Summer - Fall 1985
"Together With All The Saints"
(Ephesians 3:17-19)
The cool quietness of early morning was broken only by the sound of hymns coming up from the morning meeting room. Over the edge of the roof on the north side of the central patio of Hudson Taylor Hall, the mountains were so clearly defined that, standing on the balcony outside the 24-hour prayer room, I felt I could almost reach out and touch them. In another hour the sun would clear the roof to the east, announcing with its warmth that summer had come.
Suddenly, not ten feet from where I stood, a bluebird burst into song. He sang for a half hour at least, pausing only to dart to another bush or tree in another corner of the patio. And my heart sang with him "The winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers are springing up and the time of the singing of birds has come" (Song of Solomon 2:11).
Our winter — our time of deep despair — was also gone. God had replaced it with a new hope in His providence and grace. Without any dramatic miracle, His quiet hand had stayed the rush of events, giving us new trust that in our helplessness He was not helpless. He would not allow His will to be thwarted if we only remained faithful. What joy!
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Now that we could breathe again, we surveyed how everything was progressing on campus. In spite of all the strain of the past few months, altogether things were moving along fairly well. The production of the Global Prayer Digest was pretty much on schedule; just recently two more denominations (Missouri Synod Lutheran and Foursquare) plus a large evangelical Methodist group had decided to use it. Enrollment in our Perspectives courses across the nation was increasing; from all appearances, it looked like we might have as many as 3000 students in 63 locations during the next year. A few weeks earlier several key mission strategists, known world-wide, had met in our library to lay plans for a massive mission mobilization effort across America; all that was lacking now was the person to head it up. (We called this the "Mission 2000" plan.) Also, cooperating agencies on campus all seemed to be moving ahead, also experiencing the blessing of God on their work.
In April, in order to end the seven-month payment stalemate, at Point Loma's suggestion we had paid all the money we had. The balance still due they applied to our mortgage so we could start again with a clean slate. At our request they also adjusted our payment schedule one month so that it would match usual calendar quarters — January 1st, April 1st, July 1st and October 1st. Ralph felt this new schedule would fit our needs better and, incidentally, give us an extra month to raise the money for the July 1st payment.
Summer meant vacations for most of the staff — and a few extra four-hour prayer watches for the rest of us because of their absence. The mountains and the beach called, yet there was little time for play. Somehow, summer always seemed to be the busiest time of the year on campus.
In winter, the research and mobilization offices were visibly hard to work. But every summer, the campus swarmed with students. Not only did we have two of the 63 Perspectives courses on campus, we also had students for all the courses offered by the various institutes and agencies that
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cooperated and worked here with us. The Zwemer Institute of Muslim Studies expected its largest enrollment yet, well over 100 in its two sessions, each six weeks long. Then there were, as usual, the month-long courses taught by the Institute of Chinese Studies, the Institute of Buddhist Studies, and the Institute of Hindu Studies. Also, International Films had several courses on filmmaking and the Fellowship of Artists for Cultural Evangelism their usual course on the use of native art as a bridge for evangelism. All these besides WCIU's on-going program called "Applied Linguistics / Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages." (Just to pronounce the name of that program took practice!)
Anyone visiting our campus during the summer can't be blamed for assuming that the USCWM/WCIU is primarily a school. But that is far from true! The training courses given here are essential, especially since our policy is not to teach anything taught anywhere else. Yet, in our minds, the most important contribution which the U.S. Center for World Mission and the William Carey International University make is in the fields of mission research and mobilization. These may not be quite so visible but are absolutely crucial if the Christians of the world are going to pursue the completion of world evangelization efficiently.
The research done by the various institutes and by Global Mapping Project is just now beginning to flow to denominations and mission agencies around the world. And in the field of mobilizing the church worldwide, there is so much to do — and so few to do it — that we often wring our hands. I sometimes worry about all the important pieces of mission literature that go out of print and wait months (sometimes years) before someone finds the time to update them and get them back to press. Or the number of manuscripts that sit on my desk, waiting for suggestions and approval before they can be printed and added to the mission literature, which is so crucial to a new missionary thrust. I fret at the lack of really up-to-date Sunday School mission
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materials, films, and videos. We do our best, but we need help.
I sometimes think about God's call to Isaiah (Isaiah 6:8) when He asked, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" From my youth I have always thought of this as a "missionary" verse. Yet the way Isaiah "went" is the way these crucial mobilizers on our team "go." The world will never be won to the Lord unless some people, equally "called," stay at home and mobilize. Unfortunately, church mission committees rarely understands this and often do not support the mission mobilizers living in the States. What a tragedy. May the Lord forgive our shortsightedness!
Always we sense the lack of enough people with managerial experience to supervise all the work here. We need at least five more like Art McCleary. If we could pay salaries, we could get them easily. But very few have the faith to trust God to supply their personal needs. Why? Aren't there some retired people with management experience whose hearts burn for missions?
The summer of 1985 was no different in these ways from any other summer. One experience, however, stands out.
Because of the brush with foreclosure, it was absolutely critical that we be on time with all future payments. But now that would be more difficult than ever. Instead of $175,000 for the campus itself, our new payment schedule required $300,000 each quarter. Also, our housing payments increased more than $10,000 per month.
In the stress and uncertainty of the fall and winter months, we had fallen behind in our only communication with the public — our monthly bulletin called Mission Frontiers. We had long noticed that when Mission Frontiers went out regularly, the donations kept coming. But when it didn't go out, donations inevitably fell.
So we scrambled to catch up ... while April turned into May and May into June.
"Art," Ralph said in mid-May, "we're going to have to
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figure out how we can meet this next payment. We must encourage staff to really be in prayer about this. As I see it, unless God provides in some unforeseen way, we're going to come up very short. According to Bruce, very little money has come in toward this payment, but we simply cannot be late. I know we paid everything we had last time, but do you suppose there are any unrestricted internal funds anywhere at all that we can tap?"
Together they looked over Bruce's financial records. Yes, there was one fund, but ...
Ralph thought back to his time as a professor at Fuller Seminary. On one occasion, the faculty had had to decide between taking a cut in salary or having part of their salary withheld temporarily because of a financial crisis. "I wonder if we dare do the same here," Ralph mused. "What would happen if we had to withhold salaries for a couple of weeks? Dare we do that? Or at least keep back $100 from each paycheck? Do you think, Art, that our staff could weather such an action if it is necessary in order to save the institution itself?"
The question was not as simple as it might seem. Many had found it very difficult to "raise their support," and had struggled along for years on only part of what it should have been, which was low by usual American standards. One staff member that month had received only $105 from his supporters!
In this crisis — praise the Lord! — most of them rallied to the occasion. Moreover, several gave from their personal resources to help others in greater need.
A number of couples on our mailing list learned of this sacrifice on the part of our staff and joined them by sending a third of their own salaries for three months. One of Ralph's long held dreams is that hundreds of thousands of American Christians would adopt this kind of lifestyle and use the extra money for a new mission thrust by all agencies and churches.
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Those who helped us in this way we called our One-third Times Three donors. Without exception, they were not wealthy. Indeed, we were surprised at how many were retired people, missionaries, or country pastors with salaries not much higher than ours. But their generosity got us through that July 1st payment and the October 1st one as well.
As it turned out, we were able to repay the $100 staff loans almost immediately. But a few of the staff left because they were so troubled about the whole episode, especially the lack of forewarning. Almost all who stayed voluntarily signed a statement that should a similar emergency arise again, up to one-third of their salaries could be considered available.
On the whole, however, the experience seemed to bond us all closer together. Certainly it forced us to think whether we were here to be served or to serve and to reconsider whether the Center really needed to exist.
Admittedly, most Americans would never be willing to give up part of their salaries in order for the organization to survive. Yet the pattern is not that strange among mission agencies, all too well acquainted with financial strains. Those among us who had served a number of years overseas did not seem distressed by this request, even though it meant personal hardship in some cases. But the suggestion seemed scary for some who were younger — not because of the financial insecurity so much as the implication that someone else could decide such a move. This kind of team "live-or-die together" attitude had not been part of their previous experience.
Whatever was true, we saw that one of our basic weaknesses was that we had never set up a staff training program that would prepare us all for this kind of togetherness. "What you need is a Discipleship Training School," Todd, our youngest son-in-law told us. "I don't think Youth With a Mission (YWAM) would have survived without it. We have
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found we really can't assume that even missionary candidates are spiritually prepared for the kind of stresses they may go under just from being members of a team. They often come with old unhealed hurts which, when the going gets rough, they project onto the organization. Everyone who joins YWAM goes through this kind of training, no matter how long they have been Christians, or even missionaries, for that matter!"
"You may be right, Todd," Ralph responded. "Come to think of it, most home-based agencies seem to have something of the sort. I know Campus Crusade does and also Navigators. It gives the candidates time to either become a real part of the team, or to leave without feeling like they have failed. But we started with so few and with so much to do that we just overlooked the importance of this. And I think we have suffered because of it. Now what do we do? I'd really like for all of us to go through something like this together. But how could we ever take off six weeks, like YWAM does, to do this?
"Well, instead of the two hours of staff meeting we now have on Wednesday afternoons, perhaps we could have shorter time on Wednesday mornings and follow it with this kind of staff development," Art suggested. "It might seem like a huge expenditure of time, but I think it will help in the long run."
Within weeks we had set up another committee to work this out. It was made up of a couple who had been with Navigators, a YWAM couple, and a couple who had come to us from Agape Force. Starting in September, every Wednesday morning we gave over to this kind of "staff development," we called it. The roster of those who shared with us was like a "Who's Who" — George Verwer and George Miley (both of Operation Mobilization), Joy Dawson (YWAM), Bilquis Sheik, Dan Sneed (Navigators), David Hunt, David Bryant (InterVarsity), and Greg Livingstone (Frontiers).
On the whole, we chose speakers who were part of some
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other close-knit mission community. Some of their shared experiences were so typically like ours that we roared with laughter, even while we grimaced at some of our own memories. It takes grace to live in close community, but in the process you also grow in grace.
But the experience was a wonderful time of refreshing as well as conviction and renewal and it revealed that time spent in discipleship is time well spent.
