Behold Your God: A Summary
By David Brickner, Director, Jews for Jesus, San Francisco
We in Jews for Jesus are extremely grateful for all the help we received from so many members of the LCJE as we carried out Operation Behold Your God over the past 5 1/2 years. Without the participation of various LCJE friends, it would have been far more daunting a task to fulfill this program. Thank you to all of you who participated and prayed for this outreach.
Origin
The idea for Operation Behold Your God resulted from a two-day brainstorming session. The brains that were “storming” were those of the Jews for Jesus leadership who met in the upper room of our “Shalom Hospitality House" in San Francisco.
The baton had been passed from Moishe Rosen to me, and I began my tenure by asking the senior staff to agree on how to articulate two things: a mission statement and a set of our core values. It was important for us to affirm that we were not changing the purpose and values of Jews for Jesus. The mission statement and core values served as a platform for dreaming about how we might make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue for Jewish people worldwide.
We used 3x5 cards to jot down sky's-the-limit ideas of how to approach our mission for the next five years. We pinned up more than 100 such ideas onto large bulletin boards. With prayerful consideration, each leader chose seven ideas and applied small red-dot stickers to the corresponding cards. This “dotting down,” process narrowed down the ideas to fifteen or so.
We brought back the ideas to our various branch locations and spent time in prayer with our fellow missionaries. We were asking God to show us a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal – a term from the book Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras) that He would enable us to reach.
The leadership came together around the idea of campaigning in cities of 25,000 or more Jewish people and after much prayer, we committed ourselves to Operation Behold Your God. (Avi Snyder, who had a key role in articulating our mission statement, privately told me that we should call our BHAG “Operation Behold Your God” based on Isaiah 40:9; “O Zion, you who bring good tidings, get up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, you who bring good tidings, lift up your voice with strength, lift it up, be not afraid; say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’).
It seemed like it would require us to reach many of the other goals we had talked about, such as developing new evangelism methods and materials, growing our number of missionaries, and raising up new leadership. All of these and more would be necessary in order to implement Behold Your God.
We concluded that 55 cities outside of Israel had Jewish populations of 25,000 or more. For a five-year program, we had to conduct a minimum of 11 campaigns a year. We actually started fairly slowly and ramped up to a pace that enabled us to complete all 55 in approximately five and a half years.
Infrastructure
Initially, we created commissions on literature, recruitment, finance, follow-up, etc. to deal with overseeing various aspects of the campaign. While these commissions were helpful, they proved to be impractical for providing the direct oversight that each campaign leader needed. So we created a structure to oversee BYG proceedings and called it the Strategic Coordinations Council (SCC). The SCC was comprised of a cross section of leaders of different ages, experience and areas of expertise. I asked Avi Snyder to head the council.
Each member of the SCC also served on one of the commissions. In addition, each member served as a liaison to one or more Behold Your God campaigns in any given year. This helped to motivate the campaign leaders as well as to provide the resources necessary to fulfill the assignment.
The SCC became the advisory board and cheerleader for those campaign leaders. The team would meet by teleconference every week for an hour of discussion and prayer. The SCC also led a three-hour session of reporting and discussion in each council (leadership) meeting, where many of our senior staff from around the world gather three times a year. Those sessions helped us see our progress, learn from our mistakes and brainstorm for future campaigns. Two of the SCC members, Jonathan Bernd and Andrew Barron, put together a preparation manual that helped campaign leaders to lay the groundwork by meeting various goals at particular junctures, beginning at 18 months, 12 months, 6 months, and 3 months prior to campaigns.
Obstacles
We launched our first BYG campaign in March of 2001. That same year the “dotcom bust” and the terror attacks of September 11 hit the economy hard, and as you know, many ministries found themselves facing drastic cuts. Jews for Jesus had begun our largest evangelistic outreach ever, and connected with that we had launched a nationwide media campaign. We were also going through a computer conversion at our San Francisco headquarters, which caused more upheaval than we'd anticipated.
When the reality of all these problems hit home, we had to make some sacrifices. We had to let some of our administrative staff go which was painful. And still, more adjustments were necessary. Senior staff met with the board to discuss whether we would postpone BYG or go forward – and the only way we could go forward was by cutting salaries. It was a time of testing as to whether or not God had really called us to do this. I am proud to say that our senior staff all agreed to take a 20 percent cut in pay. Those with somewhat less seniority took a ten percent cut while missionaries who hadn't reached seniority took no cut. With those senior level cuts, we were able to move ahead. Those cuts lasted for six months and then we were able to restore the normal salaries.
Methodology
Since our first New York City witnessing campaign in 1974, we have maintained tried-and-true methods of street evangelism.
Sometimes, simply seeing our Jews for Jesus T-shirts is enough to prompt a conversation, but it helps to be able to offer people something interesting to read. Broadside tracts are one of the hallmarks of Jews for Jesus. These (usually) humorous and thought-provoking pamphlets contain scripture, and are designed to be read within a minute or two. Jews for Jesus has distributed millions of these broadsides during our campaigns and we've found them effective for engaging people on the streets.
Along with handing out literature, our campaigners use a "proposal statement." The statement is really a series of questions and affirmations about Jesus, and, for those who are willing, it leads to a prayer of repentance and surrender to Jesus.
Other methods we've employed to reach people include phoning homes, utilizing secular media for gospel advertisements, outdoor concerts – sometimes we even conduct our own parades.
As BYG progressed, in many cities we found it necessary to use a multi-pronged strategy involving all of these modes of outreach. And we added methods we hadn't used in prior campaigns, including door-to-door evangelism, special events like evangelistic film showings (we used our own “Survivor Stories” and “Forbidden Peace”), public debates between an anti-missionary rabbi and noted Jewish Christian scholar Michael Brown, and direct mailings to homes of Jewish people in the areas of the campaigns. We have even placed kiosks in shopping malls.
Our philosophy regarding methods is never to discard something that works just because it is not new, while at the same time never giving up looking for fresh ways to tell the gospel.
Leadership
Before we launched BYG, relatively few of our missionaries had led evangelistic campaigns. Throughout the ministry’s history, that position was reserved for the more senior leaders. As we faced the challenge of completing twelve to fifteen campaigns per year, that had to change. BYG not only provided opportunities for younger leaders, it made it necessary for them to lead – which was part of the reason we felt this project was right for us. I knew that I ought to lead the first BYG campaign beginning in San Francisco (where our founder, Moishe Rosen, handed out the first broadside of the campaign). I knew we were going to end with NYC and that I should lead that campaign as well. Other than that, leadership was “up for grabs.” And quite a few newer leaders rose to the occasion.
Sometimes leadership was a combination of a seasoned “veteran” and a younger leader. One of the most encouraging aspects of BYG has been seeing the next generation of Jews for Jesus leaders develop. I don’t mean just the campaign leaders, but within each campaign, particularly on the NY grand finale, the team leaders tended to be younger people with more senior missionaries on their team to uphold and cheer them on.
Disappointments and mistakes
Recruitment was definitely our biggest disappointment. We had anticipated that the BYG campaigns would produce a whole new crop of potential young missionaries and that did not happen. Before this time, we had annual summer witnessing campaigns that fit with the college break system, as well as other special outreaches during spring or winter breaks. With several campaigns each year, we could not schedule them all to occur during college breaks.
So we expanded the parameters of who could serve on campaigns both in terms of the age range and in terms of allowing non-Jewish campaigners. Even so, those participants who fell within these newly expanded parameters were only to comprise a certain percentage of our campaigners in each city. And we postponed more than one campaign that we'd announced because we hadn’t recruited sufficiently to meet our standards.
Frankly, even during the summers, we found it difficult to recruit enough young people, particularly when we had more than one campaign per summer. I suspect that some of our campaign locations were also not a draw for younger people. Whereas we had mature and godly campaigners who gave their all, many did not have the physical energy needed for this kind of saturation effort.
Many of you will recognize that this problem is not peculiar to Jews for Jesus; it's a challenge that all of us involved in evangelism have faced since Jesus walked the earth. He told His disciples to pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers because the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. The fact that we had such a difficult time recruiting young Jewish believers for the campaigns—and the fact that very few of those who actually came to Christ though our outreach could be considered eligible for serving with Jews for Jesus—has to be one of the biggest failures of the campaign.
In hindsight, I could have done a better job of scheduling these campaigns further in advance and selecting leaders sooner. I tried to give ample preparation time but did not always do so.
Most of what we did, from the SCC to the various campaign commissions, developed along the way out of necessity. We did not create a leadership-training program until we were halfway through the five and a half year program.
I didn’t insist on unified reporting from the outset. As we began to collect reports on the campaigns, the inconsistencies in reporting made it difficult to evaluate the earlier campaigns.
We came up with a program called the Olive Tree, which was designed to involve churches in the planning process for each campaign. We developed an elaborate system that asked a great deal from partnering churches and their members. We hoped that the churches would support our campaigns, not just financially, but also by having members of the congregation spend time in prayer and then attempt to set up opportunities for us to meet with and share the gospel with their Jewish friends. It would have been a great idea if it worked – but with a few exceptions, most were not able to arrange those kinds of visits. That is not to say that we did not have churches involved in most of the campaigns. In fact, if it weren’t for local churches most of these campaigns would not have happened.
Opposition
God typically employs the small and weak to show His strength. Regardless of how our opposition may perceive us, we know ourselves to be small and weak and therefore prime candidates for God’s use. God's age-old technique when using the weak or the outnumbered was best articulated by Joseph, when comforting his brothers in Genesis: “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to being it about as it is this day, to save many people alive” (Genesis 50:20).
Even so, what our opposition has meant to hinder us has spread the gospel seed further than we could have on our own.
Take the media for example. Numerous campaigns were preceded by newspaper articles warning the Jewish community of our coming. The media attention that resulted from the dire predictions of Jewish community leaders far exceeded whatever what we might have been able to produce on our own. I don't believe that we've ever had as many news stories, in terms of secular newspapers, television, radio and Internet, written about our mission and our message. And the campaigns with the most media coverage (probably Toronto, Washington, D.C. and the greater New York area) invariably began with complaints from our opposition.
Then there was the lawyer letter we received from the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which generally speaking, has not been hostile towards us. They accepted our ads in the subway cars and in the tunnels. When pressured to take them down they explained that the ads did not violate their policies and were in accordance with First Amendment rights. However, they took exception to a logo we had on one of our T-shirts that utilized three colored circles with letters inside. While we did not believe they would have won a case against us, we had no problem complying with their demand to stop using the logo. We simply turned the circles into Jewish stars, which satisfied the MTA . . . and this turned into another media event covered by various newspapers, local TV news programs and who knows how many blogs.
We are accustomed to opposition from various sources. The unexpected opposition comes occasionally from brothers and sisters is the hardest to endure. Yet God has used even those instances for good.
In one city, a member of our anchor church convinced the pastor that it would not be best for the church to host us because it would harm their relationships with other Jewish groups. With very short notice we needed to find a new anchor church. The pastor of the church that came to our rescue had just been praying about how to be a testimony to the Jewish community in his neighborhood . . . the day before the campaign leader called asking if he would consider partnering with us. That church was an excellent base of operations for our Denver campaign.
In Lyon, France we faced opposition from another Jewish mission, the head of which discouraged local pastors from participating with us. Many churches heeded him and refused to have anything to do with us. The only churches that wanted to partner with us were outside of the center of the city, far from where we needed to be located.
In the end, one of the churches put us in touch with a Christian ministry to Muslims, which had a more centrally located facility. That ministry graciously offered us the use of their building as a day base. As it happened, fully one third of all the unbelieving contacts that we received in Lyon were Muslims. We gave those contacts directly to this ministry, which benefited their work and enabled us to bless them as they had blessed us.
Partnerships
Most of the campaigns had what we called an “anchor church” that allowed us to use their facilities as a base of operations. We were continually amazed by the generosity of these churches. They not only provided facilities for us, but some withstood pressure from surrounding Jewish communities who felt that their friendship toward us spelled antagonism to the neighborhood. Large and small alike, these churches were the backbone of many of our campaigns and we are grateful.
One of the biggest surprises in the BYG campaign was how it impacted our Co-Laborer in Messiah (CLIM) program. Co-Laborers are volunteers who take a training course and receive a charter to represent our ministry in their own city or town. BYG provided opportunities and inspiration for many of our Co-Laborers to “kick it up a notch” in terms of their evangelistic participation. In fact, the Co-Laborers were key players in many BYG campaigns, particularly around the U.S. They served as stewards, campaigners, and in some cases, they stepped up to leadership levels in planning and in preparing for the campaigns.
Another blessing we hadn't fully anticipated was how BYG served as a catalyst for cooperation between other Jewish ministries and Messianic congregations. In some instances we had as many as seven different mission agencies and congregations shoulder-to-shoulder with us in various BYG campaigns. Many of these organizations and congregations are represented in the LCJE and I think that our opportunities for keep up with one another through the LCJE helped to solidify the cooperation we enjoyed. This kind of inter-agency cooperation reflects a wonderful trend that I hope will continue.
BYG finale
Prior to 2006, we had 32 years of experience with campaigns in midtown Manhattan. As we began thinking of BYG New York and how it would differ from our annual summer witnessing campaigns, we realized that we needed to go beyond Manhattan. According to the 25,000-person guideline for Jewish populations, many communities in the greater NY area qualified for their own BYG. We wanted to focus on those specific geographic areas as though each was a separate campaign in and of itself. There were also unique challenges for ministry to the Russian-speaking, Hebrew-speaking, and Yiddish-speaking communities. Ultimately we decided to have 9 separate campaigns: Manhattan, Brooklyn/Staten Island, Bronx/Westchester, Long Island, Queens, New Jersey, Israeli, Russian-speaking and ultra-Orthodox.
All the leaders conducted a special two-week probe campaign a year in advance to explore the areas where we hadn’t conducted regular campaigns. We gathered together several times over those two weeks to learn from one another and to lay the groundwork for the grand finale.
During that probe campaign, I realized that some of our best broadsides had been written in the 70s. While some of those broadsides are timeless, others were obviously outdated. I challenged our staff to produce 25 new broadsides in time for the BYG campaign. Together we penned not 25 but 30 new broadsides.
Another strategy was a “pre-campaign” outreach into the ultra-Orthodox communities. Good friends of our ministry had secured the rights to develop and produce a Yiddish version of a well-known film about Jesus. However, they did not have the funding to duplicate or distribute the film in DVD form. When they approached us, we agreed to partner with them.
During the previously mentioned probe campaign, we had secured the addresses of approximately 80,000 ultra-Orthodox homes. We mailed the DVD to these homes in advance of the campaign so that the responses would be available to our missionaries during the campaign.
We also settled on the slogan “Jesus for Jews” for a special media campaign to reach all nine groups. We produced an inexpensive, easy to distribute book by that title, with four testimonies from our staff. We created a direct mail piece offering the book to 440,000 Jewish homes two weeks in advance of the campaign.
With the completion of BYG NY, by God's grace, we have fulfilled our mission statement to make the Messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue in many cities worldwide That is a great joy. Of course, every person who had the opportunity to freely consider the gospel and every person who actually received Jesus as their Messiah during these campaigns is a source of joy. Who can place a value on one soul?
Nevertheless, we’ve compiled statistics to give you an overview of how many people received our literature, gave their information for further contact and prayed to receive Christ:
David Brickner
[email protected]