Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who
were with him, rose early and camped beside the spring of Harod;
and the camp of Midian was on the north side of them by the hill of
Moreh in the valley. 2 The LORD said to Gideon, "The people who are
with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for
Israel would become boastful, saying, 'My own power has delivered
me.' 3 "Now therefore come, proclaim in the hearing of the people,
saying, 'Whoever is afraid and trembling, let him return and depart
from Mount Gilead.'" So 22,000 people returned, but 10,000
remained. 4 Then the LORD said to Gideon, "The people are still too
many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you
there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, 'This
one shall go with you,' he shall go with you; but everyone of whom
I say to you, 'This one shall not go with you,' he shall not go." 5
So he brought the people down to the water. And the LORD said to
Gideon, "You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his
tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink." 6
Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their
mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink
water. 7 The LORD said to Gideon, "I will deliver you with the 300
men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let
all the other people go, each man to his home." 8 So the 300 men
took the people's provisions and their trumpets into their hands.
And Gideon sent all the other men of Israel, each to his tent, but
retained the 300 men; and the camp of Midian was below him in the
valley. 9 Now the same night it came about that the LORD said to
him, "Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it into
your hands. 10 "But if you are afraid to go down, go with Purah
your servant down to the camp, 11 and you will hear what they say;
and afterward your hands will be strengthened that you may go down
against the camp." So he went with Purah his servant down to the
outposts of the army that was in the camp. 12 Now the Midianites
and the Amalekites and all the sons of the east were lying in the
valley as numerous as locusts; and their camels were without
number, as numerous as the sand on the seashore. 13 When Gideon
came, behold, a man was relating a dream to his friend. And he
said, "Behold, I had a dream; a loaf of barley bread was tumbling
into the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it so
that it fell, and turned it upside down so that the tent lay flat."
14 His friend replied, "This is nothing less than the sword of
Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has given Midian and
all the camp into his hand." 15 When Gideon heard the account of
the dream and its interpretation, he bowed in worship. He returned
to the camp of Israel and said, "Arise, for the LORD has given the
camp of Midian into your hands." 16 He divided the 300 men into
three companies, and he put trumpets and empty pitchers into the
hands of all of them, with torches inside the pitchers. 17 He said
to them, "Look at me and do likewise. And behold, when I come to
the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. 18 "When I and all who are
with me blow the trumpet, then you also blow the trumpets all
around the camp and say, 'For the LORD and for Gideon.'" 19 So
Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts
of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had
just posted the watch; and they blew the trumpets and smashed the
pitchers that were in their hands. 20 When the three companies blew
the trumpets and broke the pitchers, they held the torches in their
left hands and the trumpets in their right hands for blowing, and
cried, "A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!" 21 Each stood in his
place around the camp; and all the army ran, crying out as they
fled. 22 When they blew 300 trumpets, the LORD set the sword of one
against another even throughout the whole army; and the army fled
as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah, as far as the edge of
Abel-meholah, by Tabbath.

Building Without Debt?

On June 1, 1998, I laid before the elders a paper entitled, "The
Gideon Venture: Should We Build Without Debt?" The pastoral staff
had been thinking and praying about these things and I had their
input and support. What I want to do this morning is take you into
that vision called the "Gideon Venture" and show you in part how
the Lord brought the elders to this point (which you voted on last
Wednesday) of commending to you that we pursue the funding of
Education for Exultation debt-free. The vision is rooted in
Scripture and I will try to show you how we used Scripture without
claiming that the Bible condemns all debt or that the story of
Gideon demands that we build debt-free.

We began by simply observing that almost all references in the
Bible to debt between people were in the form of warnings not to
get into it. For example, texts like Proverbs 22:7, "The rich rules
over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender's slave." And
Romans 13:8, "Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another."
The Bible moves us toward the freedom of no financial debt.

But since there are some references in the Bible to apparently
legitimate lending (for example, Matthew 25:27), the elders did not
conclude that building debt-free was a commandment from the Lord.
We simply felt a significant push in this direction, reinforced by
two other things: 1) the fact that God has so powerfully and
mercifully brought us totally out of debt at the end of 1996, and
2) the fact that God had led the Master Planning Committee to write
in our Vision Statement that being debt-free was one of our
corporate values ("Values Relating to Bethlehem's Spiritual
Atmosphere" #22).

Then we noticed also that, in the Old Testament, gathering money
for building was pursued before building, not after, thus avoiding
debt. For example, in Exodus 35:5 when funds were needed to build
the tabernacle, Moses spoke to the people, "Take from among you a
contribution to the LORD; whoever is of a willing heart, let him
bring it as the LORD'S contribution." Another example was the
raising of money to build the first Temple in Jerusalem. David said
in 1 Chronicles 29:5, "Who then will offer willingly, consecrating
himself today to the Lord?" And so they gathered the money first,
then built.

In both these cases, the money was all gathered up front before
the building began so that no debt was incurred. The point of these
stories is not that Christians have to do it this way. That is not
the lesson that the Bible draws out of the stories. The point of
the stories is that God put amazing generosity and willingness in
the hearts of the people (see 1 Chronicles 29:16, 18). But the
stories do give us a Biblical model and pattern that fits with
debt-free building and beckons us to consider seriously something
different and perhaps very out-of-step with the ordinary American
way of building.

God's Unusual Ways

At this point we began to meditate on God's unusual ways of
doing things in the Bible. We saw his strange ways everywhere. God
loves to do things in a way that seems foolish to men, but displays
his glory more clearly. Build an ark in the desert. Escape through,
not around, the Red Sea. Speak to a rock when you need water. March
around a walled city and blow trumpets when you want to defeat a
city. Send a boy with a slingshot when there is a giant in the
land. Pour water on the wood at Mount Carmel before you ask for
fire to fall from heaven. Tell twelve men to feed five thousand
with five loaves and two fish.

We asked ourselves: Are these stories in the Bible to encourage
us to do things the way the world does them or to encourage us to
venture on God in ways that may look foolish?

We are quite aware that you can abuse this kind of thinking.
People have drowned from trying to walk on water. People have died
from drinking poison or being bitten by snakes. Children have been
refused medicine because God supposedly would get more glory if the
healing happened without it. We are aware of these things. That is
why our presentation does not have the flavor of triumphalism about
it. We are not saying God commanded this approach. We are not
condemning you or any other church if you pursue funding in
different ways. We are not saying God is bound to bless us because
of this -or that it will infallibly come to pass.

We are very calmly saying: We see a pattern in the Bible and, as
a Council of Elders, wrestling in prayer and sometimes fasting and
studying, we sense that God would be pleased at this time in the
life of our church if we would venture something very unusual - the
pursuit of a vision of Education for Exultation, including a $9
million building expansion without debt in the next two years from
a church with about 1300 members.

Bethlehem, Send People Away!

One of the key moments in pursuit of God's leading in this was
when we pondered Judges 7:1-22 and Gideon's victory over the
Midianites. What makes this story so stunning for us now is that in
June of 1998, when we first pondered this story as a Council of
Elders, there was not a hint of Grace Church Richfield on the
horizon. In other words, what looks like the main application of
this story today (with people leaving us to go to Grace Church
Richfield, just when we might seem to need all the givers we can
get), was not even in our head when the story became
the rallying
cry for our debt-free approach.

Let me show you what we saw in those days and then add what God
seems to have been planning for us now. Get the situation into your
mind: Joshua is the leader of Israel after Moses has now died and
the people are without a great leader and there is no king. This is
the period marked by the people doing what is right in their own
eyes (Judges 17:6; 21:25). Repeatedly they sin and God gives them
into the hands of their oppressors (Judges 2:11-14). But again and
again God mercifully heard their cry and raised up judges to
deliver them out of their troubles (Judges 2:16).

Gideon was one of those judges. The people sinned, according to
Judges 6:1, and God gave them into the hands of Midian. Then the
Lord came to rescue them from the very people whom he had appointed
to judge them. He approaches Gideon in Judges 6:14 and says, "Go in
this your strength and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian." But
Gideon says in verse 15, "O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel?
Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest
in my father's house." But then the LORD said to him (in verse 16),
"Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one
man." So already God is planning to save Israel in an unusual way
that highlights his power, not Gideon's ability.

So now we come to Judges 7. According to verse 3, Israel had
about 32,000 troops. But according to verse 12, the Midianites and
Amalekites "were lying in the valley as numerous as locusts; and
their camels were without number, as numerous as the sand on the
seashore." In other words, the odds against Israel succeeding
against the Midianites were already small. They were
outnumbered.

What does God do now? Here are the six observations that we saw
as a Council of Elders in June of 1998.

God's Gideon Plan

1. Verse 2: "The LORD said to Gideon, 'The people who are with
you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel
would become boastful, saying, "My own power has delivered me."'"
From this we inferred: The Lord may get more glory if we fund our
building in a way that is harder for man and depends on the Lord
for more of what we cannot see. This would be the Gideon
Venture.

2. So the Lord pared down the 32,000 troops to 10,000 by sending
all who were fainthearted home (verse 3). And he pared down the
10,000 by choosing only those who lapped water by putting their
hands to their mouths without kneeling. That left three hundred
men. So in verse 7, "The LORD said to Gideon, 'I will deliver you
with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your
hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home.'"

From this the elders inferred that the Lord seems to be
interested in a kind of person, not just a quantity of persons.
Could it be, we asked, that God is looking to build our building
with the kind of person who would catch this vision and believe God
for it? Is God telling us to build a kind of people, not just a
quantity of persons, as the channel for God's extraordinary
work?

3. The third thing we saw was this: The Lord is merciful to work
with a less-than-ideal people - people who need extra signs or
encouragement and do not have the courage to attack immediately.
Look at verses 9-11: "Now the same night it came about that the
LORD said to him, 'Arise, go down against the camp, for I have
given it into your hands. But if you are afraid to go down, go with
Purah your servant down to the camp, and you will hear what they
say; and afterward your hands will be strengthened that you may go
down against the camp.'"

Well, Gideon took option two. And God was merciful to him. In
his mercy, God is not an all-or-nothing God. So the elders took
heart that our fears and misgivings would not disqualify us from
God's great work among us.

4. In his mercy and patience, God was willing to give a
remarkable dream and a remarkable timing of dream-telling in order
to encourage Gideon that God was in this. Look at verses 13-14:
"When Gideon came, behold, a man was relating a dream to his friend
[not a coincidence, but a divine appointment]. And he said,
'Behold, I had a dream; a loaf of barley bread was tumbling into
the camp of Midian, and it came to the tent and struck it so that
it fell, and turned it upside down so that the tent lay flat.' His
friend replied, 'This is nothing less than the sword of Gideon the
son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has given Midian and all the
camp into his hand. '"

What an amazing timing and an even more amazing interpretation
for Gideon to hear. I asked the elders at that meeting in 1998,
"What was God saying to us last December (1997) when no one but a
few could even dream that we would reach our budget, let alone pay
for the Masterworks renovation without debt (another $90,000 or so
over budget)? But God did that for us. Was he saying: Stretch,
brothers, stretch beyond your dreams? Try me. Put me to the
test."

5. Gideon was not without a strategy even though the victory was
going to be God's (verse 9: "I have given it into your hand.").
What was the strategy? He took his three hundred men and divided
them into three companies and gave them trumpets and torches and
pitchers. Verse 20: "When the three companies blew the trumpets and
broke the pitchers, they held the torches in their left hands and
the trumpets in their right hands for blowing, and cried, 'A sword
for the LORD and for Gideon!'"

I said to the elders: "We used a strange strategy to be
debt-free in 1996 called "Freeing the Future" [We didn't call for
the payment of any pledges until all the pledges equaled the total
cost of the project. God was merciful to us and blessed it.] Does
God have another strange and wonderful funding strategy for us in
project?"

6. Finally, we saw that God got the victory, not Gideon. Verse
22: "When they blew 300 trumpets, the LORD set the sword of one
against another even throughout the whole army; and the army fled."
This was the whole point of the story: to make sure that we and
everyone saw that God got the victory, not Gideon. Gideon's
strategy was the occasion for God's victory, not the decisive
cause.

So here we are before you today with a $9 million battle to be
won and a funding plan that, from a merely human standpoint, is out
of reach.

Are we on the right track? Is this of God? We think so, and one
amazing added pointer is the fact that between June of 1998, when
we first pondered the Gideon Venture, and now, God thrust into our
lives the vision of sending people with Rick Gamache and Randy
Westlund away from Bethlehem to Grace Church Richfield - beginning
next Sunday. So here we are needing (from a human standpoint) every
giver possible to win the $9 million battle, and the Lord says,
send as many to Grace Richfield as will go.

We think this is God's way of saying: You had the right vision
from the beginning, but you didn't realize how right it was - how
radical it was -and I am not done paring down the numbers yet.

The Pledge Cards

So let me show you the plan by explaining to you the cards you
have received.

Children, you should talk yours over with your parents at home
in the next two weeks and have their approval for whatever you
pledge.

We will begin building when two goals are met:

1) when all the pledges total 100% of the cost of the project;
2) and when half the cost of the project has been given and is in
the bank.

These two goals correspond to two pledges and two lines on your
card. The payment of the first pledge, Lord willing, would come due
October 15 of this year - that's for half the cost of the
project.

The payment of the second pledge, Lord willing, would not be due
until March 3, 2002. That is for the other half of the project. And
that is our target date for moving into the new building debt-free
two years from now.

We will call for the payment of the pledges only when the total
of all the pledges equal the cost of the whole project and half
that cost is pledged to be paid before construction begins.

We will call for the cards to be collected two weeks from now,
on Sunday morning, April 9.

Finally, pray alone. If you are married, pray and talk seriously
as a couple and with your children, if you have children. And join
us Sunday mornings from 6:00 to 8:00 AM for the next two weeks.