I was wrestling with whether I should come
this morning, and I got everything all packed
last night.
I felt I should come.
I have some things I really want to
share.
The title of my sharing, for those who
hear this, my take is Unreached People.
I was amazed in a meeting just recently,
I took a little survey, in a meeting
that was for a missionary fellowship, how many
even understood what this is all about, unreached
people, that kind of terminology.
Only a few hands went up in the
whole meeting.
Again I realized how so often what's happening
in world missions is only understood by a
remnant of people.
We live with that remnant of people, and
there's a great variety among them, and we
get deceived by that.
There's a whole mass of people there, even
people who are interested in missions to some
degree, like the people who came to this
meeting, who do not understand what is happening,
or what we are actually aiming at in
the contemporary task of world missions.
So I want to share a little bit
about that this morning, because every one of
us should be considering ourselves, surely, part of
God's grassroots movement to spread the vision of
world missions.
It's not going to be just done by
special meetings and special speakers.
It's got to take the ordinary person, or
the person who may not think they have
public ministry gifts, to share something of this
vision.
And I'm sure it's in God's providence that
I get a phone call this morning and
discover we have someone who's just arrived, a
friend, a prayer partner who once was on
Lagos, just arrived from China, I think actually
by train or overland, maybe it was camel.
And Shirley Gearing, I'd like you to come,
welcome, and just give us a few thoughts
that are on your heart about China or
your overland trip, and I'm sure that will
tie into my unreached people's burden.
Please come.
Well, I really thank the Lord for this
opportunity to be here.
I had no idea I would be here,
or see George, or see any of you.
We first became acquainted with OM in 1973
when we were living in Ethiopia.
Had never heard of OM before, and the
team came to Addis Ababa, and we became
very involved.
I was able to travel with them overland
to the ship in Massawa, sail to Djibouti,
and from then on we've been involved in
many different ways.
But the past, let's see, from 1985 to
1989, July 1 last year, we had the
opportunity to live in China where my husband
was working with all of the agricultural work
with the World Bank.
And most of what we learned about China
orientation was through OM, the Operation World seminars,
and through David Abney.
He was the one who told us a
lot about the church in China.
And then when Peter Conlon and the team
went to first organize the Logos' trip to
China, he would sometimes come and stay with
us in Virginia, just outside of Washington.
He shared what was happening in those days.
And so that's how we really learned about
the church and what's going on in China.
Well, since a year ago, since August 5th,
we've been living in Ethiopia where my husband
is working with the World Bank in Ethiopia,
so I could talk a lot about Ethiopia,
too.
But the Lord just gave me the opportunity
to go back to China from America the
first part of October for two weeks.
And the main reason was to look up,
to see friends this time, and see what's
been happening in the country and what the
Lord's been doing.
And I didn't write anybody that I was
coming because many...
Well, we were very washed because we were
involved with many Christians and having one-to
-one meetings with different people.
And a camera was put in our elevator
of our building, and it was always on
when I was around, it seemed like.
And so I just didn't want anybody to
be in danger.
You better turn off the tape.
No.
So we just prayed about this particular trip,
and different friends were praying.
And in the two weeks there, I made
a list of people I'd like to see.
And the Lord brought everyone into my path,
even though I didn't have their phone numbers
when I got there or hardly their addresses
anymore.
I hadn't prepared ahead.
And other people we hadn't expected to see
just were there.
And it was just amazing what happened.
But the biggest thing, I had the opportunity
to meet with three pastors that have all
been in prison for their faith for many
years.
And I'll share a little bit about what's
happening.
First of all, this particular pastor is Pastor
Wu Muzha.
Probably you haven't heard of him.
But in the early 50s, 11 pastors refused
to join the Three-Self Movement when the
government took over the Church, including Watchman Nee,
Wang Mingdao, Wu Muzha, a number of other
pastors.
And they were all imprisoned or sent to
work camps in northeast China during this time.
And two years ago, another Chinese girl with
OMF introduced me to a young Chinese girl
in Beijing.
And she said, This girl has no fellowship
at all.
Would you please get together with her?
And that week, I just didn't have time.
The following week, Billy Graham came to China
for his visit.
And we were involved in the international meeting
where he spoke.
The following day, he had a meeting for
the people who had been involved in making
arrangements for his coming.
And at that dinner, my husband Jim and
I decided to sit at an all-Chinese
table, people we didn't know.
And I sat near this elderly gentleman.
Well, it turned out that he said he'd
been in prison many years, and he was
teaching Greek in the seminary at this time.
And he also had a daughter who was
married to a doctor in Inner Mongolia where
our children were teaching English.
So I gave him our name and address.
The next day, his daughter called and said,
Did you know that you were seated next
to my father last night at this meeting?
And I said, No.
So we got together.
And he was a young evangelist, and he
preached all around many, many different parts of
China.
And he worked very closely with Wang Mingdao.
This pastor is now 80 years old.
And in fact, he spoke at Wang Mingdao's
mother's funeral.
It was very, very close to him.
And his youngest daughter was five months old
when he was put in prison camp in
northeast China.
When she was five years old, his wife
and this daughter, Ruth, were allowed to come
and visit him for four hours.
The mother died in 1977 of lung cancer,
and the husband was released the year later,
the father.
So he spent four hours with his wife
during these 23 years, all the time staying
faithful to the Lord.
When he came back, he lived in Inner
Mongolia with his children for several months, several
years.
And then the church in Beijing, the Open
Church, Three-Self Church, wanted him to come
and be a part of their fellowship because
they knew he had many contacts with the
Western world in the past and was an
outstanding evangelist.
And he really didn't want to.
He was more the underground.
He didn't want to be involved with the
government.
They also wanted him to teach Greek in
the seminary.
But then he realized that was the only
way he would have an opportunity to share
openly with other people.
So he prayed, and he felt this is
what the Lord wanted him to do.
So he joined the church.
And he is a true believer.
He's only allowed to speak four times a
year.
And one time, it was a week ago
last Sunday, I was able to hear him.
It was the second time I'd heard him.
And there's just a hush over the whole
church, which is just packed when he speaks
because he preaches the whole gospel.
And anyway, he has been allowed to go
out into the countryside and minister to different
groups during this time.
The Lord's really using him.
But his health is beginning to fail now.
Two years ago when we met, I said,
Have you ever heard of David Adeny?
And he looked kind of funny.
He said, I worked with him as his
secretary in InterVarsity from 1949 to 1953, but
I haven't been in touch with him since.
And he was trying not to get in
touch with foreign people, but he didn't know
where David was.
And so we were able to get letters
going between the two.
But the sad thing is the other house
churches and even missionaries, we've introduced several missionaries
to him, and they're very judgmental of the
fact that he's with the open church, whether
he really is a Christian.
So there's this going on even between Christians.
And the people, the other pastors in his
church, were the ones who had him sent
to prison in the first place.
And this man has just a total heart
of forgiveness.
He is so humble.
There is no enmity toward any of the
people that were involved in putting him in
who he now works with.
Anyway, we have learned so much from these
people.
His daughter is now studying in America at
Lutheran Bible Institute.
She got out miraculously.
She never went to school because she was
a child of the Cultural Revolution, and her
father was in prison during this time.
So she wasn't allowed to go to high
school or university.
And so she only got a TV degree.
And the Lord just opened the door and
let her get out, even though she wasn't
a party member and all the other things
you're supposed to be.
So he still has his ways of working.
Then this is a dear Christian friend who
I met back in the first year we
were there.
Her name is Mabel.
She's a distribution point for supplies that come
in for Christians.
She lives in a ramshackle, three rooms.
Her closest friend was Washman Nee's wife.
And Washman Nee was staying in her home
for just a couple of days when he
was taken to prison back in, I guess,
the early 50s.
She's 83 years old now, a doctor, graduated
from the big Beijing Medical College, which used
to be, I think, a Methodist college, and
worked only about 15 years.
And then she was sent to Tibet as
a doctor during these years.
And her brother has been an invalid from
54 until last year when he passed away.
But she's been doing all of this on
the side, being a meeting point for many
people who were distributing literature.
And so last year we were in China
during the upheaval.
In fact, we were a block from the
square when everything happened.
And then we were sent out of the
country two days later, and we came back
two weeks later for only one week.
And the last week I went to see
Mabel for the last time.
And everything around her had been totally leveled
except her little room where she was living
because she'd been fighting being put in this
new apartment.
They were tearing down all the old areas.
And I was so glad to find her
so I could find her if we ever
went back.
But she's still in this area.
And she found out from...
My notes are all disorganized, otherwise I would...
She found a book that a friend, let's
see, James Taylor, Jr., was there.
The third.
The third was there a couple of months
ago and gave her a book, I think
it had been printed in Taiwan, about her
ancestors.
And she found out where her grandparents had
both been killed and two of their children,
in an area just north of the Great
Wall, a village.
So since the last six months, she's been
there 10 times distributing literature in the same
courtyard where her relatives were killed.
And she wanted me to go with her
on the train.
I didn't have time, but I knew there'd
be big problems because everybody knows who she
is.
And somehow the Lord just protects her.
There just wasn't a chance to go.
And it might not have been good for
her either.
But she said, I just can't quit serving
the Lord and quit working, even though I'm
83, because everybody keeps praying for me and
I just have to keep working.
So she invited me over one evening for
jazzes, to make these dumplings.
And then she also, while we were there,
different people would come, and seminary students come.
And they take supplies back to their villages
and their parts of the country.
And this gal had come in by train,
she was a seminary student, to get supplies.
And on the way, she had led five
people to the Lord.
She was this radiant when she came into
the house.
So Mabel gave her her supply of information
and then gives her apple and all kinds
of fruits to go on her way.
And she just carries on this ministry.
Just about two blocks away, a big new
customs hall has been built.
I don't have those pictures here.
Just magnificent customs hall.
And while I was there, some people from
Hong Kong also came that are in charge
of this particular work.
And the one fellow said, you know, it's
just incredible.
God has such a sense of humor.
Because here they built this magnificent customs hall
within the last six months.
And he said, probably now the head customs
official is sitting in there wondering, how can
I stop these Bibles from coming into the
country, all this information?
And just a stone's throw, this little old
simple lady in a ramshackle house, just falling
down, has over 10,000 Bibles have gone
out from out of her tiny hut the
last few years.
So God has a real sense of humor.
He uses the simple things to confound the
high and mighty.
This person, this fellow, was a student of
our children when they were teaching in Inner
Mongolia three years ago, teaching English.
And then they sent a Bible for him,
for us to give to him, about a
year and a half ago we met.
And so we had just a tremendous evening
of fellowship.
He already had a New Testament.
And then I was trying to put him
in touch.
He was a believer.
I was trying to put him in touch
with an open church where they can go
for fellowship.
And he said, no, I can't go because
I'm a party member.
I said, oh.
He said, but just because we're party members,
don't think that we don't believe this.
He said, there are many party members who
are Christians, and we believe the Bible.
So that was exciting to know.
He's a doctor now working in Beijing.
I was able to meet him about three
times and introduce him to this elderly pastor
and to Mabel.
And he was able to get some supplies
for his fellow students.
And he said now, he also was involved
in student meetings and planning all of these
things before it even started.
Just not deeply involved.
But he said, you know, now we have
to go to political meetings every week, and
they teach us to lie in the meetings.
We have to tell all these lies.
So he said, we all lie in the
meetings.
And then we go out of the meeting,
and we all tell the truth.
And I had the opportunity to talk to
so many different people.
I'd become friends.
Very down-to-earth, ordinary people.
People like this.
Several leaders of institutes.
And nobody likes what's happening there right now.
And they're all just waiting.
Someday there are going to be big changes.
So, you know, something's going to happen.
Back to the church.
The church is growing.
The pastors have said the biggest thing is
that many young people are coming to the
Lord now.
College and younger.
And the Sunday that I visited this open
church, it was packed with about maybe 25
-30% young people.
They were there 30 minutes before it started.
Oh, this is the church.
And the older people would be reading the
Scripture with them, pointing out different Scriptures.
And so it's exciting.
And many people said because of what happened
last year has just opened the door for
Christianity.
But we know many people who are back
as students and teachers and tent makers and
think they're just so open now because they
have nothing.
They have no faith in the government.
But also the problem is one of the
pastors said they will believe anything.
So this is the golden time for people
to go to China.
This is one other pastor.
These are people for you to pray about.
He's an itinerant pastor.
When he was 2 years old, his parents,
who had many children, sold him to a
German missionary couple for something like 30 yen,
maybe $5 U.S., because they couldn't keep
him.
And so he grew up in the church.
He went out with them for a few
years and came back to China.
Then they were sent out of the country
in the late 40s.
He's about 67 now.
He became an itinerant pastor about maybe 500
kilometers south of Beijing.
And I met him when he came in
to pick up supplies once.
But he was at a work camp, but
he's been in and out of prison several
times.
Now he's hiding in Beijing, waiting for the
time that he's going to be free to
go back to the country and preach again.
And he goes all over pastoring the Word
when he's out in the countryside.
So he's just praying for an openness to
be able to go back into the country.
So anyway, this is what's happening in China
in a nutshell.
Another pastor, Pastor Yen, Alan Yen, you've probably
heard of him.
He's written a story of his life.
And he said it's out of the country
now, and after he dies, it's going to
be printed.
And he sort of gave me a lot
of the history of what's going on.
And my notes are all really disorganized.
But some of the things he asked for
prayer, particularly, and they said that God gives
courage to the Christians to continue on.
That's one thing that they need.
They need more supplies.
They need training for the younger believers, because
the older ones have a solid foundation, people
like Watchman Lee and Wang Mingdao, and people
like this.
But there's no solid training for the new
pastors.
There are about 13 seminaries right now, and
they're praying that people will have a chance
to go out of the country and really
study in good seminaries and come back.
He said many people in seminaries are not
really Christians.
They're just there because they had this opportunity
to go, and they want a way to
get out of the country, and all of
this is going on.
During the Asian Games, 300 Koreans came in
and brought literature, and some distributed to the
open church, this church that I visited.
And the next week, the pastor called the
people.
They took a list of the people who
accepted Bibles from the outside, and they had
them give the Bibles back to the church,
because being Three South, they didn't want any
to come in from the outside.
So there are a lot of problems, and
there's such a need, and there's such a
hunger, and there's such an openness right now.
I could go on, China, but just real
fast.
We're in Ethiopia now.
Since 19...
Well, the revolution began in about 76.
We were living there 70 to 74.
And then many of the churches were closed,
so the system is very similar to what's
happening in China.
But we attend an international fellowship there, which
is made up of people from the churches
that have been closed, that didn't want to
go along with the government.
And so there are four services each Sunday,
and you have to come 30 minutes early
to get a seat, and about 90 percent,
85 to 90 percent of those that attend
are Ethiopians in these services.
Friends who work with SIM out in the
countryside in March decide for the first time
in 16 years to have a big Bible
-teaching conference.
In their compound.
And they thought, maybe 2,000 people will
come, because they've been working with small groups
and local pastors during all this time.
And they had this conference, because in March,
Mendieste said, there's no more communism now.
Communism is ended.
And now there's openness in the churches that
there wasn't before.
Well, 10,000 people came.
There was an average of 5,000 there,
and one day there were 10,000 people
at one time.
They sat four days in pouring rain to
hear the Word.
Then in the same area, the leaders in
one of the villages said, next week we're
going to have a big celebration march to
celebrate the new economic policies which the government
had just announced.
And so they said, if you as Christians
want to march together, that's okay, you can
come and march.
So 3,000 Christians put on their choir
robes and marched through the streets for three
hours singing hymns and choruses and praising the
Lord.
So this is what's happening in Ethiopia.
I attend weekly, I attend an intermissions prayer
group with people from all the different missions,
for anyone interested, come.
And in one area, 1,200 people had
been baptized last month.
They had 12 local pastors, each one baptized
100 people at this big baptismal service.
So things are happening all over the world.
I just came by trans-Siberian train, went
through Russia and caught the train, got in
last night, and I was thinking, I really
wish I could share a little bit of
this with someone from O.M. I'm sorry,
it's been very disorganized because I haven't gotten
my notes together.
But just keep praying for China and the
Christians.
The people there are just wonderful.
They are just...
And they're just praying for what happens in
the future.
And someday, the Lord is in control and
everything is going to be the way it
ought to be.
Amen.
Let's just pray.
Father, we just thank you for these reports.
We thank you for these many individuals that
you have touched.
And we just cry out to you for
China, for Ethiopia.
We know you have your tent makers.
We know you have others.
We especially think of those that know you
in these countries, that you help them as
they attempt to take the gospel to their
own people.
Just thank you for this challenge this morning.
In Jesus' name, amen.
In these closing moments, I want to just
share eight principles about world evangelism that I
gleaned from the India Church Growth Quarterly that
were originally shared by Louise Bush.
I was just with Louise Bush, again, at
a conference of Presbyterian pastors in California.
He is one of the leaders in the
CNEC, Christian Nationals Movement.
I think they've changed their name recently.
And I hope that you can perhaps just
jot down some of these principles yourself and
share them with others, think about them.
It's always a little difficult to share in
a meeting like this because a few of
you have many, many years of experience in
missions, and this may be a little bit
basic, but many of you are new in
the whole missionary challenge and you may be
battling to try to understand more of what
it's all about.
And especially here in a behind-the-scenes
ministry to some degree, though many on this
team are out all the time with people,
and we have a great variety of things
happening, to say the least, it's so important
to know why we are doing what we
are doing.
As I leave on a trip today, I
know why I'm going, I have specific goals
and aims.
Some of them, of course, may not be
finely tuned.
Exact number of people who are going to
become recruits, exact amount of money that's going
to be given, exact number of new prayer
partners.
But seldom in my life I have ever
had a day where I haven't known what
I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and what
the ultimate goal is.
God gripped me with this when I was
only 17, and it's never left.
Of course, there's been plenty of fuzziness, struggle,
failure, desire to pack it in, and all
that kind of thing in the midst of
it.
And sometimes if you're somewhat of a natural
visionary, you become impatient.
It's great, we had that book yesterday on
awakening grace.
This morning I was going to push this
book by Lawrence Crabb, Inside Out, but there's
not time, so I'll just mention it.
Because there is that danger, the visionary can
be impatient with the person who doesn't seem
to have a vision.
I think many people have a vision, but
don't know how to express it.
Or maybe they're intimidated by the loudmouths, so
it's good that I lead the team often,
so you can all be less intimidated and
get on with expressing your vision.
One of the things that encourages me the
most is when I get feedback from this
team, written feedback.
Hey, I actually listened to that exhortation the
other morning.
Because I get all this feedback from all
over the world, and sometimes you don't get
too much here.
And I think we do sometimes take for
granted the information we receive, the literature, the
exhortation.
By the way, I brought some more gospel
tracts for distribution.
They're there on the organ.
They may not be the greatest tracts, you
have to evaluate that, but they're good gospel
tracts, some on the organ and some over
the radiators.
So that as you go out into the
streets of London, one of the megacities of
the world, you can be using literature and,
of course, speaking to people personally.
Unreached people.
I just wanted to share a couple of
thoughts about unreached people that have been a
real help to me.
What do we actually mean when we say
that?
Years ago, when we first launched out, we
just talked about the nations of the world.
We talked about those without Christ.
We had different ways.
The word unreached, of course, was used.
But it's only in the last 10, 20
years, through a number of different people, especially
the Congress on World Evangelism in 1974, that
I had the privilege of attending and actually
giving a seminar on literature evangelism.
I remember I was trying to organize a
night of prayer with Bhakt Singh and we
actually had to move because there was no
provision for staying in the building later.
A lot of other interesting things happened.
But at that time, there was a great
clarion call concerning the unreached people.
Either before or after that, men like Ralph
Winter took up this cause.
He became a real thorn in the side
of traditional missions because he pointed out that
90% of the work was really being
done mainly among people who have already responded.
I was absolutely amazed to discover, even in
Andhra Pradesh, India, which we think of a
massive church growth area.
One of the reasons we moved our base
to Hyderabad is because it's in a big
church growth area with a lot of believers.
We want to mobilize these believers in India.
We want to see indigenous movements among them.
But research shows that most of the church
growth in Andhra Pradesh is just among certain
people's groups.
And other people's groups can be literally in
the same town having a clue hardly what
the whole thing is all about and are
not responding.
Now, if that's true in a state where
there are so many Christians, what do you
say in states where no people's group has
responded?
Like in most things, controversy came and they
were unable to get agreement on the exact
numbers of people's groups.
But that I don't think is so important
even if we have the smaller number of
unreached people's groups in comparison to the larger
number.
It's still so motivating and so important.
Let me read something.
This definition, let me go back a little
before that.
Out of these early discussions came the concept
of the people group, a significantly large grouping
of individuals who perceive themselves to have a
common affinity for one another because of their
shared language, religion, ethnicity, residence, occupation, class or
caste, situation or a variety of other factors.
This definition had to do with forming a
strategy to reach a specific group.
As people set about to use it, we
discovered that it would be helpful to add
a supplementary definition.
A people group is the largest group within
which the Gospel can flow along natural lines
without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance due
to culture, language and geography.
I found that so helpful in trying to
understand what we were actually aiming at.
But this strategic definition fails at one point.
It doesn't give us an easy way to
keep track of how we are doing in
reaching such people groups in the world.
Furthermore, it can become confused with the generally
accepted ethno-linguistic idea of a people, say
Urdu, all those who speak Urdu.
This is another thing that I had difficulty
understanding.
When we say we are attempting to reach
an unreached people, do we mean an ethno
-linguistic group that can encompass millions of people,
or are we referring to a target group?
Another definition was given.
A people was defined as a human population
with a common language, shared ethnicity and significant
patterns of social interaction.
It is immediately apparent that a people may
contain numbers of people's groups.
You may not think it's important to understand
some of this.
I hope you actually do.
A lot of new words are being used
and some of the old-timers on the
field get upset about these new words, which
is unfortunate because every culture that's moving will
develop new words.
I'm developing and using new words all the
time.
I've even had the privilege of inventing a
few.
That's part of culture.
I was reading something this morning in my
time of study just the special kind of
person it takes on the mission field to
introduce new people into the culture and into
the job.
We've acknowledged a great failing in OM a
number of times recently in giving proper orientation
to people who especially come into the work
from, say, the professional world.
It's an amazing, amazing problem on the mission
field.
One of the privileges we have actually on
this team, right here in London and most
teams have this privilege, is introducing you, helping
you understand a new culture.
You say, well, what's the new culture here?
This is England.
Most of us in this room, or half,
are not English.
And we presume that it's just a simple
thing to adjust to life in England.
And I tell you, every year, as foreigners,
we blunder about in this country.
Of course, maybe we excuse ourselves because we
don't think, well, we're not here planting a
church among unreached people.
We're here serving.
We're here facilitating.
We're here trying to work together as a
team to help British people go overseas.
If you think that's the only thing we're
doing in Britain, you're a few years out
of date because Britain has been declared a
major evangelistic target field of OM International.
Just to bring you up to the 90s,
in case you're wallowing around back in the
70s.
And an enormous amount of evangelism is being
done in Britain.
And it's exciting.
I don't think we can classify the English
people as an unreached people's group or a
hidden people's group.
But some people would classify certain people within
English culture as being hidden people.
Certainly, within the country, we now have all
these immigrant groups.
And some of those immigrant groups are classified,
in the broader classification, as unreached people.
Maybe there's a church among Bengali-speaking Muslims
in the East End, but there could be
other Muslim groups right next to them where
there is no church whatsoever.
I have an enormous problem, and many people
do, trying to decide when an unreached people's
group has got to a place where we
can consider there is work among them.
I won't get into that.
Another reason I think we should understand these
things is that later on, we get on
the field, we've been out there several years,
and we begin to start reading about missiology,
or we get a magazine article, or we
go home on furlough, and people are talking
about things that intimidate us.
So we ought to at least have enough
information, enough knowledge, so that we don't suffer
from this kind of intimidation.
Because what happens?
People then feel they must drop out for
several years of study to catch up on
all that they've missed.
It seems to me it's better to just
keep studying as you go along, then you
don't have to drop out for a couple
of years.
Though I know that sometimes God is calling
people to have a year of study, and
I think that's great.
Let me just quickly share some of these
principles that Louise Bush shared.
And it's interesting, you may not be aware
of this, that within India, there's a church
growth movement within India.
Indian church leaders are talking about all of
these things.
And we need to realize that the biggest
potential missionary-sending world is now the third
world, what some people call the third world,
others call it the two-thirds world.
And it's exciting.
I think it was around 1980 that the
number of evangelical believers in the third world
countries, the two third world countries, bypassed the
number of believers in the rest of the
world, including all of the United States.
I mean, that's a phenomenal fact.
Now, it's going to take a long time
before they're able to get, perhaps, the resources
mobilized and all the people sent out.
Eight principles.
The principle of spiritual movement.
God has sovereignly worked throughout human history in
a series of movements rather than isolated events.
Effects can be traced to causes, events.
One of the most outstanding occurrences in all
of history is the exodus when God brought
his people out of the worst kind of
bondage.
God's people today are not in one physical
location, as at the time of the exodus.
But the same movement toward fulfilling his vision
will take place as the body of Christ
in different regions of the world identifies with
a common vision of world evangelism by the
year 2000.
That's something, of course, I shared.
I might say that tape toward the year
2000 is one of the most listened-to
OM tapes in the history of the movement.
I had another letter yesterday of a lady
listening to it several times.
God's sovereign.
These thoughts, to some degree, follow on from
that.
Number two, the principle of indigenization.
For the world to be evangelized by the
year 2000, the vision must be owned by
the Church in each part of the world.
Rather than an imported idea, the vision must
be born of the Holy Spirit emerging out
of the body of Christ in each specific
nation.
And what's happening through Comey Bomb in South
America, what's happening through other similar organizations all
over the world is phenomenal.
In fact, in the Third World countries, they're
ahead of us in England.
In fact, England is very sluggish at present
in many ways as far as unreached people,
as far as missions vision.
This is not where the Church is at
in Britain.
Part of the Church is there, but if
you go around and you start talking about
these things, people, they really will look at
you and wonder exactly what you're talking about.
Things that we are very familiar with.
Most people aren't sitting in a Tuesday night,
half-night of prayer, with people passing through
from all over the world.
Most people are not going to meet Shirley
off the Trans-Siberian Express and suddenly get
news about individuals in China.
So we get to see through all this.
I perhaps less so because so much of
my time is out of OM.
It's out in all of these churches.
And even when I'm back in Britain, every
weekend is an overdose of balance in one
way or the other.
So indigenization is so important, and we are
working for that here in Britain.
We don't want Britain to give up ownership
in regard to world missions.
We don't want people to be deceived into
thinking the Koreans will do it, or the
Brazilians will do it.
It's every nation.
And Britain, and I can't get into that
in this message, has enormous potential and resources
to still be one of the major mission
-sending nations in the world.
Who could ever doubt that?
Number three, the principle of consultation.
Consultation in the Church is an essential aspect
of world evangelism by the year 2000.
I remember when the Berlin Congress on Evangelism
took place.
That seems to get forgotten now.
And I was a little bit critical.
I was very young.
I thought, how can they spend all that
money?
I was a penny-pincher par excellence.
How can they spend all that money and
have this big jamboree in Berlin?
Praise God, we had one or two OMers
go.
We were always spying out the land, trying
to figure out what was going on.
And I wrestled through the years, especially because
of my small-mindedness and lack of vision,
with some of these Congresses.
And I heard a lot of criticism about
them.
But looking back at 35 years, I am
absolutely convinced these different Congresses were a major
part of God's strategy.
And it was because I didn't have a
bigger picture that sometimes I couldn't fully grasp
what was happening and the importance of it.
With any Congress, like anything we do, there
are positive and negative factors.
The large amount of money these Congresses cost
in the minds of some may be negative,
but it could be positive if it could
wake us up to the simple fact that
to evangelize the world is going to cost
a hundred times more than the Congresses.
And if the Congresses got key people, because
to these Congresses many went who were not
full-fledged evangelicals, and through these Conferences they
crossed the line and became out-and-out
evangelicals.
If over here we have the missiologists, and
over here our seminaries are basically denying the
great doctrines, where are we going to go?
We're not going to go very far, because
we're going to plant churches, we're going to
have pastors who lose their faith pastoring those
churches.
We saw that in India.
And so I believe this whole thing of
the principle of consultation is important.
Let me read just one other thing about
that.
The objectives of these consultations are to encourage
one another through reports about world movement of
the Holy Spirit to review the participation of
the national church in missions efforts so far,
to highlight the extent of the remaining task
within the country, that would be national consultations,
to consider how to involve the churches of
the country more actively in the task of
world evangelism, and to document the missiological efforts
so far.
Just a few days ago, we had one
of our own ex-O-M-ers come
back from a consultation on evangelism in...
Who remembers where?
Quick.
You couldn't forget that.
Moscow.
Do you think that was an important consultation
or not?
A land of 250 million people?
Where do you think the Soviet Union is
missiologically?
Where do you think the churches are missiologically?
It's going to take meetings, consultations, and all
kinds of other things if we're going to
reach the unreached people of the Soviet Union,
and they are a nation probably with one
of the bigger, larger numbers of unreached people
groups.
Number four, the principle of involvement of every
major element within the church.
World evangelism by the year 2000 is an
all-encompassing task.
It requires the participation of pastors, young people,
women, professionals, lay people.
It needs commitment of denominational leaders, executives of
parachurch organizations, mission agencies, and theological educators.
And this is something that we in O
-M, somehow in God's providence, we have so
many friends and so many contacts, so many
prayer partners, so many Christian leaders that are
to some degree favorable toward us.
Think of what Doug Nichols said here just
yesterday morning.
And what a privilege to put copies of
Operation World into some of these people's hands.
I put one in the hands of Bill
Gothard.
He immediately asked me on the phone if
he could have each one for his staff
members.
We cannot just sell these books.
A lot of people are never going to
buy a book about missions.
They're never going to buy it.
That's not where they are.
They don't have that much money.
They may buy it if they get a
hard sell.
But how many people get a hard sell
on a book about missions, huh?
You can go for four years in a
church and never have anybody push a book
about missions once from the pulpit.
And I believe one of the things God
wants us to do, and we just printed
another edition for those that burned up in
the fire, is continue to push this book
and the prayer cards and other similar material
like the book Priority One into the hands
of every Christian leader, every lay leader that
we possibly can in the world, of course,
working together with anyone that has the vision.
Number five, the principle of research of the
harvest field and the harvest forces.
Someone was sort of joking that one or
two of our new headquarters, coordinating bases, was
referred to a research or training center.
I don't think we're sort of famous for
this in O.M. I dare to say,
however, that we are doing a lot of
research because we are reading people and we
are taking what we read and we're putting
it onto tape.
We're sharing it in literally tens of thousands.
O.M. takes tens of thousands of meetings
around the world.
And so I think it is legitimate to
consider part of our operation, wherever we may
be working in our offices, in our headquarters,
as research.
It needs to be better organized.
We need to take advantage of all existing
research because I think one of the greatest
things we can do is take what some
sort of scholar has produced over here in
a corner and through our O.M. network
make it known to the whole world.
That is something I get very excited about.
Number six, the principle of cooperation.
The task of World Evangelism by the year
2000, and we don't have to have an
argument about whether it's going to be finished
at the year 2000.
I think a lot of us don't feel
it's actually going to be finished by the
year 2000.
But a lot of people feel this is
a good goal, it's a good aim, we
need to set goals.
And of course, as we set those goals,
we realize that we're probably going to have
to continue on the next day.
We're not going to necessarily all leave on
the 30th of January 1999.
And the actual movement, and there are many
different movements, and they're not all interconnected, but
some are, have talked about this movement as
the year 2000 and beyond.
So let's not fight over that little thing,
as some people are doing.
We now have almost an anti-year 2000
movement.
In fact, among God's people, whatever you do,
someone will attack it.
It's just part of their nature, part of
the ethos of God's people.
Number six, the principle of cooperation.
The task of World Evangelism by the year
2000 is too great for any one single
organization or denomination to adopt as its own,
of course.
That's why whenever we talk about the goal
for Love Europe, to reach everybody in Europe
by the year 2000, I was not the
originator of that goal or that phrase, but
it's come and we've got to live with
it.
We're still counting the costs, but certainly whenever
we have said that, we have included in
that everybody working for Jesus Christ in Europe,
whether they're tied in to Love Europe or
not, because they're never all going to tie
in to Love Europe, but they are tied
in to God.
That's the common denominator, that God is the
overseer by the Holy Spirit of all that's
happening, even the things that seem very small
and are never written about in the Gospel
Gazette.
When there is cooperation, the potential is enormous.
Emerging missions are a tremendous new wave that
could penetrate the last vestiges of enemy strongholds.
But the experience and resources of Western and
traditional missions is absolutely necessary to come alongside
this new wave if we're to accomplish the
task of World Evangelism by the year 2000.
And you'll never understand where O.M. is
in the 90s if you don't understand that
God, whether we have chosen or not, I
think we have, has brought us right alongside
the whole big third wave mission movement in
dozens of ways that I may speak about
in some future date.
With that come all kinds of complexities, all
kinds of things that we're trying to wrestle
with so that we can do things decently
and in order.
And when we see people leaving from here
to fly off to Latin America or to
fly off to Asia or to have conferences
in Malaysia or to go down to other
parts of Africa, it's all part, it's all
tied in with this principle of cooperation, this
principle of coming alongside what the Spirit of
God is doing in Brazil, in Argentina, in
Taiwan, in Korea and making ourselves available.
We are their servants.
We're not going there to lead this.
I'm not going there to lead this.
We are their servants and we want to
make the knowledge we have, the 35 years
of experience as a movement that we have,
they don't have to make all the same
mistakes over again.
We don't want to reinvent the wheel.
And I think the principle of cooperation with
all the networking is so important.
And then there is the principle of encouragement.
Another book I wanted to push was Lawrence
Craft's book on encouragement.
I'll do that maybe when I come back.
When Moses first received the vision for mobilizing
God's people into action, he contacted his brother
Aaron.
In spite of the seeming impossible odds, Aaron
greatly encouraged Moses and shared the vision of
all God had spoken to his brother.
And we need more Moses and Aaron type
of encouragement and partnership.
So often we get trapped into trying to
think the way a secular company thinks when
it comes to leadership structure.
We can learn from that, but we are
brothers and sisters in Christ.
We work as partners.
We're not conniving to see if we can
get somebody's job higher up in the pyramid
so we can get a higher salary.
Someone once said, and it's been quoted many
times, it's unlimited what can be accomplished if
we don't care who gets the credit and
how hurtful it is when sometimes our own
egos get their way and we find things
happening because somehow we want to get some
credit in God's work.
And then the last principle, the principle of
a major event as a focal point.
I'm not saying there are not other principles.
I've taken this outline from this paper by
Louise Bush.
The great mobilization of God's people in the
exodus from Egypt did not begin with the
event, but their preparation and vision focused on
the event.
In the same way, the year 2000 presents
a major focal point for world evangelism.
But dates need to be set, which will
become steps, as in the exodus, for the
major united mobilization of the entire body of
Christ.
I believe this could be accomplished by breaking
the task into the regions of the world,
Africa, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, Europe, North Africa,
the Middle East, and North America.
Within each region, an immediate focal point could
be established for the clarification of the commission
of the world evangelism by the year 2000.
This could follow a process of consultation nationally
and regionally within a country and a documentation
of the harvest field and the harvest force
demonstrating effective models of how that work is
being done.
During the last five years of the century,
the expectation would be that the entire body
of Christ in every region of the world
would be mobilized for a final thrust and
become actively involved in the accomplishment of the
task of world evangelism by the year 2000.
Probably the Church of Jesus Christ is never
going to agree on all the fine details.
They may not even agree on what certain
things mean in terms of that particular year
2000.
But surely this is an hour in which
we need greater faith, greater expectation.
And I know in my own ongoing struggle
to maintain my motivation and just to walk
with God, reading these articles, reading what other
people are thinking, listening to their tapes, reading
their books, going to some of these meetings,
I find very inspiring, I find very invigorating,
especially listening to younger men, especially listening to
people who, like Joseph de Souza, come from
these countries, in his case, India.
So let's not allow any spiritual rigor mortis
to set in to OM.
Let's not get stuck because we didn't use
this vocabulary ten years ago or because we
don't really understand what incarnational theology is or
we prefer to talk about friendship rather than
bonding or discipling people rather than some other
term that someone else is using.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for the excitement of
being involved in one of the greatest world
missions thrust, perhaps the greatest world mission thrust
in the history of the planet, 2000 years
since Pentecost.
We praise you for everyone that's gone ahead
of us.
So many hundreds who laid down their lives
in China, as we spoke about China today,
just in OMF alone.
So many that laid down their lives in
Latin America and Africa and other parts of
the world.
We don't despise anything that anyone has done
in your name in the past.
But Lord, we want to move forward.
We want to dream dreams.
We want greater visions.
We want also the little visions of how
we can, as individuals, help the big vision
become a reality.
Whether we're standing in a church speaking to
thousands of people or talking to one individual
on the telephone.
And Lord, we cry out to you for
a massive mobilization of your people on every
level that we may see the whole world
reached as quickly as possible.
Yea, at least by the year 2000.
And we know, Lord, there are many complexities
in this.
And we know it's easier for us to
talk than it is to walk.
And so we ask you for grace.
We ask you for mercy.
We ask you, Lord, to deliver us from
some of our pettiness.
Deliver us from some of our small-mindedness.
We know, Lord, it's going to take hundreds
of millions of pounds and Deutschmarks and dollars
and rupees to see this job done.
And we ask you for that money.
We ask you that people would understand it's
more better to give than receive.
We ask that the vision of sacrifice in
Acts 2 and Acts 4 may not be
lost among your people.
And that love would cover our differences.
We want to hold to the basic biblical
truths.
But we don't want to strain at gnats
and swallow camels.
Strengthen us in this task, we pray.
In Jesus' name, that every unreached people and
group in the world may, in these coming
years, have a church in their midst.
And that they would be able to reach
out around them to their neighbors till everyone
in this world has been at least given
the gospel.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.