1997 has been a very, very exciting year.
I'm not going to go into detail.
There's not time, but I think we should
before we're just totally swamped in 98.
And yet the first time together in 98.
Thank God for what he did last year.
The great events here in South Africa.
The great events in your country.
It's impossible.
I don't know if you can imagine how
many hours a day I spend reading and
praying.
And it's impossible to keep up with what
God is doing, even through OM.
And we are only a tiny part of
God's great work.
I think I pray for almost every one
of you in this room.
Some of you regularly.
I go through thousands, literally thousands of e
-mails and prayer letters in the course of
every few months.
And I feel very linked with you and
your work.
And I want to thank you for your
faithfulness.
You may not think you're doing that well.
I often don't think I'm doing that well,
but I give thanks to God for each
one of you, including those that I'm only
getting to meet here for the first time.
I thank God that OM is a team
-led movement.
I'm only a part of that team.
And that's great.
This has been one of the best years
for ICT.
I speak especially for Forrest Hill, though I
believe it's been a great year for Carlisle,
because we finally, after many years, have moved
into a more team-led situation where I
meet with my four executives.
We don't really like that word.
Almost every single week.
And none of us have the gifts to
lead that complicated, challenging team.
Chaco, Mary Brinkley, John Wilkins, and Pam, our
chief financial person, usually sits in, and Ron
Goodenough, our chief counselor, usually sits in.
And we don't feel we're the greatest leaders
on the team.
Far better leaders aren't in those meetings.
We're trying to serve them.
But God had been doing something new there
in Forrest Hill, and as you know, also
giving us what is almost like a new
building in an amazing way there.
I had 420 meetings in 1997.
My efforts to cut back were not so
successful, but I'm already way ahead this year
in cutting back, because I'm often more motivated
to talk to one person on the telephone
than I am to speak maybe to a
hundred, perhaps because I've been taking those kind
of meetings for the last 40-some years.
But I've been having some new kinds of
phone calls with very amazing results, really more
in the past decade.
Thank you for your prayers.
My wife and I are still a team.
We just had our 38th wedding anniversary.
We have four grandchildren.
Charlie's birthday was yesterday.
If you didn't get our family letter, forgive
us.
My wife is the one behind that.
Not that you didn't get it, but in
putting it together, a lot of people I
don't think realize that my wife is completely
full-time, plus in the actual work of
OM.
We know not every woman has that privilege.
She keeps a database fully up-to-date
of 9,500 addresses, emails, phone numbers that
continually change.
She's more likely to go somewhere without me
than without her computer.
This has been a little bit of cause
of tension, but God has overruled.
We pushed a few buttons some weeks ago
just to see how many former OMers.
We have 1,600 former OMers on our
own.
This is just our own personal mailing list.
One of our commitments as we go forward
is to our former OMers.
I'm sure all of you are wondering what
I have in this bag.
I want to keep the book reviews minimal
because we're lacking time, but if I didn't
give any, some of you would think that
I were ill.
I want to say that South Africa is
one of the most proactive countries in the
whole of the OM world for literature.
They're also the most proactive country that I
know of in the Acts 13 vision.
They even have on the literature table, I
think it's a South African edition of the
leaflet, and the questions and answers that go
with that in case any of you are
new and you haven't seen that.
Acts 13 Breakthrough 2000 is certainly, to be
honest, not taking off like one would dream,
but it is encouraging, and it's not something
that we ever planned to sort of finish
at the year 2000.
Something like this may go very slow for
a while and then just have lift-off
as different shakers and movers take hold of
that simple concept.
Here's a great book you may want to
pick up.
I love this kind of book, The Ten
Top Mistakes That Leaders Make.
I learn so much when I read these
kind of books.
Here's one of the books that might bring
some balance to Grace Awakening.
Some of you feel Grace Awakening is not
totally in balance.
The Discipline of Grace by a Leader of
the Navigators Movement.
Perhaps a little more emphasis on discipline.
Let's see if you can all read together
out loud what it says on my T
-shirt.
Can you read that together?
One, two, three.
Amen.
That's a good sub-theme for tonight, isn't
it?
I've just come actually in from Minneapolis speaking
to 500 pastors.
One of the more unusual minister meetings in
my life, really.
It was one of the few meetings when
I had to answer the tough question, are
you a Calvinist?
John Piper wrote to me this long letter.
He's from Bethlehem Baptist Church.
This is their T-shirt.
I don't even know where I got it.
I had it for one or two years,
I think.
But he wrote to me.
I think he may have been a little
embarrassed by that question, but he said these
men were mainly of the Reformed Elk.
He wanted to know if I was Reformed
like other friends of mine.
He quoted and mentioned Greg Livingstone.
I guess I didn't realize that about Greg.
I finally told him on the phone during
the interview that I was Reformed, but I
had a strong Arminian streak.
I didn't hear for a long time, but
I did eventually get invited.
It was a very challenging time.
I think we'll be seeing a lot more
of John Piper.
Frontier has already had him as their main
speaker there in Dubrone just before we rolled
in one year.
This is his book that I've been especially
pushing since Urbana.
It's there on the table.
Let the Nations Be Glad, the Supremacy of
God in Missions.
This is my theme.
In some ways I'm probably not worthy to
speak on that theme, but this is where
my heart is.
This was the really key book for me
at the end of 1997, and I hope
that that theme will run not just through
this conference but through the whole of OM
because it just helps us.
I think our morning prayer time was along
that line to really get our priorities right.
There's another interesting book, Making Christ Known.
It's a summary of all the various documents,
Lausanne document, all kinds of documents that have
come out of the evangelical church over the
past decades, put together by John Stott.
It's certainly a book you'll want to have
in your library as Real Way OM and
also Jokowi 82,000 builds on that.
I've had more feedback last year from giving
away this book than any other book.
I gave away a lot more of other
books, but this is the one that brought
me the big feedback, the autobiography of Billy
Graham.
It came out in paperback this week, but
we've got this hardback.
Believe me, somebody is losing money every time
you sell this at half price, and I
hardly think it's South Africa.
I would urge you to take advantage of
this, and then when you get your paperback,
you can give this away.
If you need some suggestions as to who
you should give this kind of book to,
you could perhaps contact Peter Maiden or Mike
Light or someone else in the know on
these things.
But I have to confess I have not
finished it.
What I have read of it is very,
very powerful because this man in many ways
is an ordinary apple pie American who made
lots of mistakes.
He's highly esteemed now, but I will tell
you, he probably has more arrows in his
back than maybe all of us combined in
this room.
That's what he went through, especially in 1957.
So I look at these books and I
get excited.
We have been greatly blessed in OM, receiving
books at very low prices.
My book for 1998, I don't even have
a copy left, is called When Good Men
Are Tempted by Bill Perkins, the father of
a young man just back from OM.
I think Gary Dean's part of OM.
And I met him in the airport in
Portland.
He gave me this book, and I knew
as I started to read it, the most
raw, straight-to-the-cut book for men
on the subject of sex that I've seen
in quite a while.
I offered it on the radio free the
other day at Moody, and I think Tyrone
had 250 phone calls in 24 hours.
They had 40 on their answering machine.
I want to publicly apologize for that, not
giving enough warning.
I did emphasize to write in.
I don't know why all these people phoned
in in the land of telephones.
Emails came in from Hong Kong and other
places requesting When Good Men Are Tempted.
And I managed to have a phone call
with a publisher shortly before this.
It's a $12 book, which does not warm
my heart.
And I pulled off a deal to get
5,000 copies at $1.33. I would
have preferred a dollar, but we have to
be willing to compromise in this kind of
ministry.
Other books have been coming to us free
of charge.
There's one of them, the CEV, Full Bible
Called The Promise.
We've been given a gift of 40,000
copies.
If it's worth $10 each, figure the value
of that gift.
It cannot be distributed in the United States
or the UK.
We're supposed to be a little careful in
terms of bookshops.
It's more for everything, every other kind of
distribution.
If you let your creative juices flow and
send an email to Vera or Don Velboom,
who I don't think has been able to
arrive yet, all we ask you to do
is pay a little bit of the free.
We're even willing to negotiate on that.
About that time, I was trying to negotiate
to get copies of this book.
This is another outstanding book that came into
my hands because the author phoned me to
use a quotation from one of my books.
This is a Promise Keeper's book.
I told him it was not for me
to get permission to use this because I
got it from someone else, and I don't
know who that was.
It's clear in my book that it's not
me.
But in this amazing book, that song about
backward Christian soldiers fleeing from the fight now
is written by George Brewer.
Peter Conlon, do you know who wrote that?
Did you write that?
We can try to settle out of court.
When I negotiated to get copies of this,
it was in early stages.
When I found out it was $17 or
$18 a copy, since I'm always involved in
many hundreds of projects, I dropped it.
Just to forget it for a while.
And in this quantity of literature we recently
were given free were over 10,000 copies
of this amazing book.
It's a $17 hardback book, which will be
focused on in my meeting tonight.
It's my prayer that everybody in the future
that comes near an OM person anywhere on
the planet will get a free book.
I know that's a dream.
Some of you may not like the way
that sounds.
But I believe that God has been so
gracious to us in supplying literature at the
most incredible prices, and sometimes free, should we
not try to bless the body of Christ
by giving books, as well as selling them
and giving them for a donation.
My book tables now, the first book generally
is always free, and the amount of money
coming in has continued to climb.
And the amount of literature is three to
four times as much as my old-fashioned
pre-paradigm shift book tables.
Turn with me now in your Bibles of
a number of scriptures.
I have so many notes up here.
I really need your patience.
But I want you to turn in your
Bibles first of all to John 14, 6,
or maybe I could just quote that.
Jesus said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life.
No man comes to the Father but by
me.
We're especially going to be talking about truth,
love, and unity.
Because of the tremendous emphasis on love and
grace in previous years, and messages all of
you have, I'm mainly going to be focusing
on truth and unity.
Let's look at 1 John 2, 18.
I've got my Spanish, English New Testament here.
Let's just try to find that real quick.
I just let my marker slip out of
the page.
1 John 2, 18.
There are so many verses on the subject
of truth, I had difficulty making a choice.
My children, the end is near.
You were told that the enemy of Christ
would come.
And now many enemies of Christ have already
appeared.
This is 2,000 years ago.
Approximately many enemies of Christ had already appeared.
By the way, in my life this is
a neglected scripture.
I've never spoken on this scripture that I
can remember.
And so we know that the end is
near.
These people really did not belong to our
fellowship.
And that is why they left us.
If they had belonged to our fellowship, they
would have stayed with us, but they left.
So that it might be clear that none
of them really belonged to us.
But you have had the Holy Spirit poured
out on you by Christ.
That's beautiful, isn't it?
And so all of you know the truth.
I write you then, not because you do
not know the truth.
Instead, it is because you do know it.
And you also know that no lie ever
comes from the truth.
Who then is the liar?
It is anyone who says that Jesus is
not the Messiah.
Such a person is the enemy of Christ.
He rejects both the Father and the Son.
For whoever rejects the Son rejects also the
Father.
Whoever accepts the Son has the Father also.
Be sure then to keep in your hearts
the message you heard from the beginning.
If you keep that message, then you will
always live in union with the Son and
the Father.
And this is what Christ Himself promised to
give us eternal life.
I am writing this to you about those
who are trying to deceive you.
I feel, and I'm sure most of you
agree, that there are many, many forces of
darkness that are trying to bring deception into
the body of Christ.
I think one of the hardest things for
the average Christian today is to accept unpleasant
verses.
To be quite honest, I found the video
quite unpleasant.
It's very hard for me to think of
what's going on in my human way of
thinking that this is some kind of judgment
on the people of Afghanistan.
And believe me, if you talk to some
people that way, you will get in deep
difficulty.
And sometimes things like this, in discernment, we
keep them in our hearts and share them
carefully.
You may not even believe that that which
was portrayed in the video is true.
But certainly I know in my life I
have tried to run away from the message
concerning the judgment of God.
I have been deeply confused at times by
passages concerning God's judgment in the Old Testament.
But I don't believe we can believe the
Bible is God's Word and not accept that
the judgment factor, the wrath of God, all
of that side of things which we don't
hear many messages about, including hell and eternal
separation from God, is clearly in His Word.
Now I know that's hard.
Maybe it isn't hard for you.
But I believe that's what the Word of
God teaches.
Not necessarily this particular situation about Afghanistan, but
certainly that is a real possibility.
Some things in the Word of God that
show horrendous judgment upon people in this world
don't seem to be possibilities.
They are clearly recorded in God's Word.
I personally believe there is no other name
given among men whereby anybody in this world
can be saved.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe the Bible's all wrong.
Then we surely have a major problem in
operational mobilization.
It makes our other problems look fairly insignificant.
I say this because I believe as we
move into a new millennium and face the
challenges of a new millennium, that one of
the fiery darts that will continue to hit
the Church and therefore hit us is the
fiery dart of unbelief, which is combined with
the tendency to compromise concerning the truth of
God's Word.
And I've been amazed in my ten visits
to the United States in 1997, nine or
ten, of the tremendous infiltration into the Church
by New Age philosophy, by liberalism.
We used to fight against liberalism.
Now we have liberalism often among evangelical people.
And we often find that in our desire
for unity, it is no longer even acceptable
to talk about doctrine in certain circles in
which we have many friends and supporters.
This is, I guess, one of the reasons
I'm pushing this Promise Keepers book, which is
a bit of a paradox because they're one
of the main groups that's being criticized for
doctrinal compromise.
I'm a great defender of the Promise Keepers
because as a movement of that kind, I
don't believe they can fine-tune doctrine, neither
to the degree of a local church or
to the degree of a missions movement, a
church-planting missions movement like us.
So their policy probably about Catholics won't be
the same as ours.
Their policy about other things may not be
the same as ours.
But they are our brothers and sisters.
It is basically an evangelical movement.
Most of you have heard my tape about
Promise Keepers.
And this book is clearly an evangelical book.
Some of you who read things more carefully,
be sure to send me something you find
that you feel is not accurate.
And the plea of Glenn Wagner, the author
of this book, is not basic old-fashioned
ecumenicalism.
It is unity.
It is relational unity.
Brothers and sisters loving one another.
And we've learned, I think, already from Charles
Swindoll and his brilliant book, something that we
already taught ourselves, that that unity has to
be in the midst of diversity.
I want to now read something from this
book, The Awesome Power of Shared Belief, realizing
this is not perhaps totally culturally appropriate, not
necessarily for South Africa, but other cultures represented
here.
It goes back to the war in the
Gulf.
It goes back to a story about an
LAV.
And when I read that, I wondered what
that was.
It's a light armored vehicle.
It's a vehicle like a tank, but much
lighter, and cruises across the desert at 50
miles an hour.
If you remember over the years, I don't
read much out of books.
I usually give you a quote, but bear
with me to read this.
It happened during the war in the Persian
or Arabian Gulf.
It was the night of January 29, 1991,
in Saudi Arabia.
Lance Corporal Ron Tull was part of the
eight-man crew that manned a light armored
vehicle, LAV, in Delta Company.
It has nothing to do with Delta Airline.
Twelve other LAVs were a part of this
light armored infantry group that established a camp
37 miles west of Kaffi, a coastal town.
About 10 p.m., the silence of the
desert was rudely interrupted by an excited voice
over the radio, LAI, LAI, this is recon.
30 Iraqi tanks are coming over the berm.
Corporal Tull, better known to his friends as
Tully, knew this was it.
He and his crew climbed into the LAV
and Tully settled in behind the wheel.
His assignment was to keep vehicle in formation,
avoid collision with other LAVs, and watch out
for tanks.
What made this job especially challenging was that
it was to be accomplished while the LAV
was speeding across the desert at a clip
of 50 miles an hour.
Suddenly, a missile from another LAV exploded into
an Iraqi tank 30 yards to the left.
Just put yourself in that situation.
Just moments later, a second tank was hit
70 yards ahead.
Fighting this close was unnerving, but Tully's crew
swallowed hard and continued to move on with
their mission.
No one in Tully's LAV saw the USA
Air Force A-10 fighter swoop out of
the sky behind them in an attack dive.
The pilot aimed a heat-seeking missile at
an Iraqi tank, but heat radiating from the
LAV, guns, and rear exhaust confused the missile's
guidance system.
It altered course abruptly and fired into the
left rear of Tully's LAV.
The explosion blew the gun turret off and
threw the LAV into the air like a
tin can, hit with a shotgun blast.
Tully felt bomb fragments penetrate his back.
The force of the explosion slammed him into
the steering wheel and then throwing him out
of the vehicle into the desert sand.
His face black with burns, his back fractured
in three places, Tully miraculously stumbled 15 yards
from the vehicle before collapsing face down in
the sand.
When he came to in the hospital, he
was informed that he was the only one
of his crew to survive.
The other seven Marines in the rear of
the LAV were killed instantly by their own
comrades.
It's called friendly fire.
The body of Christ is in tremendous pain
in the world today.
People in some places are even leaving the
church by the thousands and some becoming agnostics,
including an interesting number of ministers, theological students,
and even former missionaries.
The church is suffering in many ways and
we don't have time to go into detail.
But one of the things I think that
hurts us the most as we work very
closely with the churches, and much of my
work is with the churches, is what they
call in this book friendly fire.
It has a number of other names that
are less friendly.
It happened a number of times in the
Gulf War.
It's perhaps happened in every war.
As I try to think on the subject
of unity, the future of OM, I have
this heart cry that somehow we would beware
of shooting one another.
I could give you specific examples of where
negative things stated by a brother or a
sister in OM have been an enormous hindrance
to another brother or his field or his
ministry.
Gossip can go around the OM world almost
as fast as an email.
We now have a number of books on
the subject of shooting the wounded, so I'm
not speaking something just totally original.
We're all vulnerable.
We're all weak.
And I'm sure I at times have engaged
in friendly fire without realizing it, trying to
point out some truth, trying to defend some
situation.
I said something negative maybe about a field,
about a brother or a sister, and that
has been used by the devil as a
hindrance.
Maybe someone else picked that up, I don't
know of a specific case, and decided not
to go to that field on the basis
of that generalization that I may have made,
that friendly fire that I may have engaged
in.
Brothers and sisters, we are hurting one another
in this movement.
If you don't believe that ever happens, I'd
be happy to receive your correspondence.
I'm not interested in giving a bunch of
details.
The Spirit of God has to convict us.
But as we go forward, we realize with
the movement now this size, with quite a
few of us moving into our senior years
and eventually moving out of our leadership, people
outside of OM, I talk to many of
them, they will tell us, your more difficult
days are ahead.
Someone came to me at Prairie Bible Institute,
which has gone through tremendous struggle in their
period of transition.
And they sort of challenged me to make
sure I have my successor in place, Peter
Maiden's successor in place.
People even ask me, people outside of the
OM, ask more bold questions often than people
inside OM.
As we face the next decade, it's going
to take everything we have, from God's Word
and the power of the Holy Spirit, to
maintain our unity.
And I think of that exhortation, to maintain
our unity in the bond of peace.
We are committed to truth.
There are many other verses from 2 John
and from the book of Jude I wanted
to read, encouraging us to defend the faith,
to stick to the truth.
Some people no longer want to be called
evangelicals.
It's quite interesting because at the same time,
many other people, including many people who have
been called charismatic, want to be called charismatic
evangelicals.
Some of you may be charismatic evangelical.
Some of you may not like that term,
but we are all in this movement, just
for the sake of some degree of definition,
evangelicals.
We believe the Bible is God's Word.
We believe the Gospel is the power of
God unto salvation.
There are situations that I'm in where I
don't use the word evangelical.
In the prayer movement, that's behind the prayer
breakfast, they tend to always just talk about
Jesus.
I'm still wrestling to figure out this movement,
but Doug Coe, one of the founders, was
one of the very first speakers at one
of the conferences similar to this in 1961
in Madrid, Spain.
Doug Coe, I'm sure, could see how we
were the kind of movement with our extremism
that could get into tangents, and he gave
a message, though that's a long time ago,
1961, that I'll never forget.
He said, focus on the Lord Jesus.
Focus on the Lord Jesus.
I believe that should be our focus, but
at the same time, if someone tries to
emphasize that to the degree that we have
to leave our other precious and major truths
of God's Word, then I cannot accept that,
though I'll be happy to love him or
her as a brother.
If you study the history of OM, and
I brought some old tapes with me, not
to give away.
We don't have many.
I got these put together in an album
by my old friend John Wright.
Tapes for leaders.
I think many of you have seen these.
Hans Strohm leading a small team.
I listened to that recently.
This is all vintage from the 70s.
Pitfalls of Leaders, that's by me.
Personality Conflict, George Miley.
Somehow John Wright seemed to put the rest
of the tapes by me, but there's another
series in which you get a wider range
of speakers.
If you'd like one of those vintage leadership
series, request it by email to Vera or
maybe a big piece of paper.
I think one of the things that marked
our movement from the earliest days until now
is the emphasis on love and unity.
That always in our conferences superseded emphasis on
evangelism, even prayer, discipline, many other things that
we became known for.
In fact, in the very first conference for
the summer campaign of people going into Mexico,
1960, a few months after Dreena and I
were married, Greg Livingstone was just passing through.
Every night, many of you have heard this,
I say it again, every night of that
conference we spoke only about the fruit of
the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes when people say off-the-wall things
about the early days of OM, and there
are off-the-wall things, you might remind
them that love was always our greatest aim.
I believe that's one of the reasons we've
held together for 40-some years.
In fact, I think in the original orientation
series, something I've been listening to lately, as
part of the 40th anniversary, I didn't quite
get through it.
Listening to my own voice was almost like
listening to another person because they are very,
very old.
But it is amazing the strong emphasis on
unity.
We sort of take this for granted in
OM.
This movement would have split.
We've dealt with many potential earthquakes in this
movement over these 40 years that could have
split.
Dale and I could have split.
We were close to it at one point.
But this emphasis on unity, combined with brokenness,
combined with the mercy of God and the
grace of God, kept us together.
And I hope that as we go into
a new millennium with far more people, far
more complexity, far more problems, let's be honest,
friends, we are going to have to work
at maintaining the unity.
It will not come just through nice prayer
meetings.
It will not come just through an occasional
time of fellowship with a brother and a
prayer.
We will have to work harder on unity
in the next 10 years than in the
previous 10 years.
The OM that exists today is not the
OM of the 60s or the 70s.
The OM today is more the OM of
the 80s, the 90s, and, of course, with
roots going back.
And so when I defend certain things or
speak about certain things, I'm not speaking about
the original George Berwer OM.
That's easier for me, actually.
I'm speaking about the consensus OM.
I'm speaking in the light of the policy
manual that you put together and that I
believe you should attempt to follow.
I'm now part of the OM that belongs
to the General Council, not to you, not
to me, not to your little nationalistic group,
whatever flag you may fly, but belongs to
the General Council, the people.
The OM in the 80s became a movement
of people.
And the ordinary person who is just as
important as any of you, and may God
forgive us as leaders of our arrogance, because
sometimes we have been arrogant.
And I, at times, have been arrogant.
May God forgive me.
There's outward arrogance and there's very subtle arrogance.
But whatever is never from God.
In an amazing way, God gave us unity
in intensive, long meetings to put together a
policy manual, which, of course, will continue to
be changed and ratified, but by the people
of the movement, as complicated as that may
be.
When we think of unity, we tend to
think of unity between brothers and sisters, unity
between one team and the other, and unity
on a personal level.
But I wanted to attempt to talk about
something a little bit different that I hope
will help continue to lay the foundation for
the future.
And I must be honest, that for the
first time in my life, I'm speaking mainly
thinking of the day when I no longer
will hold this leadership position.
I don't know when that is.
Maybe the Lord can take me at any
time.
And we have written into our notes what
to do.
Area leaders brought this into our discussion.
What do we do if Burwer goes?
What do we do then if Maiden and
Burwer go together?
We ended up in the same plane with
Hicks.
The twin hits, the two Hicks.
This was an exciting flight.
All the Americans got bumped up to business
class.
Peter Maiden was in the smoking department.
He eventually got out of that, but he
couldn't sit with his own wife.
I think Pam was back in there sucking
up smoke.
My wife and I were in discount seats.
We were mighty happy.
I'd rather be with my wife in the
economy class than in the business class as
a lonely bachelor any day.
But that was an exciting flight.
We're so thrilled they got upgraded.
They even let me come up there and
feel the air.
But I wanted to let them get on
and watch the film, so I didn't bother
them.
So this message tonight is a little unusual
for me.
And if there's some Burwer straw in it,
you'll forgive me because I'm finding my way.
But I have so many people talking to
me about this.
Most of you know Dale Roton is a
lot older than me.
I just became 60 a few days ago.
And, yes.
July 3rd is my day.
Send all contributions to special projects.
They'll be matched.
But people outside of OM, including godly people,
including donors, they want to know what are
we going to do.
Is Burwer going to do a Billy Graham?
He's still running the Billy Graham organization at
79.
Since I esteemed him, since I converted through
him, since he's one of my members, mentors,
I've wrestled through a few things.
And I just want to say with all
my heart, I am not going to lead
Operation Mobilization at that age or anything near
that age.
We are a totally different movement from the
Billy Graham Association.
And I know others that have hung on.
And Billy Graham, I'm sure, does it in
a very gracious way.
And he delegates.
But I felt, and I've shared this with
the area leaders, that most of us should
consider serious change in ministry at least when
we get to what is the retirement age
in most countries, somewhere in the mid-60s.
You know, that's changing.
You know, in India, we got that miracle
number 59.
And so I guess, you know, tonight, if
I were an Indian, I'd have given my
resignation.
But they'd open up a new ministry for
me tomorrow.
We're not talking about necessarily leaving OM, though
some will prefer to do that.
That would not be my choice.
But I do believe God wants us to
think and plan ahead.
I believe we not only should have team
leadership on the running levels of OM teams,
fields, but I believe we have put together,
without realizing it, a structure of team leaders
on an international level.
Let me introduce them to you.
You probably already know them.
The first one I'd like to introduce to
you is Mr. and Mrs. Board Member.
Mr. and Mrs. Board Member will have to
play a more increasing role in the movement.
I would challenge you to get your board
in place in your country unless you have
a special situation of which there are plenty.
So you contextualize what I say, hey, into
your situation.
I don't think the history of OM's boards
have probably been told.
I wish I had time to tell you.
The movement was born in 57.
By 58, we had a fairly solid board
in position, starting to move, certainly in control
of the money, that I was responsible to,
by 1958.
Within three months after arriving in Britain, we
had perhaps an even more disciplined, committed board
in place in the British Isles that I
was subject to.
Some of them are with us today, to
this day.
Well, Valgrave came just a few months later,
but very early days.
Mr. Dalley came also in the very early
days.
I think the original ones have gone on
to be with the Lord except Mr. Steele.
I can remember the very moment when these
men from Manchester challenged me to get my
act together and get a board.
More time probably of you as a field
leader needs to be given to board members.
But many people would say that you are
not the one that should actually exclusively choose
them.
That itself must be really a board decision.
You can recommend, but I would urge field
leaders not to be heavy-handed in just
recommending their personal friends into the board, and
to even be willing to have on the
board people who have the courage to disagree
with you.
At the same time, brothers and sisters, I
would beg of you to try to get
board members, men or women, we've had both
from the earliest days in Canada, men or
women who understand something of the ethos of
what this movement is about.
Our greatest blessing can come from godly board
members, but greatest problems can also come from
board members who may not believe the Bible
is God's Word, who may be universalists or
masons.
We cannot just bring anybody because they look
nice or they have something to contribute into
our boards.
And I believe that is going to be
one of the toughest challenges facing us, especially,
I believe, after some of us older founder
members move off the scene.
We have an authority.
The movement has an ethos because we are
around, which causes quite a few people who
might cause difficulty to just be a little
quiet.
Part of my team, not in necessarily order
of importance, Mr. and Mrs. Field Leader, you
will always be, as far as I can
understand in OM's ethos, the key people to
make it happen in your nation.
And we on the international side for 30
to 40 years have always tried to back
our field leaders, believe the best, stand with
them, going back to Valdemar Aguilar in difficult
days in Mexico.
I mean, I back Valdemar in ways that
would, I'm sure, surprise some people.
There's a loyalty between the international side of
OM and the field side of OM that
is something we can only give thanks to
God for.
That must continue.
It will not get any easier.
Mr. and Mrs. Field Leader, you have a
lot of authority.
But if you are wise, you will be
a team player.
You will not make decisions just on your
own.
And it's encouraging to see so many little
sort of teams on a field level operating
effectively.
The third part of our group, Mr. and
Mrs. Area Leader, all of you are fairly
new.
Some people wonder why I don't visit their
field like I used to.
I gave that job to the Area Leader.
I did it for 25 years.
I visited every outpost in this massive spread
-out movement.
And maybe after I give this job that
I have right now to someone else, I'll
go on a worldwide trip.
It would be great to see how many
countries at 66 years of age I could
fit into a one-year trip.
My wife would not be too enthusiastic about
this at present.
Mr. and Mrs. Area Leader are somewhat new.
We're still learning how that works out.
It's really over a decade, though, isn't it?
So saying new is a bit of a
wrong statement.
Quite a few of the Area Leaders, however,
are only in this job a couple of
years.
They are not people that are ruling over
God's heritage.
They are coaches.
They are lovers of people.
Has anybody ever been punched in the nose
by Tony Kirk, huh?
You know, take a picture.
One of God's teddy bears.
Praise the Lord.
There's probably a side of Tony I haven't
seen yet, but I'll stick around a little
bit longer.
I thank God for every one of these
Area Leaders, and they will work in partnership
with the field leaders and the boards and
carry on a large amount of the load
in the future.
And then there's Mr. and Mrs. International Coordinators,
just two of us at present.
What a miracle that God could put together
the likes of Peter and myself and our
wives.
We, of course, have our teams.
Area Leaders have their small teams.
Field Leaders have their small teams.
And so that leads me to the fourth
group to make up this little oversight structure.
I don't have the best words.
And that's Mr. and Mrs. Member of the
General Council.
A missionary movement in which people raise their
own money is completely distinct from any organization
where people are paid salaries.
Almost any salaried organization, people are hired and
fired almost at whim.
Two hundred people from the Promise Keepers Movement
were fired not long after they were hired,
including founder members.
I talked with one of them personally.
I don't think he was fired.
I think he negotiated his way out.
And I am not saying that's wrong.
I'm not pointing any judgmental finger at them.
And I am far more grace-awakened about
the many different ways that Christian movements work.
But we, over the last ten years, have
more or less decided how we are going
to go forward.
And I beg of you not to think
we have to go back over all this
ground again.
We can make adjustments.
But I believe we should go forward with
these adjustments.
Of course, praying.
Of course, discussing.
But accepting this basic structure that God has
given to us.
Sometimes in OM we have de-emphasized structure.
But without the right structure, our unity will
be hindered.
We will be thrown into confusion and disunity
on many fronts.
It is not easy to get strong-minded
people to agree.
It took us years to get to this
level.
Phenomenal change in many of us, mentally, emotionally,
the way we think, the way we listen,
the way we function.
And so we would hope that somehow this
would be accepted as the way forward and
that somehow we would work at this.
Perhaps the greatest amount of discussion these days
settles more around the General Council and whether
we should even have a General Council.
But when that was put to a vote
at a recent General Council, there was a
sense they wanted to continue to carry this
load, which will have to be modified, and
we will continue to think through that.
And the next General Council is going to
be one of the great councils in the
history of OM.
There's also considerable discussion about the international side,
especially as we think of globalization, especially as
we think about many other factors.
I even, in an off moment, sort of
reacting to something, said, maybe we could dismantle
the whole thing, internationally.
Just let everybody go, every field, go do
your own thing.
I was sort of sorry I ever said
that because it was a denial of all
that God had been leading and saying up
before that.
But as I wrestled over the months, I
just realized God has given us a tremendous
team in the international side of this fellowship.
And if in the future, try to bear
with me for these moments more, if in
the future we are going to continue to
see large sums of money go from one
country to another, there must be international coordination.
If we are going to continue to see
so many people go from one country to
another, such a rapid increase of international marriages,
and all kinds of international things, then we
desperately need strong international leadership.
If we're going to maintain our testimony, which
at this time on an international level, it
just overwhelms me to hear what other Christian
leaders say, the open doors that are given
to us.
Do you think you're going to bring this
ship into some city if the testimony of
Operation Mobilization is brought into disrepute?
If there's major immorality in the movement?
If the ship ministry has been known for
doing something in another country that's wrong or
evil?
We are very naive at times in OM
about the real problems that can hit Christian
ministry.
Most of the problems we've had for 40
years have been relatively solvable.
And one of the reasons is such a
united foundation to fight almost anything the devil
can try to bring against us.
I'm convinced, just as we need strong board
members, strong field leaders, strong area leaders, all
in different ways, we need a strong international
coordinating team.
Long after I disappear from the scene or
pass on my role to someone else, at
this point I think I want to shoot
a little mythology straight in the head.
It is a false idea that no one
could walk in my shoes.
Missions have shown that the second director of
major movements have done better than the first.
Hallelujah!
Should be, surely with a character like me
being the first.
They will not be the same.
We cannot reproduce the founding of OM.
We cannot reproduce the pioneer days in Mexico
or even the pioneering of a ship project.
The person who steps into my shoes and
in Peter's shoes, and even the way they
approach it, even where they live, could be,
probably will be, completely different.
But if we are not able to find
those people, I'm not talking in the next
year or two years, but at God's timing,
that will be discussed, then I believe we
will not hold together.
I'm a student of missions.
I could tell you stories about other missions
when they have fractured internationally.
We're talking of hundreds of people hurt.
We're talking of people giving up their faith.
We're talking about missionaries returning from the field,
angry and confused about their mission society.
We've already had people angry and confused at
times about OM, so we're not making any
claim to fame.
But I am saying that we need to
at least start praying and thinking as we
go into a new millennium about who will
be God's people to step into my shoes
and Peter's shoes and probably most of the
area leaders who are here, probably many.
Some of you field leaders are very young,
but how long do you want to stick
on the hot seat?
And there's some that feel field leaders should
go for so many years and move on.
Others feel they should stay longer.
I believe a lot depends on the individual,
the country, and more than anything else, the
guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Let's beware of just comparing one country with
another or comparing what God is doing between
one leader and another.
There's a great difference between a very visionary,
pioneering kind of start many new things leader,
praise God for them, and someone that may
come along later and carry that vision for
a few more years.
Michael Griffiths who came, what, third or fourth
in succession in OMF, one of the groups
that's influenced us, he only carried it for
a few years.
Then there was someone else.
Then OMF went to the outside and brought
in James Hudson Taylor III.
It would be an exciting day, the year
2040, maybe 2050.
We introduce Charles Verwer Levine, the new International
Coordinator of Operation Mobilization.
He was two yesterday.
Somebody told us to use our imagination, so
let's relax.
That almost surely with our kind of ethos
would never happen.
We need strong leadership at every level because
when we say strong in OM, we mean
weak.
We're not talking about anyone usurping authority.
The beautiful relationship for 40 years between myself
and boards, field leaders and boards, area leaders
and boards, is a testimony that can continue
and it can improve.
It certainly has been improving.
I am excited about the future.
I'm not the kind of person that can
mainly talk about the past.
I want to believe that 1998 will be
one of the greatest years ever.
Some people have misunderstood because of the way
Peter, Maiden and I operate that actually much
of what I've been doing over, say, the
last 10 years has not been really international
coordination of the work.
And I've hardly ever said anything about it.
Some very ridiculous things have been said at
times.
But I can just tell you that 70
% of everything I do, day and night,
14 hours a day, 7 days a week,
is my job of international coordination, working with
Peter, Maiden, working with you, working with people,
praying, serving, caring, confronting, strategizing, thinking, attending
meetings, bonding, exhorting, recruiting, peacemaking, building loyalty.
In a sense, for the future, maybe the
word coordinator isn't the best word.
And in thinking about our present leadership style,
perhaps coordinator is better for Peter and just
spiritual leadership would be better for me.
But let me just say this, and this
is the only reason I'm saying this, there
is a big job and somebody has got
to do it.
It's just work.
It doesn't mean you're going to get extra
points in heaven.
Endless relationships that often need the international touch.
It's not time to go into detail.
I want to try to wind this up
by just sharing a few other ways how
we can perhaps work harder at our unity.
Number one is that we would avoid friendly
fire.
And if you catch me at any time,
especially Peter or my team members, because I'm
part of a community, I rejoice that I'm
part of a community that lives at Forest
Hill and Bromley, that function together with much
struggle and much weakness.
Quite a few of us in that community
have been together for over a quarter of
a century.
It's a miracle.
How can we work harder at this unity?
I think perhaps rereading our doctrinal statement and
just saying, do I really believe this?
And if you can't believe it, and we
allow for struggle and doubts, then I believe
you are in the wrong movement.
We have basic shared beliefs.
That includes the basic doctrines of the faith.
That doesn't mean that's all we believe.
Secondly, I would urge you to beware of
listening to negative reports.
There are so many negative reports flowing around.
Perhaps less than some years ago.
But beware of listening to a negative report
about a brother or a sister.
Very hard to get facts about what's going
on.
My greatest struggles in 1997 have been with
exaggerations that have come from the body of
Christ.
I discover again and again phenomenal exaggeration about
what God supposedly is doing.
Like when I was in America recently and
someone came up and said, please tell us
about the massive revival that has broken out
in Great Britain where you live.
We have a tendency to exaggerate.
Numbers double so fast and nobody much wants
to confront anybody about it.
We're in that day where we want to
be optimistic.
We want to be proactive.
We all have our little statements about guys
like John MacArthur, much less David Hunt and
Hank Hanegraaff.
But does not the body of Christ need
a few people, maybe not those guys, who
are willing to warn us if they see
us diving over a doctrinal precipice into some
hot, fat brood in the kitchens of hell?
I hope so.
Let's somehow work hard at this.
Let us guard our tongues.
Let us work harder to understand people.
Let us work harder to study and understand
God.
I'm still convinced that some of you have
not taken seriously enough the heart chapters of
that book, Grace Awakening, so tied in with
1 Corinthians 13.
I believe also we've got to learn more
about forgiveness.
Churches are coming unglued right now in a
big way because of moral failure.
Most churches do not know how to handle
moral failure when it comes.
One leading mission society took a survey recently.
They were amazed the number of their missionaries
that were hooked into pornography on the Internet.
We have people confessing that in our midst.
That is going to increase.
We have case after case of churches not
knowing how to restore people to ministry.
I don't believe a man should be removed
from ministry because in a weak moment he
may have put his arm around a girl
or maybe even kissed her.
That is not the same as having sex
with her.
Maybe he needs a few months off.
Maybe that should be dealt with in a
smaller group.
But once these things happen, especially if there's
a contrarian, an opposition person in the church,
they can split that church wide open.
With a message of holiness, we must have
the message of forgiveness and of mercy.
How are we going to handle the homosexual
challenge facing the church at this time?
With some kind of homophobic reaction?
Or with compassion?
In one of the most complex problems that's
ever hit the body of Jesus Christ.
We are a movement that has demonstrated balance.
That has not come automatically.
That has come because there are some of
us who play that tune day in and
day out in almost every shape and form
because we believe the word of God and
we believe that one scripture is often brought
into balance by other scriptures.
There's lots of, by the way, little things
we can do to build unity.
Maybe a gift or a note.
I want to thank some of you for
sending me notes of encouragement.
I want to especially thank those of you
who have phoned me.
Thank you, Brother Fritz.
Thank you, a number of others.
But there seems to be a law.
I guess somebody got up and announced it
when I was in the toilet.
Whatever you do, don't phone George Verwer on
his mobile phone.
Or maybe it's budget cuts.
But I get very few phone calls from
any of you sitting in this room.
I think you are afraid it may interrupt
with a major call with a donor and
you'd rather have the money than a conversation
with George Verwer any day.
I'm sure you don't believe that, but that
communication does sometimes come.
I am not too busy to speak to
anybody here.
It is five times harder for me to
initiate a call, and I initiated a few
thousand last year.
You wouldn't want to see my phone bill.
But it's five times harder to initiate a
call than receive one.
Among other things, when the phone rings, you
don't have too much of a choice.
Even if my initial reaction at three in
the morning is not overwhelmingly positive, just hang
in there for a couple of minutes or
seconds.
I repent very quick, you can ask my
wife.
A phone call, a note, a meal out
together, and I'm not speaking of myself now,
I'm speaking generally, and a dozen other small
things that I know you can make a
list of because I know most of you
already have a Ministry of Encouragement, can help
build the body and unity in the body.
And that's why much of the blessing here
will come even behind the scenes as we
eat together, and as we fellowship together, and
maybe swim together.
And this point, I'm almost to the end,
thank you for your patience, don't let areas
of disagreement bring a breach in your personal
relationship.
I think some cultures are ahead of other
cultures in this area, or maybe they're just
more dedicated to Christ.
But there are certain cultures where when they
don't agree with you anymore, they break fellowship.
I just had a person break fellowship with
me because they feel I'm promoting contemporary Christian
music.
A 30-year relationship.
I've gone out of the way for this
brother, he went through divorce.
He's a brother with quite a few difficulties.
And myself, didn't necessarily want to necessarily maintain
that friendship, but I loved it, and I
knew he was going through difficulties in his
life, so I would phone him, I'd go
out of the way to see him, and
in one letter, he ended it.
Well, I'll go back for some more innings
when I recover.
You don't break fellowship with people because you're
into different music.
You don't break fellowship because you don't agree
with the strategy that that country has, or
how he's handling his dog.
I don't think, in O.N., any longer
will it be possible for us to read
even a great book like this, and all
be on exactly the same page.
If Thomas and I have been together for
many years in the world, but I'm sure
sometimes we're not exactly on the same page.
We just turn a few pages and read
on, and get back on the same page,
because our personal relationship goes beyond these other
things.
And I want to ask forgiveness, though it
would be more in the past than perhaps
recently, if I had communicated any rejection of
you because of some area where you didn't
agree with me, because I didn't mean that,
and that's not really my bottom line.
And then we're going to have to go
the extra mile in a lot of ways.
Have we really become mature in living in
a movement of 2,800 staff, with thousands
of others joining us in the course of
a summer or a year?
Have we really come face to face with
the sheer amount of work and toil it
takes to keep your field and to keep
this whole movement going in the complex Christian
world that is so divided with 26,000
denominations?
I hope we have.
I read, think of the words in Philippians
2, that we preach from the earliest days
of O.M., esteeming others better than yourself.
I read it in two different translations, three
in preparation for tonight.
It says different, puts it in different ways
in different translations, but I love it.
And I want to tell you, I esteem
every one of you very highly in Jesus
Christ.
And I know that all of you esteem
me in a varying levels.
I have no hang-up about that.
I haven't discovered in my deceitful heart, and
the heart is deceitful.
And I want you to feel free to
share your burdens with your area leader, just
as if I were that area leader.
For some of you, you prefer that.
Fine.
Others, maybe not.
We know that quite a few men in
O.M. are struggling with pornography.
We know that.
We talk about a higher level of accountability.
I'm not sure we have that.
I hope so.
But I pray to God, as the fiery
darts of impurity, combined with disunity, combined with
many other things at once, for Satan seldom
has a one-point program.
He has multi-headed missiles.
I pray that you will find the necessary
accountability, and that you also will learn how
to be more approachable, something I continue to
learn, so that people will feel free to
share with you.
We can pray together, and we can go
forward together.
Pornography on television is hitting quite a few
in O.M. at this time.
Pornography on the Internet is hitting.
And really, pornography is not our big problem.
It never will be.
Pride is far bigger.
Probably impatience.
And ten other sins that I could list.
But you know, all of them, somehow, somewhere,
have to be dealt with.
Recently I heard of a couple on O
.M. that came unglued in their marriage during
their time on O.M. It has seldom
happened in forty years.
I have nothing but mercy and love for
those people.
I don't know them well.
All of you know things happening in your
field that I do not know.
Do not presume I have a hotline.
If you don't tell me, I probably will
not find out.
Peter tells me some things, and sometimes I
call him about something hot, and he hasn't
heard about it either.
We're not interested in just gathering up information
and gossip.
We're interested in restoring people.
We're interested in restoring marriages.
And sometimes one phone call, one letter, from
someone like Peter, from someone like myself, or
an area leader, can mean more to a
person or a couple than we could ever
measure.
All of us have been on the receiving
end of that experience.
Let us guard our marriages with a Holy
Ghost jealousy.
Let us walk that road of holiness and
purity with greater strength than ever before.
If not, I predict in ten years this
movement will be in a mess beyond comprehension.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank you for your Word.
We thank you that even though it's scary,
your treasure is in earthen vessels, and whenever
I share, there's always some Berwer wheat, or
some, well, I hope some Berwer wheat, but
also some Berwer straw together with your wheat.
And I just pray that each one of
us not react to some little thing we
don't understand, but try to contextualize this into
our situation, our family, our field, our nation.
We thank you for the miracle of the
unity, not imperfection, not without some real heartbreaks
of disunity, not perhaps without things that even
tonight are not totally healed.
Sometimes we're not sure what totally healed means
in a lost world.
And Father, if we do even receive friendly
fire in our sort of blown out of
our spiritual vehicle, we want to forgive that
person who may have launched that missile.
For so often they didn't really mean it.
We thank you, God, for forty-plus miraculous
years, and we have no reason to doubt
that unless you return, you will give us
forty more, with men and women who love
you more than I ever have, and who
will build on these core values, and who
will build on these great principles of your
holy word, that we could see the Church
in every people's group planted, and we could
see the gospel go to every person in
the world, working in partnership with all the
great Bible-believing evangelical community across the whole
world.
Lord, give us the privilege of training thousands
more and sending them into every major mission
in the world.
Give us the privilege of birthing another one
hundred different organizations, or at least helping in
a tiny way in their birth, so that
the gospel may even go quicker in places
that we may not be ready to go
into.
And keep us, O Lord, from all the
various extremes that seem to surround us on
every side, that we may build on the
solid foundation of truth, and know the reality
of unity, and grace, and love.