Chapter 13

"Donuts! Donuts! Two dollars-a-box! Take some to work; they'll love you for it! A little coffee, a little donut, mm-mm just right! So good, so fresh! Two dollars-a-box . . ."

The sales to raise funds for the approaching Junior-Senior banquet had been going better than expected. The early, January mornings, spent between lanes of stopped traffic at a rush hour street corner, were paying off. On each occasion, my partner and I managed to sell out of these warm, glazed treats in time to make it to our morning classes. So, determined to multiply our profits, we gathered extra money and extra volunteers. We bought extra donuts and covered extra locations.

The weather, however, was not carried along by our enthusiasm. Warm and rainy conditions prevailed over our ambition, dampening our market and dissolving our profits. The street-corner sale was a soggy flop.

Determined not to accept defeat, we formulated "Plan B." First, we canvassed the campus, successfully selling even to the cafeteria director. Then we proceeded off campus from one mall to the next until all the donuts were sold. By late afternoon the sale was complete. Our work was done.

But God was just beginning to do a new work in me. I had no idea that the Great Donut Sale, was to be the window through which God would shine a life changing light.

I was a Junior in Bible College and a weekend youth minister at a church 85 miles away. Sometimes it seemed I was standing with a foot in each of two canoes, and they weren't always going the same direction. I knew that the life I lived through the week needed to match the life I lived on the weekend, but it was a constant struggle to reconcile the two, because the roles were so different. At the same time, I was burdened with doubts, because slowly and subtlely I had begun to allow academic exercise to replace an active and personal relationship with God. I needed something to bring my doubting mind and my divided heart together in an all-encompassing and powerful faith.

While selling donuts, I had made two new friends who worked in a nearby mall. Both were Christians (attending two different denominational churches), and both seemed thrilled to meet us Bible college students. But they both also seemed to have something that I didn't have, so I set out to discover what that something was. Every time I went to the mall, I made sure that I stopped to talk with each one before I left. Sometimes I went just to talk.

During one of these visits they invited me to a class being offered cooperatively by their churches; a class called "Perspectives on the World Christian Movement." I figured that any class that could bring these two denominations together was worth checking out, so I accepted the invitation.

When the night of the class came, I met them at the mall, rode with them to the church and sat between them at the front table. The guest speaker for the evening was Dr. Ian North, President of Ambassadors for Christ International. His lecture on world-Christian discipleship. (Dr. Ian North's lecture was based on material from Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, Ralph D. Winter and Stephen C. Hawthorne editors.) gripped my heart, for in it he confronted me with the kind of life I knew I needed to live: a life of integrity, reconciled to a singular faith and purpose. It seemed as if He were speaking directly to me as he called for all Christians to recommit themselves to a spiritual life focus and to reconsecrate themselves to a wartime lifestyle: one which gives up nonessentials in order to maximize potential for reaching the single goal of winning the war.

He told the story of the HMS Queen Mary, a ship the length of three football fields, which is now open to the public as a floating museum at Long Beach, CA. A partition down the center of each room divides the ornate from the simple: on one side a full bedroom suite, on the other, bunks stacked eight high; on one side a richly ornamented dining area filled with the finest of accessories, on the other a no-frills mess hall, where one metal tray with indentations replaces a dazzling array of silver, china and crystal.

This ship was at one time the finest of all luxury liners. But World War II changed it forever. The ornate and extravagant vessel was stripped down and transformed into a troopcarrying warship. Its transformation was a difficult one, but the survival of a nation depended on it. (Ralph D. Winter, "Reconsecration to a Wartime, Not a Peacetime, Lifestyle" in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, ed. Ralph D. Winter and Stephen C. Hawthorne (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981) .)

It was then that Dr. North drew to a close with these words that shot straight through my heart, "People, it's time to clear the decks for war! Stop rearranging furniture on the Titanic!" It became clear to me that the spiritual survival of millions of people depended upon my willingness to cut away my distractions and focus myself entirely upon God's singular purpose displayed throughout history: the reconciliation of His beloved but rebellious creation to Himself.

That night I sat alone in my dorm room and poured over the stack of material I had gathered up from the literature table. I wept. I cried . . . not only for myself, my sin, and my ignorance but, for the first time, I wept for a lost and dying world.

As I look back upon that night, I can see that God, in His marvelous grace, had touched my heart with His sorrow. As I read and prayed, it was as if scales were removed from my eyes and I began to see my place and purpose in history. My life began to make more sense than it ever had before.

The following year, "Perspectives" was offered again and I enrolled. It provided me with a foundational understanding of the Biblical, historical, cultural and strategic issues of Christian missions and helped prepare me for both short-term experience on the field and further graduate study in missions; both of which have been privileges too great to measure.