January - March 1985
"Don't Throw Away Your Confidence ... Persevere"
(Hebrews 10:35 NIV)
My heart was at peace, at least for awhile. But Ralph's was not. The months between October and March were months of tremendous stress for him. Never have I seen him so discouraged for so long. It seemed that the decision of the board to go against what he felt was best was like an arrow in his heart. He could no longer work with confidence that they would back him. He felt he didn't know what they would decide next, and if he could live with it. The joy left his eyes. The faith and hope which is ordinarily so much a part of him was no longer there. He said very little, but he lived with pain. Never have I seen him come so close to quitting.
As the months passed, and I saw the agony Ralph was going through, I spent a great deal of time in prayer for him personally. If he could just be distracted from the vision God had given him, if he could just spend his time fretting about problems over which he had no control, then Satan could still stop us.
Through a providential circumstance at the height of our
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personal distress, Bill Bright of Campus Crusade learned of the struggle we were in and called Ralph one night at midnight. He had just returned from Germany and was calling from Tulsa.
He recounted some of the stresses he had gone through in earlier days, times which were equally as discouraging as our own. "But Ralph," he added, "one thing is true. These men on the board didn't call you to start the Center. God did! You're answerable to Him. Anyhow, there are some things that you just can't resign from. You can't resign from being a father to your children. And you can't resign from God's call. Just hang in, and God will see you through!"
Ralph was very quiet when he got off the phone. I could tell that he felt like he was deliberately walking back into the Garden of Gethsemane. But at least the light was clear. He knew which way to go, even though we were no nearer an answer, and we were still as desperate financially.
Just to know that founders of other Christian organizations had faced exactly the same problems was a comfort. We were in good company. Paul must have been in a similar circumstance when he wrote, "We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don't know why things happen as they do, but we don't give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up and keep going (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).
In that phone conversation, Bill Bright suggested Ralph call Bill's own chief financial advisor, a man Ralph had known and respected for years, but had never spoken to about financial affairs. Ed Johnson is well known in the banking world, a man who has risen to the top. After discussing the situation with several on our Development Committee and with Ralph, he made some very creative suggestions. Then he turned to Ralph and said, "Ralph, I feel very strongly that whatever we do, we must be careful not to go against what God is telling the one He had especially called.
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What is your sense of God's leading? What has God told you?"
From time to time in the months since October, various members of the Development Committee had contacted the officials of Point Loma College. Neither Ralph nor Art knew the content of those discussions. It was almost as if there were now two Centers for World Mission, with different ways of doing things.
In early March, 1985, prompted perhaps by Ed Johnson's proposal, we received a rather stern letter from the Point Loma lawyer outlining two options we could take. Ralph was rather surprised at the tone of the letter — it was so different from all others we had ever received from them. Later, their business manager commented that the communications they had recently been receiving from our Development Committee had seemed so much like secular "hard-ball" business negotiations, that they had decided to respond in kind. "But this is not the way we prefer to operate," he confided. "In fact, through the years we have really appreciated Ralph's open-handed, no-secrets way of negotiating, and we really prefer to deal with him."
Perhaps that was the reason that when the Development Committee requested a face-to-face discussion of their terms in the March letter, the Point Loma officials insisted Ralph be present.
We were not at all in a good bargaining position. Since the previous September — seven months before — we had been expecting daily to receive a foreclosure notice. Lest we have no money to mount a final campaign after that came, we had withheld any further money that had come in to us, informing Point Loma as to what we were doing and why. Even though they understood this tactic, our failure to pay put them in a quandary. They had budgeted our payments for salaries and other expenses.
But they really didn't want to foreclose. Indeed, a number of their students, we were told, had been meeting together
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for the precise purpose of praying that God would provide for our needs.
Nevertheless, a legal contract is a legal contract. And, in view of their other obligations, they were no more financially able to forgive our debt than we were able to pay it right then.
Thus, they were very willing to meet with our representatives. Both Ralph and Art went, as well as two others representing the Development committee. "It was a friendly meeting," Ralph told me later. "And though the terms of their letter were very difficult for us, they were, nevertheless, very fair."
Essentially, they gave us two options: 1) they could foreclose immediately (Would we prefer that?), or 2) they could give us an extension of two more years on our combined balloon payment (which would then be roughly $6 million for the campus proper and $2.5 million for the houses). If we chose this latter option, they would have to increase the interest on the housing payments from 8.5% to 12%. We winced at the increase in interest, but realized that it would not be an insuperable problem since we were now benefitting from the rising rental income of the area in general. That additional rental income would cover the extra interest on the housing as well as property tax and maintenance costs. The interest on the central campus property had already been raised to 12.5%, so that was not "new."
But we were already struggling to meet the higher payments ($300,000) due every three months on the campus proper, and Ralph commented rather wryly that their offer was like saying to a drowning man, I can't pull you out, but I'll give you an extra half hour to struggle. "But we really don't have much of an alternative, do we?" he asked our staff.
"There were several other stipulations," Art told me, "none of them easy for us to fulfill, but fair. As the meeting closed, the Point Loma officials looked at those from our
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Development Committee and added, 'We want to make it very clear that you cannot sell any of the houses — not any at all — unless by so doing you can completely pay off both houses and campus. If we eventually have to take the campus back, we do not want it without the houses. The houses are absolutely essential to the financial stability of the campus proper. We have said that all along, as Dr. Winter can tell you.' " As Art related this, he added, "They were very pointed about that!"
This answer certainly wasn't what we had planned and prayed for. In some ways it was worse, in some ways better. Yet because we had prayed so earnestly, we had to believe that it was from God.
I, for one, felt that God had indeed answered prayer. In our helplessness. He had preserved the houses for us, and He had done so without any manipulation on our part. All we had done was pray.
Nevertheless, the road ahead would be very long. We knew instinctively that it was only a matter of time before the same problems would all arise again. Certain members of the Board were still determined to sell in spite of Point Loma's statement. Only with Great reluctance were they persuaded to postpone any moves in that direction until the fall of 1986.
But that small reprieve gave us breathing space. And though our task was still as difficult as ever, the spirit of heaviness began to lift from Ralph's heart. Once again he was able to look beyond the daily pressures to the goals and vision God had given him.
I knew that God had met him in a very special way when the verses he shared at morning prayers were these:
So do not throw away your confidence. It shall be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.
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For in just a little while, He who is coming will come and not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. (Hebrews 10:35-38)
"How well it fits Ralph's situation," I thought. "When you have done the will of God . . ." It was true, we weren't done yet! But we had done our best. And He said He would come and complete all He had promised. He would not delay beyond His own perfect timing! We had to trust Him and wait.
For us, meantime, our survival — our very life itself — depended on faith ... on taking Him at His word. We dared not shrink back, no matter what. We lived (and live) for His approval. And this is enough!
