I would like to pick up where I
left off about two Fridays ago when we
were dealing with some of the questions that
people are asking around Bromley in our own
team.
Some of the difficult areas where we're constantly
having discussion, sometimes disagreement, and we're trying to,
in a sense, clarify the direction that we
are going in.
We talked about this problem of discipline and
how we enforce discipline.
As I thought back over this, I hope
I didn't give the idea that we make
no effort to enforce the OM disciplines and
policies.
Of course, we do, but what I'm talking
about is in the ultimate, spiritual reality will
not come from us enforcing policies.
It has to come from you, and especially
the really more significant issues.
For instance, there's been quite a rally to
enforce the parking policy.
Of course, that kind of thing is easily
measurable.
If your car is parked on top of
somebody else's car, you can see that, and
you can say you're not supposed to park
your car on top of other people's car,
someone else's car.
But we cannot see, whether you're having your
quiet time, we cannot very easily measure evangelism.
We allow a lot of freedom.
Some do it with their churches.
Some do it in other ways.
There are, of course, especially as we're honest
and we fellowship with one another, these things
are found out.
But what I was trying to say is
that in the long run, it's self-discipline
that's going to make this thing move in
the way that it should.
Even as we attempt to try to encourage
people to keep the policies and enforce the
policies, we can't keep up with it all.
There's so many people, there's so many complications,
there's so many, when you start investigating something,
what actually happened, some of us have had
that privilege, and you find out all the
different ramifications.
You can throw your whole day away and
give yourself to trying to figure out one
particular situation.
There are some things, sometimes as leaders we
have to say, Lord, you know, we've done
what we can, we have to leave the
rest with you.
Well, I hope you understand that.
Certainly we believe that in the work of
God, and I believe this is true in
the church, there must be discipline for serious
sin and disobedience.
Do not think for a moment that someone
is going to commit fornication within O.N.
and not be disciplined and dealt with.
Here again, things can happen that we don't
know anything about.
I had someone write me seven years after
committing an act of impurity in O.N.,
seven or eight years, he was on his
conscience all that time, because he knew he
was walking in darkness.
It wasn't in a sense that the sin
wasn't forgiven, because that was the moment he
repented before God, but he felt he had
been living in deception toward the leaders because
he had given the wrong impression.
This didn't need to be brought into public,
it never got any further than my own
desk.
The Lord has a way of convicting and
convincing.
Then we spoke about the enemy's effort to
bring disunity between different age groups, and that
some of our problems here are based on
the wide range of people, different ages.
And we dealt, I hope, with a very
important issue of trying to understand the situation
of the married woman in O.N. And
I don't want to repeat what I've said
because it is available, I believe, on tape,
but I think it's such an important issue.
Sensitivity toward the married women who often have
a very unrewarding job, behind the scenes, more
easily misunderstood, and it's easy for people
to misjudge.
And we talked about the danger of misjudging
people and generalizations coming in.
Now I don't know if I got to
the next point of speaking about the complexity
of having so many older O.M.ers
and new O.M.ers all together on
the same team.
I don't think I did.
But I think this is something that's very,
very important.
In the work we have tried, with the
help of the Lord, not to be a
respecter of persons.
We don't have little badges we give out
for so many years on O.M. There's
not an official seniority ruling.
There are, however, differences between a person who
is coming with his wife and children for
longer term commitment to a work and somebody
on a year program.
Now I know that on the ships they
have had to face these differences because to
live on a ship for a year, most
people can do that.
You know, they say in the psychology books
you can endure almost anything for a short
period.
In fact, you're constantly encouraged as you think
of the day that you're going to leave
and the benefits you'll have after that or
the bigger place you'll be living in after
that.
Certainly, I, after a period of time on
the ship, came to appreciate land and woods
and a little more space than ever before
in my life.
I developed that to some degree in India
as well.
And especially when children come into the scene,
O.M. has not faced up enough.
We have to some degree, but we've not
faced up enough.
I tried to speak on this once to
a group of leaders and I felt no
one was even really catching what I was
trying to say.
The whole thing got sidetracked and people started
arguing over something that wasn't even related to
what I was trying to say.
I was trying to talk about teenagers, but
so few of the leaders had any teenagers,
it got sidetracked into something else.
You'll never be able to talk to people
about teenagers, don't have them.
When an evangelical leader finds his little daughter
walks in and tells daddy she's pregnant or
that she's on pot or she finds out
some other way.
It's very common and very common among evangelical
Christian leaders' children.
Then he'll wake up.
You know, one of the funniest films I've
ever seen, it just blew me apart, was
The Great Santini.
I saw it in an airplane.
And this guy was an extreme choleric Air
Force pilot and he loved his son.
His son, Ben, he was trying to make
his son into a little junior of himself.
It was just horrible.
I was weeping one minute and laughing the
next.
But he had one daughter who was totally
neglected.
She couldn't get five minutes out of the
father.
And of course he was a southerner, American
Air Force pilot.
She was desperate, she wanted to get a
conversation with his father.
So she finally came up one day, she
was going out of the house, said dad,
dad, I'm pregnant.
He didn't bat an eyelash, he was too
busy.
Dad, dad, he's black.
He didn't bat an eyelash.
Then he stopped.
I forget what happened.
None of those things were true.
She just wanted somehow to get some attention
from her father.
And it's my burden that with NOM, somehow
there can be this maximum understanding of people
within their different situations and an effort to
try to understand why people are doing what
they're doing.
Rather than coming down with an immediate judgment
or an immediate appropriation of values, we try
to understand the complicated situations that people are
in.
Especially as they have children, though there are
people who are not married and who are
without children, who also have very complicated situations
in their families.
And again and again in the work we've
tried to maintain flexibility.
We've tried to move on the basis of
freedom.
Of course, suppose we talk to somebody and
after counseling with them we feel they need
a couple of extra days off.
They may not outwardly look like the kind
that need that.
They may not be married, they may not
have children because of Easter holiday.
We can understand so and so has to
be with his children.
That we can understand, I hope.
Here's maybe just a single person.
Everybody's under the strain of the work.
Some people are being challenged maybe to put
in extra hours.
Suddenly Susie Q has got two days off.
That is a moment when we must ask
God to give us love and compassion and
maturity.
It is not the privilege of someone else
in the team to suddenly make a judgment.
Oh, he or she's a favorite.
Oh, why is he getting a day off?
And I haven't had a day off in
months or I asked for a day off
and I didn't get it.
That could actually happen because we are not
computers.
The leaders are not computers.
We're human beings constantly wrestling sometime in one
day up to 30, 40, 50 decisions.
And one minute we may evaluate something and
we may challenge you.
Well, look, you wanted that day off but
could you hold up on that a couple
of weeks?
Maybe if that person had come back and
re-explained it, the next day the leader
would change his mind and say, well, yeah,
I rethought that, maybe you should take it.
It's the privilege of every person to change
his or her mind.
In fact, it's when you push for quick,
instant decisions, sometimes you don't always get the
best one because the person didn't have a
chance to think or pray about it.
But often when we've given a particular privilege
or whatever, it's because we've tried to think
through that and we've tried to sense a
person's individual needs.
Why has Jerry Smith suddenly flown back to
America?
I can tell you a few years ago
that kind of move would have immediately brought
several telephone calls to me.
America was considered a long ways away.
You didn't fly back there for 14 day
trips.
But here's an older man with a family.
The Atlantic now and flying over the Atlantic
is not much more costly than flying up
to Sweden.
And you know, there are cases, I'm not
saying in his case now, where we either
give that freedom and take that special step.
Usually the person has to see the funds
come in for it.
Sometimes in emergency that is not even considered,
at least at the time.
If we don't give that kind of freedom
and make that kind of decision, then some
of these people, they're just not going to
be able to be with us.
It's as simple as that.
One of the reasons quite a few people
have stayed with this movement longer term is
because they know of our concern for them
and their personal needs and their families.
Yes, we have failed in this.
Yes, if you want to be literal, we
have been inconsistent.
Who is perfectly consistent in all of these
things when you're dealing with such a huge
number of people?
But I think as we see this and
see that everybody to some degree must be
given individual personal treatment.
We don't have an equality rule.
Everybody eats the same food.
This is nonsense.
Everybody is going to drive the same age
car in the same condition.
That's impossible.
Everybody is going to live in the same
size house.
It's impossible.
And our teaching, foundation teaching, was each person
according to the need.
And years ago the Lord showed us this
wasn't just physical need or financial need, it
was emotional need.
Some people are not as strong emotionally.
I know people in L.A. who are
just strong as a rock emotionally.
I've never seen them in an emotional tither,
if you know that word.
Others, you know, if a pigeon flies over
their head and you know says cuckoo, they're
in a crisis.
Much less if it dropped its load.
I'll never forget when that happened in Paris.
Many of you have heard this story.
And Mike Evans said, well praise God elephants
don't fly.
Let's move on.
Another area, problem area that we're wrestling with
is the fact that different people have different
priorities.
Different people have priorities.
Now this is good, but again it can
create disunity.
I've noticed those who make prayer their big
priority.
Now that's good.
It is not the only priority in the
Christian life.
Prayer without love is worth very little as
far as I can see in my New
Testament.
And C.T. Studd used to be really
heavy.
That prayer was often a cop-out.
In his day, probably true today, prayer was
a cop-out for obedience.
I would say that today praise has become
a cop-out for obedience.
One of the main things Christians do and
feel that they should do is sit in
little groups just praising the Lord.
There's nothing wrong with that, but that must
lead to action.
That must lead to obedience.
It must lead to change lives, to holiness
or otherwise.
It's similar to what C.T. Studd said.
And I think it's possible to take even
the very best things like prayer and become
extreme.
It certainly is possible to do it with
fasting, but we must respect one another's priority.
Here's a brother that really feels extra prayer
is now needed, and he wants to pray
in every prayer meeting to the end.
I've never been overwhelmed by that crowd, but
there there he is.
Here's someone else.
Evangelism is a greater priority to him.
And of course, when all people of these
two different priorities get on the team, it's
easy to judge one another.
But if we think they're the only two
things that people get carried away with or
feel are the priorities, we haven't been around
long.
What about the man who feels that organization,
management, getting things done decently in order, getting
your work, this is the priority.
And then you get the person who comes
along and says, look, this is all great,
but fellowship is the priority.
Now each one can give a tremendous message.
And at times when we get a heavy
message on one subject, we all, you know,
the cloud of guilt comes over and the
rain starts coming down.
And we get somebody's priority is fellowship.
And he's got some of these interesting quotations.
And we're told we don't know anything about
fellowship and we're all unloving.
And to some degree, it's always true.
We measure ourselves next to Jesus.
Then the next week, somebody with a prayer
priority comes down on us.
The next week, somebody with an evangelism priority
comes down upon us.
And then Mr. Management, his priority comes upon
us.
I tell you, myself, after that I'm finished.
I no longer know whether I'm coming or
going.
Because it is impossible to emphasize all of
these things all of the time.
It's just impossible.
The greatest men of God you're reading about
didn't live that way.
Forget it.
You think you know the story of Whitefield
and Wesley and Hudson Taylor, D.L. Moody,
you name them, probably you only know part
of the story.
And I think, therefore, we have to see
how different members of the body make different
contributions.
And we all need these things to some
degree.
That's agreed upon.
Christian life should consist of prayer and evangelism,
fellowship, love, organization, discipline.
But different members of the body will be
stronger.
We're all growing.
And I think it's so important to see
that the key thing isn't the triumph of
individualism, each one of us cutting our own
way, each one of us trying to be
a man or a woman of God.
But to somehow also see we're one body.
Maybe one person cannot pray on into the
night.
I know my own wife, it's just impossible
for her to go into the ends of
these nights of prayer.
But maybe someone else can.
Maybe someone is weaker in evangelism and they
need to be taken by the hand and
encouraged and protected in a sense as they
go or be given a lower dosage.
Someone else is stronger in that.
Maybe someone is having difficulty in communicating.
Relating to people is not easy.
I feel very concerned when people quickly wipe
a church off as being dead.
We often do this without knowing what really
is that church situation.
It could be that the people over the
years have become very introverted, very quiet, very
shy.
Maybe they've been hurt more than we ever
know.
So when you go in that church, they're
not all bubbling all over.
They had several that did bubble over.
One of them is down in the mental
institution down the road.
The other one committed suicide and the other
one did something else.
People have had hard experiences with the effervescent
bubbly type extroverts.
They are often people who go so long
and then explode.
Like this man in the great Santini.
So I think we need to understand why
people may be a little reserved.
Why they may be a little quiet.
Some of them may have tried to relate
more.
Some of them may have tried different kinds
of evangelism.
They may have tried throwing themselves intensely into
some kind of a prayer circle or some
kind of a revival group and they've been
hurt.
They've been burned.
We're dealing with a church today, congregations of
people who have been hurt.
They have been burned.
They at times have been misled and they
have seen false zeal because we're not dealing
with people often who have been living as
Christians 10 years.
We're dealing with people who have been Christians
10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years.
Therefore, working with the church, there has to
be a high degree of sensitivity.
And if that is true within the church,
it's also true here.
Beware, I've said this before, but I say
it again, beware of seeing your strong points
in comparison to someone's weak points.
The thing that has helped revolutionize my life
and I have a long way to go
is again and again the Lord has shown
me my weak points.
They're just always there.
Again and again that has shut my mouth.
When I was about to read the riot
act, even with my own wife or some
other brother, come down heavily in some situation,
I just saw my own weaknesses.
And again and again that has helped me
to be patient with other people.
I would say that's probably saved my marriage.
I would probably say that God has used
even my sins, the sins I've committed with
my eyes, the lust of the flesh, which
I in no way excuse.
But I will tell you because of my
failure with my eyes, I got a long
way to go on humility, I'm not even
sure what it is.
But I know that without those failures, I
might be a very obnoxious person because I
was so idealistic, so perfectionistic.
I just somehow yearn that within OM there
could be just a little more humility.
I'm not asking for a half a ton.
You might not be able to handle that,
people would think you've gone crazy.
But a little more humility, I think would
solve, if this is an exaggeration, forgive me,
but I would say would solve 25%
at least of all of our difficulties around
Bromley and other parts of the world as
well.
The next point I've written here is how
easy it is to misjudge people when we're
trying to accomplish so much.
So much is happening.
We're trying to, and I haven't got time
to go into this, reach the whole world
with the gospel of Christ in the midst
of an exploding population.
We've got the long term work, the short
term work, we've got the ships, we've got
the literature, we've got the cassettes, we've got
the audio visuals.
We've got all kinds of just general ministry
meetings.
When I leave here, I go all the
way to Fife, Scotland and return tomorrow morning.
It's an 800 mile round trip.
And the secretaries know when I go on
a trip like that, that triples their workload
when I get back.
And I've wrestled with this, Lord, are we
going too fast?
I have slowed down, O.M. has slowed
down in some areas, but we still have
the command upon us to go into all
the world, to pray forth labors into the
harvest field.
And we have this sense, we have this
sense that we may not have so much
longer to do this kind of work.
I don't have the easy answer to this,
but I do know one thing, when we're
moving at this speed, trying to do so
much, there are bound to be a never
-ending stream of misunderstandings.
We've got to learn to live with some
of these misunderstandings, how to think our way
through them, how to cast them upon the
Lord, how to openly discuss them without becoming
critical, cynical, judgmental, or anything else along that
line.
We don't know what's happening behind the scenes.
I'll never forget someone coming to me on
the ship in the early years and saying,
you know, nobody's getting any personal attention here,
all the leaders are just running around.
And as I talked, I realized this person
didn't see the leaders very much, and when
he saw them, they seemed to be just
going from point A to point B.
And as we talked it out, we realized
that the leader was going to point A,
where he just spent two hours with one
brother, to point B, where he's just spending
another hour or two with another brother.
And the reason this person had the image
of just a person going here to there,
is because you don't do counseling in public.
I don't, you know, park myself out in
front of 9 London Road, or here at
1 Sherman Road, in a little box in
front, and put a counseling, George Brown Counseling,
and there I sit, counseling people, and you're
all by, wow, boy, what a sensitive, compassionate
brother giving himself, look who he's counseling, we
gave up on him years ago, wow.
Counseling is something you just do in private.
And it's so easy to misjudge people.
On the early days of the ship, anybody
who wasn't working on the deck of the
engine and sweating in overalls, you know, people
looked at him, what's his ministry, what's he
doing?
You just dare bring someone to the ship
in those days, probably changing now, who would
be classified as a pastor, forget it, they
didn't want pastors, they wanted engineers.
They wanted men who could work, and if
we brought a pastor in those days, and
of course a lot of us were doing
pastoral ministry all the time, if you brought
a pastor in, you'd have to bring him
in like the Catholics, a working priest.
You know, the Catholic Church decided to invade
industry, and they mobilized thousands of working priests.
They went right in, they were engineers, they
were workers, and yet their main work was
to be a priest.
And we have, in O.M., working priests.
We don't use that term, of course, but
they're men who have jobs, and they're working
a fair number of hours a day in
a particular job, but they have a pastor's
heart, and they are involved in that ministry.
More, many of us will ever know.
Of course, more needs to be done.
And I would like every one of you
to read Selwyn Hughes' book on people helping.
And he points out how every Christian is
a counselor.
He doesn't like that term, he uses the
word people helper.
And I'd like Gary to arrange for everybody
to get a copy of that book.
STL.
Handles it.
Going on to the next point, I've written
here, sometimes when I write these things down,
and then it comes weeks later I'm speaking
on it, what I had in my mind
then, I can't figure out now, because I
only have just a few reminders, so I
can end up with a totally different statement.
But I've written here, failure to confront.
Now confronting people, I think is one of
the hardest tasks we have, isn't it?
I think it's more difficult than evangelism.
For me, when I know I should confront
someone, to slip out to Bromley South and
give out tracts would be a cop-out.
But I think we've got to mature in
this area.
We know Matthew 18, we know other scriptures.
Let's just look at Matthew 18.
Some people would be unhappy if I didn't
read at least something from the scriptures.
Though I believe everything I'm talking about is
based on what the Bible teaches.
I would love you to write me and
quote me one scripture that would prove otherwise.
Verse 15, moreover if thy brother shall trespass
against thee, go and tell him.
Tell him his fault between thee and him
alone.
Alone.
If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained
thy brother.
But if he will not hear thee, then
take with thee three, take with thee one
or two more, that in the mouth of
two or three witnesses every word may be
established.
And if he shall neglect to hear them,
tell it unto the church.
But if he neglect to hear the church,
let him be as unto thee as a
heathen man and a tax collector.
I believe that we are called to confront
people in love.
I think of those words, the scripture I'm
thinking of where you are spiritual among you.
Let's look at Galatians.
It used to be just here before Ephesians.
Chapter 6 verse 1, brethren, if a man
be overtaken in a fault, you who are
spiritual.
That's of course where a lot of people
drop out.
I'm not spiritual, thank you very much.
Restore such a one in the spirit of
meekness.
We need a Bible study on the word
meekness.
I've been listening to a lot of the
study program material lately.
In fact, I just had Randy Wilson, I'm
a little behind.
It's interesting to just listen to all the
various teaching that you're receiving here.
But I don't know if we've covered this
word meekness.
Restore such a one in the spirit of
meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
Bury one another's burdens and so fulfill the
law of Christ.
Immediately in my mind come the words of
A.W. Tozer that the greatest need in
the church is discernment.
Because we have to discern that which is
clearly a sinful wrong thing that needs to
be confronted, needs to be corrected and that
which may be a misunderstanding or maybe an
area of weakness where obviously the brother is
already working on it and is aware of
it and doesn't necessarily need one more person
to pounce on him.
Often it's not what we say but how
we say it.
That's been a great failure often in my
life.
People of choleric temperament have a way of
communicating harshly even when they're not aware of
it, especially if they're preachers.
And one of the greatest problems I've had
is as someone who used to take 900
meetings a year, come back into my home
and try to communicate to my children in
a non-preachy way, without raising my voice,
without thinking I was calling them to the
altar for repentance.
And I have failed many times because I
get so hyped up.
And the Lord has had to deal very
strongly with me in this.
But we must learn to confront.
That doesn't mean as a person walks out
of the warehouse you come beelining down the
road, park yourself in front of him with
others watching and rebuke him in the name
of the Lord.
If anybody does that I would like to
know about it because I would like to
confront privately, lovingly, walking through the woods.
I often take people on walks when I
want to lay something on them.
I also walk people when I don't have
anything to say, just want to listen to
them.
So if I asked you to go for
a walk, unless you're a sister don't worry
about it.
I really believe we've got to increase this
practice of talking to people.
And one of the keys, and we're trying
to teach you things here that will be
valuable to you all your life.
One of the keys is not to accuse
but to ask questions.
You don't go to a brother and say,
you were breaking the social rule when you
walked that girl out of Bromley South Station.
That is not the way to do it.
You approach him and say, oh brother was
your sister visiting you yesterday?
Something similar to that.
Linked with this there must be the willingness
to forgive people if they confront you wrongly.
That's all part of the growing procedure.
If you're going to learn to confront you're
going to make mistakes.
You're going to confront people and have your
facts wrong.
That's why asking questions.
Getting the facts first is so important.
But even after that at times you may
be on the end of being confronted for
something that even though you try you just
can't see where you went wrong.
Praise the Lord for that opportunity.
You're in God's work because you're in God's
work you're exposed to some of these things
and I believe if you're confronted or corrected
wrongly that there's a degree of growth and
privilege that comes with that.
Just very, very quickly I've written here the
whole problem of us not getting enough fellowship.
There is a sense, I could give a
whole message on this, that in OM you
get too much fellowship.
Some people.
Not most.
Why do I say that?
Because I've been all over the world and
I've talked to Christians who have gone on
for years with almost no fellowship with anybody.
We are in the western world especially with
all the emphasis on counseling.
Psychiatrists, every minister getting some training in this.
It's a very big thing in our culture.
Counseling and fellowship and all that kind of
thing.
And I think it's good.
I think it's good.
I'm for more of it so don't misunderstand
me.
But when some of you leave OM you're
not going to get it.
You're not going to get it.
Some of you will.
You'll get more than you had with us.
That's why the house groups are growing faster
than the established churches.
Because they are so strong on this.
But if you think they're so strong on
it, you may want to list next to
it their weaknesses.
Because we're talking about the whole counsel of
God.
And of course a little house group of
40 people that has 7 leaders, who don't
engage in evangelism, don't have world vision, and
don't do a lot of these other things,
they have a lot of time to give
to their people.
And I think the Lord is to some
degree using that.
But it's not the total answer.
Because in our working with people, if we
don't really ultimately get them cast upon God
and used to harder situations and more difficult
times, when the heavy winds of testing come,
they will go down.
And some of these people are already going
down.
And personally I would lean a little more
toward the Lloyd-Jones approach to some of
these things.
Discipline, dying to self, learning how to press
on in the midst of loneliness and problems.
Do you know they did a study in
inter-varsity in America and showed that after
the students come out of these inter-varsity
groups, because they get so much good ministry
and so much challenge in prayer, and I
tell you the people that I have rating
inter-varsity wouldn't say that the average university
group in America was that strong, but they
found they cannot adjust to their churches.
Because their churches just don't have the same
kind of input, prayer meetings, special speakers, John
Stotts or banner conventions.
They go back to their own church, here's
a preacher that's just barely learned how to
communicate, here are a lot of other problems,
and they can't handle the local church scene.
We have this on OM all the time.
People come on a summer crusade, they get
a taste of these hot prayer meetings, maybe
you don't think they're so hot, but compared
to what they come from, they are hot,
they get a taste of relationship, of fellowship,
and they cannot adjust back into their own
church, and many OMers, ex-OMers are leaders
in house fellowship.
Another church recently split, I noticed the ex
-OMer went off with the split.
Pastor went too.
Well the time is gone, but I hope
these miscellaneous burdens, exhortations, that come from my
feeble observance of what's happening around here, will
help you in your attempt, the greatest single
goal that I trust you have, to become
more Christ-like.
Search the pictures and see if these things
can stop.
Read those seminary chapters that every OMer is
supposed to memorize.
Listen in your discipleship, manual, a book that
perhaps you want to pull back off the
shelf, and re-read the old one before
the new one comes, because the new one
is, I understand, quite tame, compared to the
old discipleship manual.
I don't think it's heresy, but it's been
tamed down in order to keep us from
looking like a cult.
There are a few things in the old
manual that could have been misunderstood, and kept
in the hands of just everybody and anybody
that, you know, was some kind of a
cult.
So we just try to adjust things, and
to communicate some of the truths in it,
in a clearer way.
Then let's just pray.
Father, we thank you that we have the
privilege of even meeting like this, and to
think through some of these things.