A Big Day for BFA

We have not posted for a few months, but have finally got to a place where we can take a breathe and begin to catch everyone up on what has been going on with the Dows and BFA. Catherine will be sharing more about the family in our next post, but on the work and ministry front, we have been in an incredibly busy and rewarding season.

Phil has helped launch the new school year (August), spoken at a meeting of MK schools in Asia (September), travelled with our Seniors on their Rome trip (October), hosted BFA's Board for a week of meetings (October), and traveled to Saudi Arabia for BFA-related work (November).

But the biggest BFA news relates to BFA's Immeasurably More campaign. The story is not over, but during the last two years we've had a front row seat as we have watched God provide in absolutely incredible ways! Yesterday, Phil had a chance to share this miraculous story in chapel with BFA's high school students and staff and we want to share the story with you as well. Here is the transcript of that message.

Chapel - Crossing the Jordan - November 22, 2024

In 1980 the US and the Soviet Union played one of the most famous games of hockey in history.  In the Olympics at that time only amateurs could participate, but it was the height of the Cold War and the USSR put all the best players in the country on their army hockey team and made sure that they got the best of everything available - salaries, benefits, housing, and training. They were, in reality, professional hockey players.  In contrast the US team was a bunch of college kids, many of whom would never even make a professional team.  This game was called the Miracle on Ice because a bunch of amateur kids beat the greatest collection of professionals on the planet.

I wasn’t on the team, I wasn’t in the arena, I hadn’t even played an official hockey game before, but as a kid watching the game on my black and white TV in Minnesota, that victory wasn’t just a victory for the players or for the team, it was a victory for underdogs everywhere and so I cheered for that victory as if I were one of the players, as if it was mine - because in a sense - it was. 

There are three things I hope you will take from today’s chapel. 

• First, the story of God’s provision for BFA that I am about to share is also a story of His provision for you.  

• Second, in 2022 BFA faced a situation that felt insurmountable. 

• And finally, in the face of an "impossible challenge" God has provided for BFA (in miraculous ways).

Context:

But before I get to the stories, I need to give you a little context. We often talk about BFA’s mission statement, but the foundation for that mission is another statement created by our Board that describes BFA’s ultimate purpose. It is called BFA’s Global Ends Statement. Here it is:  “BFA will be a resource for excellence in transformational Christian education, producing well-prepared students at a cost that empowers global mission initiatives.”

Another way to say this is, “We exist to support global missions by providing the best education possible, at a cost that missionary families can afford.” Try to keep BFA’s Global Ends Statement in mind as we go forward.

OK, that is the groundwork. I want to begin now with a few passages relevant to our story.

Scripture:

In Numbers 13 the Israelites have escaped from Egypt and God has led them to the Promised Land. As they prepare, Moses sends 12 spies to go into Canaan and scout out the land and the inhabitants. 

The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites… (the spies go into Canaan and when they return)... 27 They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey!... 31 But… “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”... 33 We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

Because they were fearful, they didn’t cross the Jordan and spent the next 40 years wandering the desert. Scripture is clear that this was the punishment for disobedience. But part of me feels at least a little sympathetic for the Israelites. It is not like they were being irrational. The obstacles were significant. There were giants in the land. They were still figuring out what it meant to be an independent nation. The truth is that there were real risks. They really did feel like “grasshoppers!”

BFA’s situation in August of 2022:

In August of 2022, BFA faced our own version of this dilemma. I remember sitting in the Home Basics room with our brand new Advancement Team and a few others as we looked at the challenge facing BFA. We didn’t put it in those terms, but I can tell you that we felt like grasshoppers. 

Here are the facts we were looking at: 

• We had three years to replace two aging and non-sustainable dorms

• We had one option - build from scratch on the Palm field

• But the town council and our neighbors didn’t want this

• And even if they did, the cost was unbelievably high (est. $12M)

• We had almost no money. (BFA had stewarded its resources carefully but had only saved $1M)

• And had no other sources of funds (fundraising average $35K per year)

• Possible new debt - $11M (not including interest payments of up to $7M) meant a total cost of up to $18M without any new revenue or way to pay for it.  One way to look at the situation is that, based on our average fundraising pace up to that point, it would have taken us 514 years to pay off that loan and interest.

• The implications for BFA were bad!  With that level of debt BFA would either be forced to change its mission or it would need to raise school fees beyond what many missionary families could afford.

• Looking at just the facts, the situation felt impossible!

We felt like grasshoppers!

So we prayed. We acknowledged our complete dependence on God. We asked for God’s direction and blessing, and then began to move forward with a mustard seed’s worth of faith and a conviction that if we were seeking to honor God, He would direct our paths - even if that meant following a path we did not see yet.

Scripture:

There were a number of Scriptures that were encouraging to us. Particularly important were Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:25 -33, 

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?... 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

God’s call to Israel in Joshua 1:1-2 was another significant passage to us. Joshua 1:1-2 says this, “1 After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ aide: 2 “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites.”

So we felt like grasshoppers, but we also felt like God was walking with us and that something special was about to happen.

Here is the story of what happened next.

Story #1: Dave’s Story - 

Last week in Chapel, Mr. Wilson talked about the importance of listening to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit. This first story is a powerful example of how important that can be.

As we wrestled with the impossible situation we were in, we asked ourselves again if there weren’t any other options. But of course, there weren’t. BFA had explored every possible idea in the previous five years, including looking aggressively for any other buildings that might be suitable for dorms, but there was nothing that was even remotely like what we needed.

One night during these August meetings in the Home Basics room our CFO, Dave VanZomeren couldn’t sleep. Even though he knew that we had looked around before, and even though he knew that there were no suitable places in the area, he couldn’t get out of his head the feeling that we should ask around again. Finally, in the early hours of that morning his wife said, “Dave, I think it's time that you listened to this prompting. If this is not from God, you will find out soon enough, but you need to be obedient." So he sent an email to a local real estate agent, and went back to bed and slept soundly.

A couple of days later, he received an email saying, “Why don’t you come by the office. I think I might have something that could be of interest to you.” Dave and his wife went in first thing and the real estate agent explained that there was a “pocket listing”- that is a building that was not publicly on the market but was quietly being put up for sale. She then showed him the picture of the building and its asking price. Dave couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In our wildest dreams we could not have imagined a more perfect option for BFA: a building that is already set up as a dorm, and which was not just a replacement for the two aging dorms but could accommodate three modern and spacious dorms, 200 meters from BFA, and at a price that was $3M less than building from scratch. Crazy!

Dave immediately came down to my office and explained what he had just been told. I was stunned. The truth is that we had hardly started to pray and it appeared that God was already doing “immeasurably more” than what we could have asked or imagined.

And as we were to find out, this was just the first of many examples of God’s incredible provision for BFA.

Story #2:  The story of government approval.

So it appeared that God might be providing BFA with a solution that was beyond our hopes and expectations, but it wasn’t quite that simple.

Because the building was of “public interest”, we found out that we needed permission to even begin the process of (possibly) buying it and that process turned out to be much more challenging than we had expected.  

The following summer, word got out that the owner needed to sell and that BFA was wanting to buy it. This was obviously a big story in our small town and the story quickly got muddled.  Despite the fact that the owner had tried to keep the nursing home running as long as possible and had tried to sell the facility to other senior care providers, some press accounts made it sound like BFA was offering big money to kick out the residents. (Which as you know was definitely not the case - we had almost no money that could go towards the purchase). Nevertheless, letters to the editors followed, leading to intense pressure on the city council. 

Even though we were able to correct many of the errors in the press, the pressure built to the extent that we were worried we wouldn’t be allowed to move forward and we would be back to square one - but only worse, as we would have lost a critical year in the building process.

There were multiple twists and turns in the months that followed but all of those culminated in a critical city council meeting that happened almost exactly a year ago today.  At this meeting the city council needed to decide if they would buy the care home and take over its work or, if not, whether BFA would be allowed to continue with its plans to purchase the building.

Once again, there was little we could do, except to pray and ask God for favor in the eyes of the council. The city council room was packed. The press was there along with many members of the public. The first part of the meeting was given to allow members of the public to speak. While not anti-BFA, many of the comments were not encouraging. It looked like we might be going back to square one.

Then the mayor started to speak and it was immediately clear that she had been working hard to find a solution that supported the needs of the elderly in the community while also understanding the situation of the seller and the positive impact the building could have for BFA and, therefore, for Kandern. Other council members followed with similar comments and when the vote came it was unanimous in favor of allowing BFA to move forward.  We couldn’t believe it. Yes, this was not the final approval, but our prayers for favor in the eyes of the city and the city council had been answered.  This was a key step forward!

Story #3: Great but we still don’t have the money.

So now it seemed likely that we had a building that was perfect for our needs and the very uncertain permissions we needed appeared to be moving forward, but we still had a major issue - the major issue: How were we going to pay for this? 

BFA had been very good stewards of its resources over the last few years and by this year the amount we had set aside for the new dorms had gone from 1M to 1.5M - maybe 2M if we dipped dangerously into our reserves. That was encouraging progress, but still a long ways away from the 9M we needed and as I mentioned earlier, we didn’t really have much of a track record of fundraising. 

I was at a conference in the Spring of 2023 where the main speaker was the president of a large and growing Christian university and one that had been able to raise a lot of money for important projects. He offered to give us some advice, but after I told him more about our situation and the amount we needed his face fell. “That’s a really big number!” was his response. “Honestly” he said, “outside of God doing something miraculous, it's hard for me to see that happening.”

That wasn’t exactly the encouraging boost I had hoped for. And in some ways, Dr. Parrot’s words were accurate. It has been very challenging, and we still have a long way to go, but over the last two years, we have seen incredible things. From a previous average of about $35K raised per year, the advancement team has worked hard and prayed harder, and saw about $200K come in 2022-23. Last year, even more money came in - about $400K, and those numbers don’t include the two largest donations in the school’s history - $1M from the Assemblies of God World Missions and $750,000 from a family in Florida. 

And I should add that prior to the gift, this family had had almost no contact with BFA. But after hearing about our mission and history, this couple were convinced that this project was important - not just to BFA but to global missions. AND that you were worth that kind of investment!

Altogether, over the last two years, BFA has received pledges and gifts of over $2.5 million. Yes, our advancement and communications teams have been working incredibly hard, but they would be the first to say that the last two years only make sense as an example of God’s miraculous provision.

To summarize up to this point, in 2022, we had $1M towards an expected cost of $9M. But since then God has blessed BFA to the extent that we have been able to save or raise an additional $4M (or about 100X the amount we were raising in 2021). We still have about $4M to go, but God has been working and we believe this is going to happen. Incredible.

Story #4: The curveball!

However, on October 24, less than a month ago, we were thrown a major curveball. The Kandern city council met to approve BFA’s renovation plans for the care home building. This was the last local approval that we needed. Our understanding was that this approval would then go to the regional government for final approval, and once that happened (likely several months away) our contract with the seller would be triggered and we would then have 10 days to complete the payment for the building.

The day after the city council meeting, on Friday, October 25th, we got a call from our real estate agent congratulating us on completing the last step in the process and notifying us that, as soon as the letter confirming this arrived at BFA (which would be any time now), we would need to pay the remaining balance on the building - within 10 days!

This was very different from what we understood the timeline to be! We thought we would have as much as six more months to raise funds towards the purchase and now it sounded like we had a matter of days.

The good news is that, if needed, we already had in place bank loans for 4.75M Euros that would allow us to complete the sale in this surprisingly short time frame. 

It was also good news in that the loan amount of 4.75M was significantly lower that what we had feared we would need to take in 2022. In fact, it was less than half of that amount!

The bad news, however, is that if we had to commit to a bank loan of this size, it would still place a significant financial burden on BFA for the next 25 years. And, this significant loan burden would negatively impact our aim of making BFA affordable for your parents and the parents of BFA students for another generation!

But what could be done? All of our resources were already devoted towards this project. And we had no more major donors lined up. So it felt like we had no choice but to sign off on the loan and accept the financial challenges that the loan included. 

In an emergency meeting, Jack McClure (Hazel’s dad) asked a different question. Were there any people within our network who might be able to provide what is called a “Bridge loan” - short term loans that would allow us to put off a commitment to a big long-term loan, and

give us more time to raise/save the funds needed. This was an idea we had discussed before but who has millions of euros just sitting around that could get to us in just a few days? And even if they did, most investors expect high interest rates on these short term “bridge” loans.

Once again, we asked people to pray for God to make a way in this apparently impossible situation.

In the next couple of days we reached out to a number of people who we hoped might possibly know someone with that sort of capacity, but the initial results were not encouraging and the clock was ticking. 

Out of desperation (but also with a strange belief that God was about to do something), I reached out to a former BFA head of school (Tim Shuman) to see if he would be a part of approaching a mutual friend about a possible bridge loan. This mutual friend happened to be a BFA and HBR alum. Tim was willing and so I wrote up a description of our situation, and our urgent need, and sent it along.

The response of the HBR alum was quick and encouraging. Incredibly, he and his wife were traveling through Europe on their way from Austria to the Netherlands and would be passing through the Kandern area the next night - and they asked if my wife and I would be able to join them for dinner.

After talking through our situation over dinner, the couple made a verbal commitment to provide a 1M Euro bridge loan, but it came with some reasonable conditions. First, they would only invest if we could find three others willing to invest at the same amount. And second, they would only invest if we were able to raise the full amount needed to avoid taking a long term loan. This was incredibly generous, but where were we going to find three others with that kind of money and willingness to give it to us on short notice?

During the next four few days, as the clock continued to tick, it became increasingly clear that we would not be able to meet their conditions. In short, it seemed likely that we would have to take the full loan.

It would take too long to share all the twists and turns that took place over the next 72 hours, but with a day to spare, this HBR alumnus and his wife ended up providing BFA with a 2M Euro, interest-free, loan which was added to by another 500K Euro interest-free loan from a partner organization.

As a result of these two bridge loans:

• BFA only had to take out 1.3M in loans (about 10% of what we had expected to need in August of 2022).

• In addition, we were given, not just a few more months to raise the remaining funds we needed, but a minimum of an additional year AND

• BFA was able to meet the urgent deadline and complete the purchase of the care home facility within the ten day deadline.

In other words, as of last Friday, BFA is now the proud owner of the Wohnpark facility!

We have seen God do something over the last couple of years that is truly “immeasurably more” than what we could ask or imagine. In August of 2022, we felt like grasshoppers and for very good reason. The situation seemed impossible. But today, we are experiencing our own crossing of the Jordan.

Joshua 3:14-17 reads, “14 So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. 15 Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, 16 the water from upstream stopped flowing... So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. 17 The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing on dry ground.”

Before Lance prays for us and we finish with a song of thanks to God, I want to quickly recap this story - and this recap is just a portion of what we have seen God do in the last two years.

In August of 2022…

• We had three years to replace two aging dorms and the only option we seemed to have was building a new double dorm in the Palm/Maug field

• But that plan faced opposition from the town and our neighbors

• The estimated cost was very high: $12 Million

• And BFA’s resources were minimal: $1-2 Million

• We also didn’t have a track record of fundraising, with an average amount of donations to BFA per year prior to 2022 of about $35,000

• All this meant a possible new debt of $11 Million

• On which the interest alone would be approximately $6-8 M

• How is this even possible?

Just over two years later - November 2024 - God has provided…

• Three modern and spacious new dorms, 200 meters from campus that will be able to serve 20 additional students.

• Unanimous Approval from City Council for purchase and use change

• At a cost of $9M (including renovations) instead of the expected $12M

• That could be funded by a growing amount of BFA resources (about $2.5 M)

• And donations, to date of about $2.7 M (incl. $750,000 (W-family) & $1 Million (AGWM))

• Leading to an actual new debt amount of $1.3 Million (with up to 700K in interest) the total of which is about 10% of what we had feared we would need to take in August of 2022.

We have seen God move in mighty ways, we feel the wind at our backs, but this story is not over yet. We have some very important work that is still ahead. 

With that, our high school chaplain prayed and our student worship team led us in singing Phil Wickham's "the battle belongs" with these lyrics, "When all I see is the battle, you see the victory. When all I see if the mountain, you see the mountain moved... so when I fight, I fight on my knees, with my hands lifted high, oh God, the battle belongs to you." A fitting summary of the journey we have been on together over the last two years.

Thank you for playing such an important part in that journey!