I am going to try to speak to
you on things that perhaps other people might
not feel qualified to speak on.
I don't think a guest speaker will come
along and speak on the major misunderstandings of
O.M. But having been in the work
from the very, very beginning, I think I
know some of our weaknesses, and we've got
some real weaknesses.
And I may know a little bit about
some of the apparent weaknesses.
See, we have legitimate weaknesses.
Then we have apparent weaknesses.
Then we have even some strong points.
Then we have apparent strong points.
Let's just pray first.
Lord, help us as we talk about some
of the areas of miscommunication, areas of weakness,
areas where people get crushed instead of built
up.
Help us to really see this as a
time of preparation to be communicators for Jesus
in Europe and around the world.
Open our eyes to some of our own
needs and our own weaknesses that we may
be more useful in your hands.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
There are many verses that come to my
mind.
Most of them are related to this thing
of love.
I feel that in so many ways, love
is the foundation of everything.
When I say love, I say Christ as
well, because you cannot separate Christ from love.
In John's gospel, it says in this, they
will know that you are my disciples because
you love one another.
We have those strong words in 1 John
chapter 3 that says, if you're not loving
people, you're in darkness still.
And we have so many other verses on
this subject.
And those of you who have gone through
the Orientation series, you have been taken through
one verse after another on the subject of
love.
But love and the doctrine of love is
the easiest thing to pay lip service to.
We say, yes, love is the major thing
and then we go on as usual before
we ever had the doctrine of love.
And this is one of our greatest burdens,
that people will not just have a doctrine
about love, but that love and the love
of God will be a reality in their
lives.
When we come into something like OM, we
have many, many paradoxes and we have also
some legitimate contradictions that we may be trying
to deal with, but they don't always disappear.
One of the greatest problems, for example, we
have in OM, and you'll never understand OM
until you understand some of these things.
For some people it's taken them many years.
But one of the problems you have as
you come into OM is you're coming into
a movement that, humanly speaking, is trying to
do too much at once.
It's just crazy.
And I will tell you, if I didn't
have leaders, quite a few of them, willing
to put in a 17-hour a day,
seven days a week with a few days
off, OM would just not exist in its
present form.
We are in so many things.
And yet, most of the leaders, if not
all of them, are convinced that what they're
into, God has let them into it.
The Bible says, the harvest is plenteous, the
labors are few.
What we need is a businessman to come
along and tell us, what are the implications
of that?
The recruiter says, the harvest is plenty, the
labors are few, therefore we need more labors.
That's the recruiter's vision, you see.
But the man on the field says, the
harvest is plenteous, the labors are few.
What problems are we going to have on
the field in the light of this?
We lack secretaries, we lack mechanics, we lack
leaders.
Because we lack gifted leaders, we put men
into leadership who are not so gifted.
And a lot of problems come.
And so, George Fowler stands up at a
main leader's session in Europe, and he says,
I believe it's time to cut back.
So they stone him, and they get a
new international coordinator.
Because I can tell you, you're not in
a movement that's about to cut back.
I am the brakes.
People think I'm the great pioneer.
I'm the brakes.
I've changed my role.
I've got people like Mike Evans in France,
who wants to increase our total number in
France to a hundred men, who probably wants
to plant ten churches in the next two
years, who's got visions for teams into Tunisia
and already has his advance men in there.
I have people like Jonathan McCrosty, who's supposedly
the faithful number two man, who's not supposed
to be pioneering things so much.
He always tells me he's not a pioneer.
He's now got this new program to send
teams all over black Africa, completely new to
anything that O.M. has been thinking of
up to now.
We've always said, Africa, no.
Let the North African mission take care of
that place and all these other great mission
societies.
We have been involved in North Africa a
little, because we have an Arab world commitment,
and that to some degree, in a very,
very, very tiny way, has included North Africa.
Our original vision for the Muslim world certainly
was more targeted, more aimed at Iran, Afghanistan,
Turkey, that sector of countries.
But as the vision for the Arab world
increased, we suddenly discovered there are Arabs all
over the place.
One of our main thrusts this year is
a new team, full-time team among Arabs
in London, because London has become the center,
in many ways, one of the main centers
of the entire Arab world.
A man told me recently he was in
a hotel in London, and he looked at
the book rack, and no books in English.
They're all Arabic, in a London hotel.
The Arabs have so much money, they are
buying hotels, you know, like you'd go out
and buy a Big Mac.
It's unbelievable.
Before we knew what happened, we ended up
having teams in the Sudan.
I never thought of, oh, I'm working in
the Sudan.
Years ago, I wasn't even aware that there
were so many people in the Sudan speaking
Arabic.
I was more aware of the missionary work
in southern Sudan, which is among the tribal
people.
The great northern sector of Sudan is Arabic
-speaking, and one of the most un-evangelized
places in the world.
What happens?
The ship goes into Sudan, tremendous response.
The Sudanese brother joins the ship, goes through
two years of training, turns out to be
one of the best leaders we've ever had
in the Muslim world.
What does he want to do?
He wants to pioneer the Sudan.
What do you tell him?
No, no, no, we're cutting back.
A movement like I am, it doesn't cut
back easy.
It grows, it goes, it multiplies.
People are led to Christ, people are discipled.
It grows more.
They have more visions.
And I am sitting in a whirlpool of
evangelization that touches now over 150 nations in
the world.
And so this means we've got a lot
of problems.
When a whole new army of people join
us, as this summer, especially when we are
so committed to remain a movement involved with
people on an individual level.
We're not an IBM corporation.
You are not a number or a punch
card.
You are a person.
And we are the kind of movement that
will cancel a whole morning of appointments, a
whole day of appointments to deal with the
problem of one person.
And we have done it hundreds of times,
hundreds of times.
But when you start multiplying the number of
people and start multiplying the number of problems,
eventually you begin to run out of steam.
People wonder why Christian leaders have nervous breakdowns.
Because many of these Christian leaders are committed
to people and yet at the same time
they are committed to a work and to
evangelization.
They are not just running a clinic.
This is not a clinic for the mentally
unstable.
And yet most of us have problems and
perhaps could use some kind of a clinic,
at least for a short time.
So on one hand, we're trying to reach
the world with the gospel of Christ.
And we now have a thousand people full
time on the year program.
Plus a heavy involvement with ex-OMers because
we try to keep fellowship with all those
that have been in the family.
We feel they're very important.
Especially in a place like India where when
they leave OM, it's very, very, very difficult.
In the West, if you leave OM, if
you've got any degree of training, there'll be
ten organizations on your heels, ready to recruit
you.
No problem.
In India, we have to run our own
placement organization to place these brothers, to help
them find a life work.
It's incredibly difficult.
No one knows the pressure on Ray Eicher
and Alfie Franks.
And since Ray Eicher is here, it's on
Alfie Franks to a large degree right now.
That is the toughest job in OM without
any question, in my view.
The men who runs the Bombay or the
India work, 200 full time Indians in almost
every state in India.
Reaching 13 million people with the word of
God every year.
Coordinating the movements of 20 vehicles.
Keeping track with several hundred ex-OMers and
many times welcoming them and shepherding them.
And then a lot of other things, including
about 300 publication projects in 14 languages, many
of them being launched simultaneously.
That one aspect, work in India, is enough
to take all my time, even if I'm
based in London, all my time.
I can be full time just for the
work in India.
Some ways I'd like to do that, because
that's my first love.
In all of OM's field, my first love
is India.
My greater burden in some ways is the
Muslim world, but you see, in India, I've
got 60 million Muslims.
And even the major groups working among Muslims
have forgotten that there are 60 million Muslims
in India.
And we don't have 10 men in India,
in the whole nation, that are specifically working
among Muslims.
10 that I know of, there may be,
I'm sure, some hidden people.
What am I trying to say?
I'm trying to say that a movement moving
at this rate, in so many places, at
this speed, is bound to generate misunderstanding and
miscommunication.
It's bound to have some weaknesses.
I could have lined this whole week up
better.
All I'd have to do is take three
of my top men out of India, or
the Middle East, and send them to Cedar
Rapids.
Six months in advance.
Many groups are able to do this.
Especially groups that are mainly American oriented.
They've got a lot of men, they've got
a lot of money, and if you're working
mainly in affluent countries, as you work, it
generates money.
When you're working with 200 men in India,
the more you generate, the more you lose.
Because these people, most of them, come with
nothing.
Some of our recruits don't come with shoes
on their feet.
And our biggest problem, oftentimes, in India, is
purely economic.
How do the brothers eat tomorrow?
We're not working in an affluent society.
Our brothers don't drive cars in India.
We pray that our brothers may, after two
years of faithful labor, be provided with a
bicycle.
And they will consider that the greatest breakthrough,
some of them in their entire life, a
bicycle.
We like to give men who have been
trained in OM, India, after a couple of
years, we like to give them a bicycle.
When they're with us, sometimes they use a
team bicycle.
So, these are problems that many people don't
understand.
You will find aspects of OM that certainly
are not as organized as they should be.
I am very aware of this.
And yet, I know that to organize things
more, it takes more men, it takes trained
men.
You cannot do everything with amateurs.
And I refuse to sort of pull in
key men from this place and that place
when something can go on perhaps not quite
as planned ahead as we would like, perhaps
not quite as organized as we would like.
And you'll see this in the summer.
And yet, it will still go on.
And the hand of God will still be
upon it.
And the people, in some cases, will learn
a lot more quickly.
Because there is a tendency at times to
want everything done for us.
And I think this oftentimes destroys our own
creativity.
Let's get into some of these basic misunderstandings.
We've just given perhaps some of the reasons
why they're going to come.
What are some of the tough areas?
Number one, misunderstandings in connection with strategy.
People, and Americans more than most people, they
like to have everything in a chart.
They like to have everything very clear.
What is your strategy?
Have people write to me.
What is the strategy of OM?
That's a nice question.
OM has a strategy.
But that strategy greatly changes from one country
to the next.
Those of you who end up in OM,
India, and those of you who end up
in OM, France, you will think you're in
two different organizations.
If you're very strategy conscious.
Because our work in France is very different
from our work in India.
Our work in France is not yet under
national leadership.
It's under the leadership of a Welshman who
is very, very French.
But he's still a Welshman.
And one of his greatest struggles has always
been to get national French leaders.
Most of the teams now will be led
by Frenchmen.
But our area leadership in Britain, I mean
in France, is still under British.
Two or three very strong British leaders.
Our work in India is almost totally under
Indians.
The last major strong foreigner has just resigned.
He's just left.
And so it is really under the hands
of Indians.
The only one who is not perhaps totally
Indian in the main leadership is Ray Eicher.
Who has an Indian passport, born in India,
and is sort of an Indianized or westernized
Indian.
I never know how quite to describe Brother
Ray.
But he is certainly in every way in
India accepted as an Indian.
Speaking the language, being born in the country,
etc.
So the strategy varies from one country to
the other.
And I have to be very honest in
saying that some of our countries are very,
very weak.
They've never got the kind of leadership they've
needed.
They perhaps have been neglected by OM in
general.
It's not easy to emphasize everywhere at once.
And so some fields are weaker than others.
I think something you may want to avoid
if you're going on OM for a longer
term is too much tearing and comparing one
field with the next.
Because one field may have one weakness and
another field has another weakness.
And it's sometimes a waste of time to
do too much tearing and comparing.
Ultimately our strategy, as emphasized already in this
conference, is to know God and to worship
God.
That will be worked out in different fields
in different ways.
That will be worked out in different individuals
in different ways.
That is our greatest goal rather than perhaps
the word strategy.
Another main item in our strategy, of course,
is to see people discipled.
To see people converted and discipled into mature
believers.
Without question this is our main strategy everywhere.
In churches, on teams, in many, many, many
different levels.
Through literature, through Bible study, through personal input,
through counseling.
You are coming into a very non-stereotyped
operation, I can assure you.
And we are still learning new and better
ways to present the claims of Christ and
to accomplish the work of God in the
Arab world and in Turkey and in Iran.
And we are open, not only open to
new ideas, we need them.
We need new ideas, we need new blood.
And we have been able to absorb quite
a lot of it in the past few
years.
So we want to see men discipled, converted,
discipled, growing up, becoming mature.
We could get eight different people to give
us eight different stereotyped answers how that is
to be done or why it's not being
done more.
One of the greatest problems we have in
maintaining communication with people is linked with this.
Somebody comes on OM, they are already 20
years of age.
Their life is largely set.
Their emotional makeup, the way they think, the
way they talk, so many things, it's set.
They come on OM, they are 19, 20.
When they return from OM, especially if they
have been with us a year, any mistake
they do after that, any kink they have
after that, OM taught it to them.
This is what they got from OM, this
represents OM.
And so all these little advertisements that have
been on OM for a year, they came
to us with their kinks and their problems
and their hang-ups.
They went through our training program, at least
part of it.
They may have absorbed some things, they may
have learned some things, most do.
But in many cases, they will have not
learned enough in that one year to totally
take away their problems and difficulties and all
the rest.
And so when they go back home, when
they do something wrong or they say something
wrong or one of their idiosyncrasies or problems
gets exposed, people think, oh, why didn't he
get that resolved when he was on OM?
This training movement, why has he still got
this difficulty?
And then it reflects back.
And so the temptation at that point is
for somebody to come up with an easy
answer.
They say, this is happening because of this.
And if you do this and this and
this, then all these people will be living
in victory.
For 23 years, some of us have been
craving, praying and wanting to see more victory
in people's lives.
We have seen many people radically changed, even
not only when they came to us when
they were 20, when they came to us
when they were 40, which is ample proof
that the Holy Spirit can work and does
change people.
But at the same time, we believe that
spiritual growth is a life process, a life
process.
Some of the so-called mature missionaries out
on the field have come to OM seminars
and in those seminars, God has zeroed in
on some of their needs and some of
their sins and some of their problems and
they have recommitted their lives to Jesus Christ.
If a missionary on the field has to
recommit his life to Jesus Christ after 40
years of service, what can we say?
Recommitting our lives, spiritual growth, coming into maturity,
it never ends.
It never ends.
It's not a matter of coming on OM
for a year and returning spiritual, discipled, trained.
No.
Spiritual growth is not that quick.
And we've got to go on from victory
to victory.
I am convinced that God really wants to
do a deep work in our lives this
summer.
A lasting work.
But it still will only be one summer
in your life.
And there is nothing you can get from
OM or anybody else that will guarantee that
from then on, after the summer, you will
live a consistent, regular Christian life.
No one can guarantee that.
I have been in all kinds of exposure
training programs, many, many different groups, many different
organizations.
And yet I know I am facing things
now that nobody could have totally prepared me
for two years ago.
You can even read in a Christian book
exactly what you can do.
You can read exactly what you're supposed to
do when you have three teenage children.
We've got endless books telling us what to
do when we have teenage children.
It's all written.
All you have to do is read it
and apply it.
It's as simple as that.
But it isn't so simple.
Because we are emotional beings.
And because what I logically know and can
even teach, when I get under pressure and
my little 15-year-old has just uttered
some utter rubbish, and his 17-year-old
brother has told him he's whatever he calls
him, and my daughter starts refereeing, and then
suddenly the phone call, and then something starts
burning, because the only way that I like
steak, and I only have steak every, very,
very once in a while, the only way
I can barely eat it is if it's
rare.
And there it's burning on the stove.
That's enough to completely ruin any spiritual atmosphere
in my home.
Now, you don't have that problem yet.
Too many of you.
In that exact same way.
And I'm not sure I'm coming across, but
what I'm trying to say is that no
matter how much training you get, how much
discipling you get, how much grounding you get,
how revolutionized you get, you're still going to
have to live on this planet, and there's
going to be other struggles and battles and
problems and setbacks.
And no training program is foolproof.
William MacDonald says God is so arranged for
us in this life that the Christian life
has to be a continuous crisis of dependence
upon God.
There's no little, quick, easy answer that we
can give you.
I think that's important.
We've seen people discipled and going on wonderfully.
We've seen others discipled and backslide.
And I want to tell you, if you
start working in the Muslim world, maybe Brother
Steele can give you a better statistic than
we can because they're far more advanced in
this than we are, but nine out of
ten Muslims that you lead to Jesus Christ,
even if you lead them to Christ slowly,
because any decision gathering in the Muslim world
is utter nonsense.
Utter nonsense.
But even people you sincerely lead to Christ
and they seem to make a sane profession
of faith, you can figure pretty well that
nine out of ten will backslide.
I've never heard too many people that can
counter that.
And when this happens, and when the problems
come into the work, the danger is then
you start to grab for the easy answers.
We have people travel through sometimes, the easy
answer boys, most of them come out of
the States.
They travel through a field, people are laboring
away, two years, three years, he comes along
and drops a little sanctification theory.
The reason you aren't seeing blessing here is
you don't have this experience.
We've had whole teams chase after some theory.
Man, when you're out there two, three years
not seeing any breakthroughs, you'll grab anything.
And of course the result usually is just
more confusion.
More confusion.
I don't believe there's any one easy answer
to reaching the Muslim world for Jesus Christ.
Certainly if there's any answer, it's prayer, living
a Christian life, persevering, revival in the church.
They're basic answers, they're not easy answers.
They're basic answers.
But as to some little easy answer as
to how we're going to see the church
planted in Saudi Arabia, perhaps you could share
that with me if you haven't.
Moving on from this area of strategy, which
will be again spoken about, because of time,
and because in some ways that doesn't cause
so many difficulties.
Let me just add that a big part
of our strategy in some countries is church
planting.
We have the literature distribution image, but that
is not our main work.
We fanatically believe in literature.
Literature is a visible thing, isn't it?
It's something you can see.
Therefore people think we're literature work.
I give book reviews, so people think of
course I'm a literature worker.
I set up book tables.
My work at this conference, very little of
it has anything to do with literature.
Give a few nudges once in a while
to Bernie and drop some new things on
his book table and give some book reviews.
But that is visible.
Most of my work here is invisible.
It's in a closed room with an individual.
It's sharing, counseling, discussing, praying.
It's behind the scenes.
No one ever heard of OM as being
a work mainly dedicated to counseling, the ministry
of counseling.
Who are OM?
Most of our leaders give ten times as
much time to counseling as they do to
literature.
I'm talking about a hundred men, the main
men who are carrying this work.
They're in counseling, personal work, relating to people,
problem solving, all that kind of thing, far
more than they are giving out tracts, going
door to door.
In fact, I'd like them to do a
little more of that.
But you don't see that.
And you can't see, generally, church planting.
We feel it would be a hindrance to
our work if we got known as some
kind of new denomination, which we are not.
And we have managed to plant churches without
them becoming in any way OM churches.
I don't even know where they are.
I certainly can't be the leader of it.
Any church we've planted in France, we've seen
about 13 or 14, some of them very
small, some of them growing very quickly.
We've always done it on a cooperative basis
with at least one other person, and we
push the responsibility onto that person, then onto
the elders and the leaders of the local
church, and OM just fades out, just fades
out.
So there are churches in Spain, there are
churches in Italy, there are churches in other
countries, started by OM teams.
These are teams that maybe started in the
summer.
You can only start in the summer.
You can't finish it.
But through the year program, we've followed up
and churches have been planted, and then we've
just phased out.
So don't let anyone tell you that doing
literature work in the summer, which a lot
of you will be doing, especially if you
don't know the language.
Life is not just doing the best thing.
Life is doing the best thing in the
light of the circumstances and with what you
have.
Otherwise only a tiny number of people are
going to do anything.
I don't know who they'll be.
And I believe in the light of the
gifts that you have and the degree of
training that you have that getting involved in
literature evangelism this summer is one of the
most sane, sensible, in-depth things that you
could ever do.
But don't see it as an isolated event
in the middle of the summer.
See it as part of God's program that
other teams come in after the summer and
follow up, and sometimes churches are born.
And correspondence schools follow up on the people
who write in after getting the literature.
We never can follow up on everything.
And ultimately we have to know how to
trust God's Spirit.
We try to put a lot of the
work with the churches.
All of our work among immigrants and Muslims
in Britain, we try to get a local
church involved.
But we have many problems.
Why?
Local churches don't want to be involved in
this.
We have to beg them to get an
OM team to come and work among immigrants
in their area.
It's a major crusade just to get them
to agree in some places.
Much less do an effective follow-up work.
Because there's a lot of social tension in
Britain today over the immigrant question.
And some of the people don't even want
contact with these immigrants.
And it's in the news right now, if
you follow the news, that the Bengalis in
London, they want all their own housing.
This is a very, very big thing in
Britain right now.
So it gets a little more complex than
perhaps it may sound.
So our burden is to see men discipled
and trained and revolutionized and becoming Christ-like
individuals.
We know that seeing living churches planted, especially
where they don't already exist, is basic to
these people going on and growing and multiplying.
We also, of course, believe that literature fits
into every aspect of this work and want
to flood literature out across the world.
But then when it comes down to the
actual practice in a particular country, it is
greatly dependent on the leader in that country,
his burden, his vision, the people he has
with him, the problems he faces, the government
and a lot of other factors.
We could be doing so much more in
India.
Our work in India could just be just
so much further on if we could get
long-term visas for non-Commonwealth people from
them in answer to prayer.
The key in the OM financial policy is
that the initiative must come from the others
in answer to prayer.
It's not a secret society.
If somebody asks me, you know, right now,
look, is there a legitimate need?
I got $5,000 in my pocket.
Is there a legitimate need anywhere in OM
where this could possibly use?
What do you think I say to him?
Well, brother, we don't talk about this.
Or, brother, ask the Lord.
Because probably he's already asked the Lord.
And the Lord's touched him to ask me.
And we're one body.
There is a place for sharing needs.
But the question is, where does the initiative
come from?
Do you become some kind of a beggar?
Or do you allow the Spirit of God
to take the initiative?
I believe the great plague in American Christianity
is too much money, not too little money.
Hudson Taylor said, God's work done in God's
way would not lack God's supply.
And money has been a plague on the
mission field from almost the foundation of time.
I've uncovered more embezzlements out on the mission
field and I don't even want to get
near such things that I'd ever dare want
to talk about.
Money, too much of it, can be a
great plague.
We are conservative.
We are a little bit low profile.
We're not saying we're perfect.
We know we make mistakes.
But we want to press on in this
way of learning what faith is.
Also, we do not say that the man
working for money and getting a salary, he
is not living by faith, but we are
living by faith.
We don't say that.
He has to exercise faith in many, many,
many other ways.
I will tell you, if I had to
come and take some of the jobs that
my prayer partners had, I would need more
faith probably in my present job.
Because if I had to go down and
work for some guy who's lining his pockets
with a sweat on my brow, who's living
high on the hog because I'm working in
his factory making junk to sell to some
other nut down the street so that he
can have more junk, I tell you, I'm
going to need a lot of faith for
that job.
In fact, I know I can't get enough
faith for that job, so I'm not taking
it.
I highly esteem the people who are working
in secular jobs.
I don't believe it's a matter of them
looking up to us, the great full-time
workers.
We can, if we're not careful, become the
biggest band of lazy evangelical hounds that have
ever walked the earth.
Most of us have had it too easy.
We've had too much laid to us on
the platter and it's going to take a
miracle ever to make disciples out of us.
We know it.
That's why you're even risking coming on OM,
the last thing some of you ever wanted
to do.
And I esteem these people working in secular
jobs without any problem.
I esteem them highly.
I believe it takes faith to hold that
job.
I believe it takes faith to be patient
with some ugly boss who's mouthing and swearing
every other day.
Not that all unconverted bosses are like that.
Some of them are very pleasant and they
keep it very nice in the office, take
it all out on their wife when they
get home.
God, this is the key if you want
to just get the summary, works in different
ways in different people.
And there are different kinds of faith.
Faith for finance is not my great problem.
It is sometimes.
But there's so many other aspects of faith.
So many aspects of faith.
Let us not call living by faith some
little narrow thing.
It's just big.
And I'm going to have my faith tested
in whole new ways.
I'm learning to live by faith.
We in OM are not living by faith
in the final stage.
We are learning to walk by faith.
We're learning to walk with God.
Some of us take up jobs when we're
in OM to support ourselves as the Lord
leads.
That takes faith.
On the other hand, I want to be
very clear.
If the world is going to be evangelized,
we do need more people who are willing
to leave their secular job and get every
hour of the day into evangelism.
It's just a practical thing.
We need people who have got time to
get the work done.
Another major area of misunderstanding is the social
policy.
You will hear other messages about this or
at least questions answered.
And we will be having question and answer
sessions.
These are just, you know, little extras I'm
throwing in and hoping it will be of
some help.
OM social policy is not legalistic.
I do not believe it is legalistic.
It is pragmatic.
It's sensible and sane in the light of
the situation we are in.
Here we come, two and a half thousand
people together from 25 nations.
Interracial, interculture, international.
Men and women, in many cases, working together,
traveling together.
Many of them will fight through times of
loneliness when they are first taken out of
their own culture.
It is a natural situation for one big
conglomeration of messes.
Social messes.
This one feeling he is in love with
that one.
He met her yesterday on the food line
and a slight tinkle came off her eye
that he felt was a deeper vibration of
inner soulish tranquility that needed to find a
resting place in someone else.
No doubt you don't express it like that
in America anymore.
They never did.
We feel that for a summer crusade, dating
is just out.
The whole thing is so short.
We are trying to get so much into
your heads.
There are so many potential problems, miscommunications.
The whole thing is impossible anyway.
And then to say, well look, just feel
free in the summer.
You know, we are not under law.
We are under grace and soon he is
wanting to take grace out.
That is not the grace we are talking
about.
It will work.
We are not saying there is no problems.
We are not saying there are not a
few people that are going to misunderstand this
and get a bit uptight.
But in praying, in thinking, in wrestling with
this and in these years of experience, this
seems to be the way.
The miracle about OM is that most of
your leaders, many of them, the longer termers,
have followed this policy.
OM is a young movement relatively speaking.
People, you know, didn't come in from here
and now tell you to do this.
They grew up in it.
Jonathan McCroskey, the leader of all work in
Europe, kept the social policy and followed the
rules of the game as we say and
was wonderfully married I think when he was
30.
OM is a little different than the average
set up over here in that many, many
people in Europe are willing to wait until
they are 25, 30, even 35 before they
get married.
They are not paranoid.
They are not as dependent on marriage as
we are here.
At Cambridge and Oxford University, many students are
married.
You come to American University, you know, you
think it's a used car.
There are hundreds and thousands of cars because
there are families and they need a car
and many, many university students are married.
At seminary, I was speaking at one or
two seminaries, so many of the students are
married.
At Cambridge and Oxford and throughout Europe, there
are young marriages.
Don't misunderstand me.
There are plenty of young marriages.
But many are willing just to plow it
on.
They don't think of marriage till later.
This has been one of the greatest helps
in doing what OM wants to do.
And personally, this is going to frighten some
of you.
I believe some of you in this summer
are going to get delivered from a boyfriend
or a girlfriend that is not God's choice.
You are only hitched onto that person because
you are impatient by nature or lustful or
lonely or you got some other hang up.
And you've latched onto each other and you
think, this is love.
And the bells are already ringing.
Those bells.
Now, let me get the balance.
You know, Wednesday night, balance.
I'm sure that some of you here, God
has shown you your life partner.
Praise the Lord!
I got married at 21.
That's enough to balance it out.
No sense in me talking about McCrosty.
Of course, I was brainwashed.
We will not ask Burt Kempis to testify
at this time.
But it's been wonderful to see people realize
that the major thing in life is not
to get married.
With one out of every two marriages in
America ending in a divorce court.
Don't you think we could turn our brains
on a little more on this issue?
Don't you think it would help to wait
a little more?
Montgomery, that great general, said, until a man
is proficient in the warfare, let him not
even consider the subject of marriage.
Now, I'm convinced if some of you get
a little more proficient in prayer, communication, discipline,
all these things, then when you get married,
it's going to work.
By God's grace, we've never had anybody in
20 years meet with NOM after even a
little bit of training.
Meet with NOM and ever come apart.
Not one in 20 years.
The first one may come.
That won't hinder my philosophy or my burden
about this.
But I believe it's one of the proofs
that if young people get some training and
some grounding and get into the Lord and
His Word and learn about discipleship and then
such people get together, their marriage will work.
It will not be some selfish satisfying of
man's passions or some ego trip or mutual
ego trip, but it will be from God.
And so all we're saying is, look, for
one year or for one summer, can we
lay this aside a little and get on
with growth, with evangelism, with prayer, with a
disciplined life and all the rest.
Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and
His righteousness and all these things shall be
added unto you.
Is not God capable of taking care of
this great and important thing in your life?
I believe He is.
We want to learn what it is to
wait upon the Lord.
Someone says, what if I fall in love
with someone this summer?
Look, if you don't fall in love with
someone this summer, probably something wrong with you.
All these beautiful people floating around.
I used to fall in love with at
least six every year, you know, six at
a time.
Never one at a time until I met
my wife and even then I was still
confused.
But falling in love, I better define my
terms.
In other words, getting a little infatuation for
someone and little bells ring or whatever happens.
That doesn't mean, you know, this is from
God, the Lord has spoken.
And because you dream about her, oh, the
Lord's given me a revelation in the night.
I know people that dream about horses, but
they don't think they should go out and
marry a horse.
And actually, contrary to what some people may
feel, we feel this is a more liberating
way.
You say, well, I want to be more
social-rounded.
I want to get to be able to
relate more with the sisters.
That's not a great problem unless you do
something, you know, extreme.
It's the idea of relating to only one
sister that's going to be the problem this
summer.
And I think it's good.
There's freedom.
We pray together, talk together, we work together.
You get to know different people, get to
know different sisters if you're a man and
vice versa.
But I'm convinced the devil is going to
try some of his ugliest tactics in this
area.
Now, if you have an extreme problem in
the area of lust or sex, and there
are people who have this, I think you
should share that.
If you feel you cannot get through the
summer without getting messed up, I think you
should share that.
Not that we're going to say in most
cases, well, you can't come, you know, we
don't want to take any risks.
Our whole movement is all risks.
But we'd like to know.
We'd like to be able to pray for
you because that's very, very important.
Well, there's other misunderstandings, but I think if
I don't finish, I'll have another one on
my hands because the time is up.
I think that the Lord can give us
wisdom.
We want throughout the summer your feedback as
to things that you feel we need to
improve on and learn about.
But more than that, we need your arms,
we need your legs to help us to
work together to get the job done.
One of the hardest things in some places,
especially when we want to be honest and
we're willing to face our weaknesses, one of
the hardest things in turn is to get
loyalty, to get people loyal to a particular
effort.
We're not asking you at this stage to
be loyal to OM for the rest of
your life.
We hope we can be loyal to each
other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
That's what our loyalty is.
But unless we have a degree of oneness
and pulling together, even for the summer, because
it's one thing to talk about the future,
but we've got something big right now.
Right now we've got to do it.
It's not all theory.
We've got to go out from this conference
and actually put this stuff into practice.
It's very, very real.
I've got to do it living on that
ship with my family this summer.
And a lot of other things that I'm
not too keen, as we say in England,
too keen on doing, but by God's grace,
I'm going to do it.
And we need people pulling with us.
We don't mind you asking questions.
We don't mind people sharing, especially when they
go through the right channels.
And if you have something against a brother
or something against a leader, there's only one
channel, him or her.
Isn't it amazing how strongly Bill Gothard has
emphasized this in his seminars?
But where are the people to put it
into practice?
Because it's one of the toughest challenges in
the Christian life to stand and work through
God's channel of communication instead of gossip and
backbiting and negativism and cynicism, which just spreads
like cancer.
And what do they call that?
I can't think of the word, but when
we hint at something, intimidation, we can intimidate
someone.
Well, that's another whole message.
But I just pray that somehow through our
fellowship groups, through these practical sessions, through the
question and answer times, when we arrive there
in Europe, we will be to some degree
of one heart and of one mind and
ready to, in one sense, stop discussing, but
we can always discuss and work.
Because I tell you, there's a lot of
work to be done if men are to
be reached with the gospel.
Miscommunications are bound to come.
Some of you in this very conference are
not going to get the attention and the
love that we would like to give you.
You just won't among 400 people.
And in the summer, some of you are
going to be missed.
Sometimes it's almost by a freak, almost by
a...
We can only say the providence of God
that some people get so linked in and
get so blessed and come back.
This is the greatest experience of my lifetime.
They write articles for this and that and
others come back.
I made it.
Whatever way you come back, whatever way you
come back, God is not dead.
And Christ is alive and He's in you.
And our loyalty and our hope is not
O.M. or a summer crusade or a
program or a set of principles.
It's Jesus living, working, abiding in us.
May our loyalty be, Jesus.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you that we can speak
in a sense, heart to heart.
It'd be easier if I could just have
an hour with each person here and we
could just go take a walk and rap
about these things.
But somehow, 20 years after it all started,
it just doesn't work that way.
At least for everyone.
And so we thank you and I thank
you for the freedom just to open my
heart.
It's a bit of a mumble jumble.
But I believe you can put it together.
I believe that many of these young people
can sense what I'm trying to say and
that we can pull together and believe you
to help us solve the problems and to
deal with the miscommunications and to be joyful
servants of your Son, Jesus Christ, this summer
despite some of the difficulties we face.
Lord, you know sometimes even the things we
say in some of our messages, they would
have been better not said.
Sometimes even an announcement we make doesn't even
make sense.
Oh God, you alone can put it all
together.
Some of the littlest things the old devil
tries to get going and bring confusion.
We need your wisdom and we just believe
you're going to keep this together to make
this summer count for eternity.
Lord, you know those that have got social
relationships that are not really from yourself.
We pray they may at least be willing
to wait and to make sure.
We pray for those that are confused about
praying and finance.
Lord, you'll first of all let them rest
in yourself.
Better to relax than you and not have
any money.
And we believe you can then provide.
It's going to be a battle.
Teach us about prayer.
Teach us about faith.
And make us realize we're not going to
learn all this in one week or one
summer.
We give you the glory now.
Thank you for this time together.
In Jesus name.
Amen.