I've just written down some words, my philosophy
of leadership, what I'm trying, and I have
failed, to put into practice as I live
together with you, and act as your leader
before God.
The first word I've written down, you may
want to just write down a few words,
even though we put this on tape, I'm
sure very seldom any of you get time
to re-listen to a Verwoerd tape, but
the first word I put down is mercy.
If you want to understand some somewhat recent
thinking, though I know it has old roots,
and so for some of you it's not
new, listen to the tape I gave in
Peshawar a year or two ago, called, Being
Big-Hearted.
A phenomenal response to that tape.
Now they're putting it into a book, though
it's in a shortened form, and I don't
feel it has what the tape has, but
that's part of life.
It's not easy for the choleric temperament, and
I am seemingly of that temperament, though hopefully
now through Christ the negative things are being
brought under the cross, there are changes, but
at times the choleric temperament is especially known
for you know, hurting people, walking on people,
and he's known for being able to get
massive jobs done.
I've seen many cholerics in operation.
It's phenomenal what some of them can get
done.
I saw one at TEMA who left to
top American military position to pull TEMA out
of its difficulty a couple of years ago.
Billy Maynard's just on the phone with him,
and I watched him pull that event off.
They put the whole program on him, and
they gave him a big stick.
They wanted to fly me to Canada.
Artaj Singh, who's another sort of very unique
Punjabi semi choleric, tried to get me last
-minute to Canada to a big event, and
I was willing to go.
I could have done both, but I tell
you when he called Billy Maynard, that was
the end.
Artaj melted, and I stayed in Holland.
But I noticed after TEMA was over things
didn't work out, and Billy left.
He's back with the military.
He's the assistant to one of the top
generals in the whole of NATO.
Well, maybe you know, maybe he didn't have
some of the other attributes.
I don't know.
Probably did.
Just God's providence.
But I want to be really committed to
being big-hearted on this team and merciful.
I have a natural tendency toward extremes.
I'm sure I was a hard-liner, if
you know that statement on some issues years
ago, and I'm sure that streak is still
in me.
Therefore, at times I do get very upset
with what's happening in O.M. I sometimes
get upset with what's happening around Bromley.
I certainly get upset with the situation in
some churches, and the choleric protest, old, semi
-angry verver comes out.
I'm sure my wife could tell you about
that.
I think Chris referred to it in the
punching bag illustration.
But in the long run, I'm committed to
mercy, and yet sometimes with my kind of
temperament, I need just a little space.
I need just some time to think about
it.
This is why I operate better through Peter
Maiden in helping to coordinate the world, and
I operate direct.
People phone from, you know, they phone from
Singapore.
They want a decision now.
That's not my thing.
Decisions now.
I need some space.
I need to think about that.
Maybe even talk to somebody.
So as you know, when these hot decisions
come, most of the time people phone Peter,
and then he, with perhaps as great an
understanding of me as most people, phones me,
and we can we can talk about it.
And in all of our years in working
together, we've hardly had any kind of heavy
disagreement on the phone, and it's not because
we don't disagree.
There's some things we do disagree.
So the bottom line of my philosophy for
this team, and I would ask you to
have that philosophy also toward one another and
toward yourself is mercy.
That's what sent God's Son on the cross
for us in the first place.
God's mercy toward us.
Blessed are the merciful, being merciful toward one
another.
That's tied in with many other, many other
words, and I'll move on to the next
one.
Love.
I guess this is also something where we
see a lot of paradox.
It's easy to demonstrate love if you're not
doing anything.
You're not attempting to accomplish anything.
You're not involved with people.
You're not involved with the church.
And some of the people who have seemed
to be very, very loving, they discovered later
down life's road that they had just never
been tested.
They'd never been tested.
And I think it was, was it Tozer
or Dr. Lloyd-Jones, how terrible to get
those two mixed up.
Brought out how what some people think is
a victory is just the fact that they've
never been tested.
Never been tested in that area.
Does anything I long for on our team
and in my life on a practical level
is more love.
And I want to thank each one of
you who has shown love.
Hospitality House has the greatest opportunity to show
that to other people on a day-by
-day basis and for every millimeter of love
that has been shown by any of you.
I just want to thank you.
I want to be God's representative that's possible
to just thank you.
That is what makes the difference.
When people come into Bromley, come into Forest
Hill, come anywhere.
You meet them at the airport.
You meet them as they step out of
their car.
They may be discouraged.
They may be angry.
They may be confused.
They may be ready to overthrow the whole
Christian faith.
And they find some love.
They find somebody reaching out.
They find someone going the extra mile.
They find someone who cares.
Takes them out for a meal.
Brings them to their home.
This is what it's all about.
And I have to watch my idealism.
And if I ever hurt you with my
idealism, don't be afraid to come back to
me.
Because I know in our efforts to demonstrate
love at times we will be unloving.
We'll run out of petrol.
There's a book.
I hope you'll read it by Smitty's Love
Within Limits.
So beautiful.
And sometimes because OM is over committed, we
cannot minister all these people we're in touch
with.
We just cannot do it if we, you
know, use the minds that God has given
us.
Therefore at times we have to explain, look,
we are committed and we want to help
you, but we are limited in what we
can do.
My friend from Maidstone Mental Institution phoned me
last night.
I hope to see him in Christmas.
And he's really doing well now.
Some of you remember I've mobilized prayer for
him.
I felt so terrible that he called me
that one time and I didn't rush down
to Maidstone and fish him out of the
phone box because he was hinting he might
commit suicide.
But he seems to be very happy now
and he called me and somehow even though
I didn't do much, I didn't do much.
God, you know, did something.
It's not easy, is it, to live within
your limitations.
So why I like, I like the blending
of the older people and the younger people
on this team.
I mean, we don't have any really old
people on this team, you know.
This is why I like to go to
Florida.
I tell you, when I go to Florida,
I just feel like a teenager.
But this is why we like the blending
of the different ages on our team because
that will help bring balance in this area.
You will wonder at times why some of
us older ones, maybe we're not doing enough
or reaching out enough or showing enough love,
bringing tramps in off the street to sleep
in our front room.
You know, we've got room in our house
right now for people.
We've got room in our house for people,
but we don't have emotional energy.
I don't.
Maybe my wife does.
Emotional energy, organizational ability, coupled with all the
other things I'm doing, you know, to start
a major hospitality ministry at 45 Rosewalk.
I just don't think we're gonna do that.
We just use a little space for a
little more office and to spread out some
papers that may change.
I'm sure my wife has some dynamic plans.
The third word, the third word, forgiveness.
One of the areas where the Lord, I'm
sure, has done a work in all of
us, is giving us a more of a
forgiving spirit.
Before you knew the Lord Jesus, probably at
times you had it difficult to forgive.
Maybe you didn't.
Fine, I'm not saying all the unconverted people
have all the problems.
I don't even have problems acknowledging that unconverted
people are doing better than me in some
areas, because that's the way life is.
And I learned from unconverted people.
I'm amazed sometimes of how unconverted people carry
on in certain areas in a positive sense.
So my philosophy of ministry, and I hope
it's yours, is forgiveness.
I don't think most of you at your
stage in your Christian life, I'm speaking out
of the new ones, can understand how much
unforgiveness there is among God's people.
It is going to shatter you if you
get really into the ring in counseling and
working with churches.
And it's subtle.
Unforgiveness among God's people is often subtle.
And this is where my own heart may
be deceived.
And I tell you, I cry out to
God to expose my heart, if there's some
unforgiveness there toward any brother or sister in
Jesus Christ.
I guess if you've been walking with God
for 32 years, you should know something of
growth and grace and victory.
And I just want to say this because
if I have ever given you, any of
you on this team, the impression that I
have not forgiven you for something, it's a
miscommunication.
As far as I know before God, I
don't have anything against anybody on our team.
In fact, I don't know what I have
anything against anybody that hasn't been dealt with
because that's the way I learned to operate.
And it just doesn't make sense to me,
even humanly speaking, to hold things against people.
Also, in my makeup from almost my childhood,
I always gravitated toward a person that was
having problems, perhaps because I only saw my
grandfather three times.
He was an alcoholic.
I finally was with him at his death,
near his deathbed, and there was something because
of that experience that reached out to the
person who was down.
I worked with alcoholics for three years and
never had much difficulty loving the dirtiest, crummiest,
most drunken person, carrying him home, putting him
on the doorstep, seeing him accept Christ and
turn away from Christ the next day, make
a complete fool out of me, which wasn't
easy and wasn't hard in those days.
So the bottom line of my leadership is
forgiveness, yet I'm still learning how, you know,
how do you express that?
How do you make sure that that is
functioning day by day?
Fourthly, the fourth philosophy that I have is
that I want spiritual growth for every member
of the team.
I want to see you grow.
I could never exist on this team if
it was just a matter of getting people
to come and work here to get a
job done.
We want people to grow, and we're committed
to spiritual growth.
You know, it's amazing how many different messages
these days present sort of quick answers to
spiritual problems.
And I believe in the crisis experiences.
I minister quite differently in Bromley than I
do when I'm out, you know, in some
church where they never heard of OM.
We have to get wisdom for each situation.
But I believe one of the things, one
of the messages God's people need the most,
and we're going to have a time of
questions at the end of this, so please
try to think of some questions, is a
strong ministry about spiritual growth.
A lot of our problems are not that,
you know, you've got this major emotional problem,
or you need deliverance in this area, or,
you know, you've got this thing that needs
to be dealt with, and we need to
pray for you, and you need to get
zapped for God and get that sorted out.
Sometimes that is needed.
More generally, the person needs to grow up.
They need to grow up in Christ, in
His Word, in their emotions, in their mind,
in just life, just experiences of life.
Thank God that again and again, when people
have tried to push the panic button in
OM, and make some vast generalization, that people
like Dale Roton, people like Peter Maiden, and
many, many others were there to say, well,
look, what you're saying here is, you know,
there's an element of truth in that.
I mean, Dale is so gracious.
Just watching him is just, you know, I
wish I had more movies of Dale.
It's one of my great mistakes.
One of the things, maybe somebody could go
over there and just answer that.
Vera can answer it.
Chris, push the pause button.
Just take it out of the room.
Could you do that, Vera?
Sorry about that.
Any poor person had to listen to this
tape.
Spiritual growth, and I think, I remember somebody
on the doulos came to me really heavy,
and he had a word from the Lord.
The devil had more or less taken over,
was taken over on doulos, and Ichabod was
going to be written on the front of
the ship or something, which means the Spirit
of the Lord has departed.
And really heavy.
When I first went to Dale about it,
I said, look, this guy concerns me.
Dale, you know, big smile.
No problem.
You know, I definitely panic faster than Dale.
Part of my temper.
But I tell you, after several months, Dale
wrote me and realized that he did have
a serious situation with a brother who had
put two and two and made it six,
and Dale, in his gracious way, eased that
family off the ship.
We had just a few when the ship
hit the rocks.
Came up with these interesting generalizations.
It's fortunate that most people didn't have to
read the letters that I've had to read,
some of which basically said, you know, God
has done this to Judge Owen.
Somebody on the ship must have been fooling
around.
I guess somebody, you know, broke the social
policy.
Great God of love and mercy.
Somebody breaks the social policy, so he throws
the whole ship and all the staff and
crew on the rocks.
Fortunately, you know, and we have a little
bit of a more in-depth view of
God, and we are a little bit less
total answer.
Not that we didn't search our hearts over
that accident, of course.
And there'll always be a mystery when anything
happens like that.
Even again, a few weeks ago, I had
someone write, how was it, express more or
less, you know, have you discovered yet fully
why God allowed that accident?
You know, we're supposed to be still, one
year later, researching this.
Why has God allowed this accident?
We do have a few other things to
do, you know, like evangelizing the entire world,
but we should perhaps research the accident more,
get everybody that was on it and interrogate
them all and find out, you know, whatever
we need to find out and have a
tribunal.
Well, we don't want to go to extreme
the other way, but I believe that one
of the things that has helped us stay
sane and on track for God is an
acknowledgment that many things have an element of
mystery here in this world, and we will
not understand.
We will not fully understand.
We can have our theories.
I was listening to a Derek Prince tape
this morning, very pro-Israel tape.
The more I study Israel, the more I
listen to the various preachers about Israel, the
more confused I get.
I just, it baffles me how men of
God can be so totally opposed to one
another on this issue, and they all have
scriptures, and they're many fine men, and the
Lord said to me as I sat in
this very hot bath, stay out of it!
Stay in the bath, but stay out of
the Israel controversy, and God bless all these
different people with their different viewpoints about Israel.
I wanted to put in the International Update,
but I didn't have the courage to do
it.
Some plea that God loves the Jew and
the Arab, and let's recommit ourselves to both.
You know, that would bring some interesting reactions,
even though it sounds good.
Spiritual growth, and I think those of us
in the room here, we need just to
see this is one of the purposes for
us this year.
God wants us all to grow.
It may be slow.
It probably won't be without pain.
The old cliche, no gain without pain.
I know we in Bromley live in the
cloud of a number of failures.
One is, we are not enough a training
program.
A training program means, of course, taking someone,
and going with them, and showing them exactly
how to do this, how to do chalkboard
evangelism in the street, you know, hand-to
-hand training.
Now, we are doing more than that, than
is seen on the surface, because we have
relationships, and we learn by doing things together,
but we certainly don't have a formal, well
-organized training program of that kind.
We never have.
I'm not sure if we ever will.
STL goes through this much more than we
do, and there's enormous discussions going on how
to improve it.
Somebody wanted to go on the ship, they
end up in STL packing books.
Somebody goes by and interviews that person, and
they are a little upset by that, and
they don't realize that when they share that,
of feeling that they're used, we consider that
very important.
What new recruits say, you know, is incredibly
important.
That goes to board meetings, that goes to
area level, that goes to field level, and
decisions, huge decisions are made on the basis
of what the man, even a new recruit,
is saying.
And it may be that in STL, they
will move into hiring.
The board is moving toward hiring personnel on
a salary, especially if it moves to England,
and that is linked with some research, how
complete, I don't know, of this particular problem,
because we don't want to use people.
And if somebody on this team feels they're
just being used, you were shunted into this
team when you really wanted to be somewhere
else, and you're just being used, and nobody
cares for you, nobody really loves you, there's
no training, no opportunity for spiritual development, like
you were dreaming and hoping, you know, we
need to talk that out, because we don't,
we don't want that.
And maybe we could set up a program
for you called Operation Stretch, and just develop
your opportunities.
It's interesting that on the ship, research has
shown they can get away with this.
They can get people on the ship, throw
them into mundane, totally routine jobs, where they
feel some of these same struggles on being
used.
It comes from the ship quite often, but
the privilege of being on the ship is
so great, it's such a famous ministry, such
an unusual ministry, so many are turned down.
The privilege of being on the ship overweighs
the negative factors of feeling, hey, you know,
maybe I'm being used.
Whereas other teams, we don't have those big
premiums, you know, a new country every month,
a new challenge, and all that involves, which
is, it's good, praise the Lord, it's part
of the ship ministry.
So I would encourage you, that there's plenty
of scope for spiritual growth on our Bromley
teams, but it may not come in the
way you expect.
Living together, growing together, those prayer meetings with
the visitors that come in and share with
us, I feel that sometimes people are not
getting in Bromley what God wants to give,
because their antennas are not up, their learning
antennas are not up.
Maybe it's because their senses are dull, for
one reason or the other.
You may remember a message I gave a
year or two years ago, why not many
people are hungry for God.
Mike Wheat was greatly moved by that message
and asked me for the notes.
I don't know if I ever got them
to him, but it's true that one of
the problems we face today is that we
find people are not hungry for God, they're
not hungry to get into a prayer meeting.
Leonard Raymond Hill shared with me that people
travel 400 miles to come to his prayer
meeting in Lyndale, Texas.
Of course, he has contact with a lot
of people, a lot of people have read
his books, just a few out of those
are just so hungry for what this man
has to offer, they'll go that extra mile.
And often if we are not growing, it's
because our spiritual antennas are not up, or
we're not sensitive to learning from other people.
I, in a sense, may be extreme, I
just overlearn, I'm too sensitive, I feel I'm
a spiritual glutton, I'm taking in so much
and I'm not getting a chance to give
it out near enough.
Because a lot of my meetings, there's no
sense giving them, you know, some advanced thing,
seemingly advanced, the Lord has given me from
His Word when it's just the first time
I've ever been there.
They're all brand new people, they don't even
know what OM is.
So my meetings, some of them have to
be repetitious.
Billy Graham is incredibly repetitious, but that's his
ministry, it's to preach the Gospel.
And if he discovers an illustration that every
time he used it, zap, you know, 300
people come to Jesus Christ, I knew he
ought to stick to that illustration.
Though he has new ones as well, of
course, and is highly gifted.
The fifth word I've written down is relationship
and friendship.
Now this team is built on friendship.
Perhaps the biggest thing that keeps me in
Bromley, second or third on the list, is
a friendship I have with people.
It's a little difficult for me to keep
motivated in Bromley when I know that I
can choose another easier option that would be
more enjoyable in some ways, especially when you've
been in team and community life for 28
years.
And again, we have all kinds of temptations.
I use the word temptation so that you
can understand that for the present, that is
not the direction I'm going.
But one of the things that helps me
press on in Bromley with the pressure, with
the challenge, is the whole thing of friendship.
Now I know some of you are new,
and you're only beginning to build your friendships.
Jerry and I have 20 plus years of
friendship, and Jack, and the Morris's, and you
know when my children organized a 50th anniversary,
and they chose some friends to be there.
They could only choose a few.
I didn't even know of course what was
going on.
I walked in the back garden, there these
people are.
You know, a number of them were people
right from this team.
I think this is positive.
In fact, the thing that impressed Eddie Waxer,
here's a man right from the outside, very
much an organizer, man of God, with a
sports coalition.
The thing that impressed him about OM, a
number of things, was the long-term friendships
and commitments that have stood the test of
time.
That really spoke to him.
And it's not so common in the day
and age in which we live.
Not that we're the only ones in it.
I'm not saying anything near that.
But there is a cost to maintaining long
-term friendships, because often the people you know
the most are the people you can hurt
the deepest.
And if they're not big-hearted, if they
don't have this philosophy, sometimes things can break
up.
One of the things, the beautiful things that
happened through In Touch Reunion was the renewal
of friendships that had grown cold or stale,
just for lack of contact.
Quite amazing what God did there in July
at the In Touch Reunion.
Only eternity will tell the story.
Walls breaking down between people.
One of them was Dick Schwart and myself,
the leader of OM Benelux back in the
60s, who left and started a counter-movement
called Operation Pentecostal Fire.
That spoke quite strongly against OM in those
days.
We were classified in some pretty interesting ways.
And Dick and I had a friendship.
And even when he left, he felt that
I was, you know, he felt that I
was a spirit-filled man.
But he felt that a lot of people
around me just hadn't quite got the filling
of the spirit.
He expressed it in other ways.
We've hardly seen each other in 20-some
years.
And he came back to that reunion.
He said, we're only going to pop in.
He came back again.
And he brought his wife.
And he came again and again.
And we walked along that river.
And though I've never had anything against him,
somehow there was a wall there.
And that wall went down.
And he said, you know, some of the
things I once thought were so important, I've
discovered through life are not really so important.
And, you know, that's one of the problems
when we're young and it still happens to
us when we're older is we get our
priorities mixed up.
We get our priorities mixed up.
I'd love to read a couple of quotes
about that.
So we are committed as a team to
relationship, to friendship.
I'm sure at times we are going to
be criticized for not working hard enough.
We already are.
We don't, the switchboard doesn't open early enough.
And we go home early.
And there's not much comment about it.
But it's difficult to do everything, isn't it?
Emphasize friendship.
Emphasize fellowship.
Emphasize worship.
Emphasize prayer.
Emphasize servantship.
Emphasize the other 20 major emphases in this
ever-minded of a land and still be
a total workaholic.
And I'm sure we'll probably hear something from
this afternoon because someone called the office and
no one was there.
Now, I'm not saying we're not going to
try to find a solution to that.
But I am saying that my philosophy of
ministry is based on relationship and friendship.
And rather than be intimidated sometimes by the
criticism, we should try to explain to people
what our goals and our aims are.
We are committed to being different.
We are committed to creating an atmosphere of
love and friendship and fellowship.
We know some of these things are linked
with love.
Practical things.
And we're working on that.
And it's a big challenge.
I'm sure for all of us.
Number six.
And this was crystallized through speaking at Christ
Church in Bromley from the pastor there who
expressed it in a way that I hadn't
heard and I can't exactly re-express it
in the same way.
But I want to, as the vicar of
that church, I want to work with people
where they are.
And I want you on this team to
feel relaxed to some degree about being on
ICT.
We want to work with you where you
are.
We're not expecting you to be William Macdonald
or Amy Carmichael or, you know, even Jack
Rendell or Dreena Verwer or Vera or whoever.
And I just want to say we don't
mind if you're moving a little slow.
We'd like to talk to you once in
a while and find out, you know, how
we can help.
We have a wide range of people.
We have some with teenagers.
We have some with toddlers.
We have some that are just getting married.
We have some that are dynamic, non-married,
singles.
We want to work with you where you
are.
And I think this is important.
It doesn't mean we don't have any standards.
It doesn't mean we're going strong.
It means we're acknowledging that God is working
in different people in different ways.
People are coming to us from different backgrounds,
different levels of spiritual growth.
We want to be patient and forgive me
if I at any time have been impatient
with you because I do want to work
with people where they are.
Yet, I'm sure you at times are trying
to say to those of us who are
leaders, look, stretch us.
You know, we don't want to be yesterday.
We don't want to be today where we
were yesterday.
Stretch us.
Throw us a challenge.
Why do people often go out and join
those ships?
Do you think those people who join the
ships are all fascinated with the sea?
No, many of them go there.
They want a challenge.
They want something beyond them.
They want something they feel they can't handle.
Many people come into OM, even today, because
they want something that's a challenge.
They want to be stretched.
And it can be disappointing if they get
on a team and there's no stretching experiences.
You know, how does God often stretch us?
Through problems, through things going wrong, through putting
people in our midst who we don't understand
and they step on our spiritual corns, or
anything else along that line.
So my philosophy of leadership is tightly linked
with relationship and friendship.
And we want to work with people where
they are and see them become more Christ
-like.
Number seven, I have to acknowledge, of course,
that I'm a pragmatist.
It took me years to learn how to
pronounce that.
Can you pronounce that?
I want to get the job done.
God, I'm sure, has raised many of us,
hopefully all of us, up because there is
a job to be done.
I want to be, as that song we
just sang, totally available.
It's my availability that has put me in
this present leadership situation.
I don't believe it's some little bug in
my bonnet, or this is what I want
in, or this is going to fulfill some
great emotional need, or some other thing.
Of course, our hearts are desperately, can be
deceitful.
I wanted to be available, and when the
crisis came, in terms of the leadership, I
said, Lord, I want to be available, and
somehow He moved me into it.
And I believe many of you are here
for the same reason.
You were available, you prayed the prayer, Lord,
here am I, send me.
And He sent you.
You didn't know it was going to be
Bromley or Forrest Tilt, but here you are.
At the same time, we have to face
the reality of what the movement is expecting
from our team.
And let me just tell you, I don't
want to discourage you, this movement worldwide is
expecting double from our team today, what we
could get three years ago.
Double.
Totally different situation.
The area level, the new departments, new committees,
whole new philosophy has come in several years.
We have become a modified democracy that has
taken the final decision as something that was
sort of between George Verwer, boards of directors,
and field leaders, you know, being sort of
hassled out.
We have taken that and put it clearly
in the hands of the General Council.
That is all the long-term people in
the world.
Now, of course, we're having trouble figuring out
how this works, and we re-discussed it
again.
But one thing I can tell you, the
changes that we have made make it even
more necessary for this team to, you know,
to function in a way that will accomplish
the task.
The sheer amount of correspondence, the amount of
giving, the money we have to basically raise
our entire budget for our own team.
We get one percent from the rest of
the world.
When they gave us that one percent, they
gave us a whole set of invoices that
spent the one percent as well, because we
had to absorb all kinds of international travel.
Even many of the people who came to
the field leaders meetings, Brazil, New Zealand, Malaysia,
a long list, they all flew in there
at our expense, because there are many, many
cases in O.M. where there is something
we feel must be done, but nobody has
the money or will agree to pay the
money.
The area leaders, if they make a decision,
have to look to ICT to somehow carry
out that function.
Now we're changing, we're developing new ways to
get finance.
Some of it is scary.
We now have regional percentages, regions that are
taking a percentage out of the money.
After five percent is taken by the home
office, one percent goes to ICT.
Now regions, and that's going to be coming
up for discussion, because some of it sort
of snuck through without really much, much approval.
So we are pragmatic.
We have a huge job to be done.
We have an awful lot of work, and
we've got to be committed to that work.
It's there every day, and I don't think
there's anything wrong with that.
We have to know how to say no,
and we're going to be misunderstood for saying
no at times to invitations.
I'm already doing that, but I'm thinking even
on a team level.
You may hear of someone that wants to
join the team and bring a new department
into the team, maybe to do this or
do that, and as we pray and as
we talk, we say no, we can't do
it.
We're stretched to breaking point.
We've taken on communications.
We've taken on personnel.
We can't add this team, at least at
this present time.
Please try to understand.
We don't want to be unloving.
Now this is not a total picture.
I'm still as committed to prayer, I hope
as ever before.
I'm still committed to evangelism and long for
everybody on the team to somehow have some
kind of fulfilling evangelism, and I'm committed to
seeing us mingle in the community.
I want reality.
I thank God we're not all living off
in some kind of, you know, big old
mansion in the woods as a team this
size, and that your neighbors are unconverted people,
and you're going to have to relate to
them, maybe to their dog, and I thank
God we're involved in all different churches, and
that puts extra time, extra strain.
A lot of manpower hours in this room
are going into local church.
That's not wrong, but it does, when you
put it all together, mean that we are
still very idealistic about all that can be
done in one week with so much money,
so much people.
This is why I have also fought very
hard, my last point, to try to be
generous and not put heavy financial pressure on
people.
Now if you have felt that this year,
maybe it comes from yourself, maybe some of
it is good, a certain amount of pressure
is normal, but we have tried to be
generous and not bring people into the grip
of excessive financial pressure when we have all
these other goals, all these other aims, and
in some ways tied into the whole survival
of a movement that is under pressure, and
I thank the Lord that he has provided
so much money for this team.
In 1986 we came out of Red Ink.
One of the reasons was that special projects
was not allowed in the United States, so
all the big gifts in the United States
that came in from different friends and ministry
all went to ICT, including one prayer partner
that started to give twenty thousand at a
time quite regularly.
I didn't feel that was right before God.
There's a number of reasons for that in
terms of understanding why people give, what they
are thinking we are doing with that giving,
even if they give it to me personally,
which is often the case, and so special
projects became established.
A lot of that big money went into
special projects and then went out to all,
almost every single field in OM has benefited
from special projects, but we maybe or I
maybe went overboard.
We did put quite a bit of special
projects in ICT, but basically according to CAO
we've got word that we're in red, maybe
around a hundred thousand, and that will be
considerable discussion at area level.
I don't believe at present our goal for
the coming months is to cut back.
Of course, anywhere you feel before God you
can save a pound.
That's between you and Jesus, praise the Lord.
I'm still into that, probably even extreme, but
we cannot in the light of this philosophy
of ministry, the philosophy of leadership, what the
movement is expecting us to do, we cannot
start to make as a major aim cut
back.
Not when with one mistake, one mistake, we
can sail a ship, have the main engine
break down, have to be towed, pay thirty,
forty thousand, who knows what this is going
to cost us.
I'm not saying we made a mistake, but
it does seem that somewhere something happened, and
these things happen.
You know, work this size, I don't think
we're going to get through any one day
without something difficult coming down our street.
All right, let's just pray.
Father, we just thank you.
I thank you that I could share this
and hope that with all my heart it
will help some people understand why we make
some of the decisions we do, and just
enable us to discuss these things together and
ask questions, and to be able to all
be committed to some degree to these basic
philosophies, these basic core values.
And there are many other things that we
don't have time to share.
Help us, Lord, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
That's the short time for questions, and tomorrow
morning there'll be further opportunity for questions and
discussion.
Think these things through tonight, come up with
your nuggets and thoughts in the morning, when
we will also be dealing with where are
we going between now and the year 2000,
which is something that Peter Maiden has asked
every team to give thought to.
So we are going to give some thought
to that tomorrow.
This provides a bit of a foundation, because
whatever we do as we aim toward the
year 2000, this is what I sense should
be the philosophy of leadership, philosophy of ministry,
as incomplete as it may be.
Now, who would like to ask something of
clarification?
Whenever you communicate, you miscommunicate.
Certainly I do, and I never realized when
I launched into preaching and teaching how hard
communication was.
I don't know how I even survived, but
there it is.
Who would like to ask something?
Yeah, it's clearly for all of O.M.
I think it may be confusing, because Viv
was our sort of personnel director.
The ministries actually are not related, though the
gifting causes it to be related.
This is an international community, international personnel department.
We'll be talking more about that in the
in the weeks to come.
One of the main aims of this department,
many goals, we must find the people that
are needed for these slots all over the
world, and we must make use of all
the people that are wanting to get involved
with O.M., especially at times families and
married couples who were having difficulty linking.
See, a lot of things can be done
through the O.M. pipeline, especially if it's,
you know, a normal recruit in the summer
that's single, they come on the campaign, they
go through the basic one- or two
-year training.
That will continue, but we're having increasing needs
for specific kinds of people.
We always have, and we need an international
personnel department to work with our national offices
in tying those two together.
That's just one thing.
Many other things connected with this, but it's
definitely international.
We hope it'll help us as well, but
it's international, and I think we must think
of it as the international communications department, which
is part of I.C.T., not call
it the I.C.T., sorry, personnel.
I'm surely going to get those two mixed
up, both coming in the same year.
The international communications and the international personnel department
are part of I.C.T., because also
I heard somebody say I.C.T. communications
department.
Well, they're not there to communicate about I
.C.T. We hope they will, and maybe
it got confused because the first thing they
did, one of them was the I.C
.T. brochure, but there is, that's an international
ministry for the whole body.
I myself, because of the size of the
team, the complexity of the finance, the things
we are struggling with, was hesitant for both
of these departments to be born within our
team.
It is not part of some very great
expansion vision.
I have caused some grief in that area
years ago, especially bringing the ships into being
and things, but now I am more following
other visionaries, and these two departments come from
others, and I asked my questions, was strongly
discussed, and then I joined the consensus, and
so I am in favor, definitely in favor,
but I think it's a good example where
we are doing something because the whole body
feels we should be doing this.
That is a stronger, to me, that's a
stronger vote than George Burwer, you know, says,
oh, let's have a stamp collecting department, which,
by the way, we still are into saving
stamps.
Right, Vera?
And many envelopes with good, expensive, commemorative stamps,
but I drew a compromise.
I know the secretary is extremely busy.
We cannot always expect him to pull the
stamps off.
Save the envelopes and mobilize some children to
take the stamps off them.