And I have our office, our section of
the office over there.
I'm still very much involved with the team
and try to get in on the nights
of prayer, especially if we're in town.
But we like to get to know the
people.
And I wonder if we could just go
around and just get your names again and
say where you're from.
Not that we'll learn it the first time,
but we've got to start somewhere.
So, good, clear name and where you're from.
I've been living in Scotland for the last
three and a half years.
Good.
Yeah, tell me if some of you are
working in other places.
Tell where you're working, that's good.
Jonathan from Worthing.
Okay.
Gary.
Good.
Well, it seems like a very unusual year
for our international coordinating team that we have
so many men.
We've had years where we hardly had any
single men.
So the Lord always has surprises for us.
We, I think, are still praying for one
or two or more people.
Maybe the Lord will give them to us.
Are we ready to begin?
We've already begun.
I want to just share, and I appreciate
your taking some notes because we want you
to get these things down.
And I think one of the things that
you always want to keep in mind is
that someday you may have to be giving
a similar session.
Maybe to your own team, maybe out on
the mission field somewhere.
Everything we share, we want to keep in
mind 2 Timothy 2.
These things you've heard, faithful men give that
to others also.
And in working and training individuals, never cease
to be amazed the things that they eventually
end up asking.
Not just things that are very clear, simple
matters in the Bible, but all kinds of
questions.
And certainly one of the great needs in
Christian work is for wisdom.
I've just come from a meeting with the
executives of this Bible school, Bible College.
And we've just seen how the enemy tries
to bring misunderstanding when two different groups are
trying to live together in the same building.
And it was a very, very profitable meeting.
And I think because of the wisdom that
God gave different people in the meeting, we
got through that meeting without it becoming a
major rift between OM and BBI.
The enemy is always trying to divide, always
trying to bring confusion.
And that's why we have these times of
orientation.
And we have quite a few times during
the year when there are questions and answers.
And that's why we have Jack Rendell as
a team leader who is available, not George
Verwer, who is generally not so available, spending
over half of my time away from London
or Bromley.
The theme I want to talk about is
entitled, How and Why This Team, ICT, is
a Valuable Training Program.
Now, you may be involved in Manchester or
Carlisle.
Some of these things would be valid there.
Most of them would be valid anywhere within
Great Britain.
We sit back in Bromley and we watch
the troops pass through.
They share with great excitement, headed for Pakistan,
headed for Sudan.
They've got their inoculations.
They've got their maps.
They're showing you where they're going, Bangladesh, the
regions beyond.
And you're going down Bromley High Street to
the station to pick up somebody who's just
arrived there and doesn't know how to get
up to where we are.
So we can understand India, that's a training
program.
Sudan, that's a training program.
But, I mean, Bromley, Kent, training program?
And yet, because in the past some people
have come in there thinking it was just
a piece of cake.
Do you know that American expression, I guess?
Thinking it's easy.
They have fallen flat on their nose.
And it has been interesting to pick them
up in the process.
Now, my message is a little bit geared
toward those of you who are non-English.
Non-English means Welsh, Scottish, Irish, American.
And our team would like to have more
English people.
We are so happy that our English gentleman,
Aidan Currie, has agreed to stay on another
year, even though, without me knowing it, the
Lagos tried to recruit him from underneath our
very nose.
We'd like to get some English people, and
it's good to welcome Dirk to the team.
He's from Northern England, where they tend to
despise London.
But, anyway, he's come to London, and, unfortunately,
he won't be around there so much as
he's working with me.
My first point is especially relevant, because one
of the reasons this is a training program
is that it is a new culture for
many of us.
Now, even if you come from rural England,
coming into London is like a new culture.
And different people from different parts of England
think quite differently and approach life quite differently.
But for those coming from overseas, it is
a new culture, so it provides opportunity for
cultural identification, for learning, perhaps even some experimentation.
There's even a difference in language, and I
think you've already had a session pointing out
some of the problems of language.
We have people that sometimes are hard to
understand.
We had a woman from Scotland down on
our team some time ago, and very difficult
for the English to understand what she was
saying.
I think her problem was linked with not
opening her mouth.
But I was sitting in a railway station
up in Lancashire, where I'm going two weeks
from now.
We have some meetings.
These men were speaking English, but I could
not understand what they were saying.
Anyway, it is an adjustment, and, therefore, it
is a fantastic training.
If we can adjust to a culture that
is so similar to our own culture, and
it is in many ways, then how are
we really going to do among Muslims on
the Afghan border, or pygmies in the Congo,
or wherever else you're praying about going to?
So don't think it's just going to be
easy.
It is a challenge.
We, as foreigners, can easily offend in Britain,
and, of course, it's an area where we
need to grow.
Number two, it's a training because it's a
new climate.
Get these people from sunny California, and they
come to England.
They've already heard in advance that it's all
fog and rain.
We get very little fog now in London.
I lived in London during the fog, smog
days, and ever since they brought in smokeless
fuel, and, by the way, Britain has more
rules and regulations than any nation, perhaps, in
the world.
They brought in smokeless fuel and a few
other changes, and you don't get that much
fog.
Now, Sam from Ireland, who works in our
garage, feels that the air in Bromley is
bad and polluted, but compared to some of
the places I've lived in, I think the
air around Bromley is not so bad.
Maybe somebody ought to get one of these
gauges, measure the air, and we can know
if we're in the danger zone and wear
our masks.
But it is a different climate.
A lot of people make exaggerations.
This summer we've had a lot of sunshine.
We haven't had so much rain during certain
weeks, but throughout the year it's a little
bit dreary for some people.
Never found it much of a problem myself.
I don't know.
I think somehow Jesus is alive, whether it's
raining or whether the sun is out and
the sunshine is in the heart.
But it can affect you if you're just
running on your natural one little half-horsepower
engine.
The weather and all these things change you.
Up and down you go.
But I really think if we're getting what
we need from the Lord, then we can
adjust to new climates and we can learn
how to carry an umbrella or bring a
raincoat and make that small adaptation.
Number three, it's a training program because of
the range of people with whom we work.
Now we are in some ways an international
ghetto in Bromley.
We can't pretend that we're a rural Britannia
English crowd.
We have people from all different countries.
And I'm sure many people in Bromley don't
understand us.
And so it's a challenge.
In our meeting here today it was shared
how the people around this Bible Institute, they
don't understand what's going on.
They don't separate OM from BBI.
They think BBI has ships.
And interesting little things get said.
But in missionary work the key, far more
than geography, is relationships.
Learning how to relate to different kinds of
people.
And I think we need to take this
as a real challenge and learn to relate
to the different people God has given us
in Bromley.
As I'm sure you already know, we have
many, many different ministries.
Perhaps if we really weighed it up, half
of all of our work in Bromley on
ICT side is OM Britain.
We're linked with Manchester, with Carlisle.
We're under Peter Maiden to take meetings, to
show hospitality to anybody connected with OM, maybe
a prayer partner, maybe an ex-OMer.
We're involved in literature distribution in Britain.
We're involved in evangelism in Britain.
We're involved in relating to churches.
And our burden is that the whole work
in Britain, FFA, Arab World, ICT, STL, it's
one body.
Different teams carrying on different types of work,
different strategies to some degree, but one body.
So that gives us another opportunity to learn
because, of course, we have to relate with
different people who have different purposes in their
work, maybe different hours of work, maybe a
different approach to their work.
And it'll take you a while to understand
that.
Just as if you were going as a
new missionary to some country in Africa and
Asia, it'll take you a year at least
to begin to understand the ground rules.
Now, I'm in a little effort to try
to understand cricket.
And this is a shame, this is a
sin, almost, that I've been so long in
Britain and don't understand cricket.
But there are some basic rules.
You're not going to learn cricket just watching.
You have to have somebody explain.
You have to read.
And I need to get into that this
year.
It hasn't been a major priority.
But now that I'm involved in Pakistan, where
they are three times more fanatic for cricket
than Britain.
The British gave it to them.
But, I mean, there, you know, you better
know what a sticky wick is and understand
cricket.
I know that term because preachers use it.
They don't understand what it's about.
So there's a wide range of people, and
it's a training program to get to understand
these people.
It's not easy to make in-depth friends
in most cultures.
Some cultures, superficial friendship is easy.
Other cultures, not even that is easy.
But in all cultures, in-depth friendships are
more difficult.
And one of the challenges for this team
is to have some in-depth relationships with
British people, not just OM people.
And I like the fact that we are
not stuck in some missionary headquarters in the
middle of the woods.
The Lord bless the Weck and their big
Bolstrode Castle out in the middle of the
woods in nowhere.
I'm sure they can get in cars and
drive into London.
We are right smack in the middle of
a town, and they are watching.
There's a little tall building next to us.
Now there's another one gone up.
They can literally look out their windows and
watch our running back and forth.
If you back your vehicle out of the
OM garage too fast, and you hit somebody,
I tell you, it's going to be maybe
in the newspapers.
It's going to be talked about all through
the building.
Just like the day we were doing some
scrap metal work and junking cars and scrapping
cars, and we almost lost our premises as
a result of that because it was blocking
the pavement.
We're in the real world, and we're not
isolated in the woods.
Even here, we're a bit isolated.
It's a monastic-type place.
I don't like it actually for living long
periods of time.
All right, for a four-day retreat.
But we're right there, and every move will
have its ripple.
So it's a great training program because we're
called to work with people.
We're not called to retire or to monasteries.
Number four, it's a good place of training
because there are lots of pressures.
Lots of pressures.
You're going to think after a while, too
many people trying to do too much with
too little in too quick a period of
time.
Already, we're thinking about the Summer Crusade, and
we're thinking about the Mexico Christmas Crusade.
Well, how does the Mexico Christmas Crusade affect
our team in Bromley?
I'll tell you how it affects it.
Every year, it takes our leader because Jack
is committed to be in my place in
Mexico so that I can spend more time
in Asia.
And every time Jack leaves, we usually have
a few little interesting difficulties.
Jerry Davey usually picks me on the phone,
picks up the phone and says, you know,
what's going on on the ICT?
Now, Neil Porter has become rather gifted in
being the assistant leader, takes over and usually
we survive, but we're very much involved with
all kinds of things all over the world.
And it creates sometimes pressure on our doorstep.
People just arrive.
We had somebody phoning the other day.
I'm glad I wasn't there.
Wanting us to sign the papers so that
he could get into England.
He's an old friend.
He claims that he did a favor for
me way back somewhere.
So why can't I do a favor for
him and sign on the dotted line or
give my voucher him on the telephone so
he could be in England for six months
or something.
All kinds of people.
And we want to be able to show
them the love of Christ.
And the ministry of hospitality in our team
is not just hospitality house.
We've all got to be hospitable.
That little house can't handle what we're attempting.
I noticed a tremendous amount of hospitality Peter
and Birgitta Conlon have had over the past
weeks.
They're over there.
People come through.
They keep them.
They're in their home.
And we have many, many others who are
involved in the ministry of hospitality.
It's so important, isn't it, people's first impressions.
I'll tell you, the man who's behind that
reception desk, the man who's running that little
switchboard and handling the things that are done
there, the posts and other things, he's an
important person.
Because these people coming to Brownlee, they're not
going to see me.
They're not going to go away, wow, that
George Ver is a dynamic revolutionary, written revolution
of love.
We saw it in action.
We arrived and he did this for us
and did that for us.
No, they're not going to meet me.
They're going to meet the guy sitting behind
that window.
And if he is uptight because someone put
salt in his tea or he got woken
up too early or the study program didn't
agree with him or he's feeling rejected and
so he lets that irritability out, people can
read it.
You can read people over the telephone.
When you pick up the telephone, sometimes you
can tell that person is rattled.
And I know that first impressions are very
important.
So there are pressures.
This provides opportunities for training and preparation to
go on to perhaps somewhere else where there's
even more pressure.
Bombay, I'm sure, can provide greater pressure.
Number five, it's a training program because there
is a degree of unpredictability.
Is that a word?
Unpredictability.
You never know what next is going to
happen in Bromley.
We have to be flexible.
You're just about to get into a van
to go somewhere and Sam comes over to
the garage at present or somebody and says,
look, really, you can't have this van.
Somebody else needs it who has a bigger
group.
You have to go in this Volkswagen bug
with year six and your literature.
Just the problem of transportation for this number
of people when we've got this budget, this
budget, we don't have excess money.
You say, why don't we have more money
in God's work?
Well, you argue that one out with God
all you want.
But we don't.
We're broke.
God does supply.
But the work of God is growing.
The problems are great.
The need for Bible, the need for literature,
the needs for vehicles.
In the whole Bombay operation, they don't have
a single vehicle.
They don't have a single vehicle.
They learn to function, therefore, without vehicles.
We have vehicles.
We have a garage.
It's an expensive operation, by the way, if
you think it's all cheap.
But we have also learned to be very
dependent on those vehicles, each family.
And therefore, we're often short of vehicles.
And there are a number of other factors
that make it a little bit unpredictable at
times.
We need advanced planning.
There are planning meetings going on all the
time.
But sometimes, even after planning something, an unpredictable
factor comes.
I remember one year, all of a sudden,
Fred Perry and his whole family land on
our doorstep.
What are we going to do?
He's laboring in Iran.
He had to leave Iran because of the
war.
He arrives back at the international office of
OM.
You say, well, no, I'm sorry, you know,
it's nice of you to be here, but
we don't want you.
You have to welcome a missionary when he
returns from the field.
They have the sense that they're missionaries returning
to their home base.
Now, the home base of OM is actually
many places.
It's New Jersey, Manchester, ICT, it's Mospach.
But for them, at that time, they're not
interested in Mospach in New Jersey.
They're there, and they're hoping they may get
a place to sleep, they may get something
to drive, and they might even get a
place to live in for a while until
they find out where they should be going.
So the unpredictableness, which demands flexibility and adaptability,
and I always remember from my missionary lectures
in Bible college, flexibility, adaptability.
You know one of the problems in missionary
work is that people coming from highly sophisticated
cultures where there's a heavy emphasis on education,
America's in that camp, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, many,
many countries are in that camp.
When they go to the mission field, they
don't find a slot for their particular training.
Even someone who's been trained in computers.
What kind of training in computers?
What kind of computer?
I mean, you could be trained in computers
and be recruited into a computer job and
you might as well almost be at zero.
Totally different machine, totally different program, different kinds
of demands being made on you.
That's why they often say a good missionary
is a jack of all trades.
He can repair his own car.
I'm sure all of you can do that.
We need such people in ICT.
Dirk was sharing with me that he didn't
feel he had much gift yet in that
area.
He knows how to repair things around the
house because we don't have miracle men.
You just phone up and they just come
in and repair everything.
We have a maintenance crew.
They never seem to catch up.
We're a lot of old houses.
There are many of us and it's not
easy to find people to give a year
to going around repairing other people's houses and
unstopping drains.
We called the special squad in once to
rescue my toilet.
They managed to smash the entire toilet with
everything running around.
That was after we had in the professional
plumber.
The professional plumber, he was worse.
Praise God for people that are willing to
do that kind of work because without them,
some of us would not be taking the
meetings which bring in the recruits, which bring
in a lot of other things.
It's teamwork.
We praise God for that teamwork.
It's a learning experience.
Maybe the Lord wants you to develop some
new abilities this year.
You can learn how to change a punctured
tire rather than just phoning for the tire
puncture.
That's a flat puncture squad.
Amazing.
Then number six.
I've already got into it without realizing it.
The many different kinds of jobs, meetings, handling
books, hospitality, serving people, personal evangelism, literature
distribution, all kinds of areas that you can
sharpen up.
Say, well, anybody can do those things.
Not many people know how to set up
a proper book table in a meeting.
The difference between one man setting it up
and another man setting up could be a
hundred pounds easily.
A hundred pounds easily.
In fact, some people, they easily get discouraged
when they try to set up a book
table.
The man says, well, we don't allow books
to be sold on Sunday.
So he packs it all in the box
and puts it in the back of the
van instead of perhaps thinking, well, could we
put just two books out and just give
them on a donation basis?
Oh, well, we'll meet with the elders and
see.
They decide we can do that.
Actually, we have spread that philosophy in the
last 15 years all over the country.
That is not our first year.
So learning how to set up a book
table, learning some of these other basic skills,
right down to such practical things as driving
in England, which is not like driving in
the United States or Sweden.
They used to drive on that side of
the road in Sweden.
I remember when they changed sides in Sweden
seven years ago.
In one day, everything suddenly changed overnight.
And there were accidents and people were driving
into lakes and who knows what else was
happening.
But in England, they very much resist certain
kinds of change.
Decimalization.
It was looked at as a giant dragon
spewing out its head from the common market.
And now they're trying to get us to
think in liters.
Most petrol stations still have gallons and liters.
And I was in England when that famous
day we switched from shillings, pounds and pence
to just pounds and pence.
And my people were spewing out venom and
crusading down the streets and resisting these changes.
But changes do come, even in England.
And if you visit such traditional places as
Cambridge University and see all the students sitting
there in a row for their evening meal
and all the people sitting on the high
table and they open in prayer and all
this, you realize what a nation of fantastic
traditions.
And they consider, many of them, those of
us coming from America as just naive and
our nation is so young we barely know
how to put our trousers on yet.
And so we must walk with much humility.
You talk about, you know, an old building,
you know, a hundred years old in America.
They put a big sign on it.
Preservation Act.
But some of you may be living in
hundred-year-old buildings that'll be tearing down
in the next couple of months.
So there are many kinds of jobs, lots
of opportunity to get thrown into new things.
Therefore, it's a good training program.
The seventh reason it's a training program is
because there's a lot of boring, dull, routine
work.
And missionary work is loaded with boring, dull,
routine things, even in India.
Driving that old truck from Kerala to Kathmandu,
five days.
I tell you, it's boring.
It may sound like an adventure back here.
Just do it.
And in mission work today, you can't live
on the spectacular.
It's not big crusades and great meetings and
revivals springing up overnight through 20 minutes of
prayer.
There's a lot of slogging.
There's a lot of routine.
We need to learn faithfulness in routine things.
Maybe caring for our vehicle and maybe caring
for property.
We have a lot of people giving us
temporary use of their homes.
And I tell you, if we leave those
homes in worse shape than when we received
them, except in maybe some exceptional cases, we
hear that.
It seems very hard for people to understand
in London what a miracle this accommodation is
that we have.
We are living in an area where every
square foot is worth pounds.
Every little room is worth 10, 20, 30
pounds a week, a week.
And we all want to stay on minimum
prayer target.
We couldn't even raise this after seven hours
of debate and discussion with the leaders.
You have to have the minimum prayer target.
The British have to up it a little
bit because they've been so far behind with
the international figure.
So those of you from Britain, as a
year from now, the figure will be a
little higher.
The fact is, in Britain, we can't survive
on this minimum figure, not really, if we
count all the expenses.
So we like to encourage people to be
more realistic in their praying.
And I hope, however feeble your accommodation is,
you'll give thanks to the Lord and take
care of it.
Take care of it.
A house, a small house in London, is
50 to 70 to 80 pounds sterling per
week for the...
People are just going wild trying to find
accommodation.
We've had to cut our Arab world team
right down.
We just haven't been able to find it.
We say, Lord, why is this?
And a lot of the immigrants are coming
to Britain, take a house and they just
divide it up.
People are living in one little room with
their whole family in London.
They're trying to stop this, but they are,
with a little kitchen and they're paying exorbitant
rents.
The rent system at present in England is
against the renter and in favor of the
landlord.
The laws, the basic rules, makes it very
complex.
Makes it a hard country to rent in.
So a lot of our accommodation is very
unique and we need people who are willing
to try to keep it cared for.
Number eight, the eighth reason why this is
a training program is exposure.
Now, not just because we're in England, but
because we're on ICT, we get terrific exposure,
all kinds of missionary leaders.
We get more visiting speakers, more missionary leaders
than most teams.
We can learn from these people.
One of the men, the moment he left
ICT, went into quite an important leadership position,
but when he was on ICT, he was
just picking people up from the airport.
But he had a very positive attitude toward
that.
He didn't think of that, oh, no, another
trip to the airport.
He thought it was an opportunity to listen
to cassette tapes going out and listen to
the people he picked up coming back or
vice versa if he was taking somebody out.
He met a lot of interesting people and
they became friends in some cases.
So we get a lot of exposure.
We have the audiovisual department with all kinds
of interesting films and videos.
We have exposure to a wide range of
cassettes and books and tapes and magazines.
This is what little research we have on
an international level.
It was based on this team.
It's a department that is greatly weakened because
we don't have anybody full time in research.
But if you want to find out something
about almost any subject, you'll be amazed what
we have in Bromley.
So that to me is a great challenge.
It makes Bromley a great stepping stone into
other fields.
A representative of almost every field in O
.M. will eventually pass through Bromley and if
you're interested you can get to them.
You have to sometimes take the initiative.
And then the ninth reason that it's a
training program right there in good old Bromley
in London is because they're terrific scope for
evangelism.
I was telling the India group that you
know if they just want to go do
personal work and small group work, there's no
purpose going to India.
They can do that right in England.
You need to go to India for personal
work.
We've got Indians everywhere we look in London.
Now I was in the process at that
time of giving them the challenge to reach
the masses which is part of our strategy
for the subcontinent.
And to reach the masses then we're going
to have to go there.
But there's fantastic opportunities for witness.
And in 29 years of trying to get
people into evangelism, I have discovered that it
is not easy.
And Jack has discovered this who has oftentimes
been a tremendous example on our team in
the area of evangelism.
He had piles of other things to do
trudging out Saturday morning door to door giving
out tracts.
And I think this is an area where
people easily get disappointed.
They somehow picture that when it comes to
evangelism, OM has really got it all together.
Even though 50% of all the people
every year are new.
And even though the leaders, and we do
have some very gifted leaders in this.
They're spread out over 35 nations.
I'm not always attracted to Bromley.
Plus many other factors.
I can assure you, make it very clear
that we don't have in Bromley a lot
of hyper-motivated, hyper-gifted people in evangelism.
In fact, often it's a newcomer to the
team like Steve Davis a couple years ago
who really added a new dimension to our
team.
Because in evangelism and OM in general we
sometimes get into a rut.
Door to door, giving out tracts at the
railway station.
And then, you know, it's good to get
some new ideas.
Don't just think in terms of the official
time once or twice a week when there's
evangelism.
But may your whole life be evangelism.
May you have literature in your pockets.
May you be ready for a word of
testimony lovingly.
I think when it comes to Bromley itself,
mass distribution doesn't need to be our main
method.
But certainly down in London there's the chance
to reach masses of people that if you
don't give them that tract in London they're
often just passing through to the Muslim world
or passing through to some other country.
If you don't give them that tract, nobody
will.
And when I was in London more in
a different situation, I used to go into
central London all the time and just give
out tracts.
I used to carry them in many languages
and found it very, very challenging.
We used to have family day and take
the children with us and do that.
So there's great opportunity for evangelism door to
door, street work, working with the Arab team,
working with churches and I'm sure that will
be presented.
And I hope you'll take advantage of it.
Because, you know, I think a lot of
talk about evangelism in O.M. is so
much hot air.
If it's not real to you right there
in Bromley, how real is it going to
be in Bombay or in the middle of
the Muslim world?
And I just think it's a challenge to
be involved in evangelism in our own home
area or what may appear to be a
home area.
We usually drop our guard when we're in
a place like Bromley.
It doesn't seem like the mission field.
We don't see demon-possessed people running down
the street as you do in Calcutta.
You don't trip over a beggar or a
leper as you step outside the door in
Bromley.
You might encounter a drunk now and then.
And therefore, we were deceived.
But I will tell you that basically the
city of London is in the hands of
the evil one.
Sunday morning, sometimes on Sunday I go into
the huge, giant market up in the East
End and just talk to people and give
out literature.
It's unbelievable that masses on Sunday morning, they're
not in church, come into that market looking
for a bargain to go up there and
just see it.
It's quite a challenge.
And then lastly, God tests us in ways
that we do not expect.
That's why really ever since you're coming God's
training program.
And the fact that you're geographically in Bromley
rather than West Bengal doesn't mean God is
now hindered in his program to train you
because he can test you.
We don't know what's going to happen in
England.
As you know, in England, in the years
gone by, we've had terrorism.
Remember last summer when that huge bomb went
off not far from where some of our
people were killing all those people and all
those horses.
It was in the press all over the
world.
We're not in a country with total stability.
Compared to many parts of the world, I
believe Britain is a haven of peace.
And my flesh, the human side of me,
is actually very happy in Britain.
You can get so much done.
The phones work.
The trains run on time.
The buses are there.
There's taxis.
There's rent-a-cars.
There's unlimited facilities compared to most nations.
And we're not Now, if you had come
from one other very developed nation to Britain,
another developed nation, then you wouldn't notice this.
You see, I've lived four years in India,
six months a year.
And I've lived in Nepal and Bangkok.
Have you ever tried to get across Bangkok?
And I've lived in Africa a little bit.
And I tell you, when you come back
to Britain, you realize this country is an
ideal launching pad to get equipment, machinery, people,
out to the ends of the earth.
It is a fantastic coordinating base for an
international movement like OM.
We have the most international airport in the
world right down the road.
Notice how many people even come here to
Belgium.
All go through London.
All through London.
We are at the hub.
And now we can drive from Bromley to
Dover in an hour and a half for
years of praying for that motorway to bypass
those villages and bypass Canterbury.
And it's there now, almost complete.
And it's another hour off the time to
Dover, which means using the hovercraft, it's five
or six hours from Bromley to Leuven.
God has put us in a very key
place.
He's provided us accommodation.
He's provided us a fantastic warehouse, garage.
There are facilities.
With that, we have a lot of friends.
Friends giving us equipment.
Friends lending us services.
Ian Currie was sharing with me one man
who's given us thousands of pounds of services,
equipment.
And that's something we need to learn at
Bromley, how to get other people involved.
You know, people want to get involved in
helping O.M., but they don't know how
to take the initiative.
Or they may be afraid of us.
They think we're super spiritual.
And as we get people involved, we become
friends.
We get them into some of those nights
of prayer.
And we've often been very weak in this
area.
I tell you, lives are going to be
changed.
And we're going to see more people from
those local Bromley churches where we're hoping you're
going to get involved.
Not only coming to the prayer meetings, but
getting involved with us in evangelism.
Or we with them.
And even joining O.M. on the year
program.
When I arrived in Britain, somebody said to
me, Britain's a mission field.
Every nation's a mission field.
Some of Britain's greatest evangelists have gone to
evangelize America.
And it's wonderful that the British people welcome
Billy Graham and Louise Palau and many lesser
lights to the mission field.
To come back and help with a task
in Britain.
Because there's only 10% or 12%
going to church.
And that's climbed up in the last 12
years.
That includes everybody.
Roman Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Spiritists, the works.
The number of born-again evangelicals in Britain.
Most people would put at maybe a million
out of 50 plus million people.
Some would say that's an exaggeration.
But one thing we know, if there are
a million born-again evangelical Christians in Britain,
considering the rest of Europe, we have the
greatest manpower source in Europe for getting workers
and prayer.
And as I think you probably know, in
a miraculous way, God has given O.M.
a tremendous credibility with other Christian groups.
And we have opened doors.
I just had my invitation for Cambridge University
again for 1984.
We have people asking us to take more
meetings sometimes almost than we can take.
And so this provides a great open door
and gives us many opportunities to work with
people and to mobilize people.
I might only ask that I think this
training program is made more interesting by the
fact that we have another unique team of
Christians right next to us.
STL.
Very different kind of work with very different
historic roots.
They are long before we were.
I am in Bromley traditionally because of STL,
not ICT.
ICT didn't exist.
It was just myself and a secretary.
So I think it's a great challenge when
we have another team.
We work together on something, we pray together,
but we have very unique tasks.
And there's some overlapping, but there's some areas
where we agree.
This is your task.
This is our task.
Let's not get in a lot of ba
-loo-ba-doo-ba talking about it, but
let's get on with it.
And this is beautiful because what's one of
the biggest problems on the mission field?
Mission societies that can't get on with a
mission society down the road.
And it's a heartbreak on the mission field
and it's a stumbling block often to the
unconverted.
And I've often thought if we somehow can't
get on with our own brothers and sisters
in STL and esteem them and work with
them and learn how to resolve our problems,
and there are always problems.
And you know, what are we going to
do?
We work side by side with a national
Pakistani mission society in Karachi.
Totally different ideas, strategies, salary system, or whatever
else.
So that also provides challenge and preparation for
missionary work overseas or wherever the Lord may
lead you.
Don't think that this, what I've touched in
this brief hour, covers our ministries.
If you listen to the message I gave
the other night on the dynamic headquarters, then
you'll know what our ministry is.
Fifteen major ministries were shared.
I've had incredibly positive feedback from that meeting,
even from some of my leaders who don't
always have time to write feedback.
So if you want to know in general
what the ministry of almost any HQ is
or base, then I trust you were in
that meeting.
It didn't get recorded, so I'm going to
have to give it again sometime as a
number of people have requested it.
Well, there we are, right on the hour,
Jack.
Want to take a few minutes for questions?
Or is there a next...