I thought I might just begin by, since
I found this here in the pulpit, read
a few of the feedback quotes from the
Christian Leaders' Luncheon we had yesterday.
First of all, thanks to all of you
who made that possible, including some people who
are not here this morning.
I don't think we can measure the importance
of that kind of meeting.
In fact, it might be good to just
say that in the birth of O.M.
in Britain, pastors' meetings were at the very
heart of the whole strategy.
It used to go throughout the whole country,
I can remember well, since I took a
lot of them.
Having these pastors' meetings, because of course as
the work was being born, people were frightened,
there was considerable opposition.
You sometimes wonder whether those days when there
was such opposition had advantages over the day
that we now live in, where O.M.
has tremendous credibility and is accepted as a
major missionary force in the country.
Because I guess in those days, people either
loved us or hated us.
Hated would be perhaps too strong a word.
But today, the bigger problem we often find
is indifference.
What's new?
At the same time, we've got to bloom
where we are.
We can't turn the pages of history back.
But I praise God for those of you
who have this vision, to have this event
and other events.
George Burwer for Prime Minister, comment here.
Very helpful and motivational.
Thanks for your—I hadn't seen this before, by
the way.
Thanks for your generosity and specific outline of
works you're understanding overseas.
Next time, make it an all-day affair.
Useful and stimulating for vision.
An enormous encouragement as sending church.
We have 12 on the field, wow.
We have a goal of 24 by the
year 2004.
Very brilliant, excellent, superb meal.
Great presentation, challenging talk.
Thank you.
Helpful information.
Looking forward to the visit of Chaco Thomas
later this month.
Everyone was so cordial, helpful, sweet, and lovely.
All in all—watch your cynicism.
All in all, the time, including listening to
George Burwer and Associates, was both beneficial spiritually,
very well spent time-wise.
Praise the Lord.
Thank you very much.
Impressive fellowship.
Most everybody added some kind of a thank
you.
Thanks for the invite.
We'll be working toward furthering the vision.
Wonderful welcome and meal.
Most impressive time.
Wonderful hospitality.
Very uplifting.
God is a God of the impossible.
We continue to lift the 1040 window in
daily prayer.
Enormous encouragement is ascending church.
Let's just have a couple of people give
thanks and pray concerning yesterday.
Amen.
I'd like to just say a few words
about our recent time.
Graham and I in the States, because if
I don't say something now, and this tape
is going out to other team members who
can't be with us this morning, then probably
it won't get said because next week is
the area leaders meeting.
There's just so much to share.
I think, to be honest, one of the
highlights of our trip to the States was
in connection with what happened just a few
days with the Koreans.
Just to give you a little background, there's
an enormous number of Korean churches in America,
actually a couple thousand.
500,000 Koreans just in Southern California.
500,000.
But up to now, there have hardly been
any Korean Americans going into missions.
The mission trust has all come out of
Korea.
We even started OM Korea a couple of
years ago.
So far, the results have been small.
Of course, Stephen is studying at the same
time as leading that work, Stephen Choi.
Young Chu is working with him.
But it's amazing what happened just in this
past weekend.
When they decide the Koreans are going to
do something, they generally move it on a
little higher level than the average situation.
As we were greeted at the Hotel Sheraton
and welcomed back to Los Angeles, we had
been down to San Diego for a day.
Suddenly it dawned on us that something, as
they said in the opening meeting, historical was
happening.
That this was to be one of the
breakthrough events in which the course of history
of the Korean church in America would change.
I don't believe overstating that.
Because in Korean culture, it's only when main
senior pastors make a decision to do something
that things begin to really move.
I'm not saying that nothing happens before that.
But we had this dinner before the main
evening rally.
There was significant publicity for this rally.
They were aiming at getting 1,000 people
there.
I don't know if they had quite that
many.
It was aimed very much at the 1
.5 generation.
That's a new term that they taught me
over supper.
That's people who are not second generation.
To be second generation, you have to be
born in the United States.
1.5 means you were born in Korea
and you came over when you were just
very, very young.
So you are fluent in English.
Someone else referred to it as the bridge
generation.
These pastors were giving me orientation over the
evening meal about the 1.5 generation and
how important they are.
Now that, I spoke very briefly at that
meal, had to be interpreted into Korean.
But at the rally, as these young people
came together, you could feel yourself leaving Korea
and arriving in California.
The music, the way they dress, the way
they speak.
For the first time in my life, I
spoke to Koreans without any interpretation, which meant
a couple of the pastors maybe didn't understand
too much.
But the young people have no problem understanding.
I was really in my more relaxed mode.
It's harder to use humor when you're speaking
through interpretation.
But the response was quite overwhelming.
Many, many of them stood to make a
specific commitment.
It's clear that there are many of them
that would be willing to go.
They met us at the airport when we
flew out the other day and gave us
a big thick pile of these decision cards
because some of them put a note on
the back.
I just didn't share about world missions but
shared about making Christ Lord and some people
wrote feedback in connection with that.
This summer, there is a huge gathering in
Wheaton of Korean-Americans and some from Korea,
again in connection with world missions.
In an amazing way, some months ago the
door opened for me to be one of
the speakers at that conference, which is a
little bit interesting as I have to go
from Singapore to Chicago and then back to
Finland and back to Korea.
But I would like us just to take
a few moments to really pray that the
Spirit of God may fan this fire that
is ignited.
I'm not saying it got ignited during the
weekend we were there.
It was already ignited, but what happened this
past weekend is a significant breakthrough.
And it's interesting, again, to trace God's working.
The senior pastor of the church that I
spoke at the next morning, I spoke at
two out of four of their Sunday morning
services, five, six hundred or so at each
service.
And the senior pastor of that church was
greatly impacted at Network 94.
Sometimes when we meet people from another nation,
they just look like ordinary people that we
met before from that nation.
And yet often, being out of their own
culture, they may be very quiet.
We may not even get a conversation with
them.
But God is doing something, and that man
is chairman of the Korean American Board of
Directors.
Just quite amazing.
Let's just pray concerning the Korean challenge.
Dr. Ok in Korea, chairman of the board
there, has asked Stephen to return to Korea
as our work has grown so fast there,
is so complex, he is really needed there.
It means finishing his studies.
He's studying at Fuller back in Korea rather
than in California, and that will bring, I
think, a fair amount of challenge.
So let's just, before I share anything else,
just pray, especially for this Korean situation.
And let's give thanks.
It's the end of the day.
It's more work, including more work for Tyrone.
There are other things that we really need
to see a breakthrough in, especially the financing,
the financing of this.
They were very generous to us on that
weekend, which is always encouraging.
But it will take a lot more finance
to get especially career missionaries out, and there's
a long way to go.
It's just a whole new movement being born.
And the fact that so much is happening
in Korea will not automatically mean that it
will happen among Korean Americans.
And you can imagine the cultural collision there
in the minds of many of these young
people.
As often their parents do not speak English,
they come from very traditional homes, not all
of them, about 20 percent they estimated the
Koreans in the States may be Christian.
And then the great California culture.
You can almost feel the collision in the
meeting.
Of course, they're quite happy to speak openly
about it.
They have their own Korean American English magazine.
In fact, after all these meetings on the
Saturday, I was just about falling over, and
then there was a big food spread I
was supposed to go to, and then there
was these people wanting to interview me, this
girl with this huge camera, and another girl
with a tape recorder.
I said I couldn't possibly do that, but
then after trying to figure out how we
could do it on the Sunday, I decided
to do it anyway.
So late that night we did this interview
for this magazine.
Last month it was Tony Campalo.
I never had this woman with a camera.
Just doing this brief interview, I must have
taken about 35 photographs with the hope that
maybe one of them would be of any
value.
I was totally jet-lagged and wiped out
and probably looked pretty disgruntled by then.
But anyway, Tony Campalo, who was on the
issue that was given to me as a
sample, didn't look so good either, so maybe
that will balance out.
Let's pray for the Korean challenge there in
the States.
Yes, Father, we thank you for this 1
.5 generation and the second generation of Koreans
there in the States.
We just think of the potential.
It's quite staggering.
We think of how Koreans even generally are
known in California for being business people and
hardworking, and yet we know there's also great
complexity, great prejudice between different groups in the
States.
Lord, we just cry out to you.
We thank you for this huge meeting of
promise keepers, 40,000 pastors a couple of
weeks ago, and the impact this is having,
yet we see Satan counterattacking, trying to bring
division.
Lord, we just pray for our own operation
based out of Tyrone and now the new
base for the ship in Oregon.
We just cry out to you that somehow
they'd be strengthened in the work.
We ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Just a few other words about that USA
trip.
I think most of you know it was
Biola University that brought me over on the
last week.
Again, they have one of the best mission
conferences of any university in the United States.
They even dismiss all classroom activity so that
people can give themselves to the mission's event.
I won't say much except we had a
huge response there, written response.
I discovered that we actually some years ago
started the prayer concert as part of the
mission's conference, and so they carried that on,
little mini prayer conference, fairly good attendance.
Again, when you go to the universities in
the United States or colleges, you have a
very different audience facing you today.
The increased number of people of ethnic minority
background is just quite staggering, and this will
also be true at Urbana coming toward the
end of the year, something we've been promoting
everywhere we have gone, especially with that special
tape that we made.
So Biola was a challenge, and it was
a big response.
Of course, many different mission agencies are all
there trying to get recruits.
One thing we know, there is no lack
of people showing initial interest in getting involved
in missions, at least among the young people.
There must be at least 50,000 in
America.
I've just increased my figure from 20,000.
It's purely a guess based on my experience
in many different colleges, and just multiplying that,
considering all the other colleges and all the
other places and considering the fact that we
probably will have 18,000 people at Urbana.
But statistically, it's shown that only a small
percentage of those who show that initial interest,
raising a hand, coming forward, when they're often
rather young, ever become career missionaries.
I guess because we as Americans can see
the complexity in our own country, we're quick
to grab on to some of these fantastic
statements that are being made about Latin Americans
coming and about people of other cultures coming,
all of which have elements of truth.
But it's certainly, as someone who ministers in
all these different places, to leave out the
Americans or the British or any of these
other western countries where missions is a bit
old hat would be a fatal mistake at
this stage.
Because the amount of structure, missionary, healthy structure
that's in place in those countries is so
significant and so ready to take people and
train them and put them in a structure
where they can function.
Whereas in many other countries, these structures are
just being born.
They're just being born with all the complexity
of that.
We see that in our own work in
every one of those lands.
So let's not think either or as we
look toward a great number of new missionaries.
But it's got to be both.
Again, we continue to get feedback from Wheaton
College, another pace-setting college, and it's very,
very exciting.
I don't have time to say more about
this, except that a lot of our blessing
over on this trip didn't come just in
these meetings.
It came in talking to individuals and it
came on the telephone, including a phone conversation
with a man who's now set up a
matching fund that will produce 200,000 New
Testaments for India.
He will supply half of the money.
If we raise $35,000, he will give
$35,000 more for Project Light, specifically for
New Testaments in a variety of languages.
This particular matching fund has less limitations than
other funds in that it doesn't have to
be business people.
It can be churches.
It can be anybody.
It can be somebody on OM who wants
to give to Project Light.
The money will be doubled.
Pray for us as we try to sort
out how that works.
So it was an encouraging time.
If I don't seem overly as enthusiastic as
sometimes I am, it's because of getting up
at this particular time and being jet-lagged
and only getting myself to sleep at about
1.30 by use of a sleeping pill,
something I haven't done before, but it certainly
is relatively effective.
Working late last night, I came across a
letter, March 22nd.
What's today's date?
Amazing.
March 22nd, 1995.
Dear friends of ICT, this is a pure
coincidence.
I was watching this most fantastic video my
wife has recorded on rollercoaster mania and discovered
that Blackpool is way beyond anything I've ever
calculated.
How Blackpool could be such a center?
I knew they had this one huge rollercoaster,
but such a center of rollercoaster mania and
how I missed that, I don't know.
But this was just an incredible video about
rollercoasters.
Unless you think it's irrelevant, the main star
in this documentary was a vicar who kept
slipping in his testimonies about Jesus, including his
Jesus T-shirt.
And he's one of the leading rollercoaster extremists
in the world.
He shared how he met his wife and
they got engaged on a rollercoaster.
And then he went to America and traveled
on every wooden rollercoaster.
And at the end of this feature, they
were on this incredible rollercoaster at Coney Island,
where I've had the privilege of also almost
having my back permanently ruined.
They're sharing about Jesus and about their Christian
faith.
It would be very interesting to know, get
a survey of their reactions, the general British
public to this rollercoaster vicar.
But it was very motivating.
As I was doing that, I was going
through some back papers.
And I came across this letter, March 22nd.
Dear Friends of ICT, It looks like April
will be one of the worst months ever
for finance here on ICT, which includes both
our London and Carlisle preparations.
We usually forget, don't we, some of these
things?
Maybe we don't forget.
Support for our people and team has taken
a sudden drop.
We have large amounts of overdue bills, not
enough money to give people their basic allowances.
It's not easy to share this.
But I felt most people who get this
letter, this letter, by the way, only goes
out to our ICT, went out to our
ICT prayer list, who get this letter would
like to know the truth.
It's not easy to understand finance in God's
work.
Many major Christian groups are in financial difficulty.
It's not just OM that has this situation.
I won't take time to read the rest
of the letter.
God heard our prayers and brought us out
of that.
Kept us out for a few months, then
we sunk back in again and brought us
out.
I don't have any specific news about finance
for April.
I may have on Monday morning.
But I do have some news concerning something
that impacted us in a huge way last
May, and that is the New Era collapse.
I talked to a top lawyer involved in
that, and it looks like they're very close
to a settlement which will put approximately 50
cents on every dollar into the hands of
those who lost money.
This is being made possible because groups that
receive positive money are returning it.
Now, not all those groups are doing that,
which is creating some tension.
Of course, some of them, they don't have
it.
They can't raise it or whatever.
Well, I'd like us just to pray, and
I'm going to lead you in prayer because
of the shortness of time, that somehow we
may see this settlement.
I mean, this will be a phenomenal financial
breakthrough, not just for us, but hundreds of
organizations, even though it's only half.
Keep in mind that many other organizations already
received huge amounts of money.
So let's just pray because of the time,
and if you could possibly keep this in
prayer.
It is a dimension of spiritual warfare, this
incredible situation.
And also, I'm going to lead in prayer
for Jack Bennett, the man who's the CEO
of this company.
A lot of the accusations against him have
proven to be false, but he is a
man that is still devastated.
I talked to him on the phone again
a couple of weeks ago.
I'd like to pray for him and his
family.
Many other groups are still struggling to recover
from this.
It doesn't always happen quickly.
Lord, I just pray for the men and
women who are involved in trying to settle
a New Era situation.
And Lord, if we could see even half
the money that got invested in this going
back to us and to Christian agencies, this
would be a huge, huge victory.
Maybe a partial victory.
I don't know what to call it.
We do continue to pray for the different
lawyers and people involved in this.
We know so easily a setback comes in,
and we're back to square one in certain
ways.
We pray for Jack Bennett and his family
as they, of course, live with this daily
over their heads, not knowing about the future
as the court case, civil case still goes
on, possible jail sentence.
We cry out to you that somehow there
be a supernatural infusion of grace in this
situation.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
By the way, this one lawyer I spoke
to still believes this is the biggest thing
facing American philanthropy.
He made a statement which I'm not going
to repeat because I think it was exaggerated,
but he just felt if we don't get
this nailed down and get this breakthrough, it
will continue to affect giving to philanthropic agencies,
not just Christian, there in the United States
for many years to come because there have
been several other major fiascos, the Jimmy Baker
thing, and then the United Way.
Some of you would not know, but the
United Way is a way that people give
charitable income to the United Way, one gift,
and then they distribute it to all the
charities.
It's largely secular.
And one of their top men about two
years ago discovered major fraud, and that is
huge news in philanthropic circles there in the
United States.
So let's continue to battle on that, and
that certainly will have a big impact on
OM if we can see that breakthrough.
I wanted to close just by giving some
practical ideas on how you can help.
Again and again I have felt and have
seen that most people on ICT, whatever their
particular financial struggle, have seriously wanted to help
the situation.
And many weeks ago I just listed 13
things that anybody on the team, even people
outside the team, but I was thinking internally,
could do to help in this situation.
I think most people realize that I consider
this every single day, seven days a week,
a major task that God has given me
the privilege of being involved in.
Firstly, the overall financial health of OM and
helping raise the finance through prayer, faith, and
action.
And then secondly, ICT and special projects.
I'm very motivated in this.
I can't say it's always easy.
Some of you have expressed, how could you
help?
Apart from just working on your own finance
and even in connection with that.
So I was somehow allowing a few creative
juices to flow, which are always mixed juices.
Straw and wheat often coming together.
And I wrote these 13 things down.
And I hope you would consider these because
it certainly will build unity.
I think some of you are aware that
we're dealing with some very significant pockets of
disunity in the movement right now.
Some of them, one particular case we've worked
on now, Peter Maiden, almost every other day
for a month and we've not yet seen
a breakthrough.
And I know that financial pressure often is
one of the key things the enemy tries
to use to bring disunity because so many
different people have different ideas about what we're
supposed to do.
And the unity somehow, in the midst of
all of our struggles here on ICT, the
unity we've been able to maintain through this
is really more encouraging than money.
If I had to choose between money and
unity, I think I would choose unity.
That's probably not a practical statement in some
ways because without the money, you have difficulty
living.
But I think you know what I mean.
My first way that we can help in
this is to try to understand.
Try to understand what the leaders of OM
are wrestling with.
Try to understand what our churches are wrestling
with.
Your own church that may have lowered your
support rather than taking a reaction mode to
try to take a proactive mode in your
correspondence with them, in your understanding of them.
Because believe me, local churches are really going
through the fire in many, many places.
And I think as we attempt to understand
and have discernment, that is such a huge
help.
Number two, let's be thankful for what we
have seen.
This is especially complex because God has been
so generous with OM and to be quite
honest, many of the groups we're in touch
with and individuals are not experiencing that same
degree of blessing financially.
So we're in a constant state of struggle
because the moment we see that we want
to give and yet we have to control
our giving when in fact we are still
in debt.
It's a great frustration.
It's unfortunate that some Christians especially are judgmental
of business people.
One of the ways we're judgmental of business
people is by making these little super spiritual
statements about never going in debt.
That's considered very spiritual.
Which immediately condemns 80% of the entire
business community in the world because there's no
business people that are operating without borrowing money,
including STL big time.
That's just normal.
It's almost impossible to be a farmer, for
example, in modern society unless you borrow money.
And in many, many other businesses.
So if someone has a personal conviction for
themselves that they never go in debt in
the modern world, I try to respect that.
But if they stand in judgment of other
people who operate differently, that becomes to me
a grace killing mechanism.
So we give thanks for what we've seen
in OM.
God has so blessed this movement financially through
the struggles because that in itself is not
always just a simple black and white thing.
And I like to be careful.
I'm crying out to God.
I think you know this.
Be careful what I say yet without somehow
getting in total bondage and ending up not
saying what needs to be said.
Thirdly, free finance, directly or indirectly, is a
real encouragement.
In my life, I'm sure it's true in
yours, little things are a great encouragement.
Some of the little notes that some of
you have sent me over the last years
concerning these things have been a great source
of encouragement.
But as we attempt to see finance not
only come in for basic survival and the
things that have to be done but also
for special projects and to help people all
over the world, there's nothing more important than
prayer, personal prayer, spontaneous prayer, praying without ceasing
in our prayer times.
Fourthly, taking your own situation seriously but not
allowing guilt or bondage to come in or
overreaction.
It is completely normal, completely normal for us
to have some financial stress.
Ex-OMers generally, the ones I have met,
have more financial stress than OMers.
There is a lot of care in OM.
There is the value of being able to
share.
On our very team, it's people's extra finance
who are seeing extra money come in and
that changes from year to year.
That's helping those who maybe aren't quite seeing
enough.
And we know that verse in Corinthians we've
often read that indicates that that is completely
biblical and happens within our society and within
our churches.
What a phenomenal thing if the wealthier churches
in America, I use this as an example,
would help a little more some of the
poorer churches.
You have tremendous diversity of wealth in churches
in the United States.
And if there could be a little more
of that kind of sharing that we've had
the privilege of seeing, it would be an
enormous help to the body of Christ.
I may share more about that in another
meeting because the recent Promise Keepers events in
the States have launched in a large-scale
way a movement of reconciliation.
And one of the most exciting meetings I
went to on this trip was a breakfast
with people of different racial backgrounds there by
the Mexican border.
And it was really an exciting meeting.
I'll try to pick up on that some
other occasion.
Fifthly, being faithful in your own letters, your
prayer letters, your phone calls, your thank you
letters, having a specific goal.
It would be wonderful to hear from some
people, a little more feedback about some of
your specific goals in terms of adding new
prayer partners and supporters.
One of the beautiful things in what we're
attempting to do is when we sign someone
up to receive our prayer letter, whether they
ever give financially or not, they are valuable
assets for building the kingdom.
I just hope that everybody on the team
will be alert, have sample prayer letters with
you wherever you go, or have some kind
of a card with your address.
If you don't ever make it known that
you're looking for specific prayer partners, then probably
you're not going to get them, except in
the odd occasion.
Sixthly, we want to aim higher than for
basic survival.
We want to try to make efforts to
see personal support coming in to cover at
least some of those business and what we
call sometimes gray area expenses, like going to
the general council at the end of August,
where in a sense it's business, and in
the bigger sense it's personal, and it's sometimes
hard to measure.
We're thinking that if for the general council
people can at least see half the finance
come in, that we would try to find
the other half from the general fund.
That's sort of the general direction we're leaning
in right now as people wrestle with going
over there.
But let's try to aim a little higher
in terms of our basic support.
Let's make sure we're including, and a number
of people have indicated that they are, the
percentage that is taken out of our money
before it ever gets to us.
And we don't despise that, because those people
who are getting that small expense percentage is
not mainly for their personal support, it's for
business expenses, huge expenses.
We've seen in our team just what it
is to get a good photocopy machine and
all kinds of other equipment today that costs
money.
Seventhly, being concerned about other people's situations.
God wants to teach us not to just
be burdened for our own situation, but for
other people's situations.
Not even just within OM, but outside of
OM.
And praise God for the opportunities for generosity
we've had.
Eighthly, to help sell books.
We have quite a large team.
If on Monday morning, everybody who's had some
contact out through meetings turns in even 50
pound, it completely revolutionizes the first two days
of the week, because there's a lot of
people.
We must not just think in terms of
big gifts.
It is mainly small gifts and small book
sales and other things along that line that
are keeping us going.
We know when it comes to selling books
and the distribution of books is one of
the ways that Special Projects helps to subsidize
ICT as we do many other teams around
the world for books that are often paid
for out of Special Projects.
We are able to keep 100% of
that money.
So even when we use a donation basis,
those Special Projects may suffer through that depending
on the way you evaluate it.
I don't evaluate it that way because one
of the main ministries of Special Projects is
giving away books.
And unless we understand this paradigm shift that
has taken place so that we consider it's
just as vital, just as biblical to give
away a book as to sell it.
Different strokes for different folks, different strategy for
different situations.
Keeping in mind also the fact that we
are often able to get books at such
low prices and God has been very, very
generous with us when it comes to supplying
books.
So selling books and other related things like
our globes, it's all an enormous help.
And I think of OM in general.
If OM in general could take even a
few baby steps in this area each month,
it would make a huge impact on financial
health.
And in fact, we know what that is
already doing around the world.
Number nine, let's be good stewards of small
things.
I know some people feel I have changed
from the early days in terms of pinching
pennies.
You better praise God that I have changed
from the early days because most of you
have no idea what I was like in
the 60s, much less the year I got
married.
It's a miracle my marriage even withstood my
extremism, which is grace killing.
Quite ugly even though there's great humor about
it because it's either a laugh or cry
situation.
We'll never totally arrive at the place where
we're absolutely sure of every expenditure.
But if we don't somehow sometimes spend money
when we have some doubts, we will get
ourselves into a very, very difficult kind of
situation.
So it's an ongoing struggle.
But I am committed and I think the
whole team are committed to good stewardship.
We'll never all agree on how that should
work.
We're also all living with different amounts of
time.
Not everybody on the team has the same
amount of so-called free time or the
same ethos in terms of their time and
how time affects money.
One person might save an hour and produce
many thousands of dollars.
Another person may save an hour and actually
not too much money comes as a result
of it.
We may cry for fairness but we live
in a world that doesn't seem to be
very fair.
So let's keep wrestling with that.
Good stewards in small things.
It does add up.
But neurosis, race killing, judgmentalism in one whack
can do more damage and set us back
more than all the pennies we have pinched
for many, many months.
So it's a struggle and I'd appreciate prayer
in that area.
And then number 10, it's good for all
of us on the team to especially have
some kind of budget and to know what
we are spending.
We are doing that as a movement but
we have no mechanism to force families or
individuals to do that.
We can only encourage.
Again, we are still learning what it is
as a movement, especially on our team, to
operate within budget restrictions.
And this puts a lot of work on
certain people's plates and we need a lot
of grace.
Number 11, willing to share.
Again, I long to see more happen in
the area of willingness to share.
Not so easy for fast lane people who
are away a lot, who are traveling a
lot.
Sometimes it's just simpler to have your own
than try to share when there's other complexities
that are interacting.
We are not firstly a community.
We turned away from that concept way back
in the late 60s.
We are an evangelistic missionary fellowship that has
a community.
We hope a beautiful community element, but community
will always have the harder elements and the
difficulties as well.
And we can always think that the grass
is greener on the other side of the
fence.
What if everybody in OM were all little
totally independent operators handling all their finances privately?
That may look appealing if you've just gone
through some kind of relational hassle concerning money.
But believe me, it isn't that simple on
the other side of the fence.
And relational hassles are taking place there as
well.
And the financial thing is always very, very
difficult when there is a shortage of money.
Number 12, to avoid gossip and misunderstandings.
This is where, above all else, we come
back to the challenge of being more Christ
-like.
How would Christ react to some of the
tough situations we find ourselves in?
Have we ever just sat down and thought
and prayed through that?
How would our Lord react?
And to study the Gospels and to see
the Lord speaking about money, to see Him
handling situations that seem to be rather difficult,
well, it's very distressing at times when we
see gossip getting out of control in God's
work.
I'm hoping we don't have too much of
this in OM.
We always will have some.
But it's a beautiful thing when people will
practice Matthew 18, and if they have some
question, they have something that's bothering them, to
go to that person and try to talk
it out.
Some people say, well, I tried that, it
didn't work.
Most good things in life you have to
try more than once.
Don't use an excuse of past hurt to
keep you from attempting something new in the
year to come.
And then my final point, let's all of
us, in our weakness and in our need,
try to take ownership of this vision.
ICT, special projects, what we are attempting to
do here in serving the whole body, it
is a particular ministry, it is a particular
vision.
It takes an increasing amount of money to
keep it going.
We're including Carlisle, of course, in this.
And we need more people who will take
ownership of ICT and to some degree special
projects, but especially ICT.
Sometimes we sense people on our team have
taken ownership of other visions and other fields
which we have always encouraged, but have sort
of a standoff attitude toward ICT.
Well, that's ICT, almost to the point of
hearing, well, really, I'm sort of on that
team, but I'm not really of that team.
Or my finances are different, or, well, I
never agreed with that anyway, but, well, they
usually say praise the Lord at the end.
Let's not set ourselves back from this and
think this is someone else's task or vision,
but let's somehow take ownership.
If the word ownership is too strong, I
don't think it is.
And in the whole task of world missions,
one of the greatest needs is for the
Church to take ownership.
And part of the heart of Acts 13
breakthrough is to put more of the ownership
of the whole task back in the hands
of the Church.
And that's why these little pastors' conferences, which
almost have been experimental, they were organized, and
that vision came simultaneously with a vision of
Acts 13.
They actually didn't come one from the other.
But God knew they were happening at the
same time, and He was putting different things
on different people's hearts.
You and I know that when people take
ownership of OM and feel it's their movement,
it brings fantastic breakthrough.
It's interesting that in the midst of this,
Quinta, for the first time in a long
time, produced a basic letter written by me
offering no turning back free to people who
would write in and challenging them about a
few other things.
We've had the greatest avalanche of personal letters
through the general Quinta mailing, which is the
really big mailing in this country, than ever
before in recent years.
And it's quite a task for us to
process that.
But as I've read through these letters, it's
been amazing, the ownership, the sense of partnership,
it's a better word perhaps, that these many
of the very ordinary people who are our
prayer partners and who carry this work.
I may put some of those letters together
to read or share with you.
So if people out there are taking ownership
of this, partnership and giving sacrificially and financially,
how much more those of us on the
team should do the same?
And as we're bonded with one another, and
there are all different kinds of bonding.
I feel a very strong bonding at times
to people who because of my particular situation,
I don't actually get that much time with
them.
But when the crunch comes, when the crisis
comes, when the difficulty comes, or some other
special situation, that bonding then will become active.
So we can be bonded with people without
getting huge amounts of in-depth fellowship within
us.
Most of us have so many other people
outside our team that we're linked with and
bonded with and ministering to or helping.
But if we're bonded together by faith, like
-mindedness, commitment to the vision, to the word,
then when the crunch comes, that bonding will
hold.
And we saw that on this team in
a very real way in the process of
Philip Morris being taken from us.
And if that had been your situation rather
than Philip's, that same bonding, that same commitment,
of course in varying degrees, it would have
been there.
And that is a much more significant, beautiful
thing than we can measure and is worth
more than all the money any of us
ever sort of put into this work or
raise or find in order to keep it
all going.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank you for these just practical
thoughts that we've reflected on over this time
together.
Help us to contextualize these things into our
own situation.
And Lord, if each one of us can
gather just a few of these things and
begin to put them into practice in a
better way, we believe the impact will be
felt.
We thank you, God, that as we look
back over a year of considerable battle, not
only financially, but in many other realms, that
we can testify of your sovereign grace, especially
through the home-going Philip and then Ted,
and many other things around the globe that
have impacted us in a huge way.
We give you the praise.
We give you the glory.
And though, Lord, I know, especially in my
life, I so easily see the problems, so
easily see the complexities, so easily begin to
get intimidated by those things, we thank you
for the challenge to be proactive, to somehow,
when we see the difficulties, the problems, the
misunderstandings, and all that sometimes can be connected
with that, we make that determination to go
forward and to believe you for the breakthrough.
And we just thank you for this past
year, and we're trusting you to take us
through, day by day and week by week,
through the quite significant transition we're in as
a team right now.
And we pray for the Petra people as
they move to Carlisle.
We pray in connection with the changes going
on here in the building.
We thank you for this tremendous news of
a relatively very positive visit from the fire
inspection people.
We don't take these things for granted.
And we continue to pray for wisdom, discernment,
safety, and biblical Christ-likeness and maturity as
we wrestle with a huge range of complexities
on this team and throughout the world.
We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thank you for your patience.