A dear and generous friend of Bethlehem College and Seminary approached me last week and inquired of The Million Dollar+ Challenge. “It seems to be just sitting there,” she observed with genuine concern.
I reassured her. “Oh, God’s work is never ‘just sitting there,’” I said. To be sure there is a need that must be filled, but just on the other side of that need lie the “unsearchable riches of Christ,” —every material and spiritual resource that ever was, is, or is to be. It is just that God’s grace has not yet been released. We know, from both his word and from our experience, that God will supply his work with what it needs—when it is needed—often not a moment too soon, such that we may be sure to discern the manifestation of his glory in it all.
In recent years, we have become all the more reticent to express need anywhere other than Godward. Those familiar with Bethlehem College and Seminary and The Serious Joy Scholarship know our financial model well. We offer a high-quality, Bible-saturated, academically-rigorous education at a “remarkably affordable” price—about $8,000 a year. We do this so that our students may launch immediately into life, vocation, and ministry without a burden of federal student loan debt. It costs us about $18,000 a year to educate a student; the rest is supplied by God, through his saints, in the form of a $10,000 annual scholarship for each student.
The friends of Bethlehem College and Seminary are also well-familiar with how we do it. We’re open-handed in recruiting, compensating, and retaining a truly world-class faculty. We evidence extreme frugality in our operating expenses, doing our work in the unadorned simplicity of unused church Sunday school rooms during the week. And we depend on God. We look to him to stir generosity among the saints, so that their love for him might be so abundant that it overflows to the benefit of our students and their faithful teachers.
The need is always there, but never stationary. God is always at work on behalf of his mission here—“…to spread a passion for God’s supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ by equipping men and women to treasure Christ above all things, to grow in wisdom and knowledge over a lifetime, and to glorify God in every sphere of life.”
Professional fundraisers place much emphasis on technique, assuming man-crafted prods of some sort are what are required to shake loose the generosity of the spiritually gifted “contributors” identified in Romans 12:8. They aren’t. While it’s reasonable to keep you aware of the work of his works here, even to let you know that a small group of your fellows pledged $1,326,000 earlier this year in the hope that you might “match them” before school year’s end, all said and done it will be the Holy Spirit who gives the nudge, who reminds you of God’s goodness, of your joy in him, and of your hope for equipping a new generation to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That’s what we pray to happen, and ask you to pray for as well.
June 30 approaches. The end of another school year; the date by which all the Serious Joy Scholarships must be funded. And I can hear Aslan roaring. The Million Dollar+ Challenge isn’t “just sitting there.” There’s a rumble beneath it, really.
Watch what our Lord does, now.
Rick Segal
Vice President of Advancement & Lecturer of History and Political Philosophy
Prayer Requests:
- Pray that prospective students, especially those attending Preview Day next week, for all our programs will still apply for classes this Fall.
- Pray for the speakers as they prepare and for the hearts of those who will hear at Theology for Everyone.
- Pray for the full funding of the Serious Joy Scholarships needed for this school year.