It's a privilege to be here in this
place.
We thank you for this tremendous place.
The great provision it has been for the
work, which over the years has enabled us
to channel even more finance out to the
front lines and into people and into projects
across the globe.
Lord, I just know with all my heart
you want to speak to us tonight.
You already have spoken.
I thank you for these reports and challenges
in the time of worship.
And Lord, help each one of us to
receive what you want, to give us that
we may be more mature, that we may
be more like you, oh Christ.
This is our longing.
We know this has to be simultaneous with
our passion to reach the lost.
And only you can keep it in balance
and in focus.
So we ask for your help.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
It's a privilege to be able to share
with you.
I really believe that little mini-conferences like
this are so strategic.
It's a privilege to be able to share.
My heart is very, very full.
Can you imagine, I've just come from a
gathering of almost one million men.
I've come directly from Washington and arrived this
morning.
I could spend my whole session just talking
about promise keepers.
I was discouraged to see a very negative
article in British press against promise keepers from
before the rally.
And then somebody handed me this amazing positive
article from the Daily Telegraph after the rally
that they say has really silenced many of
the critics.
As I watched Coach Bill McCartney on television,
main primetime evening interview program, the night before
the big Saturday event, the heavy questions that
came on him.
God just gave him tremendous grace to answer
those questions in a powerful way.
As I was walking toward the area where
the solemn assembly was being held, I heard
a lot of women screaming.
And I knew that one of the extreme
feminist organizations was running a simultaneous protest.
I never did meet them, though I looked
for them on the Capitol steps where they
were supposed to be.
But as I heard this group of women
shouting, I thought that must be this group
attacking the promise keepers.
But in fact, it was another women's group
affirming these men.
I walked over real close to see if
I could pick up some of that affirmation.
We certainly live in amazing days.
So much evil, so many terrible things, so
much crime.
Over one million people in the United States
in prison.
I talked to a former O.M.er
who's a member of the Board of Trustees
in a Wisconsin Christian school.
A young couple, their romance just broke.
The young boy couldn't handle it, and he
murdered his own girlfriend.
He's now in prison long term.
I talked to another famous outstanding Christian leader
in Atlanta whose son at 24 years of
age, also out of control, murdered a young
woman that has 50 years sentence in the
Florida prison.
My heart breaks for the prisons.
During my time in the States, Jack Bennett
was sentenced.
The founder, leader of the new era, found
guilty.
Sentenced for 12 years with no negotiation, though
they are appealing that.
I talked to his wife, I guess it
was yesterday morning.
Didn't even know where her husband was as
he was just shifted quickly to another prison.
I'd actually wanted to visit him, but they
were not giving out permits beyond family.
Spent the whole night in British Airways.
Jack, one of my favorite airlines.
Saw a documentary on one of my favorite
people in the world, Mr. Bean.
Absolutely an amazing story of this man.
As you probably know now, there's Mr. Bean,
the movie, which has been quite attacked here
in England by some, but in fact has
not yet been released in the United States.
The movie was more created for the United
States market.
But it is amazing, isn't it, the place
of humor.
Somebody wrote me a critical letter about global
action in Hyderabad.
There was too much humor.
At least they can't blame it on me,
I wasn't there.
But you get a lot of humor through
the Internet.
And I thought at this stage of these
reports, it would be good to have just
a little humor from the Internet.
Some of you probably see some of this
stuff, it's terrible.
Some of it is quite good.
And I thought I'd just read a few
that came in.
Just recently I spent most of the night
reading my post.
This comes from, people just usually pass these
things on.
These are questions that we need to deal
with.
Instead of talking to your plants if you
yell at them, would they still grow, only
to be troubled and insecure?
Two, isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors
call what they do a practice?
What should you do when you see an
endangered animal that is eating an endangered plant?
Here's one probably for the next General Counsel.
Is it possible to be totally partial?
Why do they lock petrol station bathrooms?
Are they afraid someone will clean them?
This one I heard when I was in
New Jersey.
It's a little bit chauvinistic, but since I've
come from a men's meeting, you can handle
it.
If a man speaks in the forest and
there's no woman to hear him, is he
still wrong?
Why do sheep, this is very relevant here
at the Quinta.
Why do sheep, why don't sheep shrink when
it rains?
I think that's enough.
Well, I'm glad you all know how to
laugh, because you might be a little uncomfortable
by the end of this little series of
exhortations.
There are many things on my heart, and
I know that's, that must be a cliché.
It was great at our prayer meeting a
few weeks ago to have Martin Bateman do
a takeoff on George Verwer.
I requested it personally as the meeting was
getting a little dull.
But I would like to just say a
further word about Promise Keepers.
Some of you don't know about this movement,
but David Tarabury, after being the Chief Financial
Officer with OM, went with Promise Keepers.
Promise Keepers is only about eight years old.
Another brother out of Atlanta, Hector, went with
them.
So many of us have prayed for Promise
Keepers from the beginning.
It's a men's movement with seven major promises
that are well worth studying.
Most of them we had in our own
fellowship in the early days and still do.
The seventh major promise is the Great Commission,
which I call the Neglected Promise.
And God gave me some, when people heard
I was going to Promise Keepers, and this
was just added last minute to my visit
to the States, where I went mainly to
speak to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a
few other things.
I stayed on because of an invitation to
be part of the international conference of the
global Promise Keepers movement, which is just being
born in the last couple of years.
And so they are now going global.
Britain was just accepted at their meeting recently
of their board.
There's only about seven other countries that are
accepted into the fellowship or association.
They all realize they have to do it
differently in their own country.
There's not the plan that you're going to
try to copy what's happened in the States.
I think they're even more than aware of
the problems and the complications of launching a
men's movement.
I was talking to someone from Sweden about
how to try to launch something like this
in Sweden.
Needless to say, the Holy Spirit has been
working through this movement.
Last year alone they had over one million
people, or the year before, 96, over one
million, way beyond that, in stadiums, all men.
This year the stadium attendance dropped.
You have to pay quite a good amount
of money to go to those meetings.
Stadium attendance dropped, their finance dropped, and they
went through a major upheaval.
I met a number of the people who
have been through that upheaval.
In fact, David Turberry is no longer with
them, and 200 other people were laid off.
Their staff had to grow so quickly to
cope with just phenomenal growth.
When the money didn't come in, they had
no other way until the last few months
when they changed their financial policy, no other
way to get the money except by the
fees for going to the stadium for these
great events.
With a very wide inter-dominational, interracial group
of ministers.
One of the things that we've noticed as
we've followed this is the outstanding men they
do get at these great stadium events.
Some people believe that it fell a little
short this year because so many people around
the nation were focusing on this Washington event,
October 4th.
Praying for between 500,000 and one million
men.
Believe me, that is a lot of people.
That is a lot of people.
I have never seen so many people in
one place in my life except maybe on
television.
I've been in stadium meetings and a lot
of, I can even think of great melas
in India where I've been sort of certainly
surrounded by a few hundred thousand.
They must have had close to a million.
Some would say more, some would say less.
The Park Commission did not want to get
involved in counting because on the Farrakhan Million
March of the Muslims, there was a lot
of controversy.
So there is no official record.
All these people came basically the night before
or that morning and many of them left
by that evening.
There was hardly a single disrupted event during
the entire 24-hour period.
I remember before I went across watching the
news on television, I've never seen so much
Christian testimony come on the news in my
history.
And it went right across the world.
Internet, everything went on C-SPAN.
That's a major cable network.
The entire six hours was on C-SPAN.
You could see it better there than if
you were in the mall where they had
seven or eight, I may not have that
number exact, of the largest, most high-tech
screens that you can get a hold of.
I think there's less than 20 of these
available in the world.
The budget for this event was $10 million
excluding any travel or personal expense people had
to get there.
I noticed on the TV they were just
recording a plane crash and they were trying
to find out whether it was promise keepers.
Later it was revealed they were people coming.
A small plane crashed and exploded.
No one died.
In God's providence, it crashed near a fire
and rescue base where they were practicing.
And just, you know, even for someone as
skeptical as me, this kind of thing, you
know, always gets me believing that God somehow
is involved again.
But I went there specifically on the invitation
of Promise Keepers International.
I've been meeting with them and invited them
to Jokoway, our event in South Africa.
That tape telling about Jokoway is available if
you haven't heard that.
It was a privilege.
On the Friday evening we had a mini
prayer concert and I had the opportunity with
my little globe to just share and to
basically pray.
And there was a bonding.
Someone said to me later, a leader, because
they were from all over the world, that
if that was the only thing they had
gone to, it would have been worth it.
Of course, that was just the beginning.
This six-hour event was mainly prayer, the
Word, repentance, some praise and worship but not,
you know, not overdone.
And it was really, really quite overwhelming.
I decided not to just go and just
sit there for six hours, which is a
little bit too much like sitting in an
airplane.
But after a lot of wrestling and resisting,
I decided to carry my balloon, big global
balloon, around the periphery of the mall, which
is a huge thing.
From the Capitol Building, over a mile, I
think it is, to Lincoln Memorial and the
White House.
And everybody was in that area, if you
know Washington, the big Washington Memorial, the big
pencil-like thing and all these big screens.
So I marched around the whole outside.
It took me several hours.
You could also listen on FM, although I
heard much of it live.
And when they stopped to pray, I usually
stopped to pray.
And I can only say, God met us
in that place.
Again, I'm one of the first persons to
say just big events on their own are
not enough.
But many of us, even in this room
or who are hearing this tape, we got
started because of a big event.
These meetings are not that similar to a
Billy Graham evangelistic campaign.
In fact, the man who preached the gospel
gave an invitation and, I mean, thousands of
people stood.
I think some were already Christians who stood,
though the message was geared to the non
-Christian.
Another speaker later on had 42 speakers, some
of them very brief, of course.
But no wonder I never get invited.
But this one brother whose name I heard
later on gave a powerful, very balanced, powerful
message, included a reference to Acts 1-8
and included a slight message, a mention of
world missions.
Up to now, Promise Keepers has not been
known for being proactive about world missions.
Now that they are taking their own movement
globally, of course, they are having to look
at world missions.
And this is one of the reasons I
changed my own scheduling and felt I should
just be there.
I wanted to and I prayed specifically to
meet some of the leaders.
I've been waiting a long time praying for
some of these people.
Well, Bill McCartney, Coach McCartney, he's known to
some.
That next morning he was on Meet the
Press.
I mean, he was the most in-demand
person in Washington.
And as we had our final meeting of
our international group, which was only 100 people,
it seemed that he wasn't even there.
And then suddenly I found out there was
a dinner that evening.
I had forgotten that.
Next thing I knew, I walked out and
there Coach McCartney was.
Now, Christian Renling, one of my former helpers
in OM Associates, has his own organization, is
sort of starting to become like my agent.
That's not really true, but he likes to
push me into situations.
And you may think that I'm an extrovert
and I just run into difficult situations, but
I tell you, if it wasn't for Christian
Renling, I don't think I would have ever
met Coach McCartney or two of the other
founding members.
And the birth of this vision took place
in a car out there in Colorado around
1990.
So it's a very young movement.
And probably in the months to come, you
will read criticism, you will hear criticism, especially
from certain kinds of women.
But, in fact, God has raised up this
amazing movement.
And many of the most proactive people about
it are women.
Because they know so many men in America
have become wimps.
And I don't think the average person even
knows the situation of the average American male.
It is not like 20 years ago.
It has completely changed.
There are exceptions.
Maybe in your little church, you've got lots
of dynamic men and they're the elders of
the church.
The church has quite a few exceptions.
But we're talking very generally about the masses
of people in a land of 260 million.
And most of these internationals at this consultation
expressed that they felt the situation with men
in their country was very, very similar.
So, in some ways, this seems to me
like one of God's rescue programs.
Is it a last-minute rescue program before
Christ's return and the second coming of Christ
was wonderfully proclaimed by one of the speakers?
Not in an extreme way, but a beautiful
way.
And the fact that this now has not
only taken place and they saw the crowd
that they expected, actually more perhaps than they
expected.
They had one million New Testaments donated to
give everyone.
They couldn't get those distributed.
Their distribution wasn't fast enough, proactive enough to
get them all out.
A lot of them were left over at
the end.
People carried boxes of New Testaments away.
I might just insert here that for me,
the three most exciting things, and I'll come
back to what happened in that meeting with
Bill McCartney.
But three of the most exciting things before
that happened was the opportunity to talk to
two Afghans a little bit about Jesus.
There are many Afghans in Washington, D.C.
I've started my research to see who's working
among them.
I've heard of one international mission, missionary.
I talked to Arlie Lohan, our Afghan man
in Toronto.
I had to grab a taxi.
On a particular occasion, the driver was an
Afghan.
I was getting rather hungry.
I went to buy one of these inexpensive
hot dogs, and the man selling the hot
dogs was an Afghan.
And, of course, with all that was happening,
it was easy to tell something of what
was going on.
I've had this prayer for this year that
somehow, with all the increased responsibility I have
and very much involvement with churches and Christians,
that the Lord would give me the privilege
of being regularly in contact with non-Christians.
And God did that right there on that
day, even though I was surrounded by almost
a million men, many of whom were believers.
The next non-Christian I was to meet
was making an anti-documentary.
He saw me with my balloon.
A lot of people saw me with my
balloon, by the way.
I can't understand it.
I was the only guy carrying a balloon.
You laugh, but there were endless, endless people
carrying crosses.
All kinds of guys were carrying crosses, small
wheels, you know, all kinds, little crosses, big
crosses.
You know, I wasn't the only eccentric there.
There were many.
But nobody was carrying a balloon.
So that made quite an impact, especially in
front of the Capitol building.
And no one else had a global jacket.
That's it.
One million men, no one else with a
global jacket.
I don't know what is happening with our
global jacket sales force.
Obviously, I didn't see everybody, so no doubt
there may have been someone there.
I think it's important to just throw in
at this point that we need to be
reminded again that the average person going to
church, man or woman, is not thinking globally.
The average promise keeper is not thinking globally.
The global challenge only came out during those
six hours in a very, very small way.
But I believe, as Coach McCartney shared, that
especially in the year 2000, they have phenomenal
plans, mainly for the states for the next
two years, slow growth internationally.
But the year 2000, they want to go
global in a major way.
Well, to jump back to where I was,
Christian Rindling introduced me to these two other
men who were founders of this movement or
with the founding of it, had very powerful
fellowship with them.
And we ended up praying in this kind
of accountability group prayer where I shared a
struggle.
One of them was leading promise keepers, and
it was quite a big thing, especially for
his wife, and we prayed for him.
And then I shared an area of struggle
that I have when I get home from
a trip and the lack of sensitivity with
my wife.
And they responded to that and prayed for
me.
I got further in 20 minutes with those
two men than sometimes I get with some
people in a very long time.
They have an ethos that OM once had
and still does have to some degree.
They really believe that men need to get
together and share.
God convicted me that one of the many
mistakes I've made in OM, one of the
biggest, is when I allowed our men's meetings
to end.
We used to have the most powerful men's
meetings in the 60s, mainly dealing with sex
but not exclusively.
And we discovered after those meetings men would
share, small groups, immorality, it would come out.
We also had similar meetings which were much
more difficult with our sisters.
And there would always be some, our sisters
especially, who would criticize the openness.
It would frighten them.
And then with various changes we tried to
amalgamate.
We thought, well, things are changing now.
We don't, you know, the whole unisex concept.
You have a barber shop now and you
have men and women getting their hair cut
in the same place.
This is not a new thing by the
way.
It came in the 70s.
So we amalgamated those rather heavy kind of
sessions and it ran into greater criticism and
to some degree it died.
It still takes place in OM, different venues
and different places.
And I'm not criticizing OM.
And I want to study more what these
men are saying.
But I came away from there realizing there's
tremendous value for men to be able to
get together on their own.
And preferably, this is going to shock a
few, outside of the walls of the church.
These great meetings where so many men have
been converted and have come back to Christ,
they've been in gymnasiums, they've been in arenas.
As one person shared with me, if they
tried to do in a church, of course
they don't know some of the churches that
we know, but if they tried to do
in the church what they do in these
arenas, getting a little excited, praising God, lifting
their hands a bit, you know, they would
get the elbow from their wife.
Again, I'm sure that's present company excluded.
But whatever you may think of Promise Keepers,
and I will just say it is a
movement loaded with weakness.
But my dear brothers and sisters, OM is
a movement loaded with weaknesses.
And you may even have a few yourself.
And I would just say that God is
doing something through this movement.
And I hope when it comes to your
country or when you read about it, and
in your prayers you can be proactive.
Their books are in Spanish.
We'll be distributing those.
The new book is in Swedish.
We're going to be quite proactive about that.
There are quite a few former OMers getting
involved in this movement.
And it is very, very exciting.
The media coverage of this event has been
some of the greatest media coverage of any
Christian event in this decade.
Some of it is negative.
And Billy Graham has run into the same
problem.
I don't know if you've heard news from
San Francisco.
But Billy Graham in San Francisco, they ganged
up on him, the media.
And he is a hard man to get
him to fumble.
But they got him on the homosexual issue
and he would not move.
Homosexual practice is a sin.
And I tell you, they came unglued against
him.
They are now digging stuff that he has
said from the 50s.
That is going into major prints, going into
the Internet.
And there is a fresh new vindictive attack
against Billy Graham.
Of course, just going to San Francisco as
an evangelical with the message Billy Graham has
is almost taking your life in your hands.
By the way, this other unconverted person I
met was producing an anti-documentary.
They think this movement is sort of right
-wing with a political agenda.
Many of these people may be somewhat right.
But many of them were not necessarily right
-wing.
And I'm convinced they don't have a political
agenda.
Bill McCartney answered that question brilliantly.
That doesn't mean there isn't some overlap.
Because if you say you don't believe in
abortion, just saying that, you have a political
agenda.
You're right-wing.
So, I mean, how do you put that
together?
Even that issue and the homosexual issue, which
is so hot in America, it seems to
me they're handling very carefully.
Now, sometimes the media just grabs any old
person.
And some of those people are not able
to handle the media.
And then really stupid things get said.
And that gets multiplied.
And that is a good reason that many
more of us on OM should go to
our effective communicators conference and learn how to
talk to people.
I ended up sitting next to Bill McCartney
for supper that night.
I know that may seem like a small
thing.
I believe my desire to get next to
him isn't what some people may think.
I desire to be an encouragement to this
man.
I desire to know them, to serve.
And I have this prayer that they will
become proactive about world missions and the unreached
people.
All the countries they're going into are all
the traditional Anglo-Saxon countries.
In fact, all English-speaking except Germany they've
entered into.
They're not thinking.
And we don't believe they have to think
about Turkey, Afghanistan, many of these other places.
But can you imagine?
And they've got over 25 stadium meetings planned
for the United States.
They no longer are going to charge.
They're going to open it wider.
They want more unconverted people to come.
And it will be free of charge.
Major foundations, including some friends of ours, are
getting involved financially.
They did take an offering at the end
of this big event and at the same
time give everybody a free meal as they
walked away.
Just quite, quite awesome.
I'd like to just pray with you because
we are watching the clock and just especially
pray for a relatively young movement that has
grown as fast as any movement in the
history of the church with phenomenal vulnerability.
And to pray for Bill McCartney.
I just maybe had about a half an
hour talking with him as we ate.
Then he spoke.
He gave a very balanced, excellent message.
Others spoke at that dinner and then we've
all scattered.
What is the next step?
I'm not sure.
But I don't think all that's going on
in the work of God is ever to
be decompartmentalized.
What's going on with Campus Crusade and the
Jesus film?
By the way, they have just received one
of the biggest gifts ever for the Jesus
film.
Partly because of the phenomenal, atomic explosion of
Ted Turner's one million to the United Nations.
Billion, thank you.
One billion, one thousand million we say here
in England to the United Nations.
This has stirred up people that non-Christians
seem to be now giving more lavishly than
Christians.
And this has led a foundation to do
something they don't normally do, to chop into
the assets.
They always think of giving away interest.
That's the normal way of approaching things.
But they decided to give away this foundation
and have given a huge gift to the
Jesus film.
But whether it's AD2000 or the Jesus film
or Chicoe or Lausanne or WEF, some of
the men I met at the international meeting,
I met him at Chicoe, I met him
at WEF and I met him in Korea.
We are basically one, even though there's great
diversity and we know, of course, in many
cases, serious disunity.
We don't want to pretend otherwise.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for what you did
in Washington this past Saturday.
And what you've done these past seven or
eight years through Promise Keepers.
These men, so often backed by their wives
and women, who have become proactive in prayer,
in ministry, in moral purity, in walking in
the light, in being better fathers, in being
committed to spiritual leadership in the home and
in the church.
We thank you for Bill McCartney's challenge that
everything now must go back to the local
church, that every Promise Keeper must submit to
his pastor.
Many could hardly believe their ears as this
challenge came out over this huge gathering there
in the Washington Mall.
And Lord, we believe, though the battle is
going to be fierce, though there are many
dark clouds hanging over us as well, we
believe that this is part of building your
kingdom across the world.
We thank you for so many women's movements
over the years and even other smaller men's
movements, like the Christian businessmen.
Lord, something has really taken off here and
we give you the praise and we give
you the glory in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, sitting on the train coming here, I
just wrote a couple of words down that
I want to just put a few exhortations
around and then you can fly away.
Praise God for the freedom we have in
Jesus Christ.
May we not abuse that.
Praise God for the Grace Awakening.
It includes the challenge about discipline.
We now have our own OM edition of
that book, Grace Awakening, 10,000 copies.
Instead of $20, $1.37. Just let me
know how many you want.
That's really more for outside the UK because
here in the UK we've always had the
paperback, which they never had in the United
States until recently.
But there's just a few words that I
wanted to base a few thoughts on and
I would really ask you to pray.
Allow the Holy Spirit to speak.
You know, many of these men were not
Christians or they were baby Christians.
And we may say, well, they respond in
such a naive way.
They don't really know what they're getting into.
No one's given them, you know, Luke 14
orientation, count the cost, scared them right out
of their shoes.
So they wouldn't dare lay down on the
grass and pray.
By the way, when I did that interview
with that non-converted person, he got so
caught up with what I was saying, he
let the video camera run until almost it
was out of video.
And in God's providence, Elwood Ellis, one of
the leading black, most articulate black persons in
America, great friend of mine, in the midst
of this draft spots me with a balloon
and comes up.
I say, Elwood, this guy wants to interview
you.
And I told that guy, here's a far
better man to talk to than me.
And being black, he wasn't about to refuse
him, this little white guy from California.
He interviewed Elwood Ellis for 15 minutes.
Later on in God's providence, I met him
at the very end when everybody was dispersed.
He was sitting on a bench with his
video camera, and he said they were the
two best interviews I've got today.
My burden is not his documentary, though I
pray it may not come out so negative,
but that that young man may come to
know the Lord Jesus.
He was offended and hurt because some people
sort of ganged up on him when they
found out that he wasn't a Christian.
And it was a beautiful experience for me.
And I hope that with all of our
evangelistic methods that we continue to learn in
OM, that we will learn how to talk
to people who are initially offended by our
jargon, by our presentations, by our terminology, that
we can just be real with those people.
We can use more secular terminology to try
to share with them the message of the
love of Christ.
One of the greatest persons in the world
doing that is a man named Doug Coe.
Doug Coe is the man behind The Prayer
Breakfast.
He's the man behind many men and women
in ministry, especially at government and business level
throughout the world and in God's providence.
It worked out to get about a half
an hour with Doug, which was like a
renewal.
Doug Coe spoke at one of the first
OM conferences in history, Madrid, Spain, 1961 or
62, and he spoke about keeping focused on
the Lord Jesus.
And it looks like there may be ways
that our ship and other parts of OM
in the future may be able to network
into their phenomenal small group network around the
world.
Very different than promise keepers.
A very highly contextualized approach to non-Christians,
to government people, quite controversial also as many
contextual kinds of approaches are.
Very, very relational.
I find, this is just a quick tangent,
but I find that when certain people find
out how relational OM is, for them just
to hear that several hundred have been in
this work linked together for over a quarter
of a century blows their mind.
It blows their mind.
And with some people that means more than
all of our great goals and aims and
all the things we put on paper that
we long for them to give their money
to, because they're relational people.
And you have, of course, all kinds of
people, and it's a challenge to meet so
many of them.
And God has given Doug Coe and his
fellowship a beautiful building, a beautiful home right
behind the capitol building.
Some congressmen actually live there.
To my amazement, two friends from Cape Town,
South Africa run that ministry.
And that business person who I met in
his office a few years ago and great
friends of OM and the ship ministry, they
are running that ministry on a famous C
street behind the big dome in Washington.
Well, by now your curiosity is at saturation
level.
What are these verver words?
Some of you are probably tired of getting
verver words, and you think the first one
is going to be grace.
But actually the first word is intimidation.
I want to just talk to you a
little bit about intimidation.
It's impossible in any one message not to
get in trouble, so I hope you'll be
merciful.
But I do feel that we as Christians
are often more easily intimidated than non-Christians.
Though in the United States one of the
reasons the average male is in the state
he's in, and we're being very general, is
because men have been intimidated.
They've been intimidated by their failures.
They've been intimidated by the women's rights, equal
rights movement.
Some of that movement I'm sure is good.
Some may not be so good.
Many of them are intimidated, especially Christians, by
sexual failure.
And they don't know how to get out
of that.
And it's quite amazing when we see so
many non-Christians just sort of barreling through
and being incredibly successful.
Right now America is on a roll financially.
The stock market is up.
Ted Turner, when he gave away that $1
billion, all that was was a stock increase
from last year.
The foundation I'm linked with, that we are
linked with, that a couple of years ago
looked like they were in trouble, their stock
has gone off the charts.
There's a lot of money to give away
right now in the United States and some
other countries.
Of course, if you're following the Pacific Rim,
you know that Malaysia and Singapore, that part
of the world has been hit.
Devaluation, tremendous drop in the stock market.
That may have changed even since the last
time I looked at it.
But it is interesting to make comparisons between
Christians and non-Christians.
I am forced to do that because I
live in a non-Christian world.
And I know that we have an abundant
life in Jesus Christ that they don't know
anything about.
So you don't have to worry about me
over-exalting the non-Christian.
He's lost, he's on the road to hell,
and he needs Jesus.
I met with another amazing character, Clark Kennedy,
who now has a new job working as
my helper with the 82,000 Movement and
other networks internationally that we're now involved with.
He was with me in Washington, so was
Rick Hicks.
That was exciting that he wasn't feeling so
well.
But we met with another man just yesterday
morning, and this man's one focus is to
win golfers for Christ.
He has asked me, I feel sure he's
going to back down, he has asked me
to speak in Australia at a huge golf
event.
And I may have to play golf first.
Now, one thing you never want to watch
is my golf.
But maybe I could take some lessons.
He was just sharing how this outstanding Christian,
some of you golfers can help me, Bernard
Lange, who went way down to almost 100,
and very much an outspoken Christian.
Of course, when they go down in their
profession, people talk.
And many were making this a matter of
prayer.
And Bernard Lange, in the last few weeks,
has had some major wins.
And, of course, on a practical level, it's
his new putter.
He has this weird putter, I think it
comes up to his nose.
I don't know, it maybe operates like some
kind of a compass.
But he's certainly putting very well.
I believe one of the reasons some non
-Christians go further than Christians in their basic
work is because they are tougher.
They have to be tough.
I read a quote from a non-Christian
recently.
It said, 99% of success is failure.
In America, if you want to quote somebody
and get a lot of response, quote Abraham
Lincoln.
There's a little thing about Abraham Lincoln, and
it lists his life, largely all failure.
Failure, rejected, turned down, and then at the
end, elected President of the United States.
Now, I don't know if any of you,
96, 97 has been a year, a few
failures.
Failure should not discourage you.
Failure is where it's at.
That's one of God's great places of learning.
Promise Keepers has gone through their greatest time
of frustration, of failure, and disunity.
And yet, through that, has taken their greatest
step forward in their ministry.
And they are thinking far more quality than
they are thinking quantity, though it may not
seem that way, believe me.
And I would just urge you to beware
of various forms of intimidation.
Think of those men in the book of
Acts.
I was going to read that passage where
24 men, it's in Acts chapter 23, verse
12, have a plot to kill the Apostle
Paul.
You cannot use the word intimidation without using
the word fear.
One of the reasons I believe so strongly
in small group sharing is I believe we
must, most of us, have a place to
share our fears.
Now, there are people that have very unusual
and beautiful marriages and they have a large
part of their sharing is within their own
marriage.
Wonderful.
No one wants to get in either or
syndrome.
But I just talked to another man on
the phone the other day.
He is petrified to tell his wife that
he is still hooked on pornography 10 years
later.
The last time he shared that she just
about went ballistic and the marriage was almost
finished.
He is being counseled by people not to
tell his wife.
And so he phones me long distance to
have someone that he can share these failures
in the area of pornography.
A Christian in a secular company recently was
caught feeding on pornography out of the Internet
and he was fired and his marriage now
may break.
I talked to one who is praying with
him that his marriage may come through.
I will tell you, if we see a
men's movement of God's Spirit in OM, we
will probably discover that 50% of all
the men in OM are wrestling with pornography
or lust in one form or the other.
I wonder if we as a movement are
to the place where we no longer want
to know that, we no longer want to
hear that because that is so unpleasant.
To have an OMer come up to me
recently and confess that he is into pornography
on the Internet is not very pleasant.
Some of the other things that we have
had to face in the past years are
not very pleasant.
I don't believe any movement, Promise Keepers, OM
or anybody else, is ever going to have
100% victory in dealing with these things.
That is unrealistic foolishness.
But I believe we can increase the number
of people that come into victory and maturity
for long-term marathon running if we would
pay more attention to some of these areas,
read and distribute more books and tapes, get
involved in meetings where these things are spoken
of and have some kind of accountability group
which OM strongly teaches in its very strong
present mode of emphasis on pastoral care and
people care.
Intimidation comes through failure.
Intimidation comes sometimes because of critics.
Critics, Christians are generally sensitive and find criticism
very difficult.
If no one is criticizing you about your
ministry, then no one is observing it.
I can assure you that if I observed
your ministry even in two days, I could
give you a list, especially if you are
a public speaker.
Because all public speakers can improve and that
includes this one.
And some of the unusual invitations I get
to speak would have never happened if I
had not continued to learn from others how
to communicate, how to face different situations and
all of that kind of thing that we...
Well, I personally don't feel we hear enough
of it.
And I just praise God for the Confident
Communicators course, but only a tiny percentage of
OMers are going to go through that course,
just like most of our other courses in
OM.
The large bulk of OM are not getting
all of this core kind of in-depth
training and teaching, except on a local team
level, which, of course, is normal because these
things, of course, cost a fortune.
And I'm convinced that much of what we
believe and what we're wanting to do on
OM can take place on a team level.
Also, the local church is very key in
all that, for we certainly can't do everything.
But let's move on.
My second word is the word unity.
I have another message I'm working on called
Seven Areas of Unreality.
And one of the areas of unreality I
put as all the talk about unity.
It's probably one of the toughest areas you
can talk about.
Promise keepers, of course, are viciously attacked because
they do not take any anti-Catholic position.
Our position in OM would be very conservative
in regard to Catholics, but we're in church
planting in the field evangelism.
They are running stadium events for almost the
general public.
Slight difference in what we're attempting to do.
And we are a long-term international family
whose entire linking has largely been to local
churches who have sent us, who are largely
evangelical churches or evangelical charismatic churches, most of
whom are fairly conservative on this issue.
So there is a great difference.
And I believe we need to be able
to see people, whether it's Billy Graham or
some other great spiritual hero, do something without
necessarily feeling that's the way we should go.
I know that when many of these men
go back to their churches and back to
share this vision, especially the reconciliation factor, that's
one of the hottest things about promise keepers,
the message of racial reconciliation.
Do you know who some of the main
players were during these six hours?
Native Americans.
They were the hosts of the entire event,
and it was not tokenism.
And we had to sit there, we Anglo
-Saxons, even on the Friday night meeting, and
get this strong word from our Native Americans
and the history of the atrocities against Indians.
And we know they in turn did some
atrocious things against these immigrants.
It is still a great stain on the
United States, and of course this controversy about
what we're supposed to do about it.
But one thing for sure, we need to
be loving one another.
Some of the great speakers at this event
were Afro-Americans.
Though now one of the famous women Afro
-Americans has renounced being called an Afro-American
because she wants to just be an American.
So it is difficult to know what you're
supposed to say.
But God is bringing racial reconciliation through promise
keepers and other groups on quite an astounding
level.
The prayer summit is part of it.
All kinds of things in the States and
other countries are dovetailing together.
And I think that's beautiful even though it's
hyper-complex.
They emphasize something we've always emphasized, that unity
is in the midst of diversity.
But I would urge you to understand that
one of the strongest things we have in
our land is our unity.
And sometimes we have to back down.
Sometimes we feel we're compromising.
Sometimes we're even feeling a twinge of our
conscience, and that's a tough one to wrestle
with.
But I believe as you study the New
Testament, you see the importance of 1 Corinthians
13, then you will give unity a higher
level of esteem in your theology and your
philosophy.
Many groups that have come unglued, when I
have researched those groups, I found that they
basically presume that unity would just come through
loving Jesus.
Unity does not come through loving Jesus.
Some of the most ugly people you and
I know, let's be honest, they love Jesus.
And the militia movement in America, which has
doubled in numbers, doubled in numbers, one of
the most ferocious modern-day Nazi movements in
history, there's now a Christian book about it,
many of them claim they love Jesus with
all their heart.
And that's why they are ready, if necessary,
to put a bullet right through Bill Clinton's
head.
In fact, leaflets were being given out in
Washington asking for the immediate dismissal, impeachment of
President Clinton.
It obviously was not an official part of
the promise keepers.
There were unofficial T-shirts, and I bought
one before I heard the announcement.
Typical Verwer, move quick, look at that T
-shirt.
I bought it, then I heard a woman
on a little loudspeaker, please don't purchase these
T-shirts, you have to order them, they
don't allow that on the mall.
I already had my T-shirt.
When I went to put it on, it
had a gigantic hole in the back.
What a rebuke for my disobedience and my
impatience.
It was quite exciting to show Bill McCartney
that as I was wearing it for the
meal we had together the next evening.
The third word I want to leave with
you, I hope is one of your favorite
words, because if it isn't, I believe both
you, your team, and eventually OM, will be
in difficulty.
And that's this amazing word, flexibility.
Not a great spiritual word, is it?
Flexibility.
How will OM ever survive into the year
2000 without flexibility?
Adaptability.
As I say in one of my books,
big heartedness.
I want to just prepare you, by the
way, for a new book.
Some of you old timers probably will eventually
decide Verwer is backslidden and it's all over.
But I have allowed them to put my
picture in my global jacket on a book.
This is STL's idea.
Three of my books together.
What do they call them at STL?
Omnibus.
An omnibus or an omnibook.
And I decided in the video age when
millions have watched thousands at least or hundreds
of thousands on the internet and by video,
my interesting face, why should I refuse to
put it on a book?
It is a totally ridiculous, inconsistent thing.
And when I saw other people who I
greatly admire allow their pictures to be on
the front page of a book, I finally
surrendered, though it's not an easy surrender.
My only passion in my pragmatic ethos is
that somehow more of these books will sell.
I can hardly ever get through a week
without being someone that has been impacted through
one of these feeble books.
Last time I was here, I was speaking
to 400 leaders of the Christian Union.
A woman ran up to me and said,
one of my books can turn you completely
upside down and brought her back to the
Lord Jesus.
I've never rated my books that high.
I mainly push other people's books.
But it's a proof that God can use
all kinds of books and some of you
ought to write a book.
I think Howard Norris should write a book.
In fact, if he put his memos together,
he could have an encyclopedia.
But flexibility, I believe, is going to be
more necessary than in the past.
It's great to talk about all these things,
globalization and the manual gets thicker, the policy
manual gets thicker and the memos and the
instructions and all the rules.
We've got so many rules in OM.
Young people, when they come on OM now,
especially when they go to certain places, become
very aware of many rules and you need
rules.
I'm not thinking of necessarily rules like the
social policy, which certainly varies greatly from team
to team and place to place, but I'm
thinking of all the rules that we have
in connection with finance, all the rules we
have in connection with things, many of which
are quite good.
And then the fourth word, just quickly, is
the word spirituality.
This is a major buzzword in OM right
now.
How many have noticed the new buzzword in
OM, spirituality?
You can get ten Christian leaders to speak
on spirituality and all ten of them will
disagree with what that is.
One thing we need is we need a
balanced, grace-awakened view, forgive the term, of
spirituality.
If God hadn't changed my view of what
spirituality was, I would not be here.
I might even be an enemy of this
movement because I had that kind of potential
and I had such an unrealistic view of
what true spirituality was.
And many of us have read books that
present just a particular side to spirituality.
And lately I've been concerned that some men
of God have very much elevated the need
to pray and fast for 40 days.
I don't think the average Christian should start
praying and fasting for 40 days.
I think it's folly.
And we, in the early days of OM,
we saw fasting and folly big time.
If you're going to start fasting, why don't
you just start small?
Why don't you try a meal?
And if you think that fasting is going
to revolutionize your marriage, fasting is going to
set you free from this or that, you're
in for one more of those head-banging
experiences because the Christian life is not like
that.
So many who have testified of great experiences
in the past no longer walk with Jesus
Christ.
We can submit the names to you.
There is no one special deliverance, one special
way.
I remember a brother who went into a
three-day prayer and fasting thing.
He was one of the most gifted persons
who ever came on OM.
We're talking early 60s.
And when God didn't totally set him free
after the prayer and fasting, he lost his
Christian faith completely.
To me, when we have people in missionary
work who are talking about being disappointed with
God and blaming things on God, then we
surely need to get them by the hand
because we are in ministry here.
God gave me this thought today that I've
never had before in my life, that some
people go into marriage thinking that if the
Lord led them into the marriage, that's a
guarantee that the marriage will be okay and
they'll live happily ever after.
I realize I've hardly ever spoken about that.
I didn't, I guess, think I needed to
speak about that.
God can lead you into something and you
can still blow it.
God led you into OM, you can still
blow it.
God can take you through a great deliverance
experience and two weeks later you can blow
it.
If you think I've come away from Washington,
you know, Mr. Optimist, you don't know me.
As I saw all these men leaving the
mall, I thought, what will they face in
the next week?
Many of those men are already on the
verge of divorce.
Over 50% of all marriages in America
end in divorce.
At my meeting on Sunday morning when I
was speaking, three meetings in a large Korean
church, a leading marital counselor teacher has written
a number of books.
Mike McManus came to my meeting.
We also talked on the phone.
Though he would be naturally skeptical about certain
promise keepers things because his big thing in
marriage is getting couples who have a good
marriage, help other couples.
He's not into a men's or women's thing.
But he was proactive about promise keepers because
of a number of reasons and it's his
conviction, he may not be right, that the
marriage thing has taken a slight turn for
the good divorce in America.
He thinks maybe because of promise keepers, but
it is ever, ever so slight.
Many of those men, not only are already
through divorce, many of them through two or
three.
My breakfast was with someone in the midst
of divorce proceedings.
Every pastor in America is facing this as
a crisis in his church, grabbing many of
them for every kind of marriage seminar they
can possibly get.
And I just throw this in.
I don't know what you're going to do
with it, but anything we can do in
OM to have more input into our married
couples about the basic nitty-gritty of marriage
and family and home is time and money
well spent.
Not that our single people don't need input.
Everybody needs input.
And praise God for the courage that people
in promise keepers have had to realize God
has called them to amend movement and to
stick to their knitting.
There's so much pressure on them to do
all kinds of other things.
And they're going to stick to what they
believe God has led them to do.
Spirituality is worked out in different people in
very different ways.
It is incredibly hard to measure.
A tape I listened to recently tried to
point out the difference between legalism and a
true spiritual person.
Legalism, the influences are outward, whereas a message
about grace comes from within.
But for most human beings, it's a mixture,
isn't it?
When are we going to arrive at the
place where nothing outward affects our behavior?
No peer pressure.
Nothing to do with fear.
No concern about what people say.
Only just God and His Spirit working through
us.
Don't make that mistake.
This treasure is in earthen vessels.
My fifth word is a word I don't
think I've ever used in one of my
messages in recent years.
It's just the word dogmatic, and I just
want to be brief, but I think this
is so important.
You and I know that long after people
are missionaries or committed Christians, they can be
very offensive, dogmatic people with personality hang-ups
and therefore unable to communicate.
No wonder they don't want to talk to
any unconverted people.
They're not able to speak to people in
general.
Speaking to people is not easy in our
society.
How many lesbians are my sisters in here
involved with women's liberation people are you talking
to on a regular basis or don't you
believe they're worthy of conversation?
How many male homosexuals are we men?
We great heterosexuals, and there may be men
here wrestling with this issue.
How many of them are we talking to?
Our whole society is so pluralistic, and it
is my conviction that the church has become
a gigantic religious ghetto where 90% of
the people are not really talking to anybody
much.
And then perhaps for our pastime with our
unrealistic approach to life, we turn on one
another.
Why are Christians in so many of our
churches turning on one another?
Why have 50% of all the churches
in Britain at least gone through major disunity
in the past decade or two?
I can't go anywhere.
I can't go anywhere on this planet ministering
and not hear of another church that is
going through phenomenal disunity.
So quickly we turn on one another.
So quickly we become way too dogmatic.
I just had a letter.
Dump all the NIV Bibles from your ships
into the ocean.
King James only.
This fellow sends me a postcard every week.
The last one said, Remember Lot's wife.
Really encouraging.
Another fellow just wrote me, who I have
given, as far as I can see, love
without any other motive to over all these
years.
A former OMer.
I knew he was a bit of a,
a different kind of a fellow.
His wife eventually couldn't stand him.
She left him.
And I kept loving him.
I kept going after him.
And now he's written off my relationship with
him.
He gives maybe $25 every month, I guess.
Maybe he had a rather elevated view of
that.
I can assure you that is not the
reason I was spending time with this fellow.
He has written me, completely written me off,
and his mother has written me off, because
he knows, he has proven that I promote
Christian rock music.
In many countries, there are over 100 areas
where if you move in that area, you
will be caught off.
America may lead the pack, but other countries,
and this rosy idea we have about the
church in Argentina, the church in China, the
church in Russia, would you be, I know
we can't have a once and for all
set free, because we've already preached against that,
but if you could have, if you could
have a moderately set free experience, all over
the world, people are people, and 1 Corinthians
13 is so slow to become the priority.
Why do Christians have to become dogmatic on
so many issues?
Would you like to have a lecture on
disunity and O.M. on the subject of
computers over the last 20 years?
We could write a book.
We have people very dogmatic about computers.
I think, to be honest, in recent years,
the Grace Awakening movement has invaded them.
I'm sure they're all loving one another, so
I'm just going into past history.
The fact is, whether you're talking about automobiles,
or houses, or salaries, or income tax, or
whether an American can drive in Great Britain
once he's here for 370 days, there's 100
different areas where we as Christians get quite
dogmatic and quite uptight, and we're not afraid
to boldly share a piece of our mind.
I've met some long-termers, and they've been
doing it for years.
There's not much left now.
I shouldn't have said that.
My final word, forgive me if I've gone
too long.
Do you realize what a rare opportunity this
is to speak to folks like you?
I'd pay 10,000 pounds for this anytime,
but don't ask for it now.
It's too late.
My last word, and this message is kept
in balance by other things I've shared on
the subject of grace, and forgiveness, and love,
but my last word, just to make you
all feel so good, is work.
I wanted to have a little practical thing
because we're big into training, and to have
training, you've got to respond.
So I would like you to write the
word work down.
I know that's difficult.
You're tired.
Your hand isn't working anymore, but if you
could, on your piece of paper, write the
word work.
I'll spell it to help you.
W-O-R-K.
Now I'm going to say some controversial things
again.
You all love me so much.
If you are under the illusion that this
movement is such a movement of hard-working
people, I don't believe you know the movement.
I don't believe we have more than 50
% in our movement that are hard-working
people, and I don't hold it against them
because many of them are young.
They have never held down a job.
Unlike many people in past decades, they've never
been to war.
Can you imagine sending the average O.M.
around a military training course?
And isn't it interesting how in the United
States, women are fighting to get military training.
Have you read, you know, I'm wanting to
see G.I. Jane.
I haven't seen it yet, but have you
read any of the controversy about women trying
to get in all these different branches of
the military and be able to do the
same thing?
I think there's one in one of the
air stations out there right now.
Isn't there a woman out there now?
Do you know the training these people go
through?
Why does the book of Proverbs talk so
much about laziness?
Because people, a good chunk of people, are
lazy.
When I took a survey among people in
India way in the early days of O
.M., what is the biggest problem you're facing?
I thought, surely it's going to be surely
a lack of love.
Never forget it.
We took the survey.
They said, laziness.
I believe some of the heart cries for
pastoral care in O.M. are legitimate and
we've heard and we need to keep hearing.
But I believe other heart cries were distorted
because the fact is that person was finding
just eight hours' work on the ship very,
very difficult.
They were not making it.
And when you're not making it in your
work, you've got problems.
And not everyone is honest enough to say,
I cannot handle this work.
I did have a person when I visited
the ship share that with me.
I won't say what part of the world
she's from.
That's irrelevant.
But she just, people in her class, in
her society, that she knew never, ever did
this kind of physical work.
And this person, I tell you, was suffering.
We should have sympathy.
We should have love.
We must be patient.
We are a training movement.
We're not McDonald's.
We're not Wall Street.
This isn't IBM.
And so, those of you leaders who sometimes
maybe are a little too rough on your
people, I hope you don't go extreme.
But I believe if we are wanting to
prepare people, and most people do not stay
with OM, of the 90,000 who have
been with us, there are only 2,700
right now, most people do not stay with
OM.
Most people do not even go into missionary
work.
They go back to tough jobs.
And we in OM must maintain a high
work ethic for God's glory.
And we must examine our own hearts.
Some of you know one of my greatest
passions is to see finance come in, is
to see people raising support.
I wrestle with this every day.
And I'm convinced there are many factors.
Faith and prayer is always the one we
talk about.
But my surveys show that some people they've
never seen that support because they have not
worked at it hard enough.
Now sometimes that's because they have too many
other jobs.
So don't misunderstand me.
We need to somehow work that out.
But raising support in missions is going to
get harder than ever.
We have 30 to 40,000 people out
there who have already indicated that they want
to go.
That is on my conscience.
Because quite a few thousands of them were
in my meetings.
Many thousands.
Not the 40,000 that Howard thought once
in a memo.
But the 40,000 around the world.
We're all, you know, it's great to have
one fan on your team.
Now I've got Chaco as well in May.
But no, my whole team loves me.
You know, they're all into the Crucified Life
and Spirit film.
But I will tell you to go out
and continue to challenge young people to leave
their jobs, to go to Bible school, and
to prepare to go to world missions, and
not become more proactive on this whole issue
of how to raise support and hard work.
Because many of us believe now that the
new wave of missionaries, increasing numbers, must be
tentmakers.
And I talked to a top business person
who after two hours of heavy questions made
the biggest commitment he's ever made to OM.
And he believes strongly the way ahead, and
maybe a little extreme, the way ahead of
tentmakers.
Because it's going to be harder than ever
to raise that finance.
Some of us go out and take meetings.
It's easy to raise money if you're out
taking meetings.
They may feel they should give you something.
But what about the people behind the scenes
who don't have all those contacts?
They will have to work much harder.
They will have to be much more creative.
Thousands have done it.
Praise God that it is possible for these
things to come into balance.
And through it, I really believe, I really
believe we'll be more mature.
I really believe we'll be able to run
the race right to the end of this
pandemic.
Way beyond our secular, non-Christian cousins.
I really feel God in the church wants
to have great people in politics.
And I meet them.
God wants us to have great people in
the arts.
And I meet them.
Not that we're going to take over the
world, some kind of cuckoo dominion theology.
But because we are the soul and the
light.
Because this is a calling from God.
We have great doctors.
We have great people in every area of
society.
Great football coaches.
Great athletes.
We need great missionaries.
We don't want an army of second-rate,
half-hearted, introspective missionaries who are everlastingly thinking
about themselves and their problems and where they're
living and what they're eating.
All those things have a place.
Hallelujah.
But we want people who are focused and
hard-working and are able to go through
a day or two whether they feel spirit
-filled or not.
Whether they've got a great quiet time or
not.
What nonsense that we can't live a day
if we don't have a great quiet time.
I have many miserable quiet times.
I was so encouraged by Coach McCartney.
He's very strong on quiet time.
O.M. is not going to abandon that.
But whether you have a great time with
Jesus and you feel all Jesus-y and
all Holy Spirit warm and wonderful, you've got
a job to do.
And you've got And when you go to
take another job back in your own country,
you're not going to be able to call
them up and say, we've got a prayer
meeting this morning.
You're not going to be able to call
them up and give them some of these
kind of excuses that we get so regularly
at times.
You'll either have to go and bite the
bullet.
I love that expression.
Forgive me.
It's one of the ways I've kept going.
Or you will be fired.
Now there are companies where it's a joke.
Many times in social services.
But the fact is, today, everybody in business
will tell you the competition is tougher.
Do you know how many Koreans have just
lost everything they have in what's happened in
Korea in the last two years?
Including men and women who are dreaming of
putting money into the church and putting money
into missions.
They're bankrupt.
And one of our most committed Swiss prayer
partners who's been at many OM events lately
and we're all hoping and praying for this
big thing he's going to do.
Money go to India.
Money go here.
I just talked to him on the phone.
He's bankrupt.
For everyone's success in business in these days,
there are many.
That has an interesting implication because as people
like Peter Maiden and I and others here
go around, we have so many people that
want to get into ministry.
Oh, I'd really like to get out of
this thing I'm in and get into ministry.
I sit down with him and say, look
brother, you're in ministry.
Now God may lead you into some other
ministry, maybe OM, but you're in ministry now.
Well, thank you for your patience.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for these dynamic, balancing,
life-changing words that are loaded with biblical
challenge and biblical meaning.
If we had a seminar instead of one
message, we could go from Genesis to Revelation
and we could talk about intimidation and flexibility
and unity and spirituality.
We could speak about the problem of dogmatics
and we could speak about work.
But Lord, our time is long gone and
we just ask, oh Lord, help us as
we attempt to be more committed to the
highway of holiness.
To be more committed to 1 Corinthians 13.
To somehow know more of that book of
Acts ethos.
We know even what I've shared here today
could be debated within OM until you come
with finer tuning, with need for changing certain
terms, with the need to bring in other
truths.
Lord, we're already known as a movement that
is very much committed to balance and committed
to being big hearted and listening to the
other person and networking with people that may
even have habits or things they do that
really even frighten us.
We've seen that in our AD2000 movement where
there are certain things happening that we're actually
opposed to and yet they're happening within this
network that we are associated with.
Lord, this seems to be the way, the
complicated way of the 90s and of the
new millennium.
Lord, we ask for wisdom and if there's
even a few nuggets of wisdom that we
can get from these sort of exhortations and
heart cries from my 42 years on the
racetrack, then Lord, help each one of us
to pick at least one up for our
families, for our children, for our teens, for
our life together here in Britain as we're
on different teams and have different kinds of
ministries with complex overlap as we all live
in this country.
We're all basically relational people committed to churches
and we believe it's going to take ongoing
renewal, ongoing renewal to keep this work on
track for your kingdom here in this challenging
land with the things that are going on.
Help us in Jesus' name.
Amen.