This is an article from the October - November 1983 issue: Heroes on the Homefront Part 1

Why do you need a campus?

An Open Letter to USCWM Friends

Why do you need a campus?

What is the value of a campus? In a day in which American evangelicals are bombarded with building programs and property acquisition schemes, how do I tell you my thoughts about the USCWM campus without sounding like a huckster? Is our attempt to establish this Center merely another crisis to be lost in a crowd of noisier competitors?

To answer these questions, I must tell you some of what we've learned in the seven years of our corporate existence. First and foremost, we have entered into a more Intimate knowledge of the person of our God. Our struggling efforts to secure this campus as a frontier missions base have pressed us close to His breast, we better see His greatness, Hit majesty, His holiness, His sufficiency. His love for the nations, and His determination to bless the peoples through men and women He has earlier blessed.

To know Him Is to know ourselves, end so we have also learned some of what it means to be the people of God. Our growing knowledge of Him has provided tie with fresh opportunity to see ourselves in the light of love, holiness and purpose. The experience has not always been pleasant, for we have discovered our weakness, our fickleness, our lack of discipline, and our sin, but tie has been faithful. He has taught us to rejoice In what He can do through the diversity of His Body. He has taught us that what we are and can become is more important than what we have and do and thereby reminded us that the fulfillment of our tasks is contingent on the quality of our character and of our ionsh1s. The cleansed community will be "an Instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work."

Out of such lessons has come a new grasp of the purposes of God. Indeed, these purposes have grasped us. We press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us. As sons and daughters of Abraham and joint heirs with his glorious descendant, the Lord Jesus Christ, we accept no mandate less than one to bless all the families of the earth, to make disciples of all nations. This dominating theme of Scripture has become our mainspring.

Our expressions of obedience have taken the form of specific programs, launched In the midst of financial uncertainty and severe personnel shortages. The list of programs grows weekly: the Frontier Fellowship campaign, the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (IIS) course of studIes, a university dedicated to International development, a B.A, program designed inculcate missionary passion and mentality, computer services to expedite massive research and information management, and much, much more. While we rejoice in what Cod is doing through the ministry of other mission agencies, we want to do what others are not doing but which must be done. "Let Thy work appear to Thy servant,... and give permanence to the work of our hands."

And how, then, does our PROPERTY relate to all this? This campus has become, first of all, our sacrifice of praise and love to the PERSON of Cod in Jesus Christ, as well as a vivid reminder of how He has marvelously met ill our needs to this day. Too, the campus has become a challenge to us and others to be the PEOPLE of Cod, to put Him first, to seek His kingdom, to harness zeal to wisdom in fulfilling the mission mandate. Even our unique method of funding the campus acquisition, by which we have asked for no more than $35 per person, has been a self Imposed discipline to successfully share this vision with a million American believers. Thirdly, this campus has become a soapbox on which to trumpet His PURPOSES for the Church and the nations; "we have been made. spectacle to the whole universe." Finally, this property, previously dedicated by godly Nazarenes to the Christ centered education of young men and women, now has become the base for a vest array of PROGRAMS to serve the whole Church and to bless all of earth's peoples. We have seen how the campus has beautifully accommodated the unique shoulder to shoulder collaboration of diverse yet Interrelated organizations focused on the penetration of mission frontiers.

To understand these lessons is to understand what this campus means to those of us who I've and work here, We have come to see that the acquisition of the property is but the tip of a spiritual iceberg. Our God is eternal. His purposes are sure. He Is shaping Hi. people. Our programs transcend the property. And yet...the property is Important. We would not have come this tar had we believed the campus to be incidental. On this brick and mortar is Inscribed "HOLY TO THE LORD."

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