Can We Finance both Evangelism and Education?

RECENTLY the editor of THE MINISTRY asked me a question which appar­ently has been on the minds of a number of our men. "With all the developments and spend­ing in education today," he asked, "do we think our schools can 'keep up' without taking money from the Gov­ernment?" He then pointed out the fears of some leaders that because much of our church money has recently gone into our schools, evangelism may suffer.

Let us look at the second point first. Through the history of our church there necessarily have been shifting emphases in our denominational spending. Sometimes the medical work has seemed to claim more than its share of the funds. Other times it has been publishing or evangelism or church building that has caught the collec­tive imagination. Presently in the North American Division it appears to be educa­tion, and this time because of the explosion of knowledge it seems a greater than usual threat to those who have other primary in­terests.

Bias or Balance?

The distribution of our church moneys has been remarkably balanced through the years, even though our professional biases may sometimes hint to the contrary. For ex­ample, while president of hungry colleges I have sat on sanitarium and hospital boards, tempted to envy funds allocated to them until I reminded myself of my responsibility to medicine also. 

Our boards, of course, are human and are bound at times to accede to pressures of cur­rent events and local calls. More often than not, this shows good judgment. By necessity, today is education's heyday. These trustees would be derelict if they did not take note of the remarkable ground swell in educa­tion and react with it.

This does not mean for a moment that we will forget the great and glorious challenge of public evangelism. It does not infer that our attention to education, medicine, lit­erature, and other forms of evangelism will efface the mighty profile of the public ef­fort. Nor does it suggest that our confer­ences turn their backs on the struggling local pastors. To them a few dollars for public meetings can mean a transfusion of new life—and an awareness that the con­ference is as much a big brother as a collect­ing agency.

Yet, as many of our leaders have discov­ered, some to their surprise, our schools, our medical work, and our literature and radio-TV evangelists—along with personal work by pastor and laymen—do constitute basic and productive evangelism. We should not do one and leave the other undone.

But must our schools drain our treasuries? I think not. Our God has infinite re­sources and He is a balanced God. In a Spirit-filled church there will be plenty to go around. Our mission is not to declare on these pages what this balance should be, but to see whether we can find ways of provid­ing sufficient money for all the activities and arms of our church—including educa­tion—without resorting to the taxpayer's pocketbook under legislative mandate.

Where Does the Money Go?

Sometimes our schools may have over­spent. But great care must be taken not to overdo this talk. Many of our expenditures in education are efforts to compensate for past neglects or to catch up with growing Adventist enrollment.

Take school buildings for example. Our Adventist advance requires more of them. We build, operate, and maintain them. There are many building materials and techniques that are more expensive in orig­inal outlay but are remarkable for their operation and maintenance savings over the long run. These include such items as qual­ity heating, plumbing, and lighting systems, ceramic coating on interior brick walls, good insulation, roofing, et cetera. Quality construction, without frills and with care­ful and advanced planning—making the best use of new materials—should be the rule for all Adventist buildings even if the original cost is higher. And in design the school should be a garden of learning, not a factory.

Frills or Essentials?

While neither attractive design nor sound construction are synonymous with luxury, many institutions are finding that they can do without such niceties as expensive stone, marble, or hand-molded brick construction. Instead they use quality materials that are attractive without pretense, such as stand­ard brick and variations of precast concrete.

Air-conditioning can be a great medium for efficiency in certain areas of a school, especially under severe climatic conditions. But it can also lead to unhappiness, and to heavy maintenance and operational ex­pense when applied unnecessarily or with­out wisdom. The joint-rooms-with-bath dor­mitory is another frill that has emerged among Adventist schools and which rela­tively few major outside colleges and uni­versities feel they can afford.

And Teachers Too

Proliferation of administrative and fac­ulty personnel also tends to push up insti­tutional costs. We sometimes add people rather than study our methods of operation. Efficiency studies reveal this even in well-managed places.

Yet we as ministers must not jump to conclusions in our analysis of educational personnel budgets. Much of the recent rise in school costs, for example, has issued from the attempts of boards to equalize sal­aries of women with men and to make teacher income commensurate with that of the ministry. A teacher's pay, in general, has long trailed the minister's.

Easter-Bunny Curricula

College programs or curricula that add courses without careful thought to manage­ment constitute another cause of financial concern. While most institutional advances rise out of real need, it is often true that courses and majors proliferate as energetic professors push their specialties or as ad­ministrators eye other campuses. They are wise administrators and knowledgeable boards that carefully and tactfully, but firmly, limit the offerings of their schools and colleges.

One of the first things educators look for in evaluating institutions is whether they are living within their academic means. They ask if they are offering majors or small-class courses they do not really need, or attempting research they cannot afford nor complete on a competitive schedule and which should be left to more advanced in­stitutions.

In fact, one of the most significant devel­opments on today's higher education hori­zon is the simplifying of curricula. Some in­stitutions have reshaped their curricula so effectively that they have been able to cut their number of courses sharply. Educa­tional wisdom can thus bring a financial lift without an academic sacrifice. There is much—more than can be told here—that some of our colleges can do in this direction. And they can be much stronger institutions in the doing.

Applying the Cure

If a minister is a constituent of a school whose management gives occasion for rea­sonable doubt, he should make it his busi­ness to check in a professional and Biblical way. If he is a trustee, and board studies have proved inadequate, he should ask for an unbiased investigation by off-campus ed­ucational experts. This is a requirement of responsible constituency and trusteeship. It should be done in a kind but firm and busi­nesslike way, regardless of personalities.

And the board should be as quick to recognize the handicaps under which the prin­cipal or president is working as it is to con­demn him. The trustee has as sacred a responsibility to the administration as it has to him.

Reorganize to Equalize?

There is another area that has implica­tions for fiscal reality. It is the consistent balancing or equalizing of our school pro­grams—mentally, physically, and spiritu­ally. God invariably blesses such an opera­tion. In fact, it is a firm condition of His fullest blessing. This is of particular con­cern as our colleges race to keep up with enrollment demands, even though some al­ready are so large that the maintenance of this desirable balance is difficult.

VVe realize that there will always be sharp arguments for larger schools. Yet in all this matter of equalization we will eventually find that the more oversize we build our schools, the more we preclude the vital bal­ance of worship, study, and work, as well as the infinite blessings that are promised in its train. Seldom if ever will we find in debt an institution that has protected the balance of the head, heart, and hand as prescribed in the Spirit of Prophecy writings.

There are reasons to believe that the time has arrived for us to take regional and na­tional inventories and to plan new acade­mies and colleges. It would mark a new era of denominational maturity if we would somehow discard our somewhat provincial competition between schools and step out together in comprehensive, cooperative planning with an over-all goal of balanced education.

Holding Hands

These times demand cooperation be­tween our higher institutions and even be­tween elementary and secondary schools. The world has much to teach us here. The attempt of an Adventist college unneces­sarily to duplicate high-cost equipment or courses that can be found in other Adventist colleges is generally a serious financial drain in buildings, equipment, and operation.

We would do well to restudy our entire church college structure, particularly in North America, with a view to total coop­eration. This would enable most of our United States colleges to cut operational costs, sometimes sharply. Other colleges and universities are doing it across the nation—giving up a certain amount of autonomy and private ambition in the common inter­est of their churches. This assumes the use of common sense in treating problems of distance and of natural resources.

Elementary and secondary schools in lo­cal areas could also benefit through the sharing of specialists—reading, music, et cetera—which are hard to come by, and which few can afford alone. Hundreds of institutions are finding their cooperation a remarkable answer to many educational problems.

Are Universities Bad?

A decade or so ago fears were frequently expressed that we were so busy building our church schools and advancing our church frontiers that we were ignoring a crucial need for advanced institutions—universi­ties. Today the common concern seems to be reversed. As plans were being laid for our universities, it seemed to me that the trus­tees were cautiously counting the cost. These^-men assumed, and I believe they con­tinue to assume, that the administrators of these institutions will gear their programs to the financial and academic resources of the church.

This is not easy in these days of educa­tional hurly-burly. We must be patient. Pressures are ever on them to expand, in­tensify, and upgrade existing programs. For instance, the Master's degree is as ur­gently needed by our teachers today as the Bachelor's was twenty years ago. A number of our colleges as well as our universities are being called on for graduate degrees. Therefore we must be prepared to pay the price at this level, while insisting on insti­tutional planning and cooperation.

The Doctor's degree is something else. Most doctoral curricula involve extremely heavy outlay in equipment and/or faculty costs, and are quite satisfactorily offered by non-Adventist universities, assuming our Adventist students are able and consecrated. To be sure there are a few areas where doc­toral instruction should be provided by our schools because of ideological conflicts the Adventist faces in non-Adventist universi­ties. English and the biological sciences may be examples of these academic fields. But this does not mean at this time that any one of these doctoral majors should be offered by more than one institution among us.

Taxes for Church?

In financing our American schools, then, do we need tax moneys? What are the prin­ciple issues? The one most frequently men­tioned is Federal control. Denominationally speaking, it should concern us least. There are much more urgent considerations not so often heard.

The first is based on a single question: What is the nature or purpose or intent of our schools? If our schools were like many of church origin or sponsorship, I would see no reason why we should not take tax money for buildings and operation. These institutions of which we speak are free to select teachers from any creed and are not concerned about the proportion of their students who derive from the parent denom­ination. Nor are they concerned primarily about student orientation to the church. With the prominent exception of a few such as Mormon, Mennonite, Baptist, Lutheran, and Adventist schools, most Protestant ed­ucation falls into this free-selection cate­gory.

If on the other hand the essential objec­tive of the school system is evangelical and religious; if its first priority is the prepara­tion of workers for the church; if its courses are woven warp and woof with religion, and if courses in religion are an imperative for graduation; if its overriding purpose seeks the restoration of the image of God in man; then by definition the institutional goal is very similar to that of a divinity school. In fact, it may be much more de­nominational and doctrinal and evangelical in orientation than many divinity schools. And divinity schools are explicitly pro­scribed in virtually all Federal aid pro­grams. Mind you, I do not say ours are di­vinity schools, but their underlying purpose and modus operandi should be thought through.

The administration of Federal programs relies to a great degree on the integrity of the applicant institution or agency. We are the ones who must clearly discern and de­cide the nature of our schools. And we in the United States must determine honestly whether they fit into the intent of the United States Constitution—not that of an African or European or Oriental nation, unless we are in that nation. The Govern­ment administrators will not decide our purpose for us. They will take our word.

Second, our schools were established on a philosophical basis unique among the school systems of the world. If we consist­ently follow our philosophy, we have nothing to fear. Dr. Tsunekichi Mizuno, distinguished Japanese educator, made a nota­ble evaluation of Adventist education in the harrowing years before World War II. When speaking to F. R. Millard and his colleagues of the book Education and its philosophy of balance he said, "If you fol­low your plan you have no reason to worry. If you do not follow your plan you have no reason to exist." Our college stayed open when others were closed. Many dis­tinguished educators have lauded our dis­tinctive philosophy. Many have wondered that we don't appreciate it more.

The club of accreditation and worry over demands of the world all crumple or fade away under the blessing of a promise-keep­ing God. I wonder if here is not where our attention as a church should be, rather than assuming the posture of sycophant at the taxpayer's purse. If we maintain our unique­ness we will be appraised on that basis rather than on some of the world's more expensive criteria.

Third, but not by any means the least, is the question of the effect of Government support on the stewardship of the church. There are some experienced heads who point to its effect on other churches. They feel that it welcomes an attitude of "Why should I sacrifice for this building (or pro­gram) if the Government will pick up the tab?"

It is easy to rationalize otherwise, and ra­tionale often overtakes us unaware. But the fact remains, according to the experi­ences of other churches, that we will prob­ably pay a high spiritual price for easy money.

A Policy Needed

Whatever we do, we should no longer delay a nation-wide ratification of our pol­icy regarding Government assistance. Once established, we should, like the Mormons and others, make it clearly known. Other­wise our own institutions are left hanging in the air, and outside institutions and agencies will continue to think, as some do now, that our paucity of Government grants derives from institutional inferiority rather than adherence to a principle.

Answer to the Editor's Question

I believe the editor's question can be answered best if every minister and con­ference worker would carry out five impor­tant actions:

1. Review his definition of evangelism and his over-all assessment of public effort. Objectivity here is difficult for the typical minister, for he is usually trained to be par­tial to public evangelism. Such an objec­tive view will hardly deny the public effort its access to the conference treasury.
2. Take a long, charitable, but objective look at the church's educational institu­tions—at all levels—within his ken, and ensure, insofar as he is qualified, that they benefit by optimum management. His char­ity will overlook pettiness and areas where he is incompetent to judge, and will give the school leaders the benefit of any doubts.
3. Prayerfully restudy the unique and balanced educational philosophy pre­sented to us by the inspired pen, realizing that God's commands are enablings and that we are His only limitations. Then determine carefully but courageously to ad­here to His pattern.
4. Make cautious distinctions between (a) Government assistance to individuals (lunches, fellowships, etc.) or purchase of services (research grants, etc.) and (b) di­rect Government assistance to institutions.
5. Begin educating his laymen in so com­plete a stewardship program that the church will in reality be the center of their lives. At such times we are promised that there will be (a) fewer pressing financial appeals than now and (b) more funds—as with Israel of old—than we actually need for our work.

I believe these five actions will put evan­gelism, education, and Government aid in proper perspective. When that is done, the clear answer to our editor's question will be "Yes, I believe our schools can 'keep up' without taking money from the Gov­ernment"—and evangelism need not suf­fer thereby.