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BACK ISSUES

April 1988

DIRECTORY

Editorial Comment

Momentum is Building! Part II

Bridges and Peoples

What Wesley Practiced and Preached About Money

Letters

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The Editorial of Ralph D. Winter
Founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission

winter.JPG (5355 bytes)Dear friends,

Put yourself in my shoes. Would you look forward to 49 meetings in 7 days (see page 19), in every part of this country?

The most difficult thing about this trip is not the exhausting plane changing, bag-toting dimension.

Rather, we are required to give away $6 million worth of HOPE.

Oh, someone else might succeed, by some other tactic. There are apparently lots of ways to raise money. But our purpose is not so much to raise money as raise FAITH.

We will fail completely, the way we are approaching this, if we are not out to give more than we get. If we can't give away great huge bundles of electrifying HOPE we will never in the world succeed in getting people to give larger gifts than before.

The campus in Pasadena is not absolutely necessary. God can do without it. For that matter He can do without the whole United States - and if our people who call on His Name do not more effectively turn to Him and seek His "face" - meaning His purposes all across the world - then He may decide to let this country go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah.

But if His glorious global enterprise is going to be discovered by a sufficient number of Americans in time to ward off God's giving up on us, in time to enable us to continue to be a significant part of His global cause . . .

. . . Then this tour is crucial and very, very urgent - with or without this base in Pasadena and its related centers all over the world.

Roberta's new book spells out our Hope like nothing we have ever printed. I hope you can read it before we are in your area. I hope you'll come to the meeting hoping for hope, hoping we'll be able to make clear just what this astonishing hope is, which we have as a treasure in earthen vessels.

Can you see why I personally am looking forward to these 70 days of "close encounters" with so many of you who have been reading these editorials?

Why give to a hopeless cause? But giving is easy if hope is great. Giving is a brush off if there is no real belief in the cause for which the gift is supposedly given.

Thus our job on this tour is not so much to get as to give. We will fail if we don't. But, we have loads to give! We can literally "bomb" people with hope. Try us and see. That is a good deal of what this issue is about.

faithfully yours,

Ralph D. Winter

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