I came across a little book that I
used to use all the time 25 years
ago.
This is my Verwerk quote book.
And I thought I'd read one or two
quotes before I share with you some of
these thoughts about Europe.
I think most of you were there Monday
morning when I shared answers to prayer concerning
Germany.
We might pray more about that later on.
The weekend before I was in Spain, and
it was a visit to Spain for the
25th anniversary of decision started by John Blake,
who I didn't really know very well, but
we corresponded for 25 years.
He says he met me in Italy and
was impacted by my prayer and that influenced
him the rest of his life.
In 1990, Billy Graham wrote their office and
said, it's all over for you.
We're closing our offices around the world.
And John Blake said, no, we're going ahead.
They became independent, raised their own money.
A lot of it from within Spain and
just had a phenomenal ministry there.
Amazing.
And it partly inspired me to share what
I'm sharing this evening.
But here's a quote from Stanley Jones.
I think he was considered one of the
greatest preachers in India.
Methodist, I believe, there, Kenny.
And we were together at the Merriman Convention.
Just very briefly, I think he went to
be with Jesus.
He wrote, you needn't accept your circumstances as
from God, but you can accept them as
an opportunity for God to use them to
make you creative.
I often get discouraged about my circumstances.
And I just thank God for that little
quote.
Years ago, I guess 20 years ago, I
don't remember to be exact, I used to
carry this around with me.
And if you listen to messages from the
70s, which I'm sure most of you don't,
you'll get a lot of great quotes.
And if you read my books, you'll find
the best part of the books are the
quotes that I took from other people's books.
But there's certainly some amazing quotations that I've
gleaned from different books that I read.
Some of them are a bit long.
The whole thing is just disintegrating and falling
apart.
And I just thank God for the input
of so many people into my life.
This is one of my favorites from H
.A. Hodges.
It's about when you start to feel that
you're losing your initial fervor that you had
right after your conversion.
I've had the privilege of being introduced, by
the way, as George Fervor.
It's always encouraging.
This fervor is especially characteristic of beginners.
And drying up should be welcomed as a
sign that we are getting beyond the first
stage to try to retain it or to
long for its return in the midst of
dryness is to refuse to grow up.
It's to refuse the cross.
By our steady adherence to God, when the
affections are dried up and nothing is left
but the naked will clinging blindly to him,
the soul is purged of self-regard and
trained in pure love.
Can anybody ever remember me quoting that?
How are your memory?
There it is.
Three free books for Chaco.
Let me just read one or two more.
Legend has about John when criticized for playing
with a tame partridge, answered, the bow that
is always at full stretch will soon cease
to shoot straight.
Everyone needs relaxation.
And the more he is dedicated to his
own job, the more he will need it.
I remember when the book by a guy
named Keith Miller hit the Christian world.
It hit Wheaton College like an atomic bomb
called Taste of New Wine.
Most people would never even heard of the
book today.
And this is a quote I took from
his book.
So the totally committed Christian life is a
life of continually committing oneself and one's problems
day by day as they are slowly revealed
to his own consciousness.
I found that very, very significant.
Here's one I used to give a lot
from Paul Tournier.
How many have ever heard of Paul Tournier?
Amazing.
Lots of readers here.
He was a psychiatrist from Switzerland.
This is from his brilliant book called The
Strong and the Weak.
I picked this book up a few months
ago again.
Just happened to find it.
Any O.M. base is a place to
find old books, by the way.
It's amazing what you'll find in O.M.
bases.
Zobington, I think, must have one of the
most interesting libraries.
But here's something that he wrote on the
subject of sex that really helped me.
Too often when we speak of sin and
its power, we are suspected of pessimistic exaggeration.
It goes on to say, If the Church
really wants to recover its influence, it must
become realistic again.
The atmosphere of mystery and shame in which
it helps to envelop the whole problem of
sex is as harmful as the smutty jokes
of the moral people, the double meanings of
the cynics, or the advice of the psychologists
who advocate unrestrained surrender to the impulses of
instinct.
Dynamite.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for the different people
who have impacted our lives, impacted our fellowship,
impacted our churches through their writings, through their
sermons.
We want to continue to be vessels that
can carry truth and blessing even to the
ends of the earth.
Lord, our hearts are still stirred at the
thought of the death of our sister Bonnie
Witherall.
We do lift up Gary, and we pray
that there would be supernatural grace for those
laboring in that part of the world.
There's a lot of other heartbreaking news coming
our way.
We just ask, Lord, increase our vision.
And give us wisdom.
Lord, there's so much in your word, not
just Proverbs, but many other places where it's
clear that wisdom is important.
And we ask for that wisdom that comes
from above, which we know will be surrounded
by the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
And help us to take steps of faith
in the light of what we hear this
evening.
In Jesus' name, amen.
The challenge of Europe.
Ten reasons why you should consider giving your
life to work in Europe.
In the 40th anniversary of OM, we've been
reviewing our life and ministry.
And I realize that though my priority has
always been Asia, the 1040 window, and especially
the Muslim world, that in God's providence, he
mainly chose me to minister in Europe.
And I ministered in almost every single nation
in Europe, many of them over 30, 40
times over the last 43 years since we
went to Spain.
And I guess in God's providence, going to
Madrid just helped remind me and helped refresh
me of the European vision.
My wife flew on a propeller plane into
Madrid only seven or eight months after we
were married, all on her own.
For some reason, I sailed on the QE2
to France, I think partly to buy a
cheap car.
I heard that cars were expensive in Spain
and cheap in Paris.
And I bought a little piece of junk
in Paris that didn't even make it to
Spain without its engine blowing up near Marseille,
partly because I decided to go over the
mountain instead of the sensible route through the
valley.
And yet, amazing enough, as I drove toward
Madrid, Adrena landed in that airport, and that's
the same airport we landed at just the
other day.
It will be replaced soon.
But Barajas Airport has been serving Madrid.
It keeps growing ever since we ever met
each other there as young newlyweds 42 or
43 years ago.
But I realized that in recent years, in
OM in general, we have not been very
outspoken about Europe.
I'm sure some have.
I'm sure our brothers and sisters in France,
when they take meetings like on furlough, they're
speaking about France.
And I know our brothers and co-workers
in Austria, of whom there's only a few,
are presenting the challenge of Austria.
And I hope Jonathan, who takes some meetings,
is still presenting the challenge of Europe.
The challenge I have that I'm sharing, which
will also go by CD and tape around
the globe and, I don't know, maybe on
the Internet, is appealing more to your mind
than to your emotion.
I'm probably not in a very emotional mood
anyway right now for a number of reasons.
But God just brought these thoughts to my
mind and I wrote them down on this
piece of paper.
And so I share them with you with
the hope that you will pass this message
on to others.
Maybe you feel called to Turkey.
By the way, part of Turkey is Europe,
so we include Turkey in this challenge.
Maybe you are just totally committed to work
in Asia or on the ships or in
your home office.
That's fine.
But I'm sure God is going to bring
people across your path who would be challenged
about Europe.
I think we're missing a lot of people
for missions because we're presenting these 1040 countries
and Muslim countries.
Most people are frightened by that challenge.
Most people who have short-term experiences in
those places do not return, including OM people.
Let's be realistic.
And I think we need to look at
other options and especially options for Anglo-Saxons.
Now, not everybody here is an Anglo-Saxon.
We don't want to leave you out.
But I really believe especially Anglo-Saxon Americans,
Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders should consider Europe.
Anglo-Saxon South Africans should consider Europe because
the truth is many Anglo-Saxon people do
not become very successful missionaries in Asia and
in 1040 window countries.
In fact, there's quite a lot of negative
reports and people returning after trying for a
couple of years to crack Arabic just to
return to the United States and give up.
There are plenty of success stories as well.
So I'm not in any way putting that
vision down.
I'm just wanting to put Europe on the
map in our praying and in our mission
thinking.
And it's very much linked with the fact
that Europe is now filled with Muslims and
people of all different cultures who are generally
much more accessible than people in their own
countries.
Now, we love people to go to Saudi
Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is loaded with Christians from all
over the world.
I don't know how many of them are
witnessing.
When they do witness, they seem to end
up in jail.
We've had a few fleeing jailbirds join us
on the team here.
And yet Saudis are pouring into Europe.
They come for vacations and holidays and very
few of them are ever approached with the
gospel.
Quite a few of them are wealthy, not
necessarily found in the street cafes, more likely
found in some ritzy hotel.
Anyway, I'm getting a little ahead of myself
there.
And so let me try to give you
my list.
The first reason is because often one can
be more effective in a closer cultural situation.
If you are an Italian-born American, why
don't you give some thought to going back
to Italy?
It has about 2% as much witness
as the United States and the Italian community
in the United States.
Italy, and many places, by the way, claim
this, so it's a bit ridiculous, claims to
be the graveyard of missionaries.
And yet Italy is a place where quite
a few Americans have proven to be very
effective.
Quite a few British people have been very
effective.
And I believe most Anglo-Saxons, and we're
not limiting it to that, can more easily
learn these languages.
It's just like Koreans beating their brains out
to learn English when they go to some
of these Central Asian countries, isn't it true?
And they seem to pick up the language
rather quickly.
There's a difference between languages that are just
totally off the charts, like Finnish and Hungarian,
and other simpler languages like, say, Spanish or
French, but that varies depending on your own
language and whether you're from California or Korea.
So I think there's a lot happening in
missions today that's emphasizing the need to reach
people who are close by.
There have been phenomenal British missionaries in France.
I've followed some of them for over 40
years.
They disciple French people.
French people get linked to them.
I remember Larry Gannon, a converted drunk out
of California, a bizarre guy whose French was
horrific.
But when I've gone back to France, I've
found French people turned upside down in a
church planted that has grown because of Larry
Gannon.
He, by the way, is one of the
first missionaries I ever met when I landed
in France to buy this car.
And he's with Jesus, but he used to
cook at some of the early OM conferences.
He was a professional cook and was powerfully
saved from his alcoholism.
I could give many other examples, but we
don't have time to show the effectiveness of
people going to cultures that are somewhat similar
to their own and yet very, very unreached.
There's examples even here in Britain.
Bill Batman, who founded an organization that was
one of the first groups to welcome me
when I came to the UK.
He was from the United States, and yet
he was in a culture that was somewhat
similar.
And I still find people today who appreciate
Bill Batman.
What about R.T. Kendall?
Do you think he was an effective American
missionary to Great Britain?
He wouldn't think of himself as that.
Actually, in Europe, it's better not to be
thought of as a missionary.
Missionary is not an acceptable word in European
culture.
You can get some other name, but I
think in some cases, even people with the
name missionary have been effective.
And they've often been church planters.
Some of them, to me, have stayed as
pastors too long.
And I've wondered about that, especially in connection
with France.
But they have had an effective work.
And often they've been involved in training nationals,
encouraging nationals, and helping nationals.
It would be French nationals or Dutch nationals
or Italian nationals to, of course, get on
with a job in their own country.
And my vision is that these people should
work their way out of a job and
let those from that country take up the
load, just as we've seen to a large
degree in places like India.
The second reason I have, these reasons are
not in order of importance, is that when
we're working in Europe, we no longer have
this endless criticism that we're too expensive.
Now, for many of you, this may sound
irrelevant, but I'll tell you it's not irrelevant
to the people giving the money.
It's not irrelevant to business people.
Why has K.P. Yohannan's thing grown from
a few hundred people to 6,000 workers?
Because people want value for money.
And when they can mobilize and sponsor 100
Indians for the price of three or four
American families, believe me, some people are going
to vote to put their money that way.
Now, this is a huge controversy.
If you read my book, Out of the
Comfort Zone, where I deal with this, you
realize I'm in the middle.
O.M. is in the middle because we
have supported nationals from day one, before we
had our policy of everybody finding their own
finance.
Before we ever had that, we had the
policy of supporting nationals.
That goes back to 1958 in Mexico.
And it was in Europe, as we, I
think, got more mythologically smart, guided by the
Lord, we felt it was better for people,
as much as possible, to raise their own
support.
As soon as I got to India, I
threw the policy completely out the window.
I had a lot of authority back then.
And we started to support Indians the same
way we had supported Mexicans.
And a lot of people to this day
don't understand the differences that we had in
different countries and different cultures.
This is still a huge debate, and there
are quite a few churches now that will
not support any missionaries from their own country.
They feel all their money should go for
projects or for nationals.
And some of those people will be listening
to this tape.
God bless you.
They are leaving Europe completely out.
Because when an American comes to Europe, or
when an Englishman goes to France, generally they're
living on the same level as Europeans, at
least what some people would call middle class
Europeans.
You're not going to hire a French person
to do evangelism at the price that you
can hire an Indian brother or sister.
It's a different culture.
It's a different economy.
It's not saying one is better than the
other.
It's just the reality.
And I believe economics, this is only one
of my ten points, but economics is a
factor.
And some people who are working in some
of these countries where it's so inexpensive for
nationals to carry on the work, they actually
get very discouraged and decide they'd rather go
home and just send money.
In fact, that message is going to some
churches.
Don't send us any people.
We don't want any of your people.
Just send us your money.
It gets very complex, to say the least.
There are a lot of countries where people
from different cultures who are accustomed to a
certain lifestyle will discover they can live in
that country and their lifestyle will be beneath
many of the people in that country.
I'm not just speaking about one or two.
The third reason, and I think we must
consider Europe in a more proactive way, it
is that it's the only continent in the
entire world where there is no major church.
Now, we have some church growth in Europe.
We have individual churches growing.
Certainly the church in Albania has been growing.
It started from nothing 12 years ago, so
it's growing.
It's still a very small minority of people,
despite all the wonderful stories, and that hit
me very hard when I went to Albania.
But overall, the church in Europe is shrinking.
The statistics, and I've read some more of
them today, are just very, very discouraging.
Now, there are encouragements.
No one is saying, for example, in Britain,
that the percentage of evangelicals within the body
is shrinking.
That seems to be increasing a bit.
A little hard to measure that, in my
view.
But I'm convinced with all my heart that
the European continent needs help.
We need to put out the Macedonian call.
And if it's Canadians, if it's Brazilians, if
it's Americans, Koreans, of course, they seem to
be going to almost every country in the
world.
I myself prefer to see them going to
Central Asia and some of the Muslim lands,
but the Holy Spirit directs different people in
different ways.
When they shared with me about the present
situation in Spain, I was just overwhelmed.
The church has been growing in Spain.
There are encouragements, but it's still so small.
In fact, between the airport and where we
were going to preach, John Blake picked me
up himself.
He just spun out all these statistics about
Spain.
The greatest growth in Spain has been among
the gypsies.
And Spain is a needy mission field.
I was in Greece in the early part
of the summer.
I mean, Greece is probably the most unreached
nation almost in all of Europe, more than
Albania, just to the north.
And the very fact that so many bear
the name Orthodox Christian actually makes it even
more complex.
So Europe is a mission field.
Look at all the people of Greek background
in America.
Why don't some of them return to their
native Greece?
Some do.
And some of them, from my short experience
in Greece, are proving to be quite effective.
Another reason is that we have so much.
Is this the fourth?
I don't know if anybody's keeping a list
because I'm jumping around on my list.
There's such tremendous freedom in Europe.
We don't know how long this is going
to last.
We don't know how long before we have
a Bali bombing or a Kenyan.
Wasn't that just a big thing just in
Kenya?
And before we have a September 11th kind
of bomb here somewhere in Europe or suddenly
people are starting to get shot on the
doorways of clinics in Paris and Brussels.
It may happen, especially if this war breaks
out.
But right now there's phenomenal freedom, especially to
reach the Muslims.
This vision I'm sharing for Europe is multifaceted
in that I want to see us reaching
Europeans of all kinds.
Many Muslims now consider themselves Europeans.
Many Muslims here in Britain consider themselves British.
Many are British, so it is good to
consider them British.
And we need to watch our language in
contemporary culture.
But I believe as soon as possible we
need to take greater advantage of this phenomenal
freedom we have to talk to people of
all religions and share within the gospel.
Now I know in some cases they don't
seem to be very responsive, but I don't
think we've done enough to really make a
final decision about the response back.
The Iranians certainly are responding to the gospel.
Some Arabs have responded to the gospel.
And they're ones and twos.
And if you consider the size of Europe
and you consider how many churches there are,
even though the church is small, I believe
there are more people who know Jesus in
these churches from some of these backgrounds than
we realize.
And it's a huge, huge challenge.
See, here's the thing that I'm really struggling
with.
OM has now become a very high-risk
organization.
We are under big pressure, I can tell
you.
Very big pressure to pull our Americans out
of the Muslim world.
The decision has to be made by the
movement.
It has to be made by area leaders,
field leaders.
It's a huge discussion that's going to go
on in the coming days, especially after this
death.
And we have already people in the press,
like one Catholic priest, who said this death
was unnecessary because they were warned, if you
proselytize, it's going to bring difficulty.
Somebody quoted that from the press on the
phone to me today.
We are not surprised by these comments.
And our people who are on the field,
most of them know of the dangers, living
in Kabul, living in some of these other
places.
Some of them also know that if they
went home and lived in New York City,
they'd also be in danger.
London has a rapist running around the outskirts.
How many people is he up to?
Is it 11?
Is it 12?
It was just another one that they decided
wasn't the serial rapist.
It was another guy just doing this horrendous
deed.
But at the same time, as we attempt
to witness to Muslims in some of these
other countries, the risk is greater.
I am completely committed to going forward in
all these countries.
I don't want people to misunderstand.
But does it make sense if we send
so many people out?
It's a high-risk situation where even sharing
Christ, in some cases, is getting difficult.
Don't try to tell me sharing Christ in
Kabul is easy.
It's not easy.
Some are doing it.
Some are not doing it.
It's actually bringing tension in our own movement
because some are saying we need to be
more bold.
Some are saying, no, for at least the
first year, we need to just learn the
culture and learn the language and let people
see our light.
So here we are with this massive recruiting
effort and sending people out to these nations
which are semi-closed, with limited access, and
yet we have very few people in O
.M. working among Muslims in Europe.
And now we're going to add to the
list a couple of other countries that are
so complex to reach that in a debate
I think I could make the person look
pretty out of it.
And yet we're going to go into some
of those countries as well, risking jail sentences,
risking all kinds of things.
And I'm not against it, but I'm saying,
what about Europe with all these people that
we can just stop in the street and
give them a Bible or share that we
love Jesus?
So it's not an either-or, but it's
a plea that somehow, and I'm not mainly
speaking concerning O.M. at this time.
I'm speaking for the body of Christ in
general, and this tape will especially be released
through the Mission Mobilization Network with the hope
that our mobilizers around the globe will put
the 50-70 window into their prayer target.
I think actually somebody already released it, a
challenge about the 50-70 window which covers
Europe.
And then, fifthly, there are so many nominal
Christians in Europe.
Now that might sound negative, it is negative,
but it's also positive because I believe history
shows that you can have very rapid conversion
in church growth among nominal Christians.
Now that has not proven to be true
yet in Greece.
It has not proven yet to be true
in Spain, though the growth of people coming
to Christ in Spain would be much faster
than any Muslim country or any, say, orthodox
Buddhist or orthodox Hindu country.
Latin America, however, for a number of factors
and a culture very, very different from Spain,
has had this phenomenal church growth, and I
think we just have to face this fact
that Roman Catholic nominal Christians and other kinds
of nominal Christians often may at least know
who God is.
They often at least know what sin is.
Catholics are actually sometimes over-aware of sin,
whereas when we're dealing with, say, orthodox Hindus,
they don't even know what these concepts are.
They are totally barren.
Now, the great response we're seeing in India
right now is among outcast people.
That is a very complex response, very much
linked with their place in the social order.
It is not totally a spiritual thing, though
we hope spiritual factors are in there.
We're hoping for many wonderful conversions.
But what I'm simply saying is I feel
that Europe is more ripe for evangelism than
sometimes we will admit, and that nominal Christianity,
both in its Protestant and Catholic form, is
a foundation that can be built upon.
The far bigger problems probably are humanism and
the New Age movement and the cults and
just materialism and all of that kind of
post-modern situation that, of course, takes nominal
Christians into a position where they're often much
harder to reach.
In Europe, we have just about everything, and
I am in no way saying it's easy.
But I am saying that if someone at
least believes in God and believes that Jesus
Christ was a historic person or the Son
of God, that you've got some foundation to
build on.
If you take a survey in the United
States, if you discover one of the main
groups that are filling our evangelical churches in
the past years, they all come out of
the Catholic Church.
Many, many came out of the Catholic Church
experiencing conversion, experiencing new life.
My sixth reason is the huge variety of
nations.
This, to me, is just so challenging.
Europe has something for everyone.
It has Muslims, it has Hindus, it has
English speakers, German speakers, French speakers, Italian speakers.
Just think of all the languages of Europe.
When I think of some of our teams
over in Eastern Europe, some of them are
so small.
Some of them are having such a problem
finding workers.
How can this be?
With millions of people in America from Polish
backgrounds, our total team in Poland at this
time, someone please correct me, is two people,
isn't it?
We've got two people in Poland.
We actually had much stronger work under the
Communist era than we have today.
We are not seeing a lot of recruits
to this part of the world, and that's
one of the reasons I'm sharing this vision.
I don't know about other mission agencies, but
I think in general we need to rethink,
we need to pray through some of these
things.
And I'm sure different people, maybe even writing
articles and sharing websites, will come up with
much more in-depth thought through challenges than
I'm able to give in this brief message.
I thank God for the variety of nations
of Europe, and I pray the Lord will
raise up people for all of these countries.
I think of a phenomenal problem, this is
an extra reason, not on my list, but
the phenomenal problem we have educating our children
in some countries.
You know, educating your children in Europe is
not easy.
My friend John Blake in Spain, all of
his kids educated in Spain, the Lord provided
beautiful Spanish spouses for all of them.
You think John Blake, now that he's retired,
is leaving Spain?
He's in Spain for life.
Arthur Weems, he's in Italy for life.
Many Americans have come to Europe, like Jonathan
McCroskey, this is it.
They've become European.
You think my wife and I are planning
to go back to the United States after
we have this change next September?
Europe is our home.
This is where we're going to be.
Our grandkids are European.
Three are being converted to American, so that
makes an interesting challenge.
We love America and like to visit there
as much as possible.
Hallelujah.
So this to me is another very important
factor that I hope we can think about.
I touched on this before, but let me
just give it, and that is, am I
up to number six?
Seven.
Great history of effective foreign missions in Europe.
I've been studying this, I guess, since I
first arrived.
One of the first persons I ever met
was Dr. Homer Paine.
Do you think he was effective?
Major.
The whole European Bible College movement started by
foreigners.
It was the European Bible Institute, by the
way, which closed this year, that indirectly birthed
TEMA.
Do you think TEMA has been effective in
mobilizing Europeans?
And that's another thing.
Again, I'm not sure I have that listed
here, but our vision was always a double
vision, especially after my arrest in the Soviet
Union and the famous prayer meeting where God
gave me the name Operation Mobilization.
It was to mobilize Europeans to reach Europe,
to see the Church, of course, challenged and
motivated, and at the same time to move
out to the Muslim world.
The Muslim world vision came before the European
vision.
To some degree we saw Europe as a
double challenge.
We knew the need was great.
We were thinking, especially in those days, about
France and Spain and Austria.
But then we realized that both these activities
could go on simultaneously, the evangelization, the building
up of the Church, and the sending out
of workers.
And probably historically the sending out of European
workers, up until ten years ago when the
Asians began to move in such a powerful
way, will prove to be OM's greatest contribution
to world missions.
Now the Latin Americans are joining in, people
from many, many different countries.
The eighth reason is perhaps a small one,
but I've just written it here, cheap flights.
Cheap flights.
It's interesting how many Americans are going to
the West Indies for short-term work.
I would have thought that most West Indian
countries need one more American gospel tourist group
like I need a bullet in the head.
But that is just a Verwarian exaggeration.
It's interesting that even Willow Creek, that famous
church, is targeting Haiti.
When I had lunch with Bill Heibel, I
could, many years ago, tell that he was
not going to get involved in any kind
of traditional missions, because they felt Willow Creek
was totally off the wall.
And so if they did missions, they weren't
doing anything at the time, it would have
to be off the wall.
And so all traditional mission societies, of which
we were categorized, were just kept out of
the loop.
But now we hear, in the last years,
Willow Creek is in the missions, of course
through the Willow Creek Association, a huge influence,
and a lot of it positive in the
body of Christ.
And now people from Willow Creek are going
on short-term trips to Haiti.
Tell me, is this something really new?
Doesn't this sound like something we did in
Mexico in 1957?
To me, Americans, Canadians, people from a number
of different countries, they should consider more short
-term trips to Europe.
The culture is closer, the flights are cheaper,
the opportunities, the freedom.
I think even the mistakes we make in
Europe are less costly than the mistakes we
make, say, in Istanbul, which of course is
part of Europe, or maybe Tehran.
So the cheap flights, I think we need
to talk to more people about it, because
I'm told that people are going to the
West Indies and Central America because it's close,
and they can get cheap flights.
But I know in the summer the prices
go up on flights to Europe, but the
flights within Europe with these new airlines like
Ryanair, and, what is it, EasyJet, who knows
how long they'll all last.
I think it's a very, very encouraging thing.
Well, I thought I had ten points here,
but I can't seem to find them on
my scribble.
So I think we'll just leave that where
it is.
Oh, I wanted to bring up this fact.
Yeah, this is important.
That if you're not an Anglo-Saxon, you
must not be left out, because Europe has
all these other cultures.
And so Chinese people need to come to
Europe, because we have lots of Chinese people.
And Indians need to come to Europe, because
we have Indians everywhere, and Pakistanis everywhere.
And what can we say of Arabs?
So many Arabs, especially in France.
So many Turks.
And it seems to me it would be
a good idea if people so interested in
some of these distant, difficult countries, if they
could come to Europe first, in a country
closer to their culture, where they could, in
a way, prove themselves.
Because if you can't be a missionary in
Europe and adjust to the culture and make
an impact, I'm speaking now, maybe a missionary
among Iranians in London or Arabs in Paris,
then I wonder if you are actually going
to make out very well in Morocco or
Tunisia or some of these other places.
Obviously, God is going to lead different people
in different ways.
And the brother who has proven himself back
at home and now feels called to go
directly to Jordan for language study or directly
to Morocco, he's not going to find me
stopping him.
But I just want to have this other
alternative.
And I think there's a lot of people
that are frightened by missions because it looks
too far for them.
The culture just seems too difficult.
And especially now with this, what some people,
I'm not saying myself, many people are saying
there's now a war between the West and
the Muslims.
And all of this is going to frighten
some people, some young people.
The same young people will jump on a
plane and fly to Italy for a holiday.
My daughter, last minute, is going to Tunisia
for a holiday with the kids.
We've been asked, of course, to take care
of the animals.
Let's pray.
Lord, I just pray somehow through this message,
some people will give some more thought to
Europe, to Spain, to Italy, to Greece, to
Albania, to Austria and Belgium and, Lord, even
places like Switzerland are becoming spiritually desperate.
And what can we say of the eastern
countries, Kosovo and Bosnia and Serbia, Hungary and
Poland?
Father, we pray, raise up workers.
So many people jammed up in America, so
many Canadians stuck in Toronto, stuck in Calgary.
These European nations have less than 5%
of the amount of witness that we have
in those places.
We pray that people of Polish background will
consider Poland, people of Greek background will consider
Greece, that people, Lord, of Spanish background will
go to Spain.
We thank you for many Latin Americans who
are moving to Spain.
That really fits into this vision in a
certain way, and we thank you for that.
And, Lord, we pray also that British people
would consider crossing the Channel to Belgium.
Consider the possibility of France, where you've again
and again used British people not only to
evangelize but to birth whole churches and mission
agencies.
So, Lord, we're looking to you that somehow
Europe may be put more back on the
map of global missions and that European agencies
may see their staff needs met.
European Bible colleges may continue to flourish.
Some of them have really been going downhill.
One or two now closed.
And we pray, Lord, above all else, that
Europeans will receive the vision for their own
continent and also extend their arms for partners
willing to help from other parts of the
world, wherever that may be, and that they
would also begin to be more diligent in
reaching out cross-culturally to Hindus and Muslims
and Sikhs and Jains and Buddhists and people
from all over the globe who are now
here by the millions.
We think of these asylum seekers that are
leaving this famous place over in France within
the next 24 hours, and over a thousand,
I believe, new asylum seekers will be in
Britain in the next few days.
Lord, who's going to reach these people?
Because we know in many cases it's not
just literature or a film or a word
of testimony.
There are physical needs, and there's need for
in-depth kingdom building and church planting among
all the asylum seekers and all those who
are flocking into Europe from all over the
globe, from almost every nation of any size
in the world.
So stir us up concerning this challenge, that
we may take steps forward to respond before
it's too late.
We thank you for this great freedom we
have at this present time.
There's signs in places like France and Belgium
and some other places that there may come
more restrictions upon evangelical and biblical people, but
at least for now, the freedom is far
greater than any restriction.
So enable us to respond to this, we
pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.