As we begin another OM year, it's been
hard for us to gather together as people
have been in Debron, others have been away,
still are away, but we thank you that
so many are here this morning.
Commit to you others that may be able
to hear this by cassette tape.
And Lord, we're just cast upon you now.
And I need wisdom and discernment as my
heart is so full and I can get
too excited and then miscommunicate.
We just realized that no matter who is
leading us and we're constantly father trying to
find the balance in the whole area of
leadership that the end of the day is
a weak feeble earthen ragamuffin vessel and that
includes me.
But we thank you for what we can
learn, what we have learned.
You alone can bring into balance the reality
of ragamuffin-ness with the commitment to excellency.
That's just such a challenge and we don't
want to be found, Lord, functioning at less
and less reality than our unconverted friends.
So we can't compare a person who's converted
with one talent with a non-christian of
ten talents.
So keep us from that as well.
We do want to grow in wisdom and
discernment on this team in every area, every
department.
Give us the humility to keep growing and
receiving even though some of the things may
seem repetitious.
And as someone, Lord, who has studied the
Bible almost every day since my conversion, that's
a lot of it seems repetitious and yet
you still speak through those same words.
So help us find the balance in that.
In Jesus name, amen.
I would appreciate, unless you have a perfect
memory, if you could jot down a few
notes.
I just sense in my heart there won't
be anything more important on a practical level
on the bigger picture that I say this
year than what I'm going to say this
morning.
If you follow what's going on in these
teams the last couple of years, you know
that I actually speak less than I used
to.
I used to speak quite often, make tapes,
send them from here all over the globe.
I've cut way back on that and you
hear many other speakers.
We want to try to find the balance.
That's not easy.
But the thrust this morning, and we're not
going to look at a set of notes
on various nuts and bolts of team life,
all of that is important, but this morning
is more the big picture.
What are the goals and aims and the
ministry of this team here in Forest Hill?
I don't know whether people in Carlisle will
listen to this or not.
One or two may.
I believe most of these goals and aims
fit Carlisle as well.
It's a tremendous difference in the two ways
of approaching the same goals and aims with
a phenomenal amount of overlap that only more,
I'm afraid, discerning or people who don't know
what goes on, especially on the telephone, might
be able to understand.
I wanted to read this amazing favorite scripture
from 1 Corinthians chapter 9 where Paul says
in verse 19, though I'm free, I belong
to no man.
I make myself a slave to everyone.
In some ways, this is one of the
passions of this team.
We're not just serving very gifted and committed
area leaders, which is a part of our
mandate, but we're wanting to serve very ordinary
people who sometimes walk in off the street.
It demands a lot of balance, a lot
of discernment, and a realization that we have
severe limitations and also that unless we function
as a team, it can't be done.
I know ever since we started having more
mission events here, that's added another five or
ten percent to my own workload, which was
already beyond comprehension.
One of the persons who came here on
Tuesday really press me to take meeting his
church.
I thought this might be a large strategic
meeting.
I found out that it's a very tiny,
struggling church.
I can't even figure out exactly what he's
doing.
I had the grace when he phoned me
yesterday to say some other time.
I only could give him a Saturday.
People don't always show up on a Saturday.
He only gets 30 or 40 on a
Sunday.
I go to plenty, plenty of small meetings,
so it's not the size of the meeting.
The next day, I have major meetings in
Christchurch and Bromley.
I'm just trying to find balance in that
area, but if it wasn't for all of
you committed to this mission center concept, especially
the mission mobilization department in Chaco, I'm out
of it.
I just say thank you.
I can't do that because I'm on overload,
but that's it.
That's a tangent, so let me get back
to the scripture.
I make myself a slave to everyone to
win as many as possible.
Boy, that's a great goal, isn't it?
You have that into your purpose statement this
year, to win as many as possible.
To the Jews, I became like a Jew.
Wow, talk about cultural sensitivity.
Of course, he was a Jew.
That helped.
To win the Jews, to those under the
law, I became like one under the law,
though I myself am not under the law.
Wow, what a message.
So as to win those under the law,
to those not having the law, I became
like one not having the law, though I
am not free from God's law, but I
am under Christ's law.
I tell you, you've got about four paradoxes
already.
I've only read a couple of lines.
So as to win those not having the
law, to the weak, I became as weak.
To win the weak, I become all things
to all men, inclusive language, all people, so
that by all possible means, I might save
some.
I do all this for the sake of
the gospel that I may share in its
blessings.
Do you not know that in a race,
all the runners run?
We're in the ICT marathon, just in case
you don't know that.
It's part of the OM marathon, which is
part of the Body of Christ marathon, which
is the Jesus marathon.
But only one gets the prize.
Had a little struggle with that one.
Run in such a way as to get
the prize.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into
strict training, not just new recruits who need
training.
We all are in God's ongoing Holy Spirit
-directed training program.
They do it to get a crown that
will not last.
When we do it to get a crown
that will last forever.
Therefore, I do not run like a man
running aimlessly.
I do not fight like a person beating
the air.
No, I beat my body, I make it
my sleeve, so that after I preach to
others, I myself will not be disqualified for
the prize.
What a phenomenal scripture, and I'm sure you've
heard messages on that scripture.
I think when we think of our overall
goals and aims, one of the best ways
to summarize it is in the goals of
the 82,000 movement.
Even though that movement is going into closure
the end of next year, the vision will
go on.
The vision will go on.
There's been confession of sin, and confession of
exaggeration, and folly, and there is many, many
messy situations, and it'll never all get sorted
out, but God's work will continue, and the
vision of 82,000, the gospel for every
person, the church for every people will continue,
and I hope that can continue to be
our goal, and our aim, and our passion.
And it's important for some people more than
others, so be patient this morning, to at
times just stop and look at the bigger
picture.
We're involved in a fellowship of 2,800
full-time workers, plus our older kids, with
more ideals than you can list in a
policy manual.
We're involved with our own graduates, who number
100,000.
Maybe we're involved in 10% of them,
20%, 25% would be great if we
could come up with that statistic.
We're involved, of course, with thousands of churches,
even excluding what the ships get into.
We're involved with hundreds of other agencies.
We're involved with thousands of Christian leaders, but
the ultimate goal, and we don't want to
get bogged down with just attempting to maintain
too many relationships, become hyper-generalist.
I'm already a generalist in some ways, so
we have to sometimes just stop and make
it really simple.
We're attempting to give the gospel to every
person in the world.
In the past months here, and that's gone
out on the internet, other people are now
quoting it.
I actually believe I'm the one that started
this 25%.
I've never heard.
You see how you can get these things
going.
Now it's being accepted as fact.
I've always said it's just an estimate.
It's just an estimate.
I said it because some people were saying
50%, and from all I could gather in
my monitoring, the Billy Graham Association, the Every
Home Campaign, other mass evangelistic agencies, radio, television,
I would be very strong and willing to
debate that probably 75% of the people
on planet Earth have at least heard or
read the gospel.
We're not saying that's enough.
We're not saying they're evangelized.
So quickly correct yourself or a missiologist will
be all over you, and it may not
be pleasant.
But I haven't found many people disagreeing, and
you've heard me remind people of the fact
that 25% of the world's population today
is very close in terms of numbers of
people to 50% of the world's population
in the 50s when some of us got
started.
Isn't that scary?
Therefore, I believe the goal that we're trying
to maintain here and in our fellowship of
giving the gospel to as many people as
possible is still strategic.
And what a thrill to see, without much
pushing on my part, people like Joseph D'Souza
and our brothers and sisters in India, working
with other agencies and other churches in a
united effort called the Millennium Project, which is
going to be the largest literature project we've
ever been involved in.
10 million, 15, 20 million, I don't know.
I don't want to say.
We've already had one of the largest gifts
in the entire history of OM two months
ago to help pay for these tremendous, powerful...
It's like a book, a lot of pictorial
book presenting the life of Jesus with testimonies
of Indians.
The responses we're getting from the churches across
India at this time, just been on the
phone with India again this morning, is very,
very encouraging.
So with all the other visions and burdens
we have, we can't touch on those this
morning, we are still having this goal of
reaching as many people as possible.
That means I will still be battling to
say no to a lot of things going
on in OM.
I lose many of those battles, but I'll
still fight because if we just get so
diverse, especially in our effort to be holistic,
then we will not be able to reach.
Just this morning I made a decision that
cost us $25,000.
Praise God that we have that money in
special projects because the two main pieces of
literature they give at the gangway of the
ship, Lagos and Dulas, they don't have, they
haven't had it for quite some time.
There's no money designated.
I've just been monitoring, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Finally it's getting too late for West Africa.
I'm sure they have some material, but they
want $250,000 in one item, $100,000
in another item.
There's no money designated to that.
This morning we pushed a button, or Vera
will later in the day when she reads
my scribble, to go ahead with that $350
,000 piece of literature to give away at
the gangways of the ship.
All the money we spend on the ships,
all the money to line up a country,
and then somebody goes to the ship and
walks away without a single piece of literature.
Now the children, by the way, they got
this gold nugget.
We had big gifts for this children's book.
So the children are way ahead, but we
want also every other ordinary person, can't neglect
the older people, to get something when they
walk off the ship.
And then that second major goal, the church
for every peoples.
We realize in both of these goals, compared
to the total task, our part in OM
is still small.
Our influence, however, in the whole body of
Christ concerning these things, may be larger than
we are able to measure.
So in a movement like OM, you always
have those two things that are happening.
You have what you're actually doing, and then
you have what you are influencing.
What we did on Tuesday is small compared
to the influence that will come from what
we did on Tuesday.
They overlap, they're not easy to measure.
Moving on from this, because we could consume
all our time just talking about those two
great things, and you've already heard, I'm sure,
quite a lot about those two things.
I've written down just some basic words in
my outline to show how we here in
ICT Forest Hill and Carlisle, we fit into
this.
How are we going to make this happen?
There's a tape floating around a little hard
to find called Little Visions.
I only think I gave the message once
or twice.
I think it's a very important message for
the average person.
He's probably not going to want some major
new vision in his lifetime, and that's not
their particular gifting, but it's showing how without
a lot of people having little visions, like
every department on this team has to have
its little vision.
It might be quite big, and only as
every department and every individual on the team
has their little vision.
For example, how many of you would make
any effort in the next month to learn
how to redeem the time a little more?
Now I know it's very hard for me
to speak on this because I'm considered a
complete fanatic, and so when people are complete
fanatics, they open their mouth, people immediately say,
I've had it said to me so many
times, well, I'm not George Furwer.
Beware of overreacting to what you hear George
Furwer does.
People won't wear a global jacket because, you
know, George Furwer wears a global jacket.
I had a guy come to me the
other day, and I had this global tie.
I said, oh, I'm glad I didn't wear
my guy had a tie just like that.
I thought I would steal your thunder.
You mean to tell me if one other
guy in the audience has a global tie,
it's going to steal my thunder?
If so, my thunder, you know, needs overhauling.
But it is complex, and my heart goes
out to any of you that have to
work with me.
My heart goes out to those that have
to work with Bill Drake, too.
In fact, leaders in general who are getting
things accomplished are not always so easy to
work with, and somebody may come along and
say to you, oh, what are you, you
just another yes person?
You know, you just another Furwer yes person?
Boy, that'll really charge some of your batteries.
But you, in reacting to that, could end
up in the very foolish situations.
No matter who is leading the team, and
no matter where we are, there are always
those kinds of hassles.
What if Madonna was leading the team?
She gets saved, and she comes in to
lead the team.
You gonna have any hang-ups?
I surely would.
I think I'd have to go to another
team.
By the way, she did profess faith, knowing
the way she operates, I think it lasted
for several days.
But the words I've written down that I
hope can help us focus on the goals
and aims for the new OM year.
In my mind, this is always the beginning
of the OM year.
The new recruits are here, or they're getting
out there.
A lot of things happen.
Financially, we do not begin now.
The new year financially is, I think, is
it January 1st?
Or calendar year financially, I believe.
But we're speaking about ministry.
We're speaking about recruits.
We're speaking about more general things.
The first word I have, you probably guessed
it, is ministry.
Ministry.
We could easily change the name of our
team in Forest Hill to International Ministry Team.
We're not going to do that as long
as I'm still the international leader of the
movement, because it's my biggest job.
And the thing I'm committed to the most,
at least the next four years.
By the way, if you're elected president of
the United States, you only get four years.
So I tell you, I am out to
make these the four best.
By the grace of God, if he leaves
me around, I want to make these the
four best.
And I'm glad I've got great people like
you to help make it happen.
And it's quite uncanny what God has done
to prepare us for where we are right
now.
But we, on this team, do have a
worldwide ministry that is often unnoticed, that is
strategic in itself, even if it was totally
separated from OM, which it will not be.
But even if it was, it would be
strategic in itself.
We saw this at the meeting of the
Americans, when it was coming out through this
discussion that OMUSA didn't really have a ministry
in the USA, because someone was talking about,
you know, are we going to start teams
to work among Muslims?
Of course, we don't have that ministry.
But I think there was a consensus, I
wish we had time to discuss it, that
OMUSA has a major ministry in the USA.
It's not just recruiting.
It's not just sending workers, raising money, that's
bottom line.
But when we go out to minister, and
I don't know how many thousands of meetings
I've taken in the United States, some of
which are almost detached from OM, because they
ask you not to speak about OM, that
is ministry.
People are converted.
More people have recommitted their lives in our
meetings and joined other groups than have joined
OM.
Some feel uptight about that.
I know many a church we're after, we
got them all excited, Campus Crusade came in,
especially two years ago, and got all the
money out of the deal, because one group
builds upon the other.
And the same, of course, is true in
Britain even more so, because Britain, we've declared
officially, we have a ministry in Great Britain.
And, uh, it's off.
We have a ministry in Great Britain.
I'm convinced with all my heart God wants
to continue to give us anointing for that
ministry.
I believe we will fall into a ditch
if we constantly try to separate what's international
from what's national.
We live in Great Britain.
We live in London.
Some of us have been crying out to
God for this city for 38 years.
We've given millions of pieces of literature out
in London in the early days.
We continue to speak in London churches, as
I do, tomorrow.
And, uh, if we have to constantly pick
up changing hats, international hat, national hat, I
believe it's counterproductive.
And I praise God that more than ever,
I've seen other leaders here in the UK
acknowledge that important part of our ministry in
Forest Hill, it is to impact Great Britain
with the Word of God, with our lives.
If all the emphasis in Scripture about our
lives being even more important than the Word,
then where we live is important.
And where we live and the churches we
go to, the tracts we give out locally,
that is a vital part of our ministry.
You cannot easily separate it.
You want to forsake it when you walk
in the door at 9 o'clock on,
uh, Monday morning.
But in the middle of the morning, some
needy soul that you've just witnessed to on
the weekend may phone you.
You say, I'm sorry, I cannot take this
call because during the daylight hours, we're only
involved in international activities.
Oh, oh, by the way, if you're an
Indian, I can talk to you, but if
you're British, I would not be able to.
Every movement, especially as it gets bigger, has
a tendency to more easily slip into following
because there are more voices, we're reading more
books, we got more baggage, and we're attempting,
of course, somehow to do so much.
So our ministry in the U.K. is
a vital part of what God has called
us to.
Of course, that involves, number one, this is
my second word, if you're only writing a
few words, mobilization.
I've written three sub points under the word
mobilization.
The first is prayer.
We're committed to mobilize prayer worldwide.
I believe it is a vital part of
our ministry, whether we're speaking to 10 or
giving prayer requests on the phone or sending
prayer requests out through an email.
B, of course, we're trying to mobilize finance.
I think it's time that here on our
team, we acknowledge that we are in fundraising
in a major way and it's not just
me.
And if you haven't listened to that message,
fundraising is teamwork.
One of the most important messages I think
I've ever given on the subject, and I
still see people behaving, certainly, as if they'd
never listened to that.
And sometimes giving honor to a certain person,
saying certain things to give the idea that
the fundraising is because of this person or
that person.
I urge you to understand fundraising is teamwork.
If that person typing that receipt doesn't do
that properly, the next gift may never come.
And no great entrepreneur in the world can
make up for some of these complexities.
So prayer is teamwork, plus personal prayer.
Finance and fundraising is teamwork, plus personal finance
raising, whether it's for your own support.
And I believe we want to have more
teamwork.
We'd like to help one another more.
Dale Rotom, he didn't find it too humbling
to ask me personally if I could write
a third party letter for him to help
him get his support, which was in the
doldrums for years.
Ever since that third party letter, Dale told
me he's never had a shortfall on support.
It doesn't always work that way, and that
was definitely teamwork.
If I can't sell the ministry of Dale
Rotom, then I just can't sell, and I
should go back to perhaps collecting something.
I do collect things, by the way.
C, the third thing under this mobilization title,
of course, is recruits.
We have to engage in more creative thinking.
We have to brainstorm.
Some people are, but certainly of all the
teams in the world, we are one of
the teams that has the greatest potential for
recruiting, for helping others recruit, for inspiring more
recruitings.
The Act 13 vision, mobilizing 200,000.
There's so many things tied into that, and
it's exciting.
Wherever we go to meet people that somehow
have been recruited in our meetings, not near
the numbers we dream, and I could get
into major discouragement about this with my ideals
if I wanted to, but again, recruiting is
teamwork, and when people join other missions as
a result of our ministry, I think we
should praise the Lord for that.
We are not in competition with these other
groups.
Feedback I had both by phone and email
from one of the special visitors to DeBron
was the thing that warmed his heart the
most is when I stood up and said,
I want you to just know, OM is
not my big thing.
It's not even my second thing.
It's my big thing, and the whole body
of Christ and other organizations, that's my second
thing, and I don't know where I put
OM, I guess the third or fourth thing.
That just so touched this man's heart.
He said, that's why I'm committed to OM,
and he is very extremely committed to OM.
We're part of one body, and it's exciting
the synergy we're seeing from greater cooperation, though
it is messy.
It is complex, and there are the discouragements.
The third main word I wrote down here
is the word encouragement.
I think those of you who know me
well know that that is really one of
my favorite words.
I'm gifted at times at miscommunicating.
I phone someone, they think I got some
major agenda.
They think I'm recruiting them, or you know,
all I'm doing is trying to encourage them,
just see how you're doing.
Is there no place for non-agenda activities?
Can't we phone someone and say, you know,
how are you doing?
You feel okay today?
Is there any prayer requests?
I believe people are intimidated.
They're intimidated in some of the basic friend
raising and prayer partner winning, because they put
it on too high a level.
They're afraid to make this phone call.
What will they think?
Well, they think I'm after their money.
You can be so intimidated if you go
around always thinking, and they're after my money.
I could go right out of my mind.
When they invite me to speak, do you
think they're actually inviting me because I am
George Burwer?
They know me?
They love me?
They are inviting me to speak because they've
heard by some source that I can get
results, and they've got goals, and they've got
aims.
You know, I'm flying all the way to
Australia again next August.
I'm trying to get off the hook on
it.
It's not working.
They want me to get the air ticket
booked now because of the Olympics.
I'm not in the Olympics, just in case
you didn't know that, unless they open up
a whole new, you know, thing for people
who speak loud.
But the fact is, they've acknowledged they don't
know me.
They're afraid that no one's gonna come, or
it's not gonna help more people come, because
I'm a semi-unknown speaker.
So they want to have a big flurry
of my tapes right now.
So what if I get hung up?
Do people really want me as I am,
this ragamuffin who forgets to zip his fly
at a university meeting, and they still love
me?
Or do they just want a preaching machine?
We cannot get into that.
We're dealing with human beings, and people are
just getting to know us.
We've gotta give them the benefit of the
doubt.
Therefore, we must deal with all kinds of
intimidation, whether people love us or don't love
us.
Some are still non-functioning in their Christian
life.
They're not even sure whether God loves them,
which is a denial of the entire Bible,
though I understand how that can happen with
emotional struggles and punches in the nose.
I'm not being hard on those people, but
I believe sometimes it's good if you've been
a Christian for many years, and you're still
struggling with that, just to somehow stand more
firmly on the Word and say, I know
with all my heart God loves me, and
I stand against the doubt, the intimidation, the
fiery darts from Satan, because I think they
are fiery darts.
When it comes on your mind that God
doesn't love you, that is a fiery dart
straight out of hell.
That is even almost denied.
His, you need to move on, as I
wanted you to say a further word about
the ministry of encouragement.
I think we realize how many people have
been encouraged by our ministries.
We know there are always some who have
been discouraged.
When we hear that, we try to go
the extra mile to try to get that
sorted out, and as a movement gets larger,
and the number of relationships we have gets
bigger, you have to live, you have to
live with things that have gone through the
cracks, if you know that expression.
You cannot go back and resolve it all.
Now, by delegation you can accomplish a lot.
The biggest method that a person like me
has to use is delegation.
My main thing is not what I do.
My main thing is what everybody else and
all the leaders in OM that I'm in
contact with, what they are doing.
Our ministry, in one sense, is the sum
total of everything that's happening today anywhere in
OM, because we're serving the whole body, and
we're serving one another.
Yesterday morning it was a major encouragement phone
call with Pedro Arbolet in Spain.
This morning it was Alfie Franks.
Tomorrow it may be somebody else, and it's
not just me that's doing this.
I get, I know sometimes you must have
to listen.
Most of the things you hear about me,
I never hear, so you can relax.
But, you know, people do talk, and I
pick up some, we make so many phone
calls, he writes so many letters, people have
even said polite things about that, but we
need to understand this has only happened because
of the team.
In fact, if I fill up all these
tapes, I think I did ten, ten tapes
this weekend, and I don't have the team
to type them, send them, put in a
call.
Tell me, how many of those letters are
going to go out?
They will just sit on the tape.
It's dead.
I might as well never, I should have
just gone swimming.
The ocean was a little cold.
So, again and again, I think we have
to be reminded of the teamwork, and whether
you're driving to the airport, whether you're punching
info into a computer, whether you're picking up
the phone, whether you're, you know, doing some,
some basic cleanup work.
One of the things that you may not
realize, there's, there's hardly anything that's gone on
around here, even the dirtiest jobs, that I
haven't spent a lot of, a lot of
time doing.
And more, I'm more than willing to do
it again, if the Lord will release me
from other things.
Life is still filled with small things.
So, the Ministry of Encouragement, the Ministry of
Encouragement that God has given us in so
many ways is for all of us.
Now, here's the punchline.
You're all fairly relaxed up to now, so
get ready for this.
Therefore, I believe to be on this team,
everybody has to be committed to go the
extra mile.
I don't believe we can have a two
-tier team.
Those who are busting, their knuckles, working extra
hard, weird hours, all kinds of pressure, weeping
over people, staying up sometimes just so that
we can meet these obligations.
Do you know how many people that we're
linked with have died just in the past
few weeks?
Which one of those are we going to
just forget about?
We can't forget about any of them.
When you are in leadership, I'll tell you,
many things are not optional.
If you don't get it done, it will
haunt you.
And other problems will come that are greater.
Now, this is where, of course, we need
a lot of wisdom.
And I have never asked people to work
the hours that I work.
In fact, I have told people clearly, I
can work longer hours because I do have
a greater variety of work.
And things that non-Christians, or let's say
Christians working in marketplace ministry, things that they
would have to do in what they call
their free time, with me there's a blur
between what is ministry and what is, you
know, diversion for my free time.
Reading a book to prepare for sermon, that's
considered by pastors as part of their work.
But a man living next door who works
for Lloyd's Bank, that's just his pleasure to
read a book.
So it gets complex.
And that's why I've never liked an overemphasis
on just, you know, comparing people and comparing
ministries.
Many people don't have the energy to work
such strange hours.
All the time now, I'm having to put
the record straight that I generally sleep seven
hours.
Sometimes eight, sometimes six, but seven in the
middle.
I have to fellowship with people who boast
to me that they only sleep five.
Boy, do I feel inferior.
Forget it!
I esteem people that only sleep five.
But I cannot pretend that I'm going to
function properly the next day on five hours.
Some of you need eight hours.
Some of you, like my wife, never get
really proper sleep.
And so we're all different.
Therefore only you in one way will know
whether you're going the extra mile.
In the light of your energy, what you're
battling, what you're handling at home, you may
be putting just seven or eight hours into
the more official kind of work, and yet
you're going the extra mile.
So this is the beautiful thing about the
grace awakening.
We're not into judgmentalism.
We realize the problem of workaholism, and yet
at the same time, we don't want to
completely lose this other aspect that is a
core value of the movement, the willingness to
go the extra mile.
The extra little bit of work, the extra
phone call, the extra letter, the extra witness
to a man who's on the road to
hell, the extra track given out when you
didn't even bring your tracks with you.
That's especially difficult.
And all kinds of other things that at
the end of the day, the Holy Spirit
has to lead you in that.
No, we don't want to ever get to
the place where we, because we believe the
Holy Spirit is doing all the leading, we
never challenge anybody about it or anything.
We never urge people.
If you were working for a secular company,
you would probably, in this day and age,
get talks like this.
Have you seen the video captions of Walmart's
invasion of Germany?
I mean, it's almost humorous.
I can't believe the Germans are going into
this.
And it's a big controversy.
Everything is controversy, by the way, especially Walmart.
But they got the Germans committed to the
Walmart slogans, and they're giving cheers in the
morning.
When have I ever come in here made
you stand up and give a cheer for
OM?
Never!
We're here cheering for Jesus.
But I think sometimes, because of our desire
for humility, because of our desire for reality
in its many forms, because we have a
natural tendency to be introspective, sometimes we lack
a little bit of just go for it.
Let's go for it.
Let's go that extra mile.
Let's demonstrate a little more zeal.
In this team, we are overloaded with work.
And that workload has to be shared around
naturally.
Sometimes it's more difficult to share the workload
than just try to do it yourself.
But we're at the stage where there's no
way we can do it yourself.
That passed years ago.
And I just want to take this moment
to thank every one of you who again
and again has gone the extra mile.
You may have been tired.
You may have really wanted to do something
else.
You've gone the extra mile in whatever way,
even spiritually in prayer.
Maybe nobody ever noticed it except King Jesus.
I still want to thank you because in
what we're attempting to do globally, if those
of us who are in this kind of
ministry, I don't like to say at the
center, but you know what I mean, if
we don't somehow stay in tune with the
Holy Spirit and are be willing for the
kind of things we just read about in
this passage, the Apostle Paul, then I believe
it's going to negatively, negatively impact the whole
work.
Because you and I know OM is a
very needy movement.
You and I know we have more people
going through than we can follow up.
We've got all these grandeur thoughts about re
-entry, re-entry conferences.
How many of those do you think actually
happen?
It all takes time.
It all takes money.
People are already field over work.
Then somebody comes along and says, we're going
to have a re-entry conference.
Are you going to cook?
Are you going to pick all the people
up at the airport?
Where are we going to house them?
And so there are not many re-entry
conferences.
Other people coming back from the field, they're
too tired.
They don't want to fly off to this
headquarters for two days of re-entry.
Some of them just want to forget the
whole thing.
Plus some of them are battling just to
find a job, just to find a job
or another ministry.
So as we attempt the impossible, and we
need to reaffirm that, OM in 1999 is
attempting the impossible just as we were as
much as 59 or 69.
And yet it's more complex today because you
have all the existing people, all the existing
organization that's already there.
It's amazing.
So the Ministry of Encouragement will continue to
be, together with Basic Ministry, mobilization, a vital
part of what we do.
And then the fourth word is the word
serving.
One of my main jobs is to serve
the area and field leaders.
They must be a priority, together with my
co-director, Peter Bain.
When I get one day's notice that Joseph
Sousa's due in town the day after tomorrow,
that goes automatically the head of everything, except
maybe Frank Seeley.
But I'm sure many of you are agonizing
with priorities because your life is, of course,
beyond the OM fellowship.
You've got your church.
You've got your family.
You have relatives.
We understand that.
We appreciate when you're patient with those of
us who are older whose lives are 20
times more complex than we were single at
20.
Can you imagine me single at 20?
Most of you don't want to.
Imagine that.
Therefore, letting love cover, being patient with one
another is so basic.
Being able to switch priorities quickly, often on
consultation with others, rather than just, you know,
off the top of your head.
We're trying to serve our field leaders and
area leaders, who in turn are serving the
whole movement.
We have some of that as well.
We're trying to serve the churches.
Our first line in our main function as
international coordinating team, our first line of serving
the churches is through those field leaders, through
the existing structure.
But we also have the part that we're
directly involved in.
A team that takes 1,000 meetings a
year plus is certainly involved with churches.
And the follow-up aspect is just so
crucial.
I just want to throw this in.
I know some of you have still not
seen any kind of real breakthrough in using
the telephone in ministry.
I would just urge you to reconsider that.
This is 1999.
Now maybe yours is all email now.
You'll never, you'll never get the same bonding
with certain kinds of people, and millions are
not into email, that you can on a
phone call.
Let's not have the either-or camp.
I'm an email person or a phone person.
We all also need personal time face-to
-face.
There's part of me that at times says,
for now on, it's all telephone and email.
My more pragmatic moments.
Ridiculous.
My emails and my phone calls are meaningful
to people because I spent hours with them
in their home.
They've walked with me, they've talked with me,
they've wept with me.
They know that Verwer is not just, you
know, back there pushing a computer or playing
a record on the telephone.
A phone, of course, a man called to
apologize to me this morning for a small
thing.
I said, you don't need to apologize to
me.
He began to weep on the telephone.
Tell me, are you gonna pick that up
on email?
A little difficult, but you could try.
You could put in the email, I'm now
crying.
Praise God.
I tell you, he and I got a
linking, and I just shared, you know, I
appreciate his emotion, and I sometimes cry over
the smallest thing myself.
And I'd urge you to be willing to
change your habits.
It always bothered me when a main leader
of the movement said, more or less, we're
not telephone people.
That's not our method.
Wow, what if I had said years ago
when they tried to bring computers into O
.M., hello, computer organization, I could get a
big speech, how great we did before we
ever had computers.
This is narrow-mindedness.
This is stuck in a rut.
This is why young people start praying, Lord,
send them out to the pastors, because we
want to get on with the work.
We need to be flexible.
We need to grow.
We can be old and young at heart.
Mr. Dalley set the pace on email at
80 years of age.
Even the Scottish television wanted to make a
film of it.
So we're serving those churches.
Third point under this serving section, we're serving
our prayer partners, and probably we're as involved
with prayer partners across the world as much
as any combination of teams anywhere on planet
Earth, and that should excite us.
It should motivate us.
And then, fourthly, under this serving section, we're
trying to serve the world partners.
Former O.M.ers. I believe as a
team, we're in touch with more former O
.M.ers than any other team in the
world.
It's phenomenal, and we're seeing results, and we
praise God that this is an exciting part
of our ministry.
The next main word I wrote here is
just these two words, foundation and backup.
A lot of what we do here, keeping
the basic goals and aims ahead of us,
it is foundation building, it is backup.
Our India Department is laying a foundation.
We together are trying to provide a foundation
for the Little India Department to function, which
we've done for a quarter of a century.
But we're also trying to backup, backup the
work in India.
Often, I only make a phone call to
India because Rosie gets me on the line
and says, hey, phone so-and-so right
now.
And I just believe we want to be
able to continue to keep India as a
priority of this team, even though there's only
a tiny group in the India Department.
We, in one way, should all be in
the India Department.
We should feel with them, pray with them.
We're dealing with O.M.'s biggest field.
Even the ship ministry was born out of
the India Vision Ministry, and it was only
my going to India, traveling India on an
old ship, not ours, that led to the
birth of the ship ministry.
Where did the ship go to when we
first got it, we lived on it?
It went to India.
Now, India doesn't need the ship perhaps as
much as it did in those days, but
I feel we want to keep India as
a major thrust.
We're providing backup and foundation for the Muslim
world.
Crescent Consultants maybe has struggled along.
It was new, and with people away taking
meetings so often, not easy to just make
it all happen.
But it still has an influence beyond what
we've ever measured.
It still makes a statement to the movement
that here at the international offices, Crescent Consultants
and the challenge for the Muslim world is
part of the heart.
It is not the periphery.
It's easy to be critical of O.M.
More people are critical of us today than
perhaps you realize, because we have a whole
army of people who are so positive.
But the fact is, I would have thought
just what we are doing among Muslims alone,
so many hundreds and hundreds out working, that
somehow when people are talking about the negatives,
that that would come alongside and that we
would be esteemed just for this tremendous work
that's being done among the Muslim world.
You need to understand there's many a people,
many people will not support this work financially
because they've heard negatives.
They've heard there's not enough pastoral care.
They've heard that someone went on a campaign
and they got hurt.
They've heard we don't take care of the
health enough.
They've heard George Ferber is a fanatic that
makes people work weird hours.
All kinds of negative things, not just about
O.M., missions in general.
I cannot walk in the United States or
preach in the United States without picking negative
overtones about missions in general.
So the road ahead is not an easy
road and therefore again that puts the pressure
on us to go that extra mile in
keeping together.
Often the negative things someone says about their
own team in a moment of weakness is
grabbed by someone else who uses it to
attack this team.
I had someone specifically tell me they really
were thinking of coming to this team but
they didn't come because and then they told
me the reason.
It just blew my circuit.
Such folly, such folly that someone would believe
a sheer generalization about family life on ICT
Carlisle.
But believe me those rumors go fast and
furious.
You and I are responsible for what comes
out of our mouths and sometimes the greatest
harm has come right out of this mouth
because things I said in a defensive moment
or trying to drive a point it wasn't
accurate and then later on someone else picked
up and ran with it.
Well we're almost out of time.
I wanted to mention the foundation and the
backup in connection with the South Asia Department
with Wakely, with Gary Dean, with ACT.
Each one of these is important and each
one needs commitment on the part of the
whole team.
The next word I have is the word
training.
We're in the Holy Spirit's training program.
We can't boast of a systematic well-organized
training program here.
We don't even have global action here but
we believe through our lives, through the prayer
meetings, through the speakers, through doing things together,
through carrying these goals and aims and what
I've shared about this morning, we can be
in one of the most phenomenal training experiences
that anyone could ever get into.
We know of our commitment on the team
especially with VIP to leadership development.
This however is not something new simply because
we now have a better name.
But if you study the history of OM
you know that one of our greatest giftings
is to give people their first chance in
leadership and there are a few tens of
thousands of leaders that are now out serving
because somehow they got in this movement and
they got with these people who were so
committed to these basic goals and aims and
the core values that I'm sure you know
about.
I wanted to give this example that there's
a danger of trying at times to separate
the spiritual from the practical.
We want people to be spiritual.
We want true spirituality but we also want
people to develop practical skills from what they
do on the computer to driving a vehicle
to understanding basics about communication, setting up a
book table, handling tough counseling situations and that
I believe has to continue to be one
of our goals here on our own team.
We then have the literature ministry.
That's one of the areas where we still
very much are in coordination through Jerry Davey,
through Vera and Special Projects, through Clark Kennedy.
There's not time to speak about it but
it is our desire at literature ministry not
just the coordination of product projects but distribution
through our meetings, through our giveaway programs.
I mean we could write a book about
it that this will continue and I think
it's an area where most people on the
team are getting involved a bit and exciting.
The privilege of having a professional writer on
our team like Debbie and her phenomenal books.
If OM got proactive about the books the
number of titles could quadruple in terms of
distribution.
We need to understand today that a large
part of OM is not proactive about literature.
Now I've seen it actually picking up again
in the last few years.
Why do you think that's picking up?
Do you think it just fell out of
a cloud?
Because there are people stomping their feet and
there are people who are setting the example
and there are people who are exhorting and
there are people who have the gift of
asking hard questions.
My greatest method of communication often is just
asking questions.
Now it's a risk because sometimes people get
the wrong idea but when you ask people
like I did with a field leader who
I know has an atrocious literature program, how
is your literature program going as we went
for a walk in Dubron?
A lot came out of that and we'll
be in touch as I visit that field
this year.
So literature continues to be at the heart
of the ICT vision.
And then the music ministry.
The most exciting department we have to acknowledge
on our team.
We esteem Bill and his crowd.
They always seem to get more recruits.
They take more meetings.
They cause more fuss per square millimeter than
most departments and we are thrilled and it
would be my prayer that we could always
have a dynamic international music ministry based in
Britain or in Europe that could continue to
have this kind of impact.
I've written down here we cannot reach our
goals without hard work, creativity, taking the initiative.
I wrote extra mile but I've already touched
on that.
Hard work, creativity, and initiative.
And I would write around the whole thing.
Grace.
It cannot be somehow us trying to prove
ourselves.
It cannot be some false motivation.
Though false motivation always comes in and we
have to learn how to deal with it.
It has to be that we do have
this big picture.
That has to be there.
We actually want to win people for Jesus.
And even though what we're doing right now
doesn't seem to be related to that, what
we're doing right now will lead to people
coming to Jesus Christ.
And I tell you when you catch that
big picture, you are going to be more
motivated and you're going to be able to
battle through some of the stuff that the
enemy may be throwing at you even times
of ill health, which is always so difficult.
And some of you have not seen me
in my moments of ill health, but I
have had ill health.
I have been operated on three or four
times and a few other things as well.
In fact, you may remember that I had
a serious tropical disease that they thought might
explode behind my eyes and that would not
be too good.
And I've been on display in two tropical
disease hospitals.
They wanted to give me a new medicine
that only monkeys had received.
The board of directors overruled that and the
disease went away.
That's 15.
That came from Nepal, eating uncooked pork.
We'll not go into more details.
And then I've written the word hospitality because
we believe that is part of our ministry.
In fact, hospitality is directly linked with every
other aspect of this ministry.
And everybody on the team, on your personal
level, or in Manor House, or Westwatch, we're
all tied in to the ministry of hospitality.
We know our limitations and one of the
miracles on our team is that sometimes when
we're not able to do it in our
own homes, God has provided funds that we
could do it some other way.
We're not going to evangelize the world, brothers
and sisters, without spending money.
And it is very hard to decide when
to save and when to spend.
Some of you think I'm probably the last
of the big spenders.
You should have been with me this morning
as I was testing my batteries.
I take time, I'm sure I'm going to
be rebuked in heaven, to test my batteries,
whether there's enough power in there to continue
to use them.
There's not enough power, I put them in
a special bag for recycling.
I don't know what to do with that
bag.
It's getting bigger and bigger.
I will not put a new battery in
until I've tested the old battery to see
because I feel that would be a waste
of money and whatever.
When I'm doing this, I'm sometimes wondering what
is wrong.
We are still committed to cutting corners and
saving when we can, but time is also
money.
We have a gigantic budget we're involved in,
a huge number of multiple things happening all
the time, and sometimes a failure to spend
can even cause the death of a person.
So that's going to be an ongoing struggle.
Then I've written the word pastoral care because
we're involved in that through many, many people
linked with us.
I'm trying to improve on that.
I've written the word evangelism because I believe
that's also a silver lining that comes down
through all these things, and I've written the
word local church because I believe we must
continue to have this strong commitment to the
local church.
On this team, being involved in a local
church in an active way is not optional.
It is not optional in the work of
the kingdom.
So please work on that.
I know people now can say, well, what
local church does George Berwer belong?
I don't think people should use that as
an excuse.
If that's a failure in my situation, our
family did belong to Brownleaf Baptist for many
years.
It's all a long story, but as I'm
ministering in local churches almost every single Sunday,
52 weeks a year, sometimes twice, and I'm
involved in local churches, including many locally, until
the Lord hits me on the head, that
is the way I'm going to continue.
But I don't think people should use that
to justify the fact that they're constantly sleeping
in on Sunday as the great rest day
and not being bothered with church.
Among other things, that is a stumbling block
to local people.
You can say, well, where does grace and
the law come together?
We'll probably be wrestling with that to heaven,
but I'll tell you a lot of things
I do, I do it because I believe
it is common sense to just do it,
whether I feel like it or not.
That includes sometimes going to the team meeting,
right?
Our first goal each day, in fact, should
simply be to walk with God.
At the end of the day, in my
own evaluation sessions, my main question is often
about people's walk with God.
I don't have a stereotype view of that,
though I believe there are some basics.
So it's my prayer that we'll continue to
have these overall basics.
All this has to be worked out in
your different departments and lives.
I'm willing at any time to discuss these
things, including in future team meetings.
My final words on this piece of paper
is simply that we need harmony and partnership
in a very deep way with ICT Carlisle
if we are to carry on our goals
and aims, and we need that with all
of our other fields within the UK.
We also, as much as possible, need it
with the whole body of Christ.
So I think we've got a lot cut
out for us in the next year and
years to come, and it's my prayer that
each one of us will understand a little
more about our ministry here, about where we're
going, how we're getting there.
A lot of this needs constant redefining, but
we don't have time for that this morning.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for this opportunity to
be together.
Lord, I've heard of some heads of state
that gave their State of the Union message
and went for several hours.
So really, I've been very short here this
morning, and I just pray that we may
contextualize this in our own situation, our own
health, our own family, our own energy level,
but not throw it aside and say it's
not for us, and that, Lord, you'd enable
us to function as one body, even though
we have a lot of diversity, even though
we have people probably who just have maybe
a general unhappiness about ICT for some reason,
that somehow we let love cover, somehow we
continue to practice Matthew 18, and if we
have something against a brother on our team
especially, we'd be willing to go with them
privately and talk that through before we just
sort of mumble about it and start a
little more gossip going on around the team.
We're aware, Father, that we are attempting too
much.
I have to take part of that blame.
Help me to say no.
Lord, I have people saying now that I'm
saying no too much, and what will happen
if George Verber gets known as being reactive
instead of proactive?
Lord, how do we win in these areas?
But I pray that we may somehow be
able to pray through and talk through the
various steps we take forward that we can
move together of one heart and of one
mind.
Lord, you've kept this team going for 25
or more years here in Southeast London, but
we're not leaning on past history or traditions.
It's a new day.
It's a new way ahead.
We have just four more years in this
particular structure, and we're going to go for
it in the power of your Holy Spirit.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.