Let’s Go Forward!
"That you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" Romans IS:??
We Are Not Giving Up
I need to be determinedly honest.
In my editorial (on page two) I have already hinted at the very curious mix of events this weak: foreclosure, a cover story in Christianity Today Sept 7, the largest meeting of mission leaders ever held on the West Coast, (Bow embarrassing to be in foreclosure during these meetings!)
Who is the enemy?
Cover stories, big meetings are fine, but our whole sky Is overcast by the foreclosure issue.
First, let's be perfectly clear. Who Is the "enemy"? It Is NOT the fine Christian college to which we owe the money. Those good people are buying a larger campus on Point Loma in San Diego.
Their faith and sterling good will from the beginning are the only reason we are still here.
These campus properties here in Pasadena are the holy ground over which they labored and prayed for 70 years before we came, and they would do anything they could for us.
But they will lose their new campus unless we pay them for this one. Foreclosure? They may well believe that they are helping us by sounding the alarm. I can believe that; if you've got cancer, no use pretending, or closing your eyes, or putting off going to the doctor!
The Enemy is Us?
Probably. Many say so. They tell us that it is all our fault: 'If you had just been willing to raise money like everyone else, you had never gotten into this.
Not just another Christian project "that needs money."
The difficulty for people I talk to, is to understand that this Center really isn't "just another Christian project that needs money.
People have no great problem with our vision of reaching the final, untouched mission fields.
What they find it hard to sense is the fact that we feel God leading us to avoid competing for funds with mission agencies at the level of the local churches. But why? Because we feel it Is more honorable (If we are trying exclusively to HELP mission agencies) not divert money from them!
It is a harder way to go? Yes, harder and better. Why? Because we are forced to stir up vision among far more people!
Foreclosure!
We were today, Sept 4th, notified that the college formerly owning this campus will need to move ahead with foreclosure proceedings. Thus by the time this gets to you, say Sept 15 It in understood that we will lie in a 90 day foreclosure period.
One year ago we faced an over $6 million balloon payment which we could hot make, (We are grateful for the $1 million we did receive!)
That thrust us into a much more difficult, higher payment TWO YEAR automatic extension that ends Sept 1st, 1985, with not quite al large a balloon payment.
The $1 million which we did receive (plus a trickle of continuing gifts since then) have lasted us until now. But we are left short $154,000 toward the $300,000 due last Saturday. Thus the foreclosure proceeding.
We must understand this as a fair and serious warning. It will be fatal only if we do not take it seriously.
How to Dig out of Foreclosure
Point One: What does it take to get out of foreclosure?
Answer: Pay up! All we need to do is to pay the rest of the payment we lack $154,000. A little Is coming in each day.
Point Two: Why Is it more serious than that?
Answer: Because we already need to be saving up an additional $300,000 for the December let payment. That means a total of $454,000 needed by December let or we'll fall right back into foreclosure again.
Point Three: Is the problem still worse than that?
Answer: Yes, both worse and more exciting than that. These quarterly payments are merely the Devil's diversionary tactics, or perhaps, the Lord's way of keeping us on our toes.
On Sept 1st of next year, which is now loas than one year away, we will face both a $6 nIllion campus 'balloon" (all at once) payment and a $2.5 million balloon payment on the housing portion of the campus.
If we are not saving up for those payments, we are really hiding our eyes from reality. There is no existing legal agreement regarding any extension beyond Sept let of 1986 (last year there existed a 2 year agreement beyond Sspt 1st).
So What's the Answer?
Our Center for World Mission, occupying 35 acre, $25 million property with 300 fulltime staff (from 70 agencies) has been designed from the beginning to operate on a self sustaining basis. Thus we don't need a long term donor hat, once the campus is paid for.
Secondly, the Center has been designed to serve existing evangelical agencies, not compete with them for funds, even in Its founding period when we are trying to pay for the property. We must honor our purpose and (difficult though it may be) not go for funds to the same churches on which the agencies depend.
How do we think we can possibly raise the remaining $8 1/2 million in less than 12 month? Many solutions have been proposed. Some of them have interesting possibilities, others have problems beyond our control. We do appreciate all your ideas, however.
IDEAS SUGGESTED: First, three that have serious problems:
1) Sell off part of the property and pay for the rest. This has been seriously proposed many times. However, there are some serious problems:
a) Our contract does not allow us to sell off a portion of the property and use those funds to make the payments.
b) We need the permission of the original owner to sell any part of the campus, and it Is unlikely that we would get permisslon to. All very much because It would make the remainder both unusable and therefore harder to sell.
c) Furthermore, to sell off the housing portions of the campus would irreparably damage the self sustaining base of the campus, forcing us into a completely new policy about long term donor support and damaging, if not destroying, the very purpose of the insitution to serve other agencies without competing with them for funds.
2) Limited Partnership Plan
On several occasions we have spent an immense amount of time, end some funds as well, to explore the possibility of selling the entire property to a limited partnership of private owners who could use it as a tax shelter and in effect make the USCWM the beneficiary of that depreciated value.
This is a very tricky system, and while it hoe been and is being done elsewhere, the IRS is now trying hard to plug this kind of loophole. Furthermore, all things considered, the kind of people who teeny went to "give' are not interested in schemes like this, and the kind of people who are trying to 'get' can fairly readily find better ways of getting a return on their funds. So far this simply has not worked out.
3) Refinance for 20 or 30 years.
Basically, this means to get out of the horrendous $8 1/2 million balloon payment in September of '85 and spread the payments out over 20 or 30 years. It sounds good because this is the way people buy houses. But ordinary people who buy houses are not flying away their services but are earning a salary which then can allow them to pay payments.
In our case, in order to continue serving the mission agencies, we would have to shift into a long term donor consituency system which would force us into competition for funds with the agencies we serve and thus jeopardize and likely destroy the collaboration which is the founding purpose of our organization. in other words, the unending need to make monthly or quarterly payments would not only sap the strength we need to serve but would also drive away the collaboration with the mission agencies which is our fundamental purpose for being.
Other General Suggestions:
- Simply pray; don't tell anyone your needs.
- Hire a professional organization to plead your cause.
- Give up your small gift plan. Answer: The problem is, we have promised everyone on our list that we would not ask them for money again. True, we have not made such promises to new people. Can we, should we, follow a different plan with them?
Other, More Specific Ideas:
- We've heard of a church in which there are 57 millionaires. Suppose each one were to give $150,000. That would cover the $8 1/2 million right there.
- We have promised the 46,000 people on our mailing list that we would never ask them for further funds. Someone says, But you can pray that, unasked, they will oil send in a check for $184.78. That's $6 1/2 million right there!
- Ask 511 the big religious television stations to send out a free copy of the book giving our exciting story the new expanded version of "Once More Around Jericho," now called 'The Kingdom Strikes Back: The Secret Mission.'
- Find enough people who will give $15 and give them in return a significant blessing of inspiration and vision building materials. It would take 565,667 people this way.
So, What is the Plan?
Our plan is to launch a simple durable "Prayer vision Chain.' This is a perfected version of the expanding network we have initiated in the past. More than ever we believe a human chain must be the key. Such a chain can both expand mission vision and also finish paying for this strategic mission center.
As you know we have had a lot of experience by now, and we realize that we have not in the past offered a plan simple enough and clear enough for people to readily take hold of it, nor did we offer to keep them informed of the distant ripples of their influence!
But in all our struggles we have discovered some exciting things. We are delighted, for example, to have discovered that there are so many wonderful, loving, earnest, busy readers of Mission Frontiers who are wealthy in good deeds.
Touch Ten/coach Three
Such people, we believe, are as willing as ever to do a simple, clear cut task to help us: "Touch Ten and Coach Three" under this new, more disciplined program.
With the help of our ingenious computer center we will report monthly to every single person just what the ripples of impact of their prayers and outreach are names to the second generation and numbers to the seventh.
All such volunteers will be supplied with a variety of brochures, booklets, pamphlets to assist them as they mail out or hand out such invitations. We have believed since 1977 that God wants us to touch a million lives,
The touchstone, we feel, is to "register" new $15 Founders of the Center, in the process offering them a whole armload of other good things, coaching some to reach still further out.
If they are serious enough to give $15.95 we will then have the funds to introduce them to all these other things! (The entire $15 goee into the property we do not divert one penny to fund raising or anything else and the $.95 pays for what we send them. (See the 15 examples in the list to the right.)
Let's take a now breath of faith!
I have felt a glow of wonder and great personal satisfaction ever since I watched those numbers in the chart in the lost issue click out of my little home computer.
It is truly astounding what an enthusiastic human chain, multiplication process is like. No wonder fads travel so fast. In our case only five hundred people, volunteering to track (with the help of our computer staff) 7 generations can reach more than enough people whose one time $15 gifts will cover this campus. We'll go into more detail next issue.
The truth is that anything fins and good is bound to travel by itself. All we need to do is to make the GOOD WORD clear. Alas, here in Possessions. we are sitting on so much factual inspiration about what God is doing all around the world! "Expect Great Things from God, Attempt Great Things for God"
We are, dear reader follower, are now at the place where we have '84 Workers Trained On USCWM Campus. Training started from the concept that all were strangers to Los Angeles. The outreach teams were oriented in the geography of the area, the C. A., society or demographics itself, and then the historical factors what has God done in this area with its large Christian population.'
Then carte the 'nuts and bolts' training: how to communicate with various people groups, how to successfully operate as outsiders in the local area, how to deal with the host community both Christian and nonChristian. the ways of street evangelism, learning to do friendship evangelism in the relaxed atmosphereprovided by the Olympics, and encouraging people and helping them in the area of prayer.
Trainers provided much emphasis on spiritual warfare and on acquainting volunteers with the wide range of literature available for distribution. Additional preparations revolved around the staffing of crisis centers, 2* hour hotlines. drop in centers, and soup kitchens to help the spiritually and physically needy.
"This was the first YWAM outreach where we were computerized", said Ogilvy. "the logistics were staggering," he confessed. "Just in the case of food atone, we had to serve meals in 38 different locations. Transportation was a madhouse."
But it all happened! The workers in Olympic Outreach '84 gave out more than three million pieces of Christian literature and shared the love of Christ in word and deed. What helped to make it possible was the strong cooperation of churches in the Los Angeles area. In fact, the whole project was backed by 1,846 area churches and thousands of additional intercessor., including many in prayer cells in Korea. Some of the fruit of all these efforts were the more than 1000 people each day during the 16 days of outreach who accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior.
Where do the volunteers go from here? "The whole thing is being followed up with a large outreach to the Caribbean nexl week," Ogllv y replied as the lfla Olympics came to a close. "In doing this we are taking a large number of new converts to the field. An orientation for this group is set at the U. S. Center." In addition some SO YWAMers will be giving one to four weeks of volunteer service at the U.S. Center to further preparations for the I Fk'A /EFMA conference on carrpt's, scheduled for the 551 wick of September.
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