And I think the first thing I want
to say to you and to people in
different parts of the world that are listening
to this tape is thank you for praying
for Turkey.
I know that many of you have prayed
for Turkey for years, some of you for
decades, and it's my prayer that somehow this
little cassette tape will get to people who
have been praying for Turkey and giving to
Turkey, and that it will be an encouragement
to them.
It's always a struggle between how much to
think on what God has done, and how
much to thank people for what has been
done, all of which is important, and how
much to speak out about the situation which,
if this was the situation in Britain, I
mean there would probably, I don't know what
there would be, probably a revolution among God's
people.
I think of the things that people speak
out about and get excited about here in
Britain and in other countries, God's people.
And I guess it all fits in as
we attempt to build a kingdom, there's room
for so much.
But it's my prayer that this morning we
may somehow realize we've got to prioritize.
If you're, for example, going to give some
more time to the cause of reaching Turkey
with the gospel, you'll have to take that
time from somewhere.
You will not get a 25-hour day
because you've heard this tape or you've been
here this morning.
You'll have to say no to something.
About 10 days ago I sent one of
the more, I think it'll be one of
the more famous no memos around the world
to just mainly O.M. leaders about just
why I was not able to get involved
in a very wonderful project.
I was under considerable pressure to get involved,
raise money, not particularly an O.M. And
I wrestled with this for over six months,
perhaps over a year, and made a very
hard decision that I just, really in the
light of all that I'm trying to do,
and we're trying to do because what I
do creates more work for all of you,
and I'm more aware of that than you
may imagine.
Sometimes I feel like running away.
And I put this into the e-mail,
this memo, and I've had the most encouraging
barrage of communications certainly in the last one
or two years of people sympathizing, people understanding
that we are and I am attempting to
do so much and we're trying to raise
money for so many things.
And we do, we do even within our
movement seemingly shoot ourselves in the foot and
we've learned to get healing and help for
that.
And so that was a great encouragement.
It's a long story really of how I
ended up going to Turkey at this time,
but I think we can thank the leader
of O.M. Turkey for the way he
went about inviting me because he just had
so many invitations.
Which ones do you accept?
The fact that this men's retreat was going
to be canceled, this of course sets off
a spark in me.
I'm giving away now some of my trade
secrets.
I shouldn't do that.
But last year one other group sponsored this
men's retreat.
And a very close friend of ours, somewhat
named after the famous African missionary, was there
speaking last year and it went quite well.
And I was under conviction that I used
to go to Turkey so regularly, in the
60s and early 70s almost every year, but
then I had this great step into greater
delegation and the conviction that I should leave
these things to people who were more equipped
and backed off some of that kind of
journey.
But I had this very clear invitation and
then he pursued me by email, by other
methods, and it just seemed that I should
go.
Also I felt strong in my heart that
instead of giving so many, I still will
give weekends to work here in the UK,
but instead of going all the way to
Scotland for the weekend, which I have done
many, many times with some results, wouldn't say
overwhelming, why not go to Turkey for the
weekend?
The only difference is really the cost.
So I hope to do more of that
in the future.
To make a long story short, they went
ahead with this conference.
They got an overwhelming response in terms of
numbers, especially when it was done last minute,
and about 140 men from all over Turkey
arrived for this men's retreat.
The roots of this retreat, and I only
found this out, go back to the early
conferences that our fellowship began way back in
the 60s.
And apparently they got so big and there
were so many complexities, and I guess connection
with children and other things.
Some years ago, it was divided and the
women had their conference and the men had
their conference, and I guess one might take
care of the children so the one can
go to the particular conference.
A very encouraging thing in Turkey is that
there is a relatively good unity among all
these workers, and that I really believe goes
back to the tradition and the vision that
some of our people, men and women, had
way back in the 60s, including some of
the Turkish brothers and sisters, that somehow in
Turkey we can move together and esteem one
another and attempt to work together there.
So thank you for praying for Turkey.
There are many different ways to attempt to
talk about Turkey.
One would be the very negative way.
You look at all that has to be
done.
You look at the amount of witness.
I estimate Turkey has one-tenth of one
percent of the witness in the amount of
Christian ministry that we have in Great Britain.
I really don't believe that's an exaggeration.
One-tenth of one percent.
There are only probably 500 active Turkish believers
in the nation.
Some may give a little higher statistic.
But this is a nation where people profess
the Lord but don't necessarily go on with
the Lord, which is true, I think, in
most countries.
So we could be quite negative in terms
of describing the situation.
Unlike some of the other countries where we
hear of just small numbers of believers, we're
not talking about small population.
I think it's always important when you hear
a figure about a country, how many people
are there.
Albania now has more workers than Turkey.
And Albania, all that's happened in the last
couple of years, last few years.
I think the number of workers in Albania
is moving around the 400 or 500 mark,
which now we're getting a lot of feedback.
Oh, this is so many.
Oh, they're standing on top of each other.
Everybody's doing a lot of negative things I'm
picking up from Albania.
And there are positive things.
But it's interesting, if we have 500 workers
laboring in southeast London, which we do, put
together full-time Christian workers in southeast London,
I never hear anybody say about that.
I never heard anybody.
There's so many workers in southeast London.
Oh, they're bumping into each other.
And there's several of them go to the
same church.
You don't hear things like that.
But when it comes to a country where
we're not so familiar, like, say, Albania, suddenly
we hear this number of workers.
Because, of course, when that number of workers
goes into any new country, there will be
negative things happening.
But, of course, there are negative things happening
in southeast London.
Maybe you're so busy you didn't notice.
Might even be some in your own church.
So I feel that sometimes the generalizations that
are made about these countries, the enemy really
tries to use so that then somebody gets
up, and most of us have heard this,
and make the rest of the world look
like so much is happening in comparison to
the situation here in our own country, in
your own country, maybe, Canada, the States, or
Australia, somewhere else.
So it's not easy, is it, to give
the full picture.
My feeble presentation this morning is just an
effort to give us a better picture of
Turkey.
It's 38 years ago that the vision came
for Turkey.
I like to share this because people often
get the idea that visions have to come
in very emotional moments.
I was on the top of the tree
when God gave me the name Operation Mobilization.
So that's a great story.
That's a great story.
I can weave that into a lot of
sermons I get.
The failure in the Soviet Union coming out
on the day of prayer, God giving me
those words, which is true.
The brother who was with me that day
was with me on this trip.
In Turkey we flew separately, but he was
there.
We had some great fellowship.
He lives just a few miles away.
I hardly ever see him, but in Turkey.
We even went on a tourist.
They twisted my arm to go on a
tourist trip.
For Monday morning, I went to Ephesus.
I just wish I could arrange for everybody
on our team to have the Ephesus experience.
Here's a city 2,000 years old that
was destroyed by earthquakes, and they've rebuilt it
with a lot of the original materials.
The huge amphitheater where the big protests came
about Paul and hindering the worship of Diana.
I then walked a little further, being led,
of course, by the OM leader to the
church where the Council of Ephesus took place
around the year 300-something.
A very famous church council where Mary was
elevated to a higher position in the church.
It's interesting that happened in Ephesus where the
whole history is linked about the worship of
women, in particular, Diana.
Interesting history.
Interesting challenge.
I've never seen so many people in one
place at a tourist attraction.
There were literally thousands of people.
Of course, it's quite a large, long walk.
You get over the top and you walk
at it.
Somebody picked this up.
I guess one of the highlights, a bit
strange, but suddenly I was surrounded by some
Americans who graduated from the Master's Theological College
of John MacArthur.
This guy got so excited.
He insisted on autographs.
He was mentored by Rob Provost, who's now
in Albania.
Rob worked here as my helper quite a
few years ago now, married and doing a
great work for God in Albania.
Another man, this other fellow's father, was an
owner of quite a few radio stations, radio
stations in the States that I don't think
had ever, for various reasons, I won't go
into details, given any exposure to Operation Mobilization.
Things like that at a place, at a
time where you never expected to be, all
of us have these experiences, it's quite encouraging
just to know your steps are ordered of
God.
I would have thought we will definitely get
some people for Turkey as a result of
that little link up and what will follow
up on that.
Again, they were so ignorant, these tourists.
Tourist ships come very near there.
Ephesus actually was once a port.
It's all silted up, so now the water's
about eight miles away.
But other tourist ships come to some other
nearby port, closer than Izmir, which is about
an hour's drive away.
It's amazing, I don't know if this is
true of all tourists, but how little they
know of what God is doing in a
place like Turkey.
To be able to share with them that
one of the very best fellowships in Turkey
was right there in Izmir and that we
were going to be speaking there that night.
You just get so surprised that there are
Turks who have come to know the Lord
Jesus and they are going on.
That fellowship is led by Turks.
I had lunch with the leader of that
fellowship.
I've heard about him for years.
Glenn Garner lived in that city for years.
I'd heard about this brother and it was
just exciting to meet him.
What are a few of the things I
think we should especially thank God for?
Firstly, the number of workers.
We've been praying for 38 years, some of
us, that the Lord would send forth workers.
I was going to share how the vision
began, so I better just finish that.
It happened in a library at Moody Bible
Institute.
Couldn't think of anything more boring.
I was just reading through these books that
tell and give information like Operation World.
I stand amazed at the number of copies
of this book that have gone out, praise
God.
I also stand amazed at my surveys, how
few people use it, at least regularly.
Let's encourage people.
Part of my sharing this morning, I'm just
going to read from this book about Turkey
because with all my exposure to Turkey in
the last few days, when I opened the
pages of Operation World, I learned some things
that really I didn't fully grasp when I
was there and I was doing a lot
of talking and asking a lot of questions.
The vision for reaching the world with the
gospel was already in my heart by the
time I was at Moody.
Dale and I and one other brother, Walter,
had already gone to Mexico from this other
college where Dale and I had met.
Dale's vision was Wycliffe Bible Translators and then
he was moving from the Wycliffe vision to
the Open Brethren movement that was quite active
in Wheaton at that time.
But my main thing was just unreached people,
though I'm not sure we used that term
then, more into the unevangelized.
So wherever I could find literature that could
give me information, I would try to get
it.
In the library, I can remember, though that's
a long time ago, being hit by the
need in Iraq.
I'd already been hit with Afghanistan through Oswald
J.
Smith's book.
The introduction to Oswald J.
Smith's book, Passion for Souls, which is still
being distributed.
It's been rewritten and different chapters have been
altered, put from other books.
That's a long story.
Oswald J.
Smith got the vision to mix all of
his chapters up and produce new books.
But the challenge of Passion for Souls was
Afghanistan.
Let's remember, Afghanistan is still, as far as
any survey I can understand, is still more
unreached than the land of Turkey.
We can't really say there are active Afghan
-led fellowships in Afghanistan.
There are believers.
There may be two or three studying the
word together.
I think if we exclude foreigners, we have
to say that Saudi Arabia is more unreached
than Turkey.
I was just listing some countries that are
probably more unreached than Turkey because someone said,
well, Turkey's the most unreached nation.
It is, if you put the word, largest.
But if you go to the small countries,
I don't think Tunisia has near as much
as Turkey.
I don't think Libya.
What do we say of Libya?
How many people do we hear praying for
Libya?
Again, we always know there are things that
God's doing that we don't know about.
Some brother may be working in Libya with
an oil company.
Maybe he's led half a dozen people privately
to Jesus.
Maybe we'll only find out about that in
heaven.
I think that's also true, of course, in
Turkey.
That despite the surveys, and a brand new
survey just came out.
I have it here in my hand.
That's brilliant in terms of information.
But I'm sure no matter how much we
get into these surveys, we can't get all
that God is doing.
To make a long story short, one of
the next countries I read about in the
library that day was Turkey, and it just
exploded.
I don't think my life was ever the
same.
Shortly after that, I went out to Wheaton
College to challenge Dale to forget about these
other things and to go to Turkey.
And I, as has been true in all
my life, with often a sense of struggle
and inadequacy, perhaps was nervous to give Dale
that challenge.
I was a lot more, I think, aggressive
and choleric in those days.
I think I challenged him about forsaking various
things also that I saw around his room.
But then Wheaton College went bananas on the
forsaking all thing.
If you've never heard some of those stories,
they blow your mind.
But somehow, in God's prominence, there was another
man, an older ex-missionary from Turkey who
was there in Wheaton.
I don't even remember his name now.
But he got in this equation.
And through all this, Dale made this decision
to come back into OM, which wasn't called
OM at that time, it was just being
born, and to go and pioneer Turkey.
It would be interesting to share with you
some of the challenges that we threw out
before we felt we should go.
The amount of money you had to trust
God for, the number of prayer groups, especially
targeting Turkey.
He was born at that time in Chicago.
Another one was soon born in California.
And it was obvious that this all wasn't
happening so quickly.
I remember a conversation, this is after both
of us were about to graduate, in which
Dale decided, or we decided together, he should
be the assistant pastor at a very live
Presbyterian church in New Jersey and continue to
work to lay the foundation.
I'm bringing this in because a lot of
us here this morning are involved in laying
foundations.
And just rushing to these countries prematurely, without
support, without the foundation, really is not God's
answer.
And I believe one of the reasons God
brought me to Turkey at this particular time
was with all my vision about Acts 13,
Breakthrough 2000, and the burden to mobilize 200
,000 missionaries.
And I always like to say it doesn't
mean we're going to do that, but that's
our hope, that's our prayer, and that the
body of Christ worldwide would get involved in
doing it.
Many are already doing it, having never even
heard of this.
And that's fine, because it's from the Word
of God.
But I think one of the reasons God
brought me to Turkey was just to remind
me that it's got to be quality people.
It's got to be prepared people.
And God brought a young Kurdish believer, converted
him to Britain one year in Jesus.
And he had been recently at a big
event in Istanbul that all the Westerners thought
was really great.
And it was great, a big sort of
music praise event.
But during that time, apparently he saw foreigners,
visitors, doing things that, in his mind, are
very, very offensive to Turkish and Kurdish culture.
And they have some differences in their culture.
And so he said to me, why don't
these people get any orientation about Turkey before
they come here?
The old George Fowler immediately moves into defense.
And I said, well, I'm sure.
Some of them must get, I'm trying to
think of our own fellowship, some of them
must get some orientation before they come here.
And then I just realized as I was
talking to him, there's no need to try
to argue with his dear brother and point
out that at least some of them get
orientation.
This is a typical Verwer defense thing.
Just listen to him.
He's one year in Jesus.
He's a Turk.
He's a Kurd.
He wanted to get this off his heart.
He's probably been hurt by somebody.
But I think whatever, there's certainly an element
of truth in this.
And I'm going to be trying to maybe
circulate this more widely, but I really believe
that it can be an enormous hindrance to
the work of God if people go to
these countries without any cultural orientation.
Just basic things.
Because especially if you move out of a
place like Istanbul into a more rural area,
Istanbul, they're used to a lot of foreigners.
I'm not saying it's not important in Istanbul.
But as we get beyond Istanbul and we
get with people who are from villages or
towns, the understanding of Turkish culture and Turkish
ways is just so important.
And to be really honest, this brought a
great burst of enthusiasm in my own heart
about what we are doing short term on
the field of training.
Because in all that I've read and so
many people I've talked to, this is surely,
many missiologists agree with this, many trainers agree
with this.
I was just talking to one of the
leaders of the WEF training module, long telephone
conversation the other day.
And so many people do agree that on
the field training, especially when it's done right,
is the best way to prepare long term
people.
It doesn't exclude academic studies.
It's not either or.
It's got to be both.
But the fact of the matter is that
some of these things are very hard to
learn until you actually get there.
We need to have orientation, of course, before
they get there.
But ongoing supervision, ongoing accountability, ongoing mentoring, ongoing
evaluation, I just think it's so basic and
so important, especially out in a situation like
Turkey.
Well, for 38 years we have shouted about
Turkey in some strange situations.
And at least for myself, many times discouraged,
battling discouragement.
So the Lord brought some people there at
this men's retreat to encourage me.
Brought me somebody who heard my voice on
the radio driving down some road in the
United States.
Heard me on the radio for three minutes
talking about Turkey.
And God zapped her.
She's a long term missionary in Turkey today.
Another fellow came up to me.
He was there in a van in 1987
when I took out my binoculars, most people
having a laugh.
And I said, is anybody here going to
Turkey or are there any Turks here?
I forget exactly how I said it.
Many of you have seen that little binocular
thing, sort of an icebreaker.
Doesn't remember anything of what I said that
night.
All he knows is that at that moment
God called him to Turkey.
He's a long term missionary in Turkey today.
Probably half of all the workers in Turkey
today could trace their vision to go there
back to OM directly or indirectly because of
the multiplication effect.
I mean, I could give the name of
someone and then I could give the name
of someone in Turkey.
He wouldn't even know that person.
He wouldn't even know him.
Steve Richards is now in glory.
But it's someone who Steve Richards touched that
touched him.
And that's so exciting when we think of
our own ministry here and hopefully your own
ministry wherever you are that often somebody that
you influence, that you minister to, that you
encourage and you may only give them a
book.
There are people because of the book, My
Big Father, which unfortunately has gone out of
print in some places.
There are people there of all kinds of
different ways the Holy Spirit has worked.
Worked through the printed page, through cassette tapes,
through somebody being willing to talk about Turkey.
You know, it's interesting.
I had someone try to lay this guilt
trip on me again just the other day.
That if you talk about Jesus, you're considered
spiritual.
But if you talk about the work, that's
really not so spiritual.
That's okay.
We have these tremendous messages.
I know I've given them.
And I had to repent in the last
couple of days that in my life sometimes
I get too focused on work.
And so I have to somehow repent, get
myself sorted out to focus on the Lord.
But I believe that the Lord wants us
to speak about Turkey.
He said we're to go to Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.
And that's 2,000 years ago.
So surely we shouldn't put these things at
odd.
If we speak about Jesus...
In fact, this came up in the question
and answer session with the OM team called
Marmalade.
So in the team meeting where I was
sharing about Acts 13, I only had this
one team meeting.
I didn't feel I should give them a
major devotional about Jesus and His atonement.
One time I figured they probably already have
that and salvation and all we have in
Jesus.
I just had this one opportunity.
So I shared my vision, Acts 13, break
through 2,000, and a lot of other
things tied in.
And one of the questions came...
I won't mention what country the person's from.
It's a distortion.
But isn't there a danger in OM that
we will not be focusing on the Lord
enough and we'll be focusing on the Word?
Of course that is a danger.
That is a danger also back home.
That's a danger for all of us.
But we must not conclude from that that
speaking out about Turkey in meetings, at Urbana,
the main thing we speak about is the
Lord Jesus Christ.
Most of the messages are about the Lord
Jesus Christ.
My message that night was about the Lordship
of Christ.
But I thank God I took two minutes
and gave a shout about Turkey.
And I hope every one of you who's
here and who here gets this tape, and
of course one of the ways you can
shout about Turkey, just give them a copy
of this tape.
Then you can go home and do something
else.
Because a vast percentage of all the Christians
in the entire world do not have a
vision for Turkey, let's be honest.
They would have a great problem finding it
on the map.
And Turkey, of course, is fairly famous compared
to some other countries.
In answer to prayer, there are now over
400 workers in Turkey.
A high percentage of them either long term
or wanting to be longer term.
In this amazing survey I have here, it
breaks down what these workers are doing.
It also breaks down their proficiency in language.
There's only about 160 who are really proficient
in the language.
And one of the major prayer burdens is
for those who are there.
We must give equal importance to those who
are there with our efforts to get new
people there.
In fact, I would say the average person
in OM, or in our fellowship, in their
praying should especially be praying for any people
they know that are in Turkey and attempting
to get the language.
In this meeting I was at, this retreat,
and the Lord worked in a very wonderful
way in those meetings, but in one of
the meetings, when I was encouraging them to
learn the language, which is so important, I
had those who were able to testify or
speak in Turkish stand up.
It wasn't a very large number.
Many are working on the language.
I was reading a document about missions for
busters and next-generation people.
There's a lot of material coming out on
this.
And I think we have to face the
reality we have a different generation of people.
And it is harder to get this generation,
the busters and the exers, as they're sometimes
called, to make the long-term commitments.
That is definitely harder than it was, say,
in 1960.
But we must not be intimidated by that.
There are baby busters.
There are next-generation people there in Turkey.
They want to learn the language.
And that is going to happen.
So we thank God and we praise the
Lord and give thanks for the number of
workers.
There are perhaps a dozen or two dozen
places in Turkey where people are gathered together,
worshiping, apart from minorities.
If you look in Operation World, you realize
there are minority groups in Turkey.
There are Arminian Orthodox, even after the horrendous
things that happened many years ago.
According to Patrick Johnson, there are 27,000
Arminian Orthodox.
There are Assyrian Orthodox, about 6,000.
There are Greek Orthodox, about 4,900.
There are other tiny groups.
There are Eastern-Writ Catholics, about 6,000.
There are Latin-Writ Catholics, about 3,600.
It also gives the total number of congregations.
Most of these people are in a totally
separate world from the Turkish people of the
majority religion background.
That doesn't mean we can't pray for revival
in these churches.
I've heard that in the Arminian Orthodox Church
there has been a touch of revival.
Many, many years ago, there was a tendency
as people got discouraged working among the Turks
of the majority religion.
As they got discouraged in that, they would
end up working among nominal Christians or people
from these minority groups.
It's not for me to judge that or
say that that's wrong.
But our thrust and the thrust of most
of these workers I've just referred to of
all these different groups is the majority community,
including, of course, a fairly large segment of
Kurds.
There are 29.
In Turkey, they refer to things like our
little fellowship.
They refer to us as companies.
There are 29 companies.
The 1994 survey showed 405 workers, which was
expected to increase in 1995 to 487.
That does not include people who just come
for a few weeks or a few months.
They are not in those statistics, but it
probably would include people who are there for
a couple of years.
Not many, is it?
For a land of 60 million and climbing.
60 million people, larger than the population of
the British Isles.
So you can get some very interesting comparisons
when you compare Turkey with Great Britain because
the population is similar.
This particular survey puts a strong emphasis on
trying to get facts about church planting.
Of all the people laboring in Turkey, only
28% are preparing for a church planting
ministry.
37%, and that's increased lately, are involved in
a church planting ministry.
And 34% are involved in other ministries.
I told the leader, a close friend who
I hadn't seen for some years, who was
involved in a very, very small Bible school,
cultural center, training center.
Partly a vision from a woman who was
with us and now with another company.
And they had the building.
I visited the building.
Don't want to mention where it is.
But they phoned me back that evening, his
wife, and said, please do mention this little
Bible school that they're not really calling a
Bible school.
They have just a small number of students.
They really would appreciate your prayer.
I'm sure there are other little mentoring and
training Bible things going on around Turkey, but
I don't know of anything like this previously.
So that is a specific item of prayer.
The international update this month, you might imagine
I started writing it sitting in Ephesus.
I thought that might attract people's attention.
I always wonder if people read my international
updates.
I do get some assurance that they do.
So I open my international update and probably
give that to you on Monday.
I'm sitting here in Ephesus.
A little later, I'm sitting here in the
public toilets in Ephesus.
They have amazing toilets in Ephesus.
There are about 30 tourists all sitting there.
Some of them are sitting on the little,
what we call in the States, the john.
I'm listening to the tour leader expound about
this famous public toilet.
I don't know what the full results will
be at this time together.
Probably everybody will want to go to Ephesus
and visit the public toilets.
But most of the letter now that's going
to go out, it's already on e-mail,
will be about Turkey.
I'm just thinking that sometimes in the future,
maybe in my update, instead of so much
variety, information per request, usually about 10, 15
different places per letter, that sometimes I'll just
focus on one country and give some prayer
requests.
I give about 10 prayer requests for Turkey.
Another thing to thank the Lord for is
that the Word of God is going out.
The Turkish New Testament, many of you know
about that project, is going out in an
amazing way.
One brother from a particular Asian culture stood
up and surprised his whole group on the
number of New Testaments that he had seen
go out in just one area.
People didn't even know.
Some of our own people, especially in Ankara,
are really seeing a lot of New Testaments
go out.
And they have some pretty big goals.
Though it's still a small percentage of people.
When you had 60 million, a small percentage
that had ever had a New Testament.
Also, the use of the Jesus film in
Turkish, and now I think it's available in
Kurdish, is another major strategy.
And some very unusual open doors have come
for the Jesus film.
So that's another important prayer request.
I wanted to just mention for a moment
the whole thing of literacy, because sometimes we
forget.
When we talk about these more unreached countries,
and we think of literature, we don't realize
that a lot of people don't know how
to read.
Literacy, according to the 1990 census, there are
only 35% of the women of Turkey
who are literate.
35%.
By the way, when they say literate, that
doesn't mean they can easily pick up the
New Testament and read that.
44% of the men are literate.
It says, the following diagrams are based on
statistics available in 1990 in the Turkish general
consensus, according to the consensus, of 11 million
households in Turkey.
So when you pray, remember the sowing of
the seed, remember the use of the Jesus
film, and other efforts, and there are not
that many people given to that.
The whole thing of reaching large numbers of
people with the gospel, regardless of whether they
respond or not, is not the major vision
any longer on the mission field.
It was certainly in our fellowship in the
60s.
The belief we need to sow the seed.
Everybody needs an opportunity.
And then from that, we'll plant churches and
see people come to Jesus.
The emphasis today, generally, is to go immediately
to attempting to plant churches.
But I did find in Turkey quite a
balance.
And I found the church planters esteeming the
sowers, esteeming those whose gift is sowing the
seed.
Some, despite all their efforts, don't become that
proficient in the language.
Is there any need for such people?
Somebody sent me a letter.
A young man we were involved in recruiting
is now going to join the ship.
He's the son of somebody who was on
OM in the 60s.
That's always encouraging.
He sent a prayer letter out, and he
put something in his prayer letter I've never
forgotten.
And I've used it.
He said, for every one formula...
We just had the Grand Prix in Monaco,
I'm sure.
That's one of your big things.
But he pointed out, for every one formula
run racing driver, they have to have 50
people backing up that driver.
And I think it's important to understand this.
And this is why I have fought that
when we talk about mobilizing 200,000 workers
throughout the whole world and missionaries in the
years to come, we include backup staff.
We must include backup staff.
But something that came to my mind when
I was in Turkey was that there are
different levels of backup staff.
We need home country backup staff.
Back there in the States or Australia.
By the way, Peter Maiden is just back
from Australia, and it was a very good
time.
His time on the ship sabbatical went really
well.
Then there are the backup staff who are
in operations like this, international coordinating team.
We're not home country, but we're not out
in the middle of India.
But it's essential.
It's essential.
But we need to remember that in those
countries there is need for backup staff.
The leader of our work in Turkey has
no secretary.
And he has so much he's supposed to
be doing.
He's also the team leader for that city
with quite a few people on his team.
I was talking to a woman, actually it
was Steve Richard's sister.
And she was sharing about her ministry.
And a lot of her ministry has not
been directly with the Turkish people, but it's
been with other workers who are battling for
survival.
And she mentioned something to me that was
quite relevant because our daughters just had this
baby and my wife's down there trying to
help her.
It's not an easy time when a mother
has her first child.
And this woman in Turkey is going to
be with different people when they have their
baby.
Because their mother or grandmother or whatever can't
come in.
It's not like when it's in your own
country.
Even there it can be difficult, right?
And so one of the things she's been
doing is helping people survive when little Junior
comes along.
And just talking to her was an eye
-opener to again realize there is scope in
all these countries for people who are not
great linguists.
People in the ministry of hospitality.
People who can maybe repair vehicles.
People who can help.
They're crying out for help in Istanbul in
the correspondence course of ministry.
In fact, the leader of that ministry didn't
come to the retreat.
They just have so much, I heard, I
talked to him on the phone, just so
much work.
And they also set some book displays in
the streets, which is quite encouraging news.
And so many, thousands of people are responding
to this correspondence course.
But where do you get the people to
grade all these lessons?
I say this because people shouldn't think, because
they don't feel they're a great language learner,
I don't know how many people do feel
that, that there's no scope in countries like
this.
Why don't you push some doors?
I don't want to lose half the team
here this morning.
But why don't you push some doors, those
of you who are listening to this tape,
wondering about God's will in your life, and
write some letters.
Another survey I took in this particular retreat
was how many of you are on email?
And probably 60% more on the hands
went up.
I don't think there's any group of people
except computer people themselves who are into email
as much as our co-workers around the
world in these countries doing what we're talking
about this morning.
And we thank God.
I mean, I had emails from the people
sitting in that meeting waiting for me when
I got back here.
One of them was four pages long.
But an email has its negative sides as
well as many positive sides.
But it does mean also that it should
be easier today for people back home, wherever
that may be, it should be easier for
them to encourage people on the field through
email.
Now you need to realize the security question.
Some people feel email is more secure than
letters.
Other people feel the opposite.
One more controversy.
But if you're just a general letter of
encouragement, not mentioning especially organizations, then it can
be a great blessing.
Why am I saying that?
Because I want us to understand this morning
we all can do something for Turkey.
I know, especially as I speak here, we
have many other people here committed.
We have the Algerian crowd here.
We have the Egypt crowd here.
Our team has different people committed to different
things.
But whatever our commitment, I believe we can
all do something for Turkey.
Because we must acknowledge that Turkey is one
of our most important and strategic fields in
the world in terms of the number of
people, 60 million, in terms of the number
of co-workers we have there, over 70
plus children, and all of our concern about
training, about pastoral care.
Unlike places like India, most of our brothers
and sisters in India are all Indians.
So we're limited in what we can do,
and yet we feel, most of us, there's
a lot we can do for India as
well.
How much more when most of the workers
are foreigners who eventually are back in the
states?
Another thought that God brought to my mind
that I think is so relevant is linked
with my campaign that the church doesn't think
we no longer need American, Canadian, and British
missionaries, and British workers, American workers.
This is a bigger thing than you may
realize.
Even when I showed my plan for Act
13, Breakthrough 2000, to a very leading business
person here in London a week or so
ago, he thought it was all great except
the number of Americans.
Do we actually think the church in all
these other countries is that much greater than
the church in Britain or America or Canada?
I want to go on record, the 60
countries I've been to and the high percentage
that I'm involved in, it is not that
different from one country to the other.
I read an interesting article just two days
ago about revival in Argentina.
Can it happen here?
It's an American magazine.
Praise God, when I actually read the article,
which was written by a friend of mine,
the article was not exaggerated.
The article was very down to earth.
It pointed out there's a lot of church
growth in those countries, but it actually didn't,
unless I missed it, it didn't mention great
revival.
But the cover, of course, they like hot
stuff for the cover, so the cover communicated
that there's revival in Argentina, but of course
there's no revival in America, when in fact
most people in Argentina say there is not
great revival there, there is church growth.
And a lot depends on your definition of
revival.
Have you found the enormous range of definitions
of what revival means?
Maybe you can help me on that, because
there's still many people that run ads in
the United States that they're going to have
a revival starting on Sunday, the 25th of
January.
Please all come.
We're dealing with a very tricky word.
And let me just tell you, brothers and
sisters, this is not to put any other
nationality down, but over 50% of all
the workers in Turkey are from the USA.
There aren't hardly any Latin Americans in Turkey,
despite blowing a trumpet about it for 15
years.
There aren't any Indians hardly in Turkey.
There are one or two from Spain, there
are one or two from here, and, praise
God, the Koreans who focused on Turkey for
a much longer time do have significant numbers.
They are the next behind the people from
the USA.
Now we know that is going to change
in the future, but people were saying that
already seven years ago.
And the fact of the matter is we
don't want to get caught into this dilemma.
Is it the two-thirds world that's going
to do the job, or is it the
so-called Western countries, Britain and America, traditionally
missionary-setting countries?
It's obviously both.
And probably some Americans are listening to this
tape, and I pray that you may consider
Turkey.
It also shows the distortion when we give
the idea that the world can be evangelized
by the nationals who live within the country.
This may be true in parts of India.
Most people would say it's not true in
all of India, and thinking Indians want farm
workers to go to India, especially among the
minority group of Muslims.
Minority group of Muslims who number over 130.
I thought it was around 150 million.
I've heard 130, whatever.
So even India, I don't believe, is just
going to be totally reached by people from
their own country.
And of course India is an amalgamation of
many people's groups, many cultures.
And so when a brother goes from Tamil
Nadu to evangelize Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, that
is cross-cultural missions.
And that's one of the reasons in my
Numbers for Acts 13 breakthrough, we put the
India and South Asia number at 15,000.
We need people from all different countries.
But surely, when a country has as many
churches as Great Britain, I just got the
church statistics for London.
The thousands of churches in London.
You say, well, many of them are dead,
they're only small.
Well, we don't have anything but small in
Turkey.
We don't have anything but small.
Izmir, with 3 million, has this little fellowship
that I spoke at on Monday night.
They had maybe 50 in fellowship.
And a very high percentage of our Turkish
and brothers and sisters are quite young and
struggling.
And we just need to understand the whole
thing just gets out of balance if we
don't keep some of these facts in mind.
To bring this to a close, I would
just urge you to try to help us
mobilize prayer groups for Turkey.
We used to have specific prayer groups for
Turkey.
Maybe if that's too narrow an aim, we
could see a mobilization of prayer groups for
the 1040 window.
I'm thrilled, actually, when there's any kind of
prayer group.
If you know about prayer groups, why don't
we try to get information to them about
Turkey?
Maybe we could get this tape into their
hands.
Let's try to get more literature about Turkey.
There's literature not just produced by our fellowship.
We don't seem to have much.
But we can distribute literature that's produced by
other fellowships.
Country profiles.
I was actually going to read part of
Operation World about Turkey, but in the light
of the time, I'm going to have to
let you do that.
But it's in the English edition.
It's on page 541, if you want to
write that down.
And around the world, between November 3rd and
November 5th, people are praying for Turkey.
And it's amazing.
There's about seven, six pages of information in
Operation World about Turkey.
Why don't you start there?
And then maybe you can go and read
a book.
When you talk about Turkey, there's a name
that you must always remember.
And I've been always trying to encourage missionary
recruits to read a little bit of history.
And I would encourage people in our fellowship,
since this is one of our priority fields,
I'd encourage everyone to read a little bit
of Turkish history.
Why not get the encyclopedia out and read
about Turkey?
And even Operation World has just some amazing
history and facts about Turkey that I just
found so interesting.
And the name that I was going to
mention, that you will encounter everywhere you go
in Turkey, is Ataturk.
Let's be honest.
Anybody here has never heard of Ataturk?
Raise your hand.
It's okay.
It's like being living in the United States.
Someone said to you, have you ever heard
of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington?
Of course.
Who are they?
So let us all honor Ataturk throughout our
little fellowship, read some Turkish history, get the
feel of this country, and make a commitment
to help find the recruits they need.
We, of course, want quality recruits.
We want people that can crack the language
and plant churches.
You cannot have mission mobilization without straw.
That's how I got chosen.
You can't have mission mobilization without straw.
So we can't just hold back in the
challenge of Turkey for the fear someone may
go there who will be a problem.
I mean, we might as well fold up.
God can sort these things out.
And as I look back over our fellowship's
35 years of work in Turkey, I guess
I have to acknowledge at times it was
a ragamuffin operation.
But since many of us are reading that
book, we know that God uses ragamuffins.
You may feel inadequate.
You may never have heard the challenge of
Turkey before.
You may not know who Ataturk is or
even know where this place is on the
map.
Here's the flag right in front of me.
But that doesn't mean God can't use you
in Turkey.
If one woman could hear two sentences on
the radio and be there now as a
long-termer, if another guy could see somebody
semi-clouding around in some big meeting looking
through his binoculars to see if there's any
Turks in the meeting, end up being called
of God through that and laboring there as
a long-term worker.
And I don't think you should limit yourself.
God may want you in Turkey.
I might just add this.
Turkey is to me a wonderful place to
live.
There are difficult mission fields where you might
be living in a mud hut in the
middle of the desert.
You can't get your favorite food.
I just had an ex-ICT guy laboring
in Mozambique.
He can't get a decent meal.
I took him to Carl Jr. for a
hamburger.
I thought he was going to hallucinate.
This was in California.
He and his wife are really struggling right
out in the booties of Mozambique with very
poor facilities.
We tell these stories, don't we, as workers?
Some of those stories are counterproductive because it
frightens, especially some people in this generation, especially
the women.
I've got some men as well.
Most missionary work is not like that anymore.
One of the persons who used to be
on our team living in Istanbul, they said
to me, we love it and we're very
comfortable.
These are modern European style cities.
It's not the same, perhaps, as your own
country.
But I think we need to knock out
the idea that to live in Turkey is
to endure some great hardship.
I'm sure some of you are enduring hardships
right where you are.
That's normal.
So let's knock out some of these false
ideas.
You can be happy in Turkey.
You can rear your children in Turkey.
They can go to a nice school.
You can learn that language.
You can eat all kinds of food, including
Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and McDonald's.
It's all there in Turkey.
Of course, I'm sure that's not the major
thing that's going to attract you to go
there.
Praise God for those he's raised up and
sent to this country.
Praise God that at least a few millions
over these years, only the Lord knows because
there's some radio going into this land as
well, but at least a few millions have
heard.
I don't think anymore we can say even
what Patrick says in his book.
But it's a long way to go.
And the goals and aims of AD 2000,
especially the second goal, a church for every
people, tied into the saturation evangelism concept, I
mean, the possibility of that happening by the
year 2000 in Turkey, I think most workers
there would say it's ludicrous.
But let's at least give it our best
shot.
Let's at least try.
And with a lot of changes that are
taking place, God may surprise us.
Let's be ready for some wonderful surprises so
that at the year 2000 and thereafter, somehow
there'll be perhaps hundreds of fellowships instead of
15 or 20, hundreds of fellowships.
They might be small.
I have a list of all the provinces
in Turkey.
Most of the provinces have next to nothing.
You can see it on this incredible report.
Let's believe God that things will change.
Yes, even in the next three or four
years.
Let's pray.
Our God and Father, we thank you for
the challenge of this giant land of over
60 million people.
We think not only of the Turks but
of the Kurds.
I haven't been able to take time to
speak about that work just across the border
in northern Iraq where some of our co
-workers are seeing some breakthroughs.
We're the little groups worshipping you from among
those people.
And Lord, we just pray for all these
workers as they've gone back from this retreat,
as many of them have made recommitments in
their heart, in their life in one direction
or the other.
And Lord, we pray for the Turkish believers.
I think of how many of them responded
to the invitation for commitment in dealing with
discouragement on the Monday night meeting.
And we pray that they'll go from strength
to strength.
We thank you for Turks that are being
reached outside of Turkey.
We think of Germany.
We think of Turks that have been won
to you here in Britain and are back
serving you there now.
Not many, but a few.
And Lord, we commit to you this vision,
this burden to see everyone in this nation
reach for the gospel and to somehow see
a church-planting team in every unreached people's
group and in every part of the nation
in the very near future and strengthen us
as we attempt to take ownership of this
vision, as we attempt to move from just
listening to prayer, to action, to mobilizing others,
to sharing the vision so that there'll be
tens of thousands of beautiful Turkish people someday
worshipping with us in glory.
For we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Perhaps you want more information about Turkey.
Any OM office anywhere in the world could
probably help you at least get started.
And then keep in mind there are at
least 25 other groups that are laboring there,
and I'm sure they'd love to have contact
with you and supply you with information about
Turkey.