Father, we commit to you now this time,
as we consider one of the most important
subjects that we could ever think about in
regard to your Great Commission, help us to
really understand where we're going in our own
fellowship and as part of the Church.
We look to you, we ask for help,
help especially any listening to this tape who
may not have English as their first language.
Help us to see how this can, through
discipline and love and faith, fit into the
major thrust toward the year 2000 and beyond.
For we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
One of our great burdens in OM is
to stay on the cutting edge of what
God is doing in the world.
This is one of the reasons that we
send delegates to all kinds of including great
events like the Lausanne II Congress in the
Philippines.
We go to many different conferences, even here
in UK.
Peter Maiden's been at the Evangelical Missionary Alliance
Conference over the last couple days, a conference
I was able to speak at about a
year ago.
My thoughts came together for this burden I
want to share with you through this article,
the title of which really caught my attention.
Do we have adequate resources to evangelize the
world?
I think every year on our team here
in Bradley, there's an increase of the percentage
of our work that is going toward finding
resources for the whole of Operation Mobilization and
world evangelism in general.
India is an example.
A number of us here were long-term
in India.
We wanted to be.
God had other plans.
Though India still needs some internationals, and they
certainly are crying out for short-term people
to help, the job in India is going
to have to be done by Indians, largely.
I was listening to a tape yesterday of
the 25th anniversary meeting here in London of
OM India, in which Joseph de Souza was
the speaker.
I was greatly challenged by that tape, even
though I haven't been able to finish it
yet.
I myself need my vision constantly to be
refocused.
I need those corrective lenses that William McDonald
spoke about many years ago in a message
he gave here in this area.
Corrective lenses.
I read a lot of missionary literature, a
lot of missionary magazines.
I often wish I could just grab some
of these authors and share my feeble viewpoint
on some of these subjects.
There's quite a lot of controversy among missiologists,
often between California missiologists and European missiologists.
Europeans are still struggling with the term missiology.
But we certainly, as a movement, must be
willing to take in truth from all quarters,
and we must not get stuck.
We must not get bogged down.
We are not going to become a maintenance
program for long-term missionaries or anybody else.
When that happens, I'm going to start something
else.
Maybe I can do it better second time
around.
I've already got quite a few volunteers lined
up.
But at least for now, I think I'll
stay in Operation Mobilization.
As a movement that has just battled so
much, more than anyone can know, to find
the resources to keep going, articles like this
are incredibly relevant.
They're quite overwhelming, because this article shows that
we have the resources.
There is so much small thinking among God's
people, even in OM.
And articles like this just help to bring
the balance.
A lot of this information comes from a
man named David Barrett, who produced a book
about that thick.
The most unique missionary research in the history
of the world, some would consider it the
most unique research, period.
David Barrett believes we have the resources.
Manpower, money, technology.
We have enough churches.
We have enough Christians.
We have enough everything to do the job.
That's the great feeling among many, many people.
People who have not studied this find it
difficult to understand.
Little Joe Blow with his little mission society
down on the corner, that all he's been
doing in the last few years is cutting
back.
He's fired people.
He's cut this project, and he's cut that
project, because he doesn't have the resources.
And some character comes along and says, we've
got all the necessary resources.
You and I know that there's a great
difference between resources being available.
Like, for example, millions of pounds and Deutschmarks
and dollars in the hands of Christians.
David Barrett considers that a resource.
Every dollar in the hands of anyone who
professes Christianity is considered a resource.
So it gets a little complicated.
A lot of the statistics about the church,
church growth, how many Christians, those statistics include
often, you have to study them carefully, all
Christians.
If it's a statistic about evangelicals, they will
often say that, or some other modifying term.
The modifying terms, the footnotes, are incredibly important
when you look at statistics.
Some statistics about Christians even include periphery groups,
Jehovah Witnesses, seven-day Adventists.
Some of these groups would be quite offended
if they were not included, much less the
whole controversy concerning where Roman Catholics fit into
our statistics.
In one big conference in Singapore not long
ago, because of the Catholic involvement, the Latin
Americans staged a walkout.
And that is one of the biggest, most
difficult, thorny problems we are facing in the
task of unity and world evangelism.
In his article, David Barrett quotes from a
man named Anthony Ashley Cooper, who in fact
became better known as the seventh Earl of
Shaftesbury.
This was the answer they gave to resources
130 years ago.
Anthony Ashley Cooper was born in the year
of 1801, entering Parliament in Britain at the
age of 25.
He soon became the leading evangelical social reformer
of the 19th century.
He is better known by his title as
the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury.
In the year of 1860, the great Liverpool
Conference on Missions took place.
Shaftesbury observed as they lapsed into procrastination and
prevarication, a word I've never seen before, on
the subject of completing Christ's world mission.
Exasperated, he gave a rousing speech which contains
his most memorable statement.
Those who hold the truth have the means
enough, knowledge enough, and opportunity enough to evangelize
the globe 50 times over.
1860.
Now, it speaks a lot more about that,
and maybe I can do some photocopies of
this article, but it goes on to point
out that the resources in the hands of
God's people today is just a hundredfold beyond
what they were having in those days.
Amazing to think.
He goes into more detail in one of
his graphs, and then he makes a list.
Now, you may not agree with all of
this.
One or two points here, especially 200 million
Christian computer specialists, I do not understand that.
I will try to write in and find
out what in the world that is about.
But let me read the list of resources.
First of all, he points out that the
globe is 5.1 billion people.
It's more than that.
Every day it goes up in an almost
out-of-control way.
1.7 billion Christians.
I believe that statistic covers everybody who bears
that name.
1 billion urban Christians.
1.1 billion practicing Christians.
See?
He's fine-tuning now.
We just have to find out what he
means by practicing Christians.
No doubt.
If they go to church on Sunday morning,
they're supposedly practicing.
2.5 million worship centers.
1.1 billion regular radio, TV audience.
22,300 denominations, and that would exclude recent
-born house streams in England.
98,000 institutions.
20,000 parachurch.
20,400 parachurch or service agencies.
There we are.
It makes you really feel big, doesn't it?
One of 20,400.
Personal income.
I'd love to know how they figure this
out.
8,200 billion a year.
That's pretty good income.
Church agency income.
145 billion a year.
Foreign missions.
8 billion a year.
910,000 ordained clergy, ministers, pastors, and priests.
I repeat, I don't think this includes Hindus,
so don't get excited.
910,000 ordained clergy, ministers, pastors, and priests.
4.1 million full-time Christian workers.
That includes everybody who's full-time in any
way, anywhere, any church in the world.
262,000 foreign missionaries.
21,000 new Christian books a year.
200 million copies printed each year.
200 million.
10,000 books, articles on missions a year.
13,000 major religious or Christian libraries.
22,000 religious Christian periodicals.
That one completely blows my mind.
Must include prayer letters.
47 million Bibles a year.
70 million New Testaments a year.
450 million scripture leaflets a year.
4 billion Christian tracts a year.
42 million Christian computers.
200 million Christian computer specialists.
4,000 Great Commission networks.
56 Great Commission global networks.
9 Great Commission global mega networks.
387 current global plans.
254 current global plans making progress.
78 global mega plans.
33 global giga plans.
And the planned expenditure of $45 billion.
Now, if that doesn't rev your engine, you're
dead.
You need an overhaul.
We may not agree with everything or understand
everything, and you can feel free to write
it, because they have pages explaining often what
they mean.
The article then goes into what they consider
the greatest need if we are going to
see the task done.
Of course, one of the great needs is
to see those resources released.
Some of those resources we referred to are
already, that's already happening.
Other resources, like the money available, a high
percentage of that money, apart from the miracle
of God, will never be released into world
evangelism.
Let me read this.
Here's a quick overview of all these data.
Hang on.
Christians, as contrasted with non-Christians, are the
direct and only beneficiaries and users of the
following.
94%.
We're talking now about how much of the
resources that's actually functioning is basically among Christians,
rather than reaching out to the unreached or
to the non-Christian.
94% of all full-time workers, 85
% of all citywide evangelistic campaigns, 92%
of all foreign missionaries, 86% of all
foreign mission money, 99% of all Christian
-owned computers, 99% of all Christian computer
specialists.
That brings the statistic into balance.
That's probably, therefore, referring to every single Christian
in the world who has a home computer.
And so on.
The only resources which are to any degree
being properly used to benefit the non-Christian
world directly are the endeavors of the Bible
societies.
Even there, however, Christians consume 62% of
all Scriptures annually distributed.
In other words, some two-thirds for their
own personal use, leaving only one-third for
non-Christians.
He then gives a great plea for redeployment.
Redeployment.
That far more of our money, far more
of our efforts will go to the unreached
people of the world.
Now, this is where a lot of the
controversy comes in.
I, myself, believe that a lot of people
who are statistically not categorized as reaching the
unreached people are reaching unreached people.
I believe the statistics that came out of
the training evangelist conference that Billy Graham had
in Amsterdam, sort of writing off very few
of those as reaching unreached people, was a
statistic that lacked proper foundation and research, more
of a generalization.
This is where the controversy comes in, because
there are a lot of people who do
not have as a major thrust an unreached
people's group, but who are reaching unreached people.
I think most researchers would acknowledge that.
Up till some years ago, we did not
have these ways of categorizing things.
We have brought in new terminology.
We have brought in new means of measurement.
We have brought in new ways of keeping
statistics.
That can be overwhelming to us.
It's not a problem for the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit was in the unreached people's
movement long before we got the terminology.
This is why there's a great need to
highly esteem people that went on before us,
who were evangelizing before us, who used different
terminology.
Maybe they used nations instead of people's groups,
but that doesn't mean they weren't reaching people's
groups.
And it's important, as we are moving in
a new day with new rhetoric and new
vocabulary, that we always work for balance and
we try to understand how the Holy Spirit
has generally been way ahead of us, always
way ahead of us in anything that really
counted.
At the same time, that doesn't throw out
these strong pleas for redeployment.
It doesn't throw out the strong plea that
Ralph Winter and others have so, so strongly
preached, that there must be a greater thrust
to reach the unreached people.
And that is what's happening right now.
This has been building up for many, many
years, and it's happening.
The greatest thrust in the history of the
world to reach the final frontiers, whether you
are getting in on it, even as an
O-Emmer, because to presume that every O
-Emmer has this vision would be the height
of the ridiculous.
But whether we get in on this or
not, it's going to happen.
The momentum building up across the world right
now to reach the final frontiers is enormous.
We may not like all the rhetoric.
Subtle forms of pride can come in because
we may think that in some ways we
have already been on some of these final
frontiers.
We have been battling away in Turkey, one
of the greatest pioneer frontier battle zones in
the entire world.
We have been battling there for over 25
years.
We may read something that we feel isn't
exactly true or accurate.
However, if when we read that, we react
with pride or arrogance, that is a greater
sin or equal sin to false statistics.
And God doesn't want pride or arrogance in
His work.
The brother who arrives at Turkey tomorrow with
new terminology, new training, new rhetoric with his
computer in his hand, if he meets that
long-termer and that long-termer responds to
him in arrogance or pride and lack of
love, then the sin of that long-termer
makes the sin of that short-termer look
mighty small.
And I pray that wherever this tape is
heard in OM, we will understand how subtle
and how terrible pride is.
And that has often brought the division between
the long-term man who has been working
very hard in that field, who now knows
the language, who if he went home would
be asked to teach.
He would be asked to teach at some
of these missiological institutions.
But out on the field, he's picking up
different vibrations.
He can see through some of the statistics
or beyond them or under them, or he
may disagree overtly with certain things are said.
We can compassionately disagree.
And that's a beautiful thing.
But we must always beware of allowing ourselves
to get stuck, allowing pride to come in,
and therefore being unable to learn new lessons
that God wants to teach us.
A lot of people react to the concept
of redeployment.
Are we going to take some missionary in
over-evangelized Kenya?
Some wouldn't agree with that statement.
That's all right.
And redeploy him to southern Sudan or northern
Sudan, which is far more reached and has
probably far more unreached people, sectors, and groups
than southern Sudan.
Redeployment seems to be extremely difficult, but I'm
sure it will happen to some small degree.
Even many of the missionaries that left China
when the door closed, even with China in
the mission, some of them were unable to
be redeployed.
They returned because they felt their call was
only for China.
Others were redeployed, but only among Chinese-speaking
people.
I've often had the theory that at that
time Hudson Taylor or those who were following
in his steps should have opened a major
work in India, but they never did.
How India could have used that kind of
missionary movement at that time, but that never
happened.
Only in the last few years has the
China Inland Mission, I was in on the
initial discussions about it, made the decision to
go into the subcontinent.
Only in the last few years, a small
group of them, including some Asians, have gone
to Pakistan.
I want to just say, in bringing this
to a close, after reading many of these
articles, talking with many of these people, that
I am convinced that by a work of
the Holy Spirit, he has given us, as
a movement, the privilege of being on the
cutting edge of reaching unreached people.
This should be a major motivation factor for
our movement.
We do not have the same problem that
some other fellowships and societies have.
We have other problems, so that's not in
any way putting us up over them.
It's not what we're talking about.
But I think it's incredibly important, even for
those of us here in Bromley, to understand
we are working day and night in order
to stand behind and support our co-workers
who are on the cutting edge of frontier
missions.
And we, by God's grace, are committed to
run the race with all the other groups
that have, as their burden, reaching the final
frontiers.
I like the fact that now, in the
expression concerning the year 2000, they have added
and beyond.
Maybe it was always there.
I've only seen it recently.
It shows how slow I am on the
uptake.
Because I'm convinced that world evangelism is an
ongoing, continual process.
There will be no let-up.
There may be changes in ministry, but there
will be no let-up until the end,
until the Lord returns.
I also feel very strong that those who
are working as part of that five percent,
that tiny percent of missionaries who are actually
working among unreached people's groups and unreached people,
that I believe they must highly esteem those
who have other ministries.
In my feeble view, for every man we
have planting a church among the Baluch, probably
we're going to need ten or fifteen other
people somewhere in the process, excluding the people
in the home churches.
We will need hundreds there.
Hundreds!
The way God's people are giving presently, just
to support one man financially among the Pashto
or the Baluch or the Uyghurs, the Uyghurs
or other people's groups.
I feel very strongly that in a lot
of our statistics there is not enough emphasis
on revival.
There's not enough emphasis on quality.
This is where perhaps the influence of A
.W. Tozer is very great upon us.
I got in trouble for quoting Tozer at
Urbana back in the late sixties because his
one quote is looked at as being a
little anti-missionary.
It's not really.
Tozer said, to spread to pagan lands an
effing degenerate brand of pagan Christianity is not
to fulfill the Great Commission.
Of course, what did Tozer mean by that?
It's a tough expression.
But what I want to just insert here
is that every effort we make as a
movement to try to build God's people up,
which usually includes trying to give them this
vision for the unreached, is also absolutely vital
and essential.
The great problem is keeping it all in
balance.
The number of people ministering to believers to
try to get them evangelizing the unreached, this
is one of the main purposes of the
ship, this is the main purpose of many
of our teams, to minister among believers that
they may experience healing, that they may become
effective, that they may be able to deal
with their own problems and struggles so that
they are emotionally able to do these things.
And some people sense that this is their
ministry.
And I believe it's valid because we're discovering
an interesting number of people who go out
to reach unreached people's groups do not have
emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually what it takes
to do the job.
So it is not a matter of just
throwing mud out on the walls of the
mission field and seeing what sticks.
There has to be screening.
There has to be training.
There has to be a discovering of a
person's gifts.
Not everybody has the gift even to live.
People may say, well, this is just something
you learn.
I would say perhaps it's a combination.
To use better terminology, some people do not
have what it takes to live in some
tribe in Mauritania to plant the church.
And if all of our excitement for reaching
the unreached leads us into sort of a
running into the trenches as we had during
the First World War, it will perhaps end
in a similar kind of disaster or casualty.
We need desperately the right people in the
right place at the right time.
That is going to take renewal.
That is going to take study.
That's going to take training schools, Bible colleges,
OM training programs, a lot of in-depth
counseling.
It's going to take a wider use of
great books like Calvary Road, Healing for Damaged
Emotions.
Maybe one of the gifts God has given
me, I don't know, is an ability to
see how all these things fit together.
The dear lady in the local church down
the road who still doesn't have her Unreached
People's Map, she still hasn't seen Operation World.
She doesn't have the same vision that somebody
has who's just come back from Lausanne II.
But she loves Jesus, and she's worshiping Jesus,
and she's contributing into her local church, and
she's touching people's lives, and she's growing.
And as she grows, if our team maybe
gets there with the maps and the books
and the videos, she's just ready.
She's just ripe and ready.
Dear Mrs. Clapp, who died on Sunday, did
not have a lot of the terminology and
the rhetoric and the research and the facts
that we have today.
And yet that one woman, in her ignorance,
and people could classify her as ignorant compared
to those today who have so much information.
She is pre-Operation World.
How could people function pre-Operation World?
You see, the Great and First Me isn't
information.
It is not First Me information.
Because the greatest information we already have is
the Word of God.
It's obedience.
Obedience to the light that we do have.
And as dear Mrs. Clapp responded to the
light she had, she had prayer letters, she
had some missionary books, she had some information.
She obeyed.
And what God did through her, only eternity
will tell.
If we had time, and we don't have
it now, we could take a quick survey
of some of the fields where OM is
right there with their nose in those great
pockets of unreached people.
Let me just mention a few countries, because
my burden in giving this message is that
some who hear this will get motivated to
stand with us in prayer and financial support.
I've heard recently of people interested in reaching
the unreached, but didn't know where they should
give their finance.
If there's anybody anywhere listening to this tape,
you are at the right place at the
right time.
Because here is a movement with 1,800
people, plus all their children.
Some of them are already reaching people as
well.
With many, many thousands extras in the summer,
and Easter, and Christmas, and other times of
the year, and places like the ship, and
volunteers, there's extra people all the time.
We can't even count all the extra people
that are with us throughout various times of
the year.
That has, and has had from the beginning,
and continually adjusting and changing as its major
thrust, together with revival and reality in the
life of the individual, to reach the unreached.
Maybe we haven't always had the right vocabulary.
We certainly haven't always been able to take
what's flowing through our hearts and minds and
get it onto paper and produce some kind
of nice report.
Just think of a few places right now
before we close.
First of all, Turkey.
This was the very heart of OMS Nation,
Turkey.
Dale Roton was headed in one direction until
God, having put this country on my heart
in the earliest days, sent me out to
Wheaton, and I challenged Dale about Turkey.
Dale, I guess, challenged Roger Malsted, and soon
others were involved, and Dale Roton made a
45-degree turn in his life, away from
reaching tribes, perhaps in Latin America, with Whitcliffe
or the Brethren, and rejoined, in a sense,
this movement, and pioneered the work in Turkey.
And what our brothers and sisters are doing
in Turkey is something that we can rejoice
over, and yet, more than that, need to
pray much more for.
Isn't it sad that one of the problems
connected with the Turkish New Testament, that brilliant
project, so on the cutting edge of what
God wants to do today, battles at times
with financing?
I'll be giving out the international update at
the end, and I've offered three New Testaments
to anybody in the world who can find
a Turk anywhere in the world, and there
are millions of them, and give it to
them.
There's so much I would like to say
about Turkey.
What can we say about Iraq, where we're
now trying to do more?
What can we say for our work in
the Arab world, a high percentage of which
is aimed at totally unreached people?
Yes, there is the work also among the
believers, the training, the building up of believers,
the working with the churches, because we as
a movement are committed absolutely to work with
local churches.
We don't believe we can bypass churches.
This leads us into some incredibly complex situations
like Bangladesh, where with one foot we're trying
to work with existing churches that mainly have
their roots back among converted Hindus, and yet
we're trying to do something that's unique and
pioneer among Muslims.
These things may sound very challenging on paper,
but if you're living out there, it's overwhelming.
The complexity, the problems, it's overwhelming.
And it really hit me this week that
I had this long letter from our workers
in Bangladesh, once again painting their black financial
picture that they don't have the finance to
do what needs to be done.
I delegated some money for Bangladesh this week
through Philip for literature projects to discover that
the next morning I spent most of it
for some other need before he could get
it in the afternoon, and so we have
to find that somewhere else.
It's great to talk about all these resources,
praise the Lord for such charts, but the
fact of the matter is money is very
hard to find among God's people, and a
lot of our time and effort and prayer
and work, whether we like it or not,
I don't particularly like it, has to be
finding finance.
We as a movement should be able to
do that if what these people are talking
about is true, and if we do not
need massive redeployment, I'm sure we need some
redeployment.
We've already got more people out among the
unreached people than we are properly financing.
So our problem is not firstly redeployment, our
problem is money.
We have got to lay hold of some
of these resources, and we are making changes
as a movement in order to be more
effective, firstly in prayer, secondly in communication.
That's one of the purposes of this tape,
to link these people who need literature, who
need bicycles, who need support, to go one
more mile, one more village, one more unreached
people's group, one more unreached people's nation.
We must link those people, we have hundreds
of them out there, hundreds and many hundreds,
with these resources.
That is one of the purposes of this
team and every other team in this kind
of situation throughout ON.
And I would really ask of you to
recommit your own heart and your own life
to this Vision 2000, that we may unite
together with all other Bible-believing, God-fearing,
Christ-loving individuals to take the gospel to
every unreached people's group.
Yea, if it be His will, I'd like
to believe it is by the year 2000.
We know there will still be an enormous
amount of work the year 2001, an enormous
amount of work.
We know that some churches that are born
among unreached people's groups move into a decadent
and backslidden state within a few months or
a few years.
Statistics don't report that.
But as people concerned for the quality of
the kind of Christian that we are bringing
into being, we have to continue to give
a strong amount of effort in that zone
of attack as well.
I believe God can help us find the
balance of these many different burdens and challenges
that come upon us.
But let's pray especially that we may see
the resources released.
I've been so frightened at this India project,
and I want to give out today's India
with the project concerning the relocation of our
headquarters to Hyderabad.
When I discovered the amount of money, I
was frightened, Philip can tell you.
I was almost opposed to it.
And yet, when I think of how our
brothers and sisters there are on the cutting
edge, they are on the cutting edge of
what other people are only talking about.
And when I think of the money that's
been poured in to purchase places like the
U.S. Center for World Missions, ten years
to get the money.
Massive propaganda, information, huge gifts, and many thousands
and tens of thousands of small gifts.
And there are all kinds of projects like
that in the Western world, all talking about
doing it, and to some degree doing it.
All projects linked with the foundation, and we
accept that.
We have a similar project in Atlanta.
We have another one in a number of
other countries.
But when I think of our brothers in
India, 300 of them and sisters, they're already
doing what other people are only talking about,
what other people are only laying the foundation
for.
He talks about five years to redeploy one
person.
Five years.
These men are already there, and yet we're
not.
We're not supplying the finance they really need
to do the job.
In fact, the number one vocabulary word, as
far as I see, when I go to
Kathmandu to meet with the leaders, often is
cutback.
Cutback.
Pulling the belt.
That's the main challenge we often have to
get from the accountants, because they see the
reality.
And we need accountants, because the visionaries without
accountants fall in deep ditches, and then they
move in from the banks and from the
bankruptcy agencies.
Praise God for this step of faith by
our Indian brothers and sisters.
This headquarters, though it seems like a lot
of money to us, would not even build
a medium-sized church in the United States.
That's used maybe four times a week.
We are very idealistic.
In the early years, we wanted our money
to support the nationals, to purchase literature, bicycles,
videos, anything we could see that would actually
reach an individual.
We always found it hard to spend money
on things that we didn't see how it
absolutely touched the nerve of reaching people.
And because of that policy, we got into
renting and renting and renting until the whole
movement was choked, choked by high rents.
I don't believe purchasing a few small economical
properties, whether it's in Peachtree City or in
India, is some move away from the original
drive of OM.
It is necessary adjustment.
Tony Sargent just preached that to us the
other day, to take OM into the 21st
century.
So let's move with it.
Let's fight for it.
Let's find that money.
Let's give of our own money, if we
have any, and see this become a reality.
Let us pray.
Lord, we just thank You that You have
given us the privilege as a movement of
being on the cutting edge of what Your
Holy Spirit is doing in the world today.
We thank You for the privilege of getting
in this Marathon Race 2000, that everybody in
the world may receive the Gospel in some
way or form by the year 2000.
We know it's a wild idea.
We know unless there's revival, unless there's a
grassroots movement of prayer, unless there's a grassroots
movement of people submitting to Your Lordship, it
will not happen.
We're just in fantasy.
But Father, we want to aim high, and
by Your grace, we are going to labor
night and day to see that revival, to
see renewal, to see greater unity among Your
people, to see people coming under the Lordship
of Your Son, Jesus Christ, to see Your
people learning how to live together and function
together in brokenness as spelled out in Calvary
Road.
Father, we realize that our part is small
when we put it together with Your whole
great body in this world.
But we thank You for that small part,
and we want to do it with all
of our heart, with all of our mind,
with all of our soul, with all of
our strength.
And help us to see how the smallest
job that we faithfully do, wherever we may
be, in our local church or on this
team, the smallest job that we do with
all of our heart, faithfully unto You, helps
contribute to this forward thrust in Bangladesh, in
the Arab world, in Pakistan, in Turkey, in
the whole Eastern Bloc, where there are still
many unreached people's groups and unreached cities and
villages that are opening to us in a
new way.
We pray together right now, our Father, for
the release of resources.
We pray especially for people that have perhaps
more resources than the average person.
So many people we meet seem to need
financial help.
But we pray for anyone anywhere that has
resources, whether it's a computer or finance or
something else, that they would have wisdom and
courage and grace to take steps of faith,
to take risks, to invest in this great
forward thrust to reach the world with the
Gospel.
Help us to maintain the love and the
balance and the biblical perspective in the midst
of all we do.
For we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.