I'm dealing with tensions between different types of
people.
A leader is a peacemaker.
Most of you probably will go back to
your team even now and they'll be some
peacemakers.
Little Paul from Carolina and little Isis from
Ethiopia have had an argument, or something.
And you're going to go back there and
you're going to have to make peace.
One of the key ministries that we need
to have is building up one brother so
that another brother can accept it and understand
it.
Have something good you can say about everybody.
And say it at the right time.
Often individually.
Appreciation.
Commendation.
But you have different kinds of team members.
Some of you know the chapters, Tudor, Discipleship,
and the book Revolution of Love and Balance.
I wondered when a lot of my books
went up in the fire.
Did they?
Yeah, a lot of them went up in
the fire.
Well, they're really hot, those books.
Maybe you started the fire.
They're not that hot.
But you know the different people in the
little book with Pseudo-Discipleship.
You know, Miss Manhunter and Mr. Slow and
Mr. Doublestandard and other people.
So I developed some other Mr. and Miss
concepts in regard to people.
And the kinds of people that are hard
to get them together.
And some of you may marry one of
these persons, and I'm about to tell you
that.
That will prove to be especially interesting.
And so again, my message this morning will
help people going into marriage as well as
relationships on the team.
First of all, there's building peace and helping
Mr. Quick and Mr. Slow.
You probably have some of those on your
team.
Mr. Quick, out of bed at five in
the morning, usually with a bit of noise.
And he's, you know, he's shaved in about
three minutes.
He's into his Bible.
He's ready for breakfast a half an hour
or an hour later.
He prepares the breakfast quickly, eats it quickly,
and he's ready to go.
Mr. Slow has spent that moment very, very
well on his bed.
To see if the morning light has yet
peered through the window.
And you get these two people on your
team.
Mr. Quick easily feels he is more spiritual.
He's got his verses.
Whatsoever you do, do it quickly.
And he can begin to think that this
other brother is lazy.
And so, when he's led to take the
morning devotions, and it's good to give different
people the opportunity to speak.
Don't do all the speaking on your team.
Your team is probably tired of hearing you.
You're not, you know, Sadhu Sunder Singh, even
his great grandson, as far as I know.
So let others share.
Give them some advance warning so they can
prepare.
Because a lot of the spontaneous stuff, you
know, it's not too good.
Let them prepare.
If it's the first time, maybe you need
him to show you his notes before he
shares on the team.
But Mr. Quick, he gets brothers.
He's got 20 verses for Mr. Lazy.
But you know, some people are slow by
temperament.
They may have a slow metabolism.
And it's very important to show Mr. Quick
the strong points of Mr. Slow.
You may have to show Mr. Quick some
of his weak points, especially when he does
something in haste and it makes a mess,
and work for balance.
We need both kinds of persons.
The slower, methodical person, maybe if he's a
phlegmatic, he will have a little trouble with
laziness.
Mr. Quick will probably have his own problems.
His tongue will be too quick.
He may eat his food too quickly.
He develops ulcers, stomach problems.
He needs a hospital.
We pay a thousand rupees for his quick
eating.
All the books I've ever read on health
say it is good to chew your food.
Some of you, I haven't been watching, but
I have in the past, go through a
plate of rice and meat.
You know, it's just like one of these
dogs.
Have you seen them eat?
Two dogs.
Enjoy your meal.
Chew it.
So that your stomach muscles and your stomach
don't have to work overtime to somehow get
this chunk of buffalo tail properly digested.
Your stomach is very valuable.
So Mr. Slow and Mr. Quick will both
have their problems.
Now, the great event is when they get
married.
Especially when Mr. Slow marries Miss Quick.
I.e., when Ray married Krista.
Give me a chance to finish.
Because we know they both matured, and they
both changed, and now they're probably going at
the same speed.
If anything, Ray has probably now become a
little quicker, maybe, than Krista.
Things changed with the middle years, and with
several children coming into the situation.
But, you know, I'm a guest, Mr. Quick,
and I certainly married what I would have
classified lovingly Miss Slow.
And I won't go into the details.
Some of you have already heard of the
strain and the difficulties that were created.
But we need slow, methodical, pragmatic, disciplined people.
They may learn a little bit to speed
up.
You know, a little bit could help.
The other one has to, at times, learn
to slow down.
And then we have number two.
We have Miss Alert and Miss Sleepy.
This sister, coming to the sisters, was very
alert.
She sees a cockroach enter the room.
Bang!
She's on it.
Death to the cockroach, instantly.
Miss Sleepy is drowsy.
Miss Cockroach has only made his way halfway
up her sari.
She hasn't even seen it yet.
Perhaps a poor illustration.
You know, in the mornings, some people wake
up slower than others.
Some people explode out of bed.
Other people crawl out.
Number three, we don't want to get sidetracked.
Miss Initiator and Miss Plotter.
Now, I had to try to put a
number of women in this, because if you
don't do that today, women slip right on
top of you.
And in pseudo-discipleship, I had a person
write to me saying not enough of the
pseudo-disciples were women.
They were offended.
There is the person, and these two people,
of course, we realize we desperately need both
types.
The Initiator, the person, woman or man, who
can start things, who can initiate new projects.
Pioneer, and then the one who comes along
and plots.
People have compared McCroskey and I.
McCroskey once told me, I haven't started anything
ever.
It's not true, I'm kidding.
But a lot of McCroskey's ministry has been
the plotter.
He's had to pick up where I left
off.
And plot, and keep going.
I was in Zobington, I lived in Zobington,
maybe two summers, and then Zobington finished.
McCroskey picks up Zobington, one decade, like a
turtle with a building on his back, plotting
along with Zobington.
We need both, initiators and plotters.
But sometimes they'll not understand one another.
Sometimes there'll be collisions.
Especially if the Initiator, he's left out.
All the credit goes to the plotter.
Oh, this guy, he never finishes anything.
So, you know, he's written off as some
kind of a gospel firecracker, and everybody's admiring
the plotter.
Or just the reverse.
The Initiator, who?
He started it.
He gets all the credit.
His name goes into the gospel gazette, and
the man has been carrying it for 15
years.
Nobody knows he even exists.
And so jealousy comes in.
Wrong feeling comes in.
Oh, we know that's of the flesh, but
it happens.
It happens.
Maybe you do something on your team, and
someone else gets all the credit.
What a wonderful feeling.
I read, not long ago, something that I
don't think I'll ever forget.
The possibilities are unlimited of what can be
accomplished in any movement, provided the people in
the movement don't care who gets the credit.
You think about that.
I will say that's true of OM India.
The possibilities are unlimited what we can do
in this work, provided we don't care who
gets the credit.
Think on that.
Believe me, there's a lot to it.
And number four, there's Mr. Hard Work.
And Mr. Work is hard.
Sounds similar.
Mr. Hard Work.
He may be from Switzerland.
He may be from one of the other
countries where, you know, they just have such
a heavy work ethic, and they just learn
work, work, work.
And when this Mr. Hard Work gets on
the same team with Mr. Work is hard,
it's the last thing you want to do
in life, there can be a fair number
of tensions.
We have it in our offices all over
the world.
The sister who can sit down with a
typewriter, and for seven, eight hours, she just
goes.
She just goes.
And the one who sits down at the
typewriter, and within 40 minutes, she's wondering when
the tea break is coming.
And if there's anybody in range, she will
be called for fellowship.
And she's perpetually blowing her nose, or she's
perpetually straightening out her chair, or she's running
off to talk to this person, or she's
developed diarrhea, and she's always going off to
the toilet.
Anything but work.
We have these kind of people.
And the clashes are really heavy sometimes.
We need love.
Love that covers, yet love that is open.
If those two people would sit down to
get to know one another, and talk, and
play, and understand one another, the fellowship, I
believe, would often be great.
I've had people actually, through misunderstandings, think that
my wife was not a hard-working person.
Because her work is not seen.
She's behind the scenes.
And maybe because they saw her at some
moment sitting, reading a book, especially when she
travels at times, there's not too much that
she has to do.
But in her home, as many women, she's
unbelievably hard workers.
Many times I'm in bed at night before
she is, even though she needs at least
two hours sleep more than I do, physically.
And one thing I know, God has given
me a hard-working woman.
But oftentimes, if it's not in the limelight,
people get judged wrongly.
Married women in O.M. get misunderstood, because
a lot of them don't have a public
ministry.
And we need a lot of wisdom in
this area.
Then number five is Mr. Quality and Mr.
Quantity.
This has been the argument these days.
Now, I've tried to come along as Mr.
Quality.
I'm often both.
But I, you know, out here there's no
need to come along as Mr. Quantity.
I'm only here a couple of days.
I can't recruit more workers for you.
If you saw me taking meetings around India,
you would know my burden would be recruits.
We want to move some people out so
we can move new people in.
That means more people are going to get
the training, more people are going to be
discipled, and so in fact the growth is
bigger, and the church overall is going to
get the greater blessing.
It's just a matter at times of knowing
how long people should stay with us.
It seems to me that the rest of
the world, most people only stay two years
in O.M., and they go out and
they go into leadership positions in many different
groups.
In India, it's five years, six years, seven
years.
Now we understand there are some unique factors
here.
So I'm not criticizing that.
Especially if a man is now a main
leader.
But I think that if the turnover, do
you know that term?
If the turnover could be a little quicker,
we could have a smaller work and be
turning out more.
We can't hold everybody in O.M. until
they've got all the principles and we really
feel they're really some kind of ideal perfect
leader.
We've got to take some chances.
Let's move along.
The Lord will continue his teaching program.
O.M. is not God's only method for
teaching people.
That's for sure.
We need Mr. Quality.
We need Mr. Quantity.
We need both emphasis.
There'll be some arguments, normal.
But we'll find our way.
Number six, there's Mr. Prosperity and Mr. Poor.
Now in the West, you know, one of
the reasons I often preach from outlines is
that you can adjust your message according to
the culture.
It's a very important thing, at least in
my speaking.
The message must be tailored to the people
I'm talking to.
And so you may learn, rather than preaching
from long notes, preach from an outline.
Have your heart full, your mind full, have
several messages, and then get an outline.
You won't wander astray.
You can adjust.
Now if I was speaking about Mr. Prosperity
and Mr. Poor in America, I would talk
about the prosperity cult and all the extremism
in that area.
But in India, we have a different story.
We have the tension, at times, between the
mentality that sometimes the way has emphasized.
Let's keep it simple.
I heard him say, as we were walking
to the hotel last night, my son mentioned
about some converting unit you could get in
America and you could put it on a
truck here and that could convert the truck
current and run a projector.
And my son just gave this as a
suggestion for running the projectors, and Ray immediately
said something interesting.
You know, keep the American equipment in America.
Ray represents, to some degree, Mr. Poor.
No vehicle in Bombay.
They're in there.
We walk.
We go by bicycle.
And then we have Alfie.
Now, Alfie is, you know, they're very similar
to these two.
But, you know, he may be a little
further over in terms of the equipment.
I find a little more enthusiasm with him
in some of the equipment we need for
the audiovisuals.
I don't know where you stand on the
Indian vehicle thing, but the Indian vehicle thing,
pushing Indian vehicles, goes on the prosperity side.
We're bleeding back in supply.
75,000 rupees per Indian vehicle.
I mean, to Mr. Poor over here, Mr.
Simple Lifestyle, which is often linked with that,
that's a great controversy as well, Mr. Simple
Lifestyle, especially when he marries Miss I Like
a Nice Clean House and the Things I
Need for a Proper Way of Life.
And there will be much controversy.
The greatest controversy my wife and I have
had at times are over lifestyle.
And actually, she's probably already closer to Simple
Lifestyle than you'd hardly ever find a woman
to be.
But I'm so far over that it caused
tension, and I had to surrender.
I had to surrender.
That doesn't mean she's compromised.
Now, my daughter seems to be so influenced
by some of the things she's heard me
say or others say, she turns around now
and accuses my wife of being a materialist.
This, of course, brings wonderful feelings into my
wife's heart, especially over the dinner table.
And then, of course, one of the children
may accuse us of eating too much.
We don't eat that much in the Miller
family, neither do the children.
They have a great variety of eating habits.
But I like every once in a while
something a little special.
I'm the kind that can forget eating.
I didn't have any breakfast this morning.
I get very busy, and I have to
forget lunch.
And I could jeopardize my health.
And I found that it was something a
little bit exciting.
One year, I did have breakfast this morning.
Good night.
I didn't have any breakfast.
And on the way up, I saw these
in the shop.
And so on the way here, I was
eating handfuls of things.
So there I found the truth.
But I find that eating, at times, is
a terrific psychological boost.
And you have something a little special.
For you team leaders to once in a
while give your team a little special.
So give the boost to the morale, a
psychological boost.
Part of our humanity, they'll work harder.
They may love you more.
They may not think of you as being
such a penny-pinching scrooge.
So when it comes to food, Mr. Prosperity,
God will supply.
When will God supply?
Some say steak.
Mr. Prosperity, when will God supply?
Dahl and leaves.
So there can be a lot of controversy,
a lot of controversy.
And we've got to learn to accept one
another.
We're not going to all eat the same
thing.
And a lot...
Can I get back to the word I
told you this morning?
There's a lot of penniness in O.M.
A lot of small-mindedness.
Really, it must make God very pleased.
Making mountains out of molehills.
So that Brother A.Q. Arms and everybody
else had water.
You know, he's not about to lead a
revolution of prosperity.
And we're not communistic.
We're all trying to be equal.
If you've studied China and Russia, you know
that it's absolutely not working.
It is this.
Unbelievable Picasso...
That's the Spanish word.
What's the word?
Fiasco in history.
We're not all equal.
You're not going to be that way when
you leave O.M. So don't be too
extreme now.
And then number seven, Mr. Organizer and Mr.
Spontaneous.
I've been accused of being Mr. Spontaneous.
I love things to be spontaneous.
I love to meet people in a spontaneous
way.
I can't stand sign-up lists.
They're already selling me one of these sign
-up lists.
It reminds me of a dentist.
You know, I fellowship probably with as many
people as most.
I just do it in a more spontaneous
way.
Now, I know sometimes it's wrong.
I have to have my secretary line up
things.
It's just necessary.
So that's me bending a little bit this
way, you see.
And I've allowed far more planning in O
.M. than I originally had.
And I believe something I always believed should
be intensively planned.
Other things I felt are better when they're
spontaneous.
More and more Mr. Organizers came to O
.M. Advanced planning charts, endless paper.
And you know, recently I had it proven.
That something was so advanced planning that so
many things were written.
And when it actually came off, it was
far worse than anything we had done 17
years ago when it was spontaneous.
So neither way is the total answer to
that.
And when we're moving this fast with this
many people, some things have to be spontaneous.
Because people's time is valuable.
We could have spent hours and hours, days,
paper, memos, phone calls, just planning this conference.
Getting into all the details.
I know people that would put 500 hours
into planning a conference like this.
You see, if we're going to accomplish what
we're going to accomplish, then some things like
this, it's better just spontaneous.
Ray and I met in Catlinville, we already
knew, we already had ideas.
Plenty of things were planned, I can assure
you.
We got together in Catlinville, we talked, we
talked coming down here.
We met a little bit, we put a
tentative program together, and we launched that.
I think it's true.
Sure, it could have been more organized.
A lot of things could be improved.
There's nothing you can do that cannot be
improved on.
But basically, with a minimum amount of time,
manpower, and planning, because all of us have
a hundred other things to do, we've had
a very acceptable, sane conference.
And far more suitable to my lifestyle, so
you would get far more out of me
than you would get in some other situation.
The fact that I can come here in
a relaxed way, got a big clock staring
me in the face, you know, and people
ready to nervously send notes up, shut up,
we're going home or whatever.
I can just come and unload my heart.
If I want to give one message or
two messages or three messages, want to preach
an hour and a half or a half
hour, I can just do what I want.
I'm going to come again.
I'm going to come next year if you
let me.
At the same time, we need balance.
We need balance.
Every man, especially when he's in key leadership,
has the privilege to some degree of doing
it his way.
No problem.
But he shouldn't force his way necessarily down
someone else's throat.
And beware of little books on management that
come along and say, this is the only
way to do it.
Because I can point other books on management
that I've personally read that will tell you
this book is totally up the street, up
the creek, and if you follow what that
man says, your business will go boom.
There's a lot of contradiction in managing principles.
And when we're Christians and our priority is
people, people, their needs, sometimes we have to
blow the hole in our management chart and
do something different.
And then number eight is Mr. Established Church
or Miss Established Church and Mr. or Mrs.
House Church.
This is a tension in India.
Do we work with these established churches?
Some of them are denominational.
They seem so dead.
Some of them are using the wrong translation
of the Bible.
This thing, that thing.
Why do we only work with the living
churches?
Boxing assemblies, living Pentecostal churches, living Brethren assemblies.
In England, of course, where I first developed
this set of notes or outline, that is
the hottest controversy going right now.
Is it the established church or the house
church?
I say it's both.
History shows God has worked through both.
The illustration of the new line and the
new line skin, the line skin, I don't
believe it's biblical.
I believe it's an extension.
It's taking something from the scriptures without bringing
it in balance with other scriptures.
They take it to an extreme and basically
say what God is doing today cannot be
in an old denomination or an old church.
The new line, what God's doing today, must
be in a new line skin.
It sounds great.
We fall for it like little theological ducklings
and wobble along, but it's not biblical.
It's not biblical.
As far as I can see, in my
people understanding of scripture, this is speaking to
the whole new age of grace that we
are in now through Jesus Christ and that
through Jesus Christ, that's the new world, new
life in Christ, salvation in Christ, forgiveness of
sin, the grace of God, probably other things.
Maybe it includes the church and this cannot
come in the foundation of the Ten Commandments,
the laws of Moses and all that we
see in the Old Testament.
Therefore, I feel that there is plenty of
new wine in old churches.
Plenty of new wine in old churches.
I've seen it.
I've drunk from it.
There's also new wine in house fellowships because
the new wine is Christ, his teaching, his
life, his love, the Holy Spirit and he
will go where he will.
Maybe that's controversial.
I surely could do with studying it some
more myself, but I will not swallow this
idea that only the movement of baptism is
the real work in India or only the
movement of the Pentecostal church or only the
brethren assemblies and there's nothing going to come
to the Lutherans, nothing going to come to
the Anglicans, nothing going to come to the
old time Methodist churches or that there is
nothing there.
No.
One may have more.
Their brothers in this room have more wine
than some.
But we're all part of the new covenant.
We're all washed in the same blood.
How dare we make second-class citizens of
any blood vote believer who loves Christ and
is going on by putting a label on
his head or because we feel he's not
in the really new wine skin.
I better not go much further on that.
And then there's number nine, Mr. Expansion and
Mr. Consolidation.
No small number of tensions in O.M.
over this.
I used to be Mr. Expansion.
I used to lead the work.
You all know that.
No, I just galloped behind it, gasping for
breath.
Where are they going?
What country next?
What?
Another ship, did you say?
Another ship?
Another plane?
Wait up, brother.
I'll get there.
I'm coming.
So it's true.
I've had to change.
I've taken up golf, and I go out
on the golf course desperately trying to forget
the whole mess to some degree.
So now I've become Mr. Consolidation.
You don't need one more pioneer in a
movement of a hundred pioneers.
You need someone to come along with a
club or a foot or a mallet and
say, Down, boy, down.
You know, wait another year.
We got $100,000 of overdue bills.
I know you don't care.
You do care.
Down, boy.
And then, of course, there are going to
be tensions.
There are going to be tensions.
And I just appreciate it.
Most of you have been fairly kind in
these days that I've come here to help
prove and help consolidate.
You haven't understood.
Some of you said before this conference you
didn't understand, and now you do.
That encourages me greatly.
Dallas Matthews told me that.
Very kind.
Because you're out of state, we would like
to do a little pruning.
Where is Dallas Matthews this morning?
He had to leave.
Probably gone back there to start the pruning.
Praise the Lord.
But it was encouraging.
I appreciate that kind of feedback, and I
hope that somehow, even though you missed your
expansion, now we can have the unity.
I've appreciated John Lee's attitude.
I find out sometimes people on paper aren't
the same way face to face.
John Lee on paper, you don't mind me
saying that, if you do, I'll say it
anyway.
On paper, he comes across pretty heavy.
You know, I mean, boy, follow-up church
planting, bent columns.
You know, he's laying a pretty heavy page
after page.
And he signs the end, you know.
But when we talk to him, and we
give him a cup of tea, we talk
to him, we bring the doctrine in, and
we somehow come to what seems to be
a step forward involving consolidation in West Bengal
and Orissa, but at the same time, which
will definitely be a step forward, allow some
degree of follow-up, some degree of experimentation
as we attempt to do God's will in
that state.
And then number 10, there's Mr. Personal Worker
and Mr. Mass Evangelist, the one who wants
church planting.
You know, one thing that gets me a
little concerned about the church planters, they seem
to be gifted in belittling the non-church
planting.
And we have people that are definitely belittling,
oh, I'm Indian.
They're saying things, well, you need to come
of age and church plant.
Church planting is not the only way to
come of age.
We mature in different ways.
God has given different ministries.
Billy Graham is not a church planter.
Poor soul has not yet come of age.
Neither was Sadhu Sinder Singh.
And I can name thousands of other men
of God that were not basically into church
planting.
They believed in it.
What they did often led to it, and
that's true of all of India, but that
was not their primary calling.
Never belittle another man's ministry or calling.
We don't want to copy what other movements
feel is their main thing.
Many movements feel their whole thing is church
planting.
Praise the Lord.
You want to help them?
And we are, in a way, doing some
church planting, but we need to get a
big green signal from the Lord in each
country and each state when we are to
move into that.
And there are complexities in India that if
we fail to count the cost of those
complexities, we could do a lot of harm
by prematurely doing something that we're not really
called or led to do.
There will be tensions, and you, all of
us in OM, have to learn to be
patient with people who totally misunderstand at times
what we're trying to do and who may,
in a subtle way, belittle us or make
comments that, well, I can tell you we've
had a number of people leave OM India
because we're not selfish and not trying to
hang on to people.
It hasn't been such a problem, but if
we had been a different style of movement
trying to save our people and use them
for, say, church planting or something else, then
it may have caused us some hurt.
But we've had people leave because they felt
this kind of thing is second best.
They wanted to leave and get into the
real, the real thing.
It's the wrong attitude.
It may be the right work, but it's
the wrong attitude.
Because my Bible says, esteem others better than
yourself.
Gospel recordings is not mainly a church planting
ministry, but it's a vital ministry.
And when the Holy Spirit raises up a
ministry, even though it may appear to me
something that I don't want to get in,
I dare not belittle it, but rather pray
and encourage and maybe help, even through that,
bring a certain degree of balance.
Yes, we're going to have to be peacemakers.
We're going to have to work for balance
and peace and a lot of areas, and
we could list a lot more.
I hope you'll do that sometime in some
of your Bible study.
Let's pray.
Father, we just again thank you for the
opportunity to share these truths in the way
of exhortation, in the way of review, in
the way of analysis, analyzing and thinking through
what you say, what your words say about
many of these different factors that we're up
against day by day in our teams and
in the work in general.
Guide us now the rest of the day.
Commit healthy to you as he returns to
Bombay.
And we give you the praise and the
glory for all that you've done in these
days together.
In Jesus' name, amen.