“Everything is in place except money,” C.S. Lewis Foundation founder and president Stan Mattson told Religion News Service last week about the plans to launch C.S. Lewis College at a Massachusetts campus built by evangelist D.L. Moody.
Mattson acknowledges that the foundation did not meet its December 31 goal by more than $3 million, but says its plans are far from dead.
There is still “a window of opportunity to raise the $10-15 million needed to be the sole recipient of the Northfield Campus,” the foundation wrote on its website. “Be assured, we are pressing on towards this goal.”
The campus in question is owned by the Green family, noted owners of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain as well one of the largest collections of biblical antiquities. The family is known for its giant gifts promoting Christian education and the Bible, including a $70 million donation that saved Oral Roberts University.
“If [the Green family] does gift the campus to another organization, and if, for one reason or another, collaboration with that organization should not prove mutually advantageous, the Foundation will … continue to seek to establish C.S. Lewis College at another appropriate location, preferably in the Five College area of Massachusetts,” the foundation wrote.
