From Small Beginnings…

I recently had an intriguing conversation with Carey Childrey, one of the original Paraclete associates. He shared the fascinating story of Paraclete’s founding and early ministry. Here are some excerpts—edited for clarity and brevity.

Carey, I understand Paraclete Mission Group has an intricate but distinguished foundation. What can you tell me about that?

Well, Jim, it started in 1970 when Gary Ginter, the founder of the Jubilee Foundation, later to become a Paraclete founder, was a young University of Southern California student. He sat in a dilapidated white station wagon talking with Fuller Professor Dr. Ralph Winter, who became the founder of the US Center for World Mission. Doctor Winter was saying that what we need are people who will take seriously the call of organizational engineering, people who will design new organizational forms that can engage in the mission of the future. Gary says that conversation was a pivotal point in his life. He was interested in frontier missions and just loved Doctor Winter’s vision of reaching the unreached people groups of the world.

Robin Wainwright was the chairman of William Carey International University, that was part of the US Center for World Mission. Doctor Winter was trying to buy the old campus of the Pasadena Nazarene College, but the Hari Krishnas also wanted it. In order to fund the purchase, Robin Wainwright came up with the idea of The Last $1,000 Campaign.

Doctor Winter was asking people to give nickels and dimes and piggy banks. But Robin said, “That’s fine, but we’ll never be able to buy the property that way.” So, he challenged potential donors that they could give the last $1,000 needed to pay off the campus. In those days, the IRS laws weren’t as strict as they are now. He said if they didn’t gain enough money to buy the campus, they would refund the donor’s $1,000, or whatever amount, back. They were not going into debt for it. He said, “If we can, we’ll buy it. If we can’t, we’ll give it back.”

The Last $1,000 campaign succeeded, and US Center for World Mission was able to buy the entire campus and move into its new facility in Pasadena, California. There was a total of about 40 different agencies on the campus such as Frontiers, DAWN (Discipling A Whole Nation), Caleb Project, Zwemer Institute of Muslim Studies, Global Mapping International (GMI), Cities for Christ International, and China Ministries International (CMI) focused on reaching the unreached peoples of the world.

So, are you saying that Paraclete was one of those ministries?

Not exactly. You see, Gary Ginter and Robin Wainwright were now in Chicago. They had been talking about starting a mission consulting team. So, they called Allen Finley, the president of Partners International (PI), to come up from California to discuss an upcoming conference in Europe being put on by The Evangelical Mission Association (TEMA) in Europe. The call surprised Alan who was raising funds for the conference. He put together a proposal and went up there. They talked for about 10 minutes, then they said to Allen, “We’ll give $10,000 for that project (a large amount in 1987). But then said, “What we really want to talk with you about is helping us start a new mission consulting team. You’ve been with Partners for over 25 years and have the experience. Would you help us?”

Allen Finley had recently passed off his presidency to his successor but was still in the office as Director of Project 2000 to promote planting churches among the unreached. Allen would come back from meetings at the US Center and bring back the Ethnologue (catalogue of the world’s 7,000+ languages) that Wycliffe Bible Translators had published about all the people groups in the world and what degree of Christian influence or evangelism or discipleship or Bibles they had. That was Paraclete’s heartthrob.

Allen had been both my (Carey’s) boss and mentor. So, after he came back from those meetings, I could tell something was going on. I was at a change point in my ministry and looking for God’s will in my life. Alan told me about Paraclete, then said, “By the way, I’ve already talked with Robin Wainwright about your coming and they’d be glad to have you.” It was perfect timing for me, so I said that I could I go with him. So that’s how I came to Paraclete.

You said the Chicago group had started the Jubilee Foundation. How did that become Paraclete?

Sometimes people would hear our name, “Paraclete” and say, oh, parakeet mission group or parachute mission group, and we would laugh. But to answer your question, Paraclete got its name in a hot tub.

A hot tub?

Yes, a hot tub. You see, Robin Wainright and Jay Randall (Robin’s protégé) were playing handball. After the game, they went to the hot tub. As they were soaking and talking about the Jubilee Foundation’s unique ministry, Jay said, “Why don’t we call it Paraclete? We’re not the Holy Spirit but hopefully will be used by the Holy Spirit to encourage others.” That was in 1987, and we launched full-time operations in April 1988. We changed the name of Jubilee Foundation to Paraclete Mission Group, registered in the state of Illinois as a nonprofit organization.

Robin Wainwright became chairman of the board. We all had offices in the William Carey International University building at the US Center for World Mission, so we set up operations there. Our Board members were Robin Wainwright, Gary Ginter, Allen Finley, Phil Foxwell (college classmate of Billy Graham), Thomas Graham, and Max Dunn.

Jay and I were the only two full-time associates at Paraclete. He was seconded from the US Center for World Mission, and I was seconded from Partners International. Allen Finley was my boss. He and his wife, Ruth, would spend a week or two a month on campus, but I moved to Pasadena full-time. Jay and his wife, Terry, were already in Pasadena. Jay served as Robin Wainwright’s junior associate, and I worked as Allen Finley’s.

I discovered that the word parakalew (or relatives of that word) is in 2nd Corinthians alone some 52 times. I exhort you, I encourage you, I admonish you. And so, if we look up those in the concordance, we get the meaning of “one called alongside to help” which is all throughout the New Testament. That’s interesting, and Jesus said if I don’t go to the Father, I won’t be able to send another Paraclete to you, another comforter, another encourager, another helper. And so that confirmed our choosing of our name.

But what did Paraclete do? I mean, why start one more mission agency?

We felt called to be different from other organizations. Our focus was to come alongside other mission agencies, giving our help in fund development, strategic planning, organizational development, and personnel resources. We ministered to the 40 or so organizations, building them up as a ministry. As far as I know, Jim, Paraclete was the first one to use or to popularize a phrase that became our motto: “coming alongside.” We were consultants who were like secret agents, parachuting in. Most would never hear us or see us. We became the secret ingredient or catalytic influence that was designed to come alongside and help these agencies. I know this was my personal experience.

I understand Paraclete worked with the various agencies at the World Center. What can you tell me about that?

That’s correct. Paraclete immediately came alongside many of the agencies on the World Center campus. We helped some of them go into the big time, so to speak, but it was all God’s doing. Allen Finley and I worked on fund development, management, and so forth. I was the implementer, and he was the visionary. We connected them with funding agencies such as the McClellan Foundation and the Crowell Foundation. They had confidence in Allen because he had been president of Partners International for about 28 years, growing it from a tiny board into where he had 60 staff in the international headquarters in San Jose with about 80 different ministries in 40 different countries. They knew he had been over the mission road.

We started off with a seminar in April 1988 on fund development, trying to help the leaders of the ministries get a vision for how they could raise more prayer and financial support. And that was a great success. Many of their leaders attended. I had a lot of people to work with. I was the liaison with all these 40 different agencies. And we let them know if you want our help, you just let us know.

How did Paraclete become an independent ministry?

The body of Christ needs to consider both sides of an issue. The organization (US Center for World Missions) wasn’t really at the point to accept or implement everything we suggested, though they did make many improvements. However, Ruth Finley and I went around and did a survey of as many of the 40 agencies as we could. We were questioning, “What do you need?”

Dr. Winter was the founder, the mover and shaker, the entrepreneur to get the US center going. Our management study was very thorough. They had another management study done in 1987 by the Naramore Foundation and basically found the same thing as we did. The management structure was foundational, but it wasn’t sophisticated. It had existed for years. The style was that if you came to the morning prayer meetings, you’d be all right. You’d figure out what was going on and you wouldn’t be frustrated. That worked to a great degree, but many people said, this is great, there’s freedom here and there’s friendliness, but sometimes we feel overburdened and the structures aren’t really clear sometimes.

In 1992 we moved out of our offices because our work was finished at the US Center. We did a full analysis and presented it to the board, and the board approved it. Now it was up to them to implement.

In 1991 or so, I had asked Allen Finley, “Why can’t Paraclete be organized so we’re available to come alongside any ministry in the US or the world that wants our help?” At that time, our articles of incorporation limited us to helping the US Center for World mission. But then, Paraclete went into a period of dormancy from 1992 to 1996. They continued to have the legally required board meetings, but not much more.

I helped Frontiers for a year as a paraclete-like associate from 92 to 93. And then I was back up in San Jose with Partners helping Allen Finley. Since I had just come from Frontiers, I went with Partners again full-time because Paraclete had been phasing out in 1990; by 1992 it had gone dormant.

Then, in 1996, Alan said to me, “Carey, you need to dust off your Paraclete credentials. We’ve appointed Keith Butler as the new president of Paraclete, and he wants you to come help him over in Colorado Springs. We prayed about shutting Paraclete down. But God would give us no peace. We had no peace from the Holy Spirit to shut the thing down.” And so, we decided to move forward and relaunch in 1996, now committed to working with multiple agencies. Pete and Leslie Holzman were the first associates to rejoin in the sense of being on the field. And then I was the 2nd and went to Colorado Springs for four years. I served under Keith as director of development for Paraclete and the Adopt a People Clearing House.

We all wore multiple hats. Keith turned his basement in his Colorado home into the offices for the Paraclete Mission Group and the Adopt People Clearing House. He was a jack of all trades and did a tremendous job—and was fun to work with.

Phil Elkins served as president as well during the 1990s, doing a tremendous job growing the ministry relationally with new recruits, while also having a tremendous ministry to the unreached. Norma, his wife, had become our PMG Secretary running the office in 1990, adding invaluable contributions, and then had transitioned to helping Phil full time in 1992.

What were some of Paraclete’s early projects?

We helped publish a book called Target Earth by Frank Caleb Jansen, a Norwegian businessman, and elder in his church. He’d been engaged in missions all his life. He served in the Far East, Poland, USSR and supported his ministry through commercial activities such as publishing data, TV, etcetera. He founded a ministry called Bibles for All.

Allen Finley encouraged him and, if I remember correctly, helped raise funds to put it together. We asked Frank Caleb, “How much is there still left to do? What’s been done?” Ralph Winter was behind it and wrote the foreword for it. Our name doesn’t appear in the book, but I don’t know if the book would have ever made it to publication without Paraclete’s involvement.

Another thing Paraclete did was help start the Adopt a People Clearing House. Originally, that was a vision of Doctor Winter and Dale Kietzman, president of William Carey International University. He and Allen Finley worked together to start that ministry. My home church, Grace Bible Church here in Lawrenceville, adopted one of the people groups through the Adopt a People Clearing House down in Venezuela, a tribe of 600 people. The church ended up supporting a New Tribes missionary couple there who were translating the books of Genesis and Exodus. They came down with dengue fever and their support was low. But the church’s added prayer and financial support seemed to be enough to get them over the hill and enable them to finish an excellent translation. The whole tribe officially turned to and professed Christ as Lord and Savior.

How did Paraclete grow from there?

As the second successor to Allen Finley at Partners International, the board chose Chuck Bennett (former Mission Aviation Fellowship president). Chuck had earlier said, “I’ll come, but I don’t feel ready to do it now.” Then later, after the next president had stepped down from Partners, Chuck Bennett became president of Partners. And then when Chuck was retiring from Partners International in San Jose, we picked him up around 2000 as our president at Paraclete.

Around 1997 or 98, Jim and Leeta Van Meter had joined Paraclete. That, to me, was a turning point because we were attracting folks from other top mission agencies. They recommended Don and Ele Parrot to become our next president. The Parrot’s brought a great ethos to Paraclete. As a couple, they put on great retreats. They had us playing games, interacting, getting to know each other, as well as providing spiritual content. He emphasized building relationships and an ethos of prayer. Don focused on attracting missionaries whose organizations required that they retire but were still looking for a place to serve. He’d say, “Paraclete is a good fit for you.”

In 2008 or so, when Don and Ele stepped down, they left a baby doll on Glen and Shelly Volkhardts’ front door with a note saying, “This is now your baby.” I thought that was a great way to phase out.

We had wrestled with the question of how to get younger people into Paraclete, but we hadn’t crossed that Rubicon yet to any extent, if at all. Which wasn’t bad because our selling point was that “Paraclete has a team of experienced missionaries who can share what God has taught them in hopes that it will encourage, equip, and empower you in the face of whatever your challenges are right now.” Among many other tremendous organizational advancements, Glen and Shelly Volkhardt expanded the focus and attracted younger people as well as veteran missionaries.

God used each of these men and their wives to make tremendous contributions to the work of the Kingdom. I especially appreciate how various presidents have looked at us Paraclete associates, even as leaders who are worthy to run our own ministries.