Hello, my name is George Verwer.
I'm the International Coordinator of Operation Mobilization and
also have the stretching challenge of being the
chairman of the track for the mobilization of
new missionaries, part of the AD2000 and beyond
movement.
I also recently accepted the responsibility of being
the co-director of a consultation for missionary
executives that is to take place in South
Africa, June 30th, 1997.
This particular consultation of mission executives will run
parallel with nine other consultations there in Pretorius,
Johannesburg, South Africa.
There'll be a consultation of business executives.
There'll be a meeting of people especially in
connection with helping the poor and needy around
the world.
There'll be an African national AD2000 initiative.
There'll be a training event for church planting
movements.
There'll be a South African local church pastors
consultation.
There'll be a theological institution presidents and academic
deans consultation.
A university students and youth leaders consultation and
then a consultation for performing arts and missions.
This will all go on simultaneously over a
six-day period and though there'll be some
gatherings of all the people, I don't think
many, most of it will all take place
in these separate entities.
I'd like to share with you a little
background of this because it very much comes
out of what God has been doing in
South Africa in connection with the Love South
African movement and other movements that have dovetailed
together there in that great nation where I
think most of us realize God is doing
something very real and very special in these
days.
And this invitation to hold this congress has
come from a considerable number of South African
leaders to really try to take a giant
step forward in regard to world missions and
world evangelism.
I think some of you, at least a
few of you, have probably heard the tape
I did about a year and a half
ago on why I joined AD2000, a movement
that, like most movements, has some degree of
controversy surrounding it.
And I'd be happy to send that tape
if you wanted more background as, of course,
some of that now is a little bit
out of date.
We've had our great gathering in Korea where
many of us were involved and we saw
the Holy Spirit do a real work there
at Jukoe in Korea in May of 1995.
I was back in Korea just, again, recently
for a student missions conference.
We had 6,000 students at that missions
conference.
This is a five-day event.
And when I spoke two of the final
evenings, and on the final evening about 1
,500 came out of their seats and came
forward, my Korean interpreter gave the invitation, to
make a life-term, long-term commitment to
world missions.
And, of course, Korea is one of many
countries where the AD2000 movement and networks tied
into that, organizations tied into that are really
going strong.
You might ask at this stage, why a
consultation for mission leaders?
Maybe I could say just a word about
my own struggles with the great missionary events.
I think of when I first came to
Europe and OM was just being born, really
exploding in 62 and 63.
And we were often misunderstood and criticized by
other mission groups, so we were very rapidly
becoming linked with many of them.
And some of the criticism against us, I'm
sure, was valid.
But I remember wrestling with that first congress
that was announced back then, in Berlin, 66.
And though I didn't go personally, I felt
this was something that we needed to at
least be involved in.
And I remember sending a couple of our
key leaders, I think one of them may
have been Greg Livingstone, who was with us
at that time, to go to Berlin.
And though I had my questions and I
had my doubts, especially the large amount of
money for travel, I saw, as I looked
at these things, these events, in some ways
with critical eyes, I saw that they were
strategic in building the kingdom of God and
had the privilege then of getting involved in
the Lausanne Congress way back in 1974.
I remember it well.
Dr. Schaefer was there, and that's when the
great Lausanne Covenant was born.
And there again, though, I had my negatives.
I became convinced these events were very, very
strategic in terms of world evangelism and building
the kingdom of God.
And I would urge you, if you have
sort of this negative view of these big
conferences, why spend the money, and what really
comes from them, I'd really urge you to
try to be objective, try to understand the
variety of ways that God works.
And though you personally maybe are not helped
in a huge way through going to such
events, other people are helped in many, many
ways by at least having one opportunity to
be in this kind of big international consultation
or event.
In many ways, Jokowi 1997 in South Africa
will be very, very distinct.
I personally can never remember going to an
international event that was attended mainly by missionary
executives and leaders.
And I personally feel that such an event
is long overdue.
We're brothers and sisters in Christ.
We have the same basic goals and aims
in terms of world evangelism and church planning,
despite the great variety of ways that we
may be going about that.
And I personally feel that in the complex,
rapidly changing world that we now live in,
it would be a tremendous thing if a
maximum number of us could be in South
Africa for this consultation.
For some of us, it may be only
once in a lifetime event.
The consultation for missionary executives is not going
to be a consultation where we're mainly just
listening to messages and listening to great speakers.
There's going to be a strong emphasis on
interaction.
There's going to be a strong emphasis on
fellowship, on getting to know one another, getting
to know one another's ministries.
We hope to be able to really have
time to talk through the major issues, or
at least some of the major issues, that
are hitting us as biblical and evangelical mission
societies and fellowships and organizations and churches in
our day and age.
And I believe we will all learn a
lot from one another.
And I believe we will learn things and
experience things that are going to enable us
to be more focused and more proactive and
more committed as we move toward the end
of this millennium.
And I would just urge you to consider
being with us, even if you've decided somehow,
maybe before getting that much information, that you
can't be with us, that you would reconsider,
because I believe this is going to be
a strategic event that is going to be,
as some consultants say, a win-win situation
for all of us who get involved and
for all missionary fellowships who decide to get
involved by having strong representation there.
I thank God that he does use these
big events to change people's lives, to help
people become more focused, to help people become
more biblical, more evangelical, to help people take
on the vision of the unreached people and
other great challenges that are so important for
all of us in these days.
I believe with all my heart that prayer,
of course, is one of the major factors
in seeing this become a successful and helpful
event.
And whether you can go or not, I
would appreciate your prayers.
And the co-director of our particular consultation,
Avery Willis, who is one of the leaders
in the Southern Baptist Missions Movement, speaking for
both of us, we really do need your
prayers.
Louise Bush, of course, will be with us
as the leader of the 82,000 Movement.
Willie Crew from South Africa is carrying, together
with others, a tremendous coordination responsibility to make
this happen next summer, which, of course, is
the winter there in South Africa.
This consultation is not just for people who
are already involved in the 82,000 Movement.
We know that in some parts of the
world, especially in Europe, the 82,000 Movement
is not well known and not officially functioning
everywhere.
But this particular consultation, though it is tied
into that movement, is for any missions executive
who is part of an evangelical and biblical
missionary fellowship or missionary organization.
And we include in that churches that, in
a sense, have created their own missions organization
and are sending people directly from their church
out into the mission field.
In fact, that's one of the areas we
hope to discuss, the whole challenge that's facing
us, with increasing number of churches wanting to
have greater ownership in the World Missions Challenge.
I saw this when I was in Singapore
recently.
And we want to listen to each other
as we talk about different issues that are
fairly controversial.
One of the reasons I believe this consultation
is so important is that I feel strongly
the time has come, as pragmatic, generally fairly
fast-moving missions leaders with more than enough
work to do, and certainly many challenges facing
us, I believe the time has come for
us to come together and to listen to
each other and to listen to God.
It's my prayer that all of us who
come, and I speak about myself, will come
with a real learning curve and come with
a desire to sharpen the saw, so to
speak, and see this as a growing and
learning experience.
I think of what people pay to go
to college and to get higher education in
our days.
I think of the emphasis in many places
on the need for missionary leaders to have
ongoing education.
And I'm convinced that, though this may not
be the priority for this consultation, it will
be a growing experience.
It will have an educational training factor to
it as we meet so many different people,
as we listen to different people of very
different backgrounds, different nationalities.
Another one of my great burdens is in
connection with a whole emerging world of new
missionary agencies.
Places like Brazil and Korea and Argentina, of
course Southern Africa, other parts of Africa.
New mission societies are being born.
New agencies are being born.
And we need to somehow, those of us
who have been in mission work for a
long time, Operation Mobilization, we're soon celebrating our
40th birthday from our very beginning when three
of us went to Mexico in 1957.
And in OM, we're somewhat stuck in between
the very new emerging mission societies and the
great longer-term older mission societies like SIM
and OMF and others.
And we long to be a bridge between
the younger and the older, especially as in
our own work we have a very large
segment of our ministry which is long-term
missionary work, but our major focus continues to
be also short-term.
That's another one of the subjects we hope
to discuss together at this consultation.
Let's be honest.
There are tremendous controversies in connection with the
great world mission thrust today.
There are tensions.
And often, if we're honest, we find ourselves
not always appreciating what some other mission agency
is doing or saying, especially in their publicity.
What a fantastic breakthrough.
If we could all experience a grace awakening
together in prayer, a greater understanding of what
different agencies are wanting to do and why
they are doing something in a particular way.
I just find that kind of thing builds
love, builds understanding, builds unity, builds synergy.
And I believe coming together in this way
will glorify God and help advance building His
kingdom throughout the whole world.
I've listed a few of the concerns that
I'm hoping we will be able to speak
about at this consultation.
We are actually trying to get missions leaders
right now to submit to us items that
they feel should be on the agenda.
And I can assure you the agenda is
not yet set.
But these are a few things I'm hoping
we might be able to discuss and seek
biblical answers together.
Firstly, the challenge between mobilizing and supporting nationals
in their own country, especially places like India,
in comparison to sending international missionaries into that
country.
We'll have representatives from both those different strategies
sharing at the consultation.
And I believe it is going to be
an important discussion.
Secondly, there's this great tension or challenge between
is it Western missionaries in the future or
is it those coming from the new emerging
sending countries, sometimes referred to as the two
-thirds world.
I'm personally in the camp of believing that
it has to be both, that we greatly
still need Western missionaries.
I've even done whole tapes about that and
speak on it, write about it.
But at the same time, most of us
are convinced that one of the greatest hopes,
if not the greatest hope, for evangelizing the
whole world in the future is coming from
the new emerging missionary sending countries.
Sometimes what they're doing or planning to do
gets overstated and exaggerated.
Sometimes the problems of the Western countries who
have been in it so much longer, that
also gets overstated and exaggerated.
And just on this issue alone, we need
more research, we need to be listening to
one another, and we need to be open
for change, which we believe is so important
in the years to come.
Thirdly, there's this issue of tension between short
-term and long-term.
Again, many of us feel it must be
both, and the situation has certainly changed in
the past ten years.
Many long-term missionaries now got their initial
vision through being involved in short-term.
But now we have something new that's on
the scene, and that's the sort of church
missions trip, people going out on a missions
trip.
One church in Singapore, I heard, had a
thousand people going on a missions trip.
These are just two weeks.
Then we've all heard about the prayer teams
that go out, praying for different parts of
the world, prayer walking.
We also now are very much hearing about
research teams.
That's nothing new, but it's being done in
a much bigger way.
In fact, part of the heart of the
Joshua Project is in connection with research teams
going out, especially to the 2,000 largest
unreached people's groups, and coming back with more
information and statistics and facts so that a
lot of new profiles of people's groups are
being produced.
We need to hear what God is doing
through so many different groups, so many different
strategies, so many different organizations around the world,
rather than just picking up little bits of
information and making some generalization about it, which
is often not based on the fact or
on facts, and that surely doesn't bring glory
to God.
We hope to discuss the Joshua Project, and
I'm hoping Louise Bush will be able to
share with us something of his vision of
the Joshua Project.
There's a dream that somehow we could be
more united in focusing on these 2,000
unreached people's groups without neglecting the many other
smaller people's groups all over the world, even
in almost all of the major cities of
Europe.
We don't want to get constantly into either
-or situations, and we hope that Ralph Winter
also will be able to share the burden
of his heart, as God has given him
so much vision and understanding in terms of
reaching the unreached with the gospel.
We hope to be able to deal with
the whole area of recruits.
Why are we seeing a drop-off in
long-term recruits in some countries?
Is there any hope?
I estimate, just a rough guess, that there's
probably about 35,000 around the whole world
who have made some kind of indication, usually
at a very young age, that they want
to be a missionary.
But only a small percentage of these are
ever getting through to the field for long
-term missionary work.
WEF, a movement that many of us also
are very linked with, one of the older
great networks across the world, Uniting Evangelicals, has
had a special consultation on the whole thing
of missionary attrition, missionaries dropping out.
I have a large document that I'm studying
right now from them, and we hope to
be able to incorporate some of the answers
that have come out of that consultation and
other consultations around the world into our agenda,
so that we can all get a better
picture and a better understanding of what God
is doing in the whole body of Christ.
I hope that I'm able to have the
privilege of sharing a vision and a burden
that God has put on my heart that's
now called Acts 13, Breakthrough 2000, which is
tied into the New Missionary Mobilization Network and
into AD2000 and beyond in a general way.
Actually, anyone can adapt the Acts 13 Breakthrough
concept.
They don't have to be linked necessarily with
any other organization, though we hope they will,
because it goes back to the simple strategy
of Acts 13, where a group gathered in
prayer, then the Holy Spirit sent two out
of that group into missionary work and added
a helper, Mark, to the group, even though
that, of course, didn't work out very well.
I believe we could see 200,000 new
missionaries mobilized.
That means tentmakers as well as more traditional
missionaries.
It means those sent out from mission societies
as well as those sent out from their
own churches.
It means those going as tentmakers or people
going cross-culturally in their own country, Nigerians
from one tribe reaching out to another, Indians
from Kerala reaching out to Muslims in the
north.
It involves people also who are seriously committed
in the actual backup staff of mission fellowships
and agencies.
I have another tape just on this subject,
why 200,000, and I'd be happy to
send that to you, as well as a
tape of the initial sharing of this vision
shortly after it broke into my heart on
an airplane flight in Argentina last January.
There'll be question and answer sessions where you'll
be able to ask, yes, even the hard
questions about some of these visions and some
of these strategies that are burning upon our
hearts and that are beginning to catch and
spread right across the world.
We think of some of the controversy in
connection with prayer, some of the new styles
of prayer, prayer walking, the challenge about territorial
spirits.
This particular consultation is going to be an
open opportunity to share about some of these
things and to get questions answered.
And I'm sure in some cases we're just
going to have to agree to disagree, and
we'll go away from this consultation with the
zeal and the focus and the commitment to
get on with the job in our own
missionary agency and our own missionary fellowship.
I hope we'll be able to discuss the
whole challenge of partnership.
InterDev and Phil Butler are tied into the
AD2000 movement and have been an enormous blessing
to so many groups and organizations.
Certainly part of the future in world missions
today is tied in with partnership, different agencies
partnering together in a particular place to accomplish
specific goals and aims.
Please don't write that kind of thing off
until you've studied more of what God has
been doing through that, until you listen to
some of the people who are on the
cutting edge of that kind of missionary strategy
around the world.
The very fact that we're going to have
a number of new agencies represented as well
as older agencies, the very fact that we're
going to have people there who believe the
best way for missionaries to go is just
sent out from their own church together with
people who feel quite strongly that that really
isn't the most effective way to go in
the future, means that we're headed into a
very lively and catalytic conference and consultation together.
I'd like to require everyone who comes to
read Charles Swindoll's book, Grace Awakening, before I
get there, because to me this kind of
book and the whole message of 1 Corinthians
13 helps set the stage for a consultation
like this in which we long to be
guided by the Holy Spirit, filled with the
Holy Spirit, and operating under the anointing of
the Holy Spirit.
That will, I believe, help us stay bonded
together in the huge task that God has
given us.
We connected with AD2000, do not believe the
job is going to be finished by the
year 2000.
I don't think any of us ever believe
that.
I think there are some who have the
vision and hope that the pioneer evangelistic aspect
of world evangelism might be accomplished by then,
but I don't think there's ever been total
unity concerning some of these things, and it's
difficult, if we're realistic, to get unity at
times even in terms of definition.
Let's not allow little things that are bothering
us.
Let's not allow problems in terms of numbers
of people's groups or definitions of particular words
like unreached hinder us from coming together to
wait upon God, to get to know one
another and one another's ministries, and to be
able to pray and engage in prayer together
for the accomplishment of God's purposes across the
world.
Evangelism will go on and on until the
Lord comes.
There's so much to do even in the
countries where there are many churches.
Building the kingdom, which for many of us
is a better way of explaining all that
we as God's people are attempting to do.
Building the kingdom will go on and on.
In fact, that leads me to mention one
of the other things that probably is going
to come up in our discussions, and that's
the challenge of social concern in comparison to
just reaching people with the gospel.
There's tremendous tension about this.
There's various words that are thrown around like
holistic ministry and incarnational evangelism.
Of course, people who don't have English as
their first language are often confused by our
ongoing changes in terminology and all the fine
-tuning we engage in with endless missionary books
that are flowing off the press in these
days.
Brothers and sisters, if we don't have basic
love for one another, if we don't acknowledge
the work of the Holy Spirit in our
lives to produce that fruit, love, joy, peace,
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, if that's
not happening in our lives, then where will
all this strategizing, where will all the fine
-tuning, all the discussion, where will it actually
lead us?
So, of course, our prayer is that as
we come together there may be a touch
of revival in our own hearts and that
we may go from South Africa with a
renewed commitment to the great work that God
has given us.
Yes, it's a big challenge.
And I know many of you who are
listening to this tape are incredibly busy people.
And for you to fit this into your
schedule and also to find the air ticket
is no small challenge.
In some ways, humanly speaking, with my present
responsibilities, I should have run 100 miles away
from this particular challenge.
But the Holy Spirit would not allow me
to do that.
I feel very weak and very inadequate for
my own responsibilities in this particular event and
in the whole work of God in general.
But I know from Corinthians, his strength is
made perfect in weakness.
I know from that same passage that his
grace is sufficient.
We need one another.
Because we need one another, we need to
be listening to one another and we need
to seek ways that we can work together
in greater unity, which we know will continue
to be in the midst of great diversity.
I don't believe it honors God when we
as missionary leaders, to be blunt, bad-mouth
other mission leaders or other agencies, and especially
when often we haven't done our homework and
we don't really know the facts.
There is increasing controversy in the work of
God.
There are quite a few tensions between parachurch
agencies, as they're sometimes called, and local churches
or denominations.
Let's be honest.
Let's be open about some of these problems.
Let's bring things into the light.
Talk about them and pray about them and
see if we can find some God-given
solutions that we then can share with the
wider body of Christ around the world through
our periodicals, through our messages, through the Internet,
through cassette tape and every other means of
communication.
We're living in exciting days.
There are large numbers of young people around
the world who want to be involved with
us.
They want to launch into world missions.
But I personally feel that if somehow we
as missions leaders don't get our act together
a little more, that we're going to lose
many of these new recruits and we're going
to see days of increased confusion, disappointment, and
tension.
Let's unite together in Jokowi, 1997, for greater
things to happen across the world.
Let's pray together.
Living God, we thank you for what you're
doing around the world.
We thank you that in your sovereign purposes
you've raised up so many great churches, so
many great missionaries and visionaries and co-workers
from so many different backgrounds and nationalities.
Lord, we ask that we may have greater
wisdom and greater grace and strength for all
that lies ahead of us.
In a world with such exploding population, in
a world of so much complexity, we pray
for this great event that's coming up in
June of 1997.
We ask that you bring there, you lead
to that consultation and all the different consultations
going on simultaneously, the people that you want,
and that somehow each one of us may
have a spirit of faith and a spirit
of expectation, not just for that particular event,
but for all that must happen between now
and then and for all that we believe
must happen after that special time together.
Lord, help us.
As you commanded in Luke 14, help us
to really count the cost of what is
involved in attempting to reach all the unreached
people of the world.
Deliver us, Lord, from doubt and unbelief on
one side but foolishness and exaggeration on the
other side and enable us to somehow find
biblical cutting-edge balance in all that we
do.
Father, you know the responsibilities we have in
our own mission fellowships, churches, and agencies.
Most of us probably have more to do
and more challenges facing us than we know
what to do with.
But somehow we believe that meeting together and
waiting upon you is going to help us
be more effective in the work that lies
ahead of us across the globe.
Strengthen us, God.
Guide us as we're cast upon you.
For we pray in the name of Jesus
Christ.
Amen.