August 01, 1985 by

The income forfeited by 65,000 American missionaries is a lot of money. They do this simply by being willing to live on a lot less than they might otherwise earn (especially in a job overseas). What they give up must be on the order of $300 million to $600 million annually, possibly $1 Billion or more if they were paid as secular workers in the same circumstances they are now in!

Apparently they gladly live on a reduced level. In fact, thousands stay on the field despite the fact that they don't even receive what they are supposed to get. How do you figure that out?

4,000 Mission Minded Families Pay Off This Campus in 3 Months? ("Planned Poverty")

That is what we proposed last time   that 400 pastors, with 9 families following their lead, accept the challenge to get along somehow on 2/3 of their income for three months. (You may have missed the GREAT PAYCHECK ADVENTURE in the last issue.)

What happened?

Out of our mailing list of 50,000 households, six families noticed those two columns on page 20 (last issue) and sent in their first 1/3 installment! The sixth family to check in was the first pastor . and at this point he has not mentioned this to his congregation!

I have meditated on this. You can say, "The US Center just put out one more GREAT IDEA for saving America, for saving the mission cause, for saving our project here" and very few caught the vision.

Who was that one pastor?

Can you imagine the humor God must have had just a little mischief almost   in some of the humanly 'crazy" choices He has made?

EXAMPLE ONE: I confess had I been present in England back 1792,1 would have cringed at the thought of HIS CHOICE of that young man from the wrong part of England, from the wrong side of the tracks, etc. Yet that young man as a young moonlighting pastor wrote a small book in his superscarce part time which was to have greater influence in global evangelization than any other book in all history outside of the Bible itself! That was William Carey and his modest. "Enquiry."

EXAMPLE TWO (right now): Why in the world would God choose a young pastor, just out of seminary, earning LESS than the avenge missionary to be the first pastor in all America to send in 1/3 of his salary over the next three months?

Add to that the fact that he is a pastor in a town of 1,000 in Yutan, Nebraska. Isn't that just exactly like that young pastor in 1792? Is YUTAN any different from PAULERSPURY? Come on! Have you heard of either place?

Okay, God HAS a sense of humor! I just phoned Steve Gettinger. His wife answered the phone. On a pastor's Monday he was out digging in the garden. (William Carey was quite a gardener, too¬world famous eventually in that realm as well as many others).