1988 - 1989
"Great Is Thy Faithfulness"
(Lamentations 3:23)
Epilogue 1988
[2002 Edition: The next two chapters were written by Roberta in 1988 and 1989 describing events as they were at that time. The third additional chapter was written twelve years later, in February of 2001 and after she had been in cancerous decline for four years. It breaks off almost before it starts, ending with simply a list of things she would have wanted to write about. The final three chapters were written by her husband, the first to summarize a bit of what she had written, the second to mention some adverse circumstances that drastically postponed her continuing her writing, and the third to give a bit of a picture of the future.]
Father in Heaven, how we love You,
We lift Your name in all the earth,
May Your kingdom be established in our praises,
As Your people prepare Your mighty works!
Blessed be the Lord God, Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come.
Blessed be the Lord God, Almighty,
Who reigns forevermore.
I was seated on the platform of our large auditorium with Ralph, Paul Cedar of Lake Avenue Congregational Church and Jack Hayford of Church on the Way. As I listened to Jamie and Cindy Lewis sing the praises of God, my
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heart soared heavenward. That was what this was all about — that His kingdom would come and His name be exalted throughout all the earth!
That evening, January 16, 1988, a large crowd, about 1500 friends of the U.S. Center for World Mission, had come together to celebrate what God had done in 1987 — an amazing year in the history of the USCWM. For eleven long years we had longed for the day when we could had over to Point Loma College officials a check for the remaining balance that we owed them. Except for the pledges still to come in, that day had come! Standing on an easel in front of the platform was a five-foot receipt which Jim Bond, the President of Point Loma, had brought, acknowledging the check for $6.5 million we had sent a few days before. (The balance we would send as outstanding pledges came in.) To one side of the platform were more than one hundred people who had stood with us through the years, even though many times it was very difficult to believe that we would ever be able to have a Victory Celebration like this.
I felt very grateful to each one of these people. They had stood with us through thick and thin, even when what we were doing was criticized or ridiculed. Our one-time $15 gift plan had seemed the most ridiculous plan of all. On three separate occasions we were on the verge of foreclosure, and even some of those most loyal began to question whether we might not be foolishly putting God to the test. We, ourselves, didn't always understand why we felt so constrained to follow that plan. And yet we felt we must.
Just a year before, we were well into the final months before our $8 million balloon payment was due. During those months, we had struggled to find out God's way for us. We knew we could never make the payment with our current fundraising efforts, and yet the restraint not to compete with other missions for funds still held.
Still earlier, in May of 1986, Bob Coleman came up with the novel idea that we begin what we called our
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"Last $1000" Campaign. We followed his suggestion that we ask 8000 people for $1000 gifts, which we, however, would receipt as gifts but would think of as advances. Over the years to follow, we would continue our one-time $15 gift plan, and as small gifts came in to replace the $8 million given in $1000 gifts, those larger gifts would be returned (if from churches or mission agencies) or reassigned to whatever mission the donor would suggest.
The plan was rather simple, though not easy to explain. Perhaps its most unique aspect was that each $1000 gift would be used only if and when the full $8 million total was pledged.
The risky part was that if we failed to get the full amount in cash or pledges by the time the campaign ended, we promised to return everything and call it quits! That thought was really scary because in that event we would lose essentially everything, even the $7 million we had already paid.
Even though the plan was not easy to explain, we felt the Lord had given it to us because it was one of the very few ways to proceed that would not violate our constraints (in the long run not to compete with mission agencies). Many of our friends, however, didn't think of it in those terms but only breathed a sigh a relief that now we were finally asking for large gifts.
Ralph began to realize other possibilities that this plan might very well produce. "I'm not really interested in just this $8 million," he said. "I'd like to set up a 'Fund for the Kingdom' to help other key projects get started. For example, some of those giving $1000 (once $15 gifts replaced their gift and their $1000 was ready to be sent on) just might opt for this Fund for the Kingdom. That money would only be used to help start various crucial projects which would be of benefit to all agencies. Once going well, these projects would in turn replace that start-up money with their own stream of 'Founder's' gifts."
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Right then, in the spring of 1987, however, we ourselves were in jeopardy. Ten years before, when God had helped us make the enormous down payment on the property, Ralph had assumed that long before the balloon payment would come due, the evangelical public in America would rally behind the vision to such an extent that over the years we would be able to build up the funds necessary to pay it.
God did not ordain that to happen. Instead, He gave us a wonderful Christian creditor. The Point Loma College officials were extremely patient with us. From time to time they called, restating their confidence that God would see us through. It was a great help when they decided to postpone our last two quarterly $300,000 payments and add them to the $8 million balloon payment so that we would not have to confuse our public with two fund drives at the same time. Their confidence, which exceeded that of many of our best friends, was a balm to our weary souls.
However, the Last $1000 Campaign got off to a rather wobbly start. A friend of many years in Chicago had pledged to pay all the expenses of the campaign for us. That was the completely new factor that made it all possible. It was a promise which cost him dearly, since he lost a great deal of money in the stock market crash the following November, from which he has not yet recovered.
As had happened so many times in the past, attempts to use professional fundraisers (at the insistence of several who wanted to give large sums) simply didn't work. It was as if God said, "This is my battle. I want all the glory to come to Me, not to anyone else."
But it was still not easy to find out just what God's plans were. We had to have some plan, didn't we? We couldn't do what had to be done with just a name and rough outline for the campaign. That was clear!
Bob and Doris worked very hard, but with very little help. The professional we had hired at the insistence of those funding the campaign still had not come up with what we
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felt was a workable design. And the months were passing.
Finally, one day in October, Ralph said, "Something is going to have to change. We're not getting anywhere very fast. It seems to me that it's about time we come back to our own resources, as inadequate as they may be.
"We have a good general manager in Art McCleary. It's true that he has never run a fundraising campaign. But he has the confidence of our staff and knows how to get people to work together." He hesitated a minute then added, "I really hate to ask him to do this. He's already so terribly overloaded that it's almost criminal to give him more. But maybe some of his other responsibilities can be given to less experienced people. I certainly hope so."
Almost immediately everyone could tell the difference. Instead of two people trying to do everything, now our entire staff, in spare moments, joined the work force of the campaign. Within days, Art had thought through the main responsibilities tied to the campaign and had reshuffled the entire staff to fill those needs. A person with a bit of management experience, though new on staff, took over business management of the university for Art. Darrell was placed in charge of the production of all campaign materials: campaign brochures, mailings, a publicity booklet for business people, etc. Greg, Hogie and two others began work immediately on a campaign video. Scott Hemphill went to work designing a bar-coded computerized receipting system for our desktop computers. ("We can't run the risk of our micro computer network crashing during this period," Ralph had insisted. And Robby spent long hours, night after night, uncomplainingly printing off 60,000 pages detailing the interests of people on our address list for the use of local outreachers.
There was quite a flurry of activity during December, January, February and March. As usual for that time of the year, Ralph was gone most of the time for long-scheduled speaking engagements. I was deeply immersed in revising
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and updating my books — Once More Around Jericho and The Kingdom Strikes Back — coming up for air just long enough to edit one or another of the personalized "publics" letters that Darrell and his team were sending out, or to consider some suggestion Art had made. It was a real relief when Ralph came home in April — to stay, I hoped.
By April, however, we were still only crawling. Nine months of the campaign had already passed. At that rate, we would not even have half of the $8 million needed, come October. But we could see that momentum was beginning to pick up, and that fact was enough to satisfy our board for the time being.
More important than anything else, no doubt, was the fact that people all over the country were beginning to pray in earnest for us. And gradually more and more of these praying people came for a few months to volunteer their help. Some, we found, were excellent on our 800 phone line, answering questions and encouraging people at a distance. Others proved to be a God-send for opening mail, typing pledges into the computer, or helping out in a myriad of other mundane tasks.
When he finally touched down for good, Ralph was thunderstruck to learn that a couple of weeks before, in a weak moment perhaps, I had agreed with the suggestion that he and I "go on the road" for six weeks, touching down for a meeting at each of the 27 cities where we had the most supporters. "Roberta, don't you remember? We tried something like that several years ago, and it was just a waste of time and money. We really can't afford to do that again." But the first invitations had already gone out and the list of cities we would visit had been published. It was simply too late to change now.
Fortunately, the updated book (now named I Will Do a New Thing), was ready for the press by the first week in May. Unbelievably, within ten days, we had the first 20,000 copies in our hands!
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Just about the same time all the other materials were also ready: the new brochures, the Dream to Reality booklet, and the "Complete the Dream." But it was now only four months from our October 1st deadline! But finally, we felt ready to really move!
Those next weeks were almost a blur in my memory. From day to day, we were in a different city, usually getting to bed a little before midnight. At seven o'clock the next morning, we would then have breakfast with a group of local pastors before taking off to another city where we repeated the pattern, and then to still another city. The first few meetings were rather sparsely attended, but we were amazed at the distance some had driven just to be with us. In other cities, such as Boston, Columbus, Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, we were crowded out. Everywhere we went, however, we were overwhelmed with the response of some wonderfully loyal friends. They wanted to help. They were praying hard.
In spite of all the hard work, those meetings were not without their snafus: most of the invitations for people in the Philadelphia area got there the day after the meeting; the ones for Columbus somehow got mailed in the envelopes of backers in Minneapolis, or something like that. Some people got three letters because they happened to be on three separate lists of ours, which, when combined for this special situation, didn't get corrected. (We simply didn't have the time and personnel to do it.)
As Ralph and I went from city to city, we refined the presentation. By the time we had done ten, we gave videos only to those who agreed to call up our friends — rather than completely new people who had no head start — and invite them to see the video in their homes. But when I looked at our mailing lists for the various cities we visited, I realized that those showing the videos simply couldn't do it alone. They needed others to help make the phone calls, and others yet to find the phone numbers. It was more than enough
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simply to host a group of strangers several nights a week without having to do all the preparatory work besides.
Then, with only ten weeks until the scheduled balloon payment, we began asking for volunteers who could help a few more hours a week for six weeks. It was heartwarming, to say the least, to see over 3,000 respond. I can hardly imagine any other organization having more enthusiastic help. The campaign depended on these people. But it was God who touched their hearts to volunteer.
Toward the end of June, on one of the flights home, Ralph and Art were reviewing how things were going. "We keep talking about needing 5,000 more gifts," Ralph said. "But that's far too much for any one person to readily identify with. Let's break it down into more reasonably sized clusters. Why not divide up our constituency state by state and set goals for each area?" He pulled out his pocket calculator and begun punching in some figures.
"Let's see. How many Founders do we have in Massachusetts? What percentage are they of the total number of founders? Do you think they can raise that same percentage of the remaining 5000 needed gifts?" It took a few days before all this was worked out and the quotas listed in our weekly first-class letters.
Ralph also inaugurated a weekly letter to the "joiners" (those who had volunteered to help or had already pledged their $1000), updating them on just how much had come in by then and encouraging them to pray and to reach out to others on our list. This letter was also crucial because it probably generated at least a thousand new volunteers.
Then, each week this key letter carried a graph of the progress of the campaign. As we neared October 1st, it was exciting to see the gradual groundswell of new gifts.
In the meantime, the Lord had sent to us someone who proved to be a tremendous blessing. At first glance, this young realtor, Dave Emerson, seemed like just another really nice fellow. It didn't take long to see that he was much more.
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I liked his insistence on covering all we did with lots of prayer. I also appreciated his steady confidence that God was in this campaign, and that He would see us through. Here was someone we wouldn't have to push; he would help do the pushing.
As with so many before, Dave's wife was the spark. She had read I Will Do a New Thing and had caught the vision. Instead of leaving on their scheduled vacation, she said to her husband, "Why don't you take this time off to volunteer at the Center?" And so he did.
As we came to know Dave better and saw how he worked, it seemed that God had prepared him especially for us. Several years before he had been responsible for a network of regional seminars for Gospel Light Publishers. That meant he knew how to build up and supervise a chain of helpers at a distance — just what we needed right then! As the National Campaign Coordinator, Dave kept in touch regularly with our volunteers in every state.
By the first week of September, when the board met again, we now had $3 million pledged. At least two-thirds of the pledges also were already in. There was no way, however, that we could hide the fact that we needed to get in another $5 million in just four weeks. "But look at the buildup of momentum," Ralph urged. "It took nine months for the first million to come in, and six more for the second. But the third million took only two months!"
It was not an easy board meeting. Although Ralph had not yet talked to Point Loma officials about the possibility of an extension of time, he felt confident that if we were far enough along, they would give us until the end of the year. But several of our board members felt that to accept such an extension would be dishonest to our constituency. "We promised that we would end the campaign on October 1st or return all the money," one of them remonstrated.
"No, that's not quite true," Ralph answered. "We simply promised we would return all the money if we could not get
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enough cash and pledges to pay off the balloon payment. We did not say that we would close the campaign down even if we got an extension beyond the due date of October 1st, 1987. And, if we're doing well, Point Loma may extend it. They do not gain if we send millions back. That date is in their control, not ours."
Back and forth the discussion went, with some heat. One member threatened to resign if we could not reach our total by the October 1st deadline, whether or not it was extended. "We can sell some of the houses and still keep the campus. After all, we have almost half the money now."
But Ralph answered, "We really don't have half the money. By the terms of our campaign, if we don't reach the total, everything must go back. We can't just assume people will decide to leave their gifts and pledges in. We can't sell 20 houses to make up the difference. They are not yet ours. This campaign is an all-or-nothing situation."
Finally, with a great deal of reluctance, the board decided to go until the end of the year if Point Loma offered us that option. "But we have to stop then, whether we have the money or not. I will not be a party to an indefinite date."
October 1st came all too soon. And it was an earthshaking day — literally. When Ralph and I drove up to the curb at 7:43 A.M., just in time for our daily morning prayer meeting, we were surprised to see several people standing around on the sidewalk looking a bit dazed. The first words they greeted us with were, "Did you feel that? We just had an earthquake!" (We hadn't felt it because of the motion of the car.)
Minor tremors are common in California. But this one, we soon learned, was a 6.1 on the Richter scale, large enough to do considerable damage at its epicenter 30 miles away. I confess I thought, "What if we pay for the campus and then lose it all in an earthquake? But with that kind of thinking there'd be no buildings at all in California. Oh well, these buildings have stood for a number of decades, through
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several earthquakes. God is able to continue to take care of them."
As it turned out, only a few windows were cracked and we had minor damage in the ceiling of our faculty lounge at the university. We were suddenly very grateful to God that two years before (despite our questioning faith back then) two huge trusses in the large auditorium had cracked, forcing us to spend $96,000 at a very inopportune time to shore up all nine of the huge wood trusses with steel. But had we not done that then, the earthquake might well have destroyed the entire structure — worth well over a million dollars. Instead, it came through without a flaw. Praise God!
Happening as it did on our due date, this 6.1 earthquake reminded us of Joshua and the earthquake at Jericho. We also needed walls to tumble, but they were walls of resistance to our need — not those on the campus! And these walls were tumbling, faster than ever that day as friends across the nation called in their pledges.
When Ralph called the officials at Point Loma, he was able to tell them that we now had $5 million, and they graciously offered to give us until the end of the year. "We are praying for you, too," their officials told us. "We really want you to make it."
It took at least a week to notify our network across the country of the additional time we had. We didn't know how these volunteers would take this "good" news. All of them had been sprinting and were now very tired and needed to turn back to their regular responsibilities. They had done their best for at least six weeks; how could we ask them to help for another three months?
And what about Dave? His vacation time was long gone. Amazingly, during the first month that he was with us, he had won the national prize in his company for selling the most houses. I still don't know quite how that happened, except that God blessed his generosity to us.
Dave was typical of our volunteers all across the country.
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They decided to trust God to provide for them personally even as we all had to trust God to provide for us as an organization. "Let's give it one final push," was the attitude they all took. "God surely could not have brought us thus far just to have us lose everything now."
Increasingly the phone calls asked, "How are WE doing?" It's hard to imagine how any two-letter word could thrill our hearts more. It wasn't just our campaign; it was theirs, wherever they lived, all over the country. There was that revival of hope of which Ralph had so often spoken. And it wasn't just for the property; it was for the larger, much more important goal of finishing the Great Commission. Ralph had been telling everyone that we were not just trying to get $8 million. We were trying to give away $8 million worth of HOPE!
By November 12th, we had less than $2 million left to go. But we were really feeling the strain.
"I think maybe all of us need to fast and pray for the next three days," Bruce suggested at morning prayers one morning. I knew God could work; I believed with all my heart He was going to fulfill all the promises He had given us over the years. But I frankly didn't know if I had the energy to fast and pray right then. "God, if we should do this, then You'll just have to give us the energy we have to have right now," I prayed. And he did.
We also took off for a weekend spiritual retreat — again at what seemed to be the wrong time. But God used it to meld hearts together. We had times of repentance and weeping before the Lord. But also times of rejoicing and just plain fun. A wonderful retired missionary who had been involved in the East Africa Revival, a highly spiritual on-going phenomenon, Dorothy Smoker, was the Lord's instrument, though she came not expecting to participate in that way at all.
The Lord honored this time of seeking His face, because all across the country, things began to move as never before.
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With less than $2 million to go and Dave Emerson, our National Volunteers Coordinator, encouraged those helping us throughout the U.S. to organize huddles of those helping in each area. He sent them a video created specifically for these volunteers, suggesting further things they might try in their mobilizing efforts. But one sentence stands out to me. "Keep praying. This is a spiritual battle which will be won or lost on our knees!"
How true that was. Like those working on the wall with Nehemiah, we had to be constantly in prayer. But sometimes those prayers were prayed while we were talking on the phone, or printing out receipts, or writing letters, or whatever else had to be done. At that particular point, we had to depend on others to be on their knees for us.
Some felt strongly that we should repeat our Jericho marches. So, starting November 8th, we began marching for six Sundays, through December 20th. Just seeing what God had (or was) giving us was a boost to our morale just then. This time we cut through the yards of several staff families in order to encircle every square foot of our properties, not just the campus itself. And, as before, we prayed as we marched.
For two years, Ralph and I and Art and Elaine McCleary had been scheduled to go to the COMIBAM conference in Brazil the final week in November and the first week in December. It turned out to be not only the largest international conference of Latin American evangelists, but, miracle of miracles, it focused not on evangelism in general (as so many international conferences have) but precisely on mission outreach to virgin fields. The theme of this conference was specifically unreached peoples, and how Latin Americans could go as missionaries to reach them. Nothing like this had ever been held in Latin America. The church in Latin America was still basically a receiving church when we left Guatemala in 1966. Now, mature Hispanic Christians were eager to go with the Gospel, especially to the hard
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places, like Muslim countries. One could sense the hand of God upon them in an unusual way.
But it was a terrible time for the two top leaders of the Center to be away — just one month from the END. The campaign should have been finished by then, and there was just no way we could back out of promises made. Ralph and I both were leading workshops, and it was the first time Art had ever visited where Elaine grew up as a missionary kid. It was important for both couples to be there, and we had to trust the Lord to take care of the home base.
We had left it in good hands. Dave's network was working so efficiently that every day saw numbers of new $1000 donors or pledges added to the total. And those on our staff who were second in command did a magnificent job of not only holding the fort but pressing on at that crucial time. The December 4th graph of campaign contributions showed that nine states had already reached their campaign goals, two of them by more than 200 percent! Most of the gifts tended to be of the $1000 category, though once in a while someone would call in a much larger pledge.
"Recently," one donor in California wrote, "we celebrated my husband's 70th birthday. Although we specifically requested no gifts, our friends were extremely generous with cash gifts. In gratitude to God for His many blessings and love, my husband sent all of the $215 to the Center. Since then, more gifts came, and I would like to match those with an additional $785 to make it our second 'Last $1000' gift to the Center. Christmas time is the time for giving, and what better place to give to than the center who follows the command of our Lord to bring the Good News to all nations."
One businessman who had already sent in $1000 felt led to send in $10,000 more. "I wanted to wait to see if my additional donation would really be needed or not," he stated, "but God impressed upon me that He was not impressed with my procrastination! The time to finish the job is now, and I want to do all I possibly can to help."
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It was that kind of call or letter every day now. Young people gathered together enough others to jointly pledge $1000. Children sent in half of their savings accounts. One elderly woman of 80 invited 13 people to her home and got them all to pledge, even though our video she had requested failed to arrive on time. It was as if people were afraid to miss out on the blessing.
The responses grew to an avalanche, right down to the wire. Even our own staff gave sacrificially, despite their often low-support base. Many of our staff pledged or gave $1000 or more. One wonderful lady called, offering to make up the difference the last minute however much we were short. What wonderful friends! What a wonderful God!
Shortly after noon on December 31st, with this dear sister's wonderful help, we had all we needed, or at least what we thought we needed. Those manning the phones were still trying to answer several at once. But the rest of us were running around the corridors, praising God and hugging each other.
It had been more than ten long years of testing and trials. Many times we were brought low. Many times God had allowed us to be humiliated. But through it all, He had remained faithful to all His promises — faithful beyond all we deserved or hoped for. How can we praise Him adequately for all He has done?
