost a week before we could truly rejoice over that victory in disguise.
Our contract with the former owners stated that if we failed to pay the entire $6.5 million, we could continue two more years at higher interest and almost double payments: $300,000 per quarter. Furthermore, the new date for our balloon payment would be two years later, coinciding with the $2.8 million balloon payment that would come due then for the off-campus housing! We had always dismissed this option as one that would surely crush us, and had prayed earnestly that we would be able to avoid it.
But God evidently had other plans. Perhaps we still needed pruning. It was true that, in spite of all our efforts, most American Christians were still in the dark about the unreached peoples. We had tried, but we had not yet accomplished that goal. Was that why we could not get out of the wilderness through which we had wandered for five long years? Or did God know that we might claim the victory ourselves? Was the victory He wanted to give so great that He knew we were not yet ready for it?
Or was the discovery of how to reach 14,000 people with new hope more valuable than getting in the money just then? Did God feel we should have the additional opportunity (necessity!) to continue to reach new people?
I do not know. But I do know that in only six weeks God had provided almost a million dollars. We couldn't make the $6.5 million balloon payment with that, but we could catch up and pay the next two quarterly payments besides. God had not forsaken us. Apparently, He was just leading us a different, longer way.
The twice-as-big $300,000 quarterly payments looked
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impossible — but at least the principal would be reduced faster!1 But how would we ever make those payments and two years later a combined balloon payment of $8.5 million.2
God had promised He would never leave us nor forsake us. He had promised to be with us and to give us all that we would need. He had called us to this work for His kingdom's sake and had led us by a path to bring glory to His name. Therefore our problem was His! He would have to find the solution! We only needed to push on in faith.
Still, with mounting pressure upon us from all sides, one question troubled many of our staff and board members: did God really want us to concentrate so much on giving hope rather than on getting the money we so badly needed? Was there no easier, more sure way?
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1. It may seem strange, but it is true: when we were paying 8% interest and $175,000 per quarter, we could count only a little over $60,000 going to reduce the debt. Later, paying 12 1/2 %, but much higher payments of $300,000 per quarter, we were actually paying more than $120,000 per quarter against our debt. Moreover, with each payment, the percentage paid against the principal actually increases and the proportion eaten up in interest definitely decreases.
2. Although the balloon payments were set at $6 1/2 million (for the campus proper) and $2.8 million (for the houses), because of the increased payment schedule, the combined figure two years later would be only $8.5 million.
