But I sense that God wants Peter, Megan
and I to continue at least a few
more years as a team.
It's interesting, I had a top article on
management I was just reading recently and it
pointed out, oh there it is, should the
CEO be one person?
You know, that's a big buzzword for the
last 10 years, CEO, Chief Executive Officer.
This article, by a lot of top people
put input into it, are saying more and
more in the corporations of the world, of
course we knew this before they did, you've
got to have a team, usually at least
a team of two.
There's just too much in any fast moving
corporation for any one man to be the
CEO.
Whatever other name you call him, President, Chairman
of the Board, there's usually at least two
guys that are working hand in glove to
try to just keep the whole thing on
course.
And there's usually others tied right into that.
Isn't that a confirmation of the enormous decision
we made a decade ago to sort of
divide this responsibility?
I have to give Peter Maiden three-fourths
and let me have one-fourth and expand
it.
But an interesting article, of course, believe it
or not, I think Brother Divakram actually sent
me this article.
Divakram is really a lot more up on
all this than you may think.
Here he is, I'm dressed in a t
-shirt, he's got a suit and tie on,
this is globalization at its best.
We're all learning.
You expected me to say something about books,
but I'm actually talking at this point about
motivation.
If anybody takes a set of notes and
photocopies me those notes with at least 15
sentences, I will give you a 250 pound
credit of books.
Just a little incentive, any of you that
are interested in notes.
For 30 years I've been trying all the
spiritual incentives and I tell you, some of
them don't work.
Extra treasure in heaven, they just look at
you, big deal.
Most of these OM field leaders, they want
it, cash in the hand.
More than treasure in heaven, I hope they
do get both.
But really I would like you to try
to write some of these things down because
though this is a potpourri type of sharing,
there are some nuggets here that I hope
you can share with others.
A lot of the young people in calling
out for pastoral care, if you listen carefully,
are not necessarily calling out for some close
surveillance from some gifted pastoral leader.
Not everybody wants that.
Many of them are just trying out for
communication.
They just like to know what in fact
is going on on this team.
Who is going to lead the team next
year?
Pastoral care, which I believe God wants us
to increase, is something that has many different
facets, many different colors in the rainbow.
Why am I a little more motivated in
the last few months?
By the way, even when I say this,
I have a fear of losing my motivation.
I have a fear of depression.
If you don't have any fears in your
life, great.
You're so beyond me that you'd be lucky
if we could have a conversation.
But we can try.
But I have a lot of fears, and
one of my fears is fear of depression,
fear of losing my zip, life losing its
meaning.
My wife, of course, has been praying that
I would lose some of my zip, and
we'll get into that later when I push
one of my other books.
But I have been...
Don't ask me for a lot of definitions.
The British people are the greatest people of
double meanings in the world.
And by the way, I have brought with
me one Mr. Bean video for a late
night showing.
But let me answer the question.
Why am I a little more motivated?
And it's because I made this awesome decision
to become part of AD2000 and beyond.
Yes?
I've been praying for one of these for
several years.
I think I'll present this to my wife.
Okay.
We need a hundred of those, really, I'll
tell you that.
I've been wanting to get one of those,
and I know we can market those, especially
in certain countries like Texas where the people
are so big.
But somehow, influenced by David Hicks, influenced by
John Kyle, influenced by a lot of different
people, quite reluctant, though I was always more
or less moderately in favor of AD2000, been
pushing the leaflet for a year or two.
I never felt that it's something that I
should become a part of.
I did, as I usually do, have some
criticisms and reservations, especially about what I felt
was an overemphasis on demons and territorial spirits
and other things along that line.
And as I shared that, when they asked
me to join one section of it, I
shared my reservation and turned down that invitation.
That was the second thing I'd been invited
to become involved in.
And they encouraged me to share my reservations
with the chairman, Paul Cedars, which I had
the opportunity of doing in Minneapolis when I
was ministering there at Northwestern, and then to
Louise Bush on the phone.
And I found nothing but very listening ears
to my struggles with this movement.
And that, of course, encouraged me.
And there was the sense that AD2000 wanted
or needed the kind of balance that sometimes
I represent.
And so I went to Colorado Springs, not
my normal thing, one of the first times
in my life, I guess since WEF in
Manila was another one, and Lausanne, in Lausanne
was another one.
But I haven't always just flown somewhere just
to go to meetings.
Even La Manila, I was having meetings out
there and fit that in.
But I went all the way to Colorado
Springs just for these meetings.
There's not time to go into detail.
But my heart was greatly challenged as I
met so many people, Ralph Winter, John Kyle,
Peter Wagner himself.
In fact, I had the joy of openly
confronting him in front of the whole group
about some of his teaching and just trying
to represent what other people shared with me.
And that was a difficult experience.
The night before, I had actually had a
fever, and I woke up in the night
wrestling with Peter Wagner in my sleep.
Would I have the courage to face him
with things that I had said to other
people about his teaching?
I felt an instant rapport with this man
as a person.
He sort of got some similarities to me.
A lot of extreme people do have similarities,
positive and negative ones.
But I found him willing to listen, and
we had a little exchange.
And I probably had moved a few degrees
in his direction, especially through reading this, what
I feel is a more balanced book on
this subject by Steve Hawthorne and Graham Kendrick,
Prayer Walking.
I've been prayer walking almost all my Christian
life.
Never even thought of giving it a name.
And I think if it wasn't for the
ethos of OM, if it wasn't for the
influence of people like yourself, books like Grace
Awakening and the message of Roy Heshin, of
dealing with pride, that I could react in
pride to a book like this and think,
wow, you know.
But somehow, by the grace of God, I
just found this book ministering to me.
My prayer walking has greatly improved since reading
this.
New ideas, new ways to do things.
I had fantastic phone conversations with Steve Hawthorne.
And I believe this is one of the
books of the 90s.
Now it's controversial.
Very straight-laced evangelical people will find it
difficult.
Charismatic people will not find it a problem
at all.
And this is why I believe the church
needs both the charismatic and the evangelical side
and those who blend the two together, as
many in OM.
In fact, the one thing you'll never understand
AD2000 is a very up-to-date movement
with all the messiness that that will mean,
is that it is a more representative movement
of the amalgamation of the charismatics and the
non-charismatics.
Lausanne was the bridge.
WEF, of course, was old-line evangelicals.
Changed a lot since the last few years.
Lausanne was a bridge.
The final Lausanne Congress had mainline charismatic speaking,
like Jack Hayford.
And in a sense, now AD2000 has taken
the leap.
And if at times it appears like the
charismatics may be dominating, well, numerically, they dominate
the number of believers in the world today.
So maybe they deserve 60% to evangelical
40%.
To me, it doesn't matter.
But I'm excited about this amalgamation.
I do believe that the church and all
Christian activity in the next six years will
be extremely messy.
I think those of you who want everything
nice and ordered and tidy and well-defined,
you will probably have a nervous breakdown by
the year 2000.
But those of you who understand that often
the Holy Spirit works in power in very
untidy, messy situations, doesn't mean, and don't go
misquoting me, that I am now dedicated to
untidiness.
My wife already thinks that, and it will
not help you.
Help me to add, and I'm not talking
about cleaning up your room.
I'm talking about just the way things happen
in the body of Christ and the way
we sometimes can get bogged down if we
try to get things too nice and too
tidy and everybody nice, feeling nice about each
other and agreeing on every jot and tittle.
That is not going to happen anymore in
the body of Christ.
There are 22,000 different denominations.
If you think they're all going to somehow
come together and shake hands and get a
nice, warm, oozy feeling about each other, you
are in unreality, and I pray you'll come
out of it.
That doesn't mean we don't want to work
for unity.
So I'm excited about this job.
I've now accepted this chairmanship.
That's not the CEO job.
I better keep this partnership leaflet away from
Perry Rickerts.
But Perry Rickerts is the coordinator.
He's been in it much longer than me.
I'm the third chairman to attempt to take
on this track.
You can understand how I got in it.
You keep going further down as you look
for something difficult.
The track has actually changed its name and
its ethos to some degree.
But I think we've landed on center now,
and we're staying there.
It's for the mobilization of new missionaries.
When I first started to flirt with my
friend Perry Rickerts, who I've known for years,
but in connection with this, his goal was
a million new missionaries.
And I said, you know, if that's it,
I'm out.
It's ridiculous.
It's over the top.
The total missionaries now may be somewhere around
200,000.
Depends how you count them.
And so I got a compromise.
My first major compromise, which most of you
know is my middle name, was to go
down to 200,000.
What a drop, you know, from a million
to 200,000.
I'm sure some of you, if you really
think, 200,000 new missionaries by the year
2000 and beyond, Perry tends to think a
few years past the year 2000.
You're talking about the greatest increase of missionaries
since Pentecost.
You're talking about something that's never happened before
in history.
I know all the wonderful stories because Perry
gives them to me.
But we're really aiming high.
We're really aiming high.
But it's a result of intensive compromise.
We can't go into more detail about what
that means.
That's not my purpose tonight.
Some of you have received letters from Perry
Rickards.
Some of you are already going to be
going to Jiko-A.
Jiko-A is the big working conference in
Korea in May of 1995.
Not a giant celebration, not a challenge conference,
though I hope they'll be challenged, but a
working conference.
A lot of the meetings will be in
the track groups.
That's scary if Perry and I have got
500 people in our track that we've got
several hours every day.
Many of you have received letters from Perry
Rickard asking you to become a mobilizer, a
recruiter.
I'm working on a message that I hope
to put on cassette, 10 ways or 12
ways to be a missions mobilizer.
I found as I joined this track that
really we're way behind.
Any help you can give us in prayer,
correspondence with Perry, distributing the materials we eventually
turn out, would be an enormous thing.
One of the buzz words that's gripped my
heart that comes from these younger men and
these more optimistic people is the word doable.
That's a new word.
It's doable.
These people that are in this movement, it
varies from person to person.
They're not a bunch of clones, but many
of them really believe we can reach the
whole world by the year 2000, less perhaps
believe we can see a church planted in
every people's group by the year 2000.
Quite a few are saying we've already missed
the window of opportunity for missions mobilization and
information.
Heavy article about that in Evangelical Missions Quarterly
this month.
Now I could, I'm sure, outdo most of
you two to one on negative things about
AD2000 and about almost anything else, including OM,
which we've seen from all the information gathering
we've done in the last year.
But I'd encourage you as you read about
this, as you go through the AD2000 handbook,
there are some of those out there on
the literature table that you attempt to be
positive, that you attempt to exercise faith.
If you want to read something devastating on
unbelief, read David Wilkerson's latest article on unbelief.
I don't have a chance.
I mean, this guy, unbelief, that is the
16-eyed, triple-legged, dragon greater than lust,
unbelief.
And here I am, oftentimes, paddling unbelief and
doubt.
And I guess I need to have a
phone conversation with David Wilkerson.
The last time I met with him was
a rather high-octane meeting in which he
asked me what I felt was his greatest
need.
I said, it's really just like me.
You need a lot of balance.
From that moment, he became more extreme.
He detests the word balance, David Wilkerson, but
I think he might have a different definition
than me.
He has, by the way, a phenomenal, fast
-growing, amazing church right in the heart of
New York City.
So I'd appreciate your prayers, appreciate your feedback,
appreciate your reading the materials.
Now, if my distributors could pass these out.
If you didn't get one of these through
your post in an envelope together with the
first leader's letter of the year, if you
didn't get those, could you raise your hand
if you are an official delegate at this
conference?
And we will give these out.
Let me show you what they are.
World Evangelization.
Wonderful correction by David Hicks.
Thank you.
Is it possible?
I had World Evangelism.
World Evangelization.
I may even be changing my main signature.
Yours were for World Evangelism.
Last week, I changed it.
Yours were World Evangelization.
Both are nice, but one is better.
World Evangelization.
Is it possible?
That is the hottest, wildest thing that I
have written in a long time.
Can you imagine?
I am calling for the distribution of 100
million pieces of, not gospel tracts, not Grace
Awakening.
They are not included in this.
That is a separate project.
100 million pieces of missions mobilization material from
Bill Drake's newest Red Hot Missions cassette or
Fortunato's missions cassette to books, to tracks, to
laser beam communications by satellite.
I believe it is doable.
In fact, I feel so strongly about this.
This is, by the way, my AD2000 hat.
It is not the OM hat.
OM will only do part of this, so
I am sure OM already is probably one
of the greatest pace setters.
If you count STL in missions mobilization material,
just think of Operation World that you can
ever imagine.
Please read this.
All of you are involved in this in
one way or the other.
Most of you are already committed to this.
I am preaching to the converted, so I
am not going to say more.
No, I am sure you have questions.
They are answered on this sheet.
This, by the way, has hit the evangelical
press in England this week.
That is how I got it done.
They were pressing me for an article, and
I put the two struggles together and came
out with this and make them out in
a number of other mission articles and mission
papers.
I hope it will be followed by your
questions answered about Operation 100 million.
In the first paper, I did not even
mention money.
I thought that would bring too many reactions.
Anybody with a brain could figure out it
would need a lot of money.
I make it very clear we are not
expecting that money to go into one organization.
It does not even have to go to
groups that are related to AD2000.
The thing I like about AD2000 is you
can buy into part of the vision without
joining anything.
Maybe you do not like this.
It is to have that goal together.
Of course, the more you network with something
like AD2000, I think the more can be
accomplished.
Anyway, in the question and answer sheet, I
do ask that we could release through prayer
100 million dollars.
Now, that seems so much, but God has
blessed our little movement that started from nothing
in 1957.
This year with 20, I do not know,
I heard some 23 million figure.
That is now excluding STL because it is
a donation figure.
It includes, of course, some book sales.
World Vision has an annual budget of 200
to 300 million.
Look at the budget of Campus Crusade for
Christ.
Look at the budget of the Billy Graham
Organization.
God can bring in tens of millions.
We are not asking this to come into
OM.
I do not want any more than we
can handle.
I surely believe we can handle a lot
more than we are getting right now.
Peter, may you say amen to that?
Thank you.
Even our accountants might say amen if they
are in a good mood.
Anyway, we do not have time to go
further in that, but I hope you will
read it.
People say, is this going to detract a
lot from Verwer's job in OM?
This just so dovetails with what I am
already doing.
I am already corresponding with thousands of people,
some of them only once a year, some
of them once every other year.
Now, in some cases, instead of enclosing this
particular book, I am enclosing some of these
materials.
That is actually lighter than sending Operation World,
which I have been sending out free to
hundreds and hundreds of people.
I cannot say there will not be more
work because there will be.
We are wrestling through that, but I believe
the Holy Spirit somehow is working through this
great network, and I count it a privilege
to be part of it.
I hope that you will link in as
much as you feel that you are able.
Let me just mention a few other books
that fit into this whole missions mobilization thrust.
Some of them, I am just going to
mention the titles because the books are there,
and you can get them.
We have already explained you can give a
postdated check up to the year 2000, and
we are not joking on that.
We already have such checks.
You can sign as a field leader and
pay through the banking system.
You can give any currency in the world.
We now are releasing the bargain.
Is May Wayne here to take notes on
this?
Where is May?
We are releasing the bargain.
Every book you buy, we give you an
equivalent value book free.
Every book you buy, you get an equivalent
value book free.
We are going to look and see who
bought these books, and I want to tell
you those who buy books here, their field
is going to be blessed.
When the tide comes in, the first million,
your field will feel the impact.
We have already, through special projects, been providing
tens of thousands of dollars and pounds of
books all over, not just within OM.
You cannot imagine how grateful some of these
missions are who want Operation World and have
no budget to buy any.
George Miley, phenomenal phone conversation.
I said George could use 100 copies of
Operation World.
He was thrilled.
They are on the way.
Steve Hawthorne, the writer of this book, a
shaker and a mover in missions.
Do you have any copies of Operation World?
No, I don't.
I'd love to get some.
Ralph Winter went through his 100,000 pretty
quick.
I said, look, we'll send you 100, keep
the money for your own mission agency.
Perry Rickards, oh boy, I shouldn't have made
him this offer.
This guy, he came back within a few
days, I'd like 500 for Anastasis.
That was 2000, even buying them from Bellboom.
So $2000, which I owe.
But Anastasis got the 500 Operation World.
Perry Rickards got the money.
That's financing the AD2000 track and mobilizing new
missionaries because one of the marks of AD2000
is everybody's broke.
Everybody's broke.
It's amazing.
I'm sure that's a little exaggeration.
Here I am standing in this meeting, I'm
a newcomer in the club, and Peter Wagner
is giving all these phenomenal stories, demons being
knocked out all over the place, revival here,
boom, boom, boom.
And then he gets up in front of
this whole group and he says, but you
know, I am not able to raise money.
This is something I'm not able to do.
Can you imagine that?
I jumped out of my seat and I
said, how can it be, Peter, that you
can see all these things happen and you
can't raise money?
What about the demons that are hovering over
all these banks?
You ought to go for them.
And we had a few laughs at AD2000.
You can be sure of that.
So if some of you are into prayer
walking and territorial conquests, I would really ask
you to put banks on a much higher
priority.
You can include in that savings and loan,
the stock market, and any evangelical fish who's
got a bulge in his wallet.
Let me mention some of the other books.
Look at that one.
Can you imagine that suddenly showing up?
Mentoring for Missions.
This is hot, hot, hot, old, new, middle,
60s club, 70s club, 94 club.
This is the book of the decade as
far as discipleship and missions, marriage.
And it's a young fellow.
It's Kevin Pippert that discovered this.
I saw it.
I said, Kevin, read this.
Is any good?
Kevin read a lot of books last year.
He was excited about this book.
And OM needs to put its hands on
this book.
We need to see this go into many
languages.
This is a serious book.
This isn't the first book to give to
somebody you're trying to mobilize for missions.
This is for the guy that's serious.
Might be a little heavy in a few
places.
But Mentoring for Missions, a handbook, Leadership Principles
Exemplified by Jesus Christ by Gunther Kralman.
He, by the way, is moving into that
same Harpington office with Perry Rickards and all
the YWAM guys.
An exciting book.
I think actually STL OM Publishing is praying
about perhaps producing this.
We only have a few copies out there.
Friend Raising We've Already Pushed is going very
fast in OM.
How to Raise Support.
She's moving into Harpington.
All these people we've just had phenomenal links
with lately.
Don't pick these kind of books up for
yourself, but pick them up for other people.
Well, isn't it exciting what God has done
in a year and a half with this
book?
An unknown book is now sweeping the world.
I was just pushing the German edition in
my meeting yesterday morning.
Brilliant cover on a German edition.
They're so good often in these covers.
It'll be in Spanish.
And David Eichelbarger, who's here, is praying about
doing 20,000 so that we can make
it a shotgun blast rather than a trickle.
And to do that, you've got to give
copies away.
You've got to prime the pump.
But this book is going into many languages
and is part of the arsenal for the
mobilization and training of missionaries.
Why should I hold up Operation World?
Everybody in OM is excited about this book.
Everybody in OM is praying through this book.
Everybody in OM believes in this book.
It's not true.
Many people in OM are not praying through
this book.
There are people in OM who don't even
have a copy.
People in OM can't even afford a copy.
I've had OM leaders write in the last
few weeks, I don't have a copy.
I could surely use one.
You mean you'll even send me some free?
It takes work to push books.
And this thing is big.
And I would encourage you to study this
book.
In my notes this morning, I wrote something
else down.
Do not be afraid of the word missiology.
And understand that many of you, I won't
say all, many of you are missiologists.
Whether you want to be called a missiologist
or not, you are a missiologist.
You've studied missions for years.
You've been in missions for years.
When you go back to churches, they consider
you to some degree a missiologist.
And with this book, have you read the
section in here on definitions?
I mean there's so much material in this
book.
I've been twice through the old edition and
hardly missed something.
I read a lot of missions material on
almost every page of this book.
So I'd encourage you to make a greater
commitment.
We would like to help finance some of
your fields that are struggling through supplying free
copies of Op World.
We can't do that right now.
We've done some of it.
Now we've got to pay our bill, and
then we'll do more.
Because we feel one of the ways to
help subsidize the third world mission thrust, where
money is such a major factor, it's not
only true there, is to supply them with
books.
And when they sell the books, they can
keep the money to buy more books or
to keep going.
But it's a way of injecting money into
the work where it's very hard for people
to misuse.
Finance compared to the big straightforward, you know,
big kind of handouts.
Some say this one is selling even faster
than Operation World.
Again, if you can't sell that book, you
need to go back to kindergarten and whoever
taught you anything about communication.
You don't need to be a salesman to
sell these kind of books.
You just have to open your mouth.
You have to smile.
You have to hold a book in front
of them.
And of course, hopefully there's children within range.
This is the level of the average adult
in the average church, folks.
Not this one.
This is a graduate course for PhDs.
Though I encourage people, don't try to understand
it all, especially read parts of it and
go for the prayer requests.
The prayer requests in here are fairly simple.
It's all the technology, you know, World A,
World B, World C, which I know, of
course, all of you know about, but it
was complicated to the layman.
You can change the world.
There's so many other great missionary books and
especially if we're going to have a thrust
among Muslims, we've got to increase our thrust
of books about Islam.
Here's an excellent book, Bill Musk, Passionate Believing,
The Fundamentalist Face of Islam.
Some of you are very heavy into the
Islam thing.
You probably read these books and you always
can see something in it that you don't
agree with.
But the average person isn't where you are.
The average person hasn't read any books about
Muslims.
And we've got to get down, if we're
going to have missions mobilization, we've got to
get down to the grassroots.
And maybe the ultimate simple book on Islam
has not yet been read.
Maybe somebody written, maybe somebody here, should write
it.
I wanted to mention a word about this
book.
It doesn't fit in with missions, but I
know most of you are wrestling with pressure.
And I always feel a little bad that
probably when I speak I increase the pressure
and I don't want to do that.
So I'm bringing this book along here with
a hoping that if the pressure increases tonight
that you can read this book by our
good friend Peter Meadows, Pressure Points.
Hope for those with the world and the
church on their backs.
I don't think it's necessarily written particularly for
people like us, but the point is very,
very clear.
The only free book out there is The
Sign.
That's free.
The author gave me a bunch of these.
It's just to get your creative juices about
the second coming and how much you're going
to suffer before you get there.
So you can take one of those.
Now this book is not available on the
book table.
This book is only available in plain wrapper
from my new helper Chris.
This is a very controversial book and it
would only be somebody really a bit wild
that would distribute copies of it.
It's called Restoring the Pleasure and it's a
complete step-by-step program to help couples
overcome the most common sexual barriers.
Now to have the courage to distribute a
book like this you really have to have
some deep convictions.
So let me share my deep conviction.
It is my conviction that Christians often in
this area have more hang-ups than unconverted
people.
And some of the most tragic things in
OM have never been told because you can't
talk about this.
It's sexual mess-ups in the marriage that
they refuse to even go to a counselor
about.
They'd rather just go on and on until
it hits the divorce courts and they do
hit the divorce courts.
It's Christians who have this idea that when
you're married sex is not really a spiritual
thing.
It's all right.
I hope we're not still in the age
where we think it's bad though there are
some probably so brainwashed with false things and
things that our culture throw at us that
they can't help subconsciously feeling that.
It's an enormous problem in many people's lives.
But I really feel it's a great mistake
to put the whole area of sex sex
within marriage and single people I know this
book offends some single people other single people
think it's great.
I'm not outpushing it among single people because
I've got so many controversies I don't want
to get in another one.
But for married people this book is brilliant.
It's a Christian book it's written by godly
people who have years of counseling.
You don't have to read the whole book.
But I believe the big assaults of Satan
on OM in the next few years will
be on the marriages.
This is the day of marital breakup.
This is the day when we're seeing the
wives of top pastors just walk out and
say hey I'm finished.
It's a day of unpredictable immorality.
That's why I've been pushing for several years
now this book The Snare.
I just think it's so brilliant.
I just had a long phone conversation with
Lois Mowdy.
She's willing to be with us at our
September conference if we've got any room there
for her to speak.
But NAVs are republishing her book.
We got this special edition done.
Just for us somehow.
But the official NAV edition will come off.
And this is one of the few books.
If I had to choose between this one
and this one I would push this one.
But I think they work together.
Let's just pray and then leave these things
behind for closure.
And I can get into the heart of
what I want to share.
Lord you know my heart.
I'm just so full of these things I
want to share.
I believe they're significant.
I believe that a lot of the things
in our movement hinge on whether we're willing
to really deal with these issues.
We don't have time to deal with these
issues together.
Therefore it's got to be books.
It's got to be tapes.
It's got to be our own churches.
It's got to be other methods to get
these things into our lives, into our teams,
into our families, into our churches.
And Lord if some of us still have
some kind of hang-ups in some of
these areas where we can't even talk about
these things.
Help us to be set free because your
word is so clear.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of beautiful verses
about sex and many aspects of sex.
And we need to be preaching this from
the housetops in our culture on television, on
radio, through books, through video that somehow we
could present the biblical answer to the promiscuity,
the immorality and the debauchery of our day.
We thank you for men like Josh McDowell.
We thank you for the authors of this
powerful book.
And we know there'll be controversy but Lord
we'd rather take the risk and be a
little more open than somehow continue to live
with so many things under the carpet that
eventually blow up and destroy whole churches.
Oh God, help us to be realistic and
guide us as we look into your word
together.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
Turn with me to the book of Acts.
Just give me a minute here.
I got the wrong marker.
Let's look at this marker.
Acts 14.
The book of Acts, chapter 14.
We find something very beautiful.
I, of course, have great struggles with so
many different discussion meetings that I have to
attend and wonder why we often have to
have so many of these different kinds of
meetings.
We've been having them since the earliest days
in the work.
And again and again when I've been wrestling
with certain things, the Lord's taken me to
this passage where it talks about the council
at Jerusalem.
That's really more in chapter 15.
And it talks also about Paul after he's
stoned at Lystra.
They're rocks, not drugs.
He goes back to Antioch.
Let's just look at the 14th chapter and
the 22nd verse.
Just bear with me a minute.
I've got that in my authorized version, but
I want to read it from this new
international.
14 and verse 22.
They preach the good news in the city
and one large number of disciples.
What verse is that?
21, yeah.
Strengthening the disciples.
We talk about strengthening churches, I think, in
one of our statements.
Here's a good one.
Strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain
true to the faith.
We must go through many hardships to enter
the kingdom of God.
Would you underline that?
Don't expect a message from me on that,
but you're not going to get it tonight.
But there it is.
Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in
each church and with prayer and fasting committed
them to the Lord in whom they had
put their trust.
Beautiful example of delegation.
Beautiful example of trusting young Christians.
So much to learn from that.
After going through Pisidia, they called into Pamphylia
and when they had preached the word in
Persia, they went down to Italia.
And from Italia, they sailed back to Antioch
where they had been committed to the grace
of God.
Remember that back in chapter 13?
For the work they had now completed.
Interesting.
Completion.
Closure.
On arriving there, they gathered the church together
and reported all that God had done through
them and how he had opened the door
of faith to the Gentiles.
And they stayed there a long time with
the disciples.
Now I hope you don't feel that sort
of my introductory exhortations and remarks were too
long.
But I believe there's a biblical basis for
coming together like this and sharing what God
has been doing.
It's not boasting.
It's not secondary communication.
It's not mainly me who will be doing
that this week.
It will be many different people as we
had in our prayer time this afternoon.
And today, in the high-tech world, with
so much happening, with so many different groups,
so many different people, so many things that
OM is touching, we do need extra time
to sometimes update ourselves on where we are.
You've already had two leaders' letters from me
in the last two months.
That's more than you had in the whole
of 1993.
So I lost my motivation with leaders' letters.
I felt the communication going from roots and
branches and from others, plus my update were
enough and I didn't need to write my
old-fashioned leaders' exhortations.
I didn't feel I was getting enough feedback.
I don't know, whatever things popped into my
head.
But I hope in the light of, especially
my 82,000 responsibilities, in the light of
all that we're going to have to do
to somehow put into practice what we decide
in these meetings, that I can be more
faithful in communicating to you.
I now have, we have e-mail.
I don't know how to work it.
Mira is doing that.
Of course, we've had fax for years.
We've got mobile telephones.
We're seeing a whole new communications highway hit
the world that as God's people we have
to make use of for world evangelism.
So I hope to be more in contact
with you and sharing more with you in
1994.
I'm praying that 1994 will be a quantum
leap forward in the ministry of OM.
Surely that's why God is taking us through
all this strategic thinking and strategic planning.
And we know from our tapes from Jim
Angles that we've got to have the strategic
thinking if we're going to do strategic planning.
And sometimes the planning is easier than the
thinking.
But I've written something else down that I
hope you'll remember when you leave here.
And that is that strategic thinking and planning
must lead to strategic action.
And that will take a lot of discipline
right across the body.
I don't think this is the age of
discipline.
Maybe you can correct me.
I think some of the problems we have
with young people, their great need isn't necessarily
counseling and care.
And I believe in that.
The very fact that some people have received
so much care through OM and I've had
much contact with such people is one of
the reasons other people fall through the cracks.
They get missed with the rapid growth with
other complexities.
And that's why we're dealing with what we're
dealing with in these days.
Now I know that some people struggle when
certain things are stated that seem fairly negative
in the attempt to drive home a strong
point.
Some people struggle with that because they don't
see things quite that negative.
That can be used to bring disunity in
the body.
I could have gone that way.
And let me just share how the Lord
helped me as I heard so much negative
stuff coming.
And things look pretty grim at times in
certain ways.
I was helped of course by balancing statements
by Mr. Balance, Peter Maiden and others.
But I was also helped and maybe this
will help you that when the Holy Spirit
is trying to get us to focus on
something even though we may have scored B
if you know the American grading system even
if we may have scored 7 out of
10 when the Holy Spirit is zeroing in
He doesn't want you to look at your
past scores.
He wants you to aim at a higher
score.
If we graded OM on some of these
things we'd get 7s, 6s, 8s but that
is not the issue now.
The issue now is not looking back.
We thank God for all that He's going
to do.
I'm going to touch on that in a
few minutes.
But it's to seriously make changes that will
enable us to pursue greater excellency in all
of these areas.
If we were 8 we want to be
9.
If we were 7 we want to be
8 or higher.
So at the moment of impact when the
Holy Spirit is working to some degree we
have to forget the past.
And not get uptight if somebody says something
really weird about the past we're free to
correct them if we want to.
Amy Carmichael was that way in some of
her writings.
If you read her little poem If it
just blows you away.
If you don't understand that what Amy was
trying to say is that when the Holy
Spirit is zeroing in on you in a
particular issue everything will look black at that
moment.
Because the Holy Spirit is just wanting to
get you to repent.
To repent of that issue.
Not to defend yourself.
Hey it's not that bad.
Lord I'm not really that unloving am I?
You know her little thing about love?
But he wants you to deal with that.
To repent of that.
To get it sorted out.
And that's so helpful I believe.
And yet God is calling us to unity.
God is calling us to decisive action.
God is calling us to change.
And I believe that little thought that the
Lord has helped me with may be of
help to you.
Let me just read this in the authorized
version.
Verse 26 And from there they sailed to
Antioch where they had been commended to the
grace of God for the work which they
had fulfilled.
I just read that from here.
When they had gathered the church together they
reviewed all that God had done with them
and how he had opened the door of
faith unto the Gentiles.
And there they abode a long time with
the disciples.
Now as one of the mentors in the
movement I don't have that opportunity anymore to
be a long time with the disciples.
We're way, way down the road.
And the fact that my influence as I
saw in some paper is less in the
whole movement is no problem to me.
Don't think whoever wrote that that is upsetting
to me.
That is so obvious, so normal.
And it is my prayer in these years
in my life that the greater influence will
be from the people that I have imparted
myself to.
I have no great huge new vision to
spring upon you.
You think that's a minor thing.
I think you ought to thank the Lord
for that.
Because old founders are known for coming out
with cockeyed out of date dooney looney visions.
And everybody knows the guy.
Knows the guy's gone going off track going
to open a five million dollar retirement center
in the Everglades.
Nobody particularly wants to tell him because he's
getting older and you don't want to hurt
the guy too much.
Founder protection.
And founders have done some really bizarre things
as they've got older.
Now I had the advantage of reading about
these people.
I don't know who they were reading about.
But I don't have that many you know
super great visions that I'm inflicting on OM.
Now this is the wildest thing I've come
up with lately.
And I'm inflicting that on the whole body
of Christ.
You can just take whatever little section of
it you want.
But that's a very sort of vague it's
not vague it's specific in some ways.
But each part of the body of Christ
as they read this or something similar that
someone else has written is that new?
They have to take what they feel they
are able.
My burden my burden is to back up
all of you.
And others who are not here.
Just to lay my life down.
And I got this word from the Lord
today.
I know some people don't like you to
say that.
I'm not into new revelations.
You know I do believe God has to
say things to us.
You know when I study the book of
Leviticus I don't always get the real heavy
blessing that I know some of you more
Bible student types get.
And I do read the book of Leviticus.
And I probably need to read it more.
But I do believe that as we pray
God can bring impressions to our hearts not
as revelations but just as practical instruction for
our own soul.
My wife is surely praying that I'll get
more of that.
And some of the areas where my wife
would like me to improve are not found
in the scriptures.
The basic principles of course are found there.
But I was thinking this today if I'm
wrong about this just take what you can.
As I look out at all of you
and we've been together in this work some
of us for 38 years like Dale and
I some for only a month like my
new helper Chris.
Above all else I just want to be
your friend and your brother.
I'm not interested in lording over you.
Not really interested that much in titles.
I'm not interested in telling you what to
do that sometimes if we're going to be
courageous leaders we have to tell people things.
Many of us run away from that.
Most of you know I have a coward
streak.
But I would like through all this just
to be your friend to somehow feel that
if you're in a pinch and the enemy's
having a go at you you'd feel free
to phone me and say hey could you
pray for me.
That doesn't take long.
That's a lot less time than reading one
more of these memos that are coming across
my desk by the dozens and dozens which
I love as well especially if they're typed
they're handwritten ones.
We don't get many of those are very
interesting but I did get a handwritten one
today.
So I haven't finished reading.
Now why did I read this particular passage?
What am I trying to set you up
for?
Some of you know my methodology.
I'm just trying to take some of the
pain from what I'm trying to say which
is not the exposition of scripture.
I'm trying to say from this scripture that
it is legitimate to do what I'm now
doing.
Here are my notes.
This is the main part of the message
I felt burdened to give at this important
conference.
I've had it for a long, long time
and I've dressed it up and added and
subtracted.
I have such a negative streak.
I've seen so many negative things in who
I am lately.
I don't think any more really than before.
It's just more people.
And I know that quite a lot of
what we're looking about we're having to deal
with negatives in order to go to the
positive and so I felt I should just
share this.
Ten signs of health in operation mobilization.
Is OM basically right now an unhealthy movement
that needs major surgery?
You know, we need to get in there
and get a heart bypass, a triple plant,
chemotherapy, all of it.
Or is OM basically healthy but needs to
improve, needs to make, of course, changes, needs
to add to existing foundations, focus more, get
more things in writing as David Schmitt said.
So instead of bombarding you with a lot
of negative things, I'm going to just share
these reasons why I think OM is relatively
healthy at this time.
Without the great Verwer influence, without this same
ethos in terms of door-to-door work
and giving out tracks and late, late, late,
extra long prayer meetings, all of which does
occasionally happen still throughout the work because our
work will continue to be very pluralistic no
matter what we say and I just love
the idea of boundaries because if we don't
set some boundaries the place is going to
go really, it's going to get weird.
I know you're saying it already is weird
but I guess it's a definition.
Ten signs of health.
Number one, and I want you to rejoice
with me because the next three or four
days some of it's going to be pretty
heavy.
Number one, people are coming to Jesus Christ.
That is a sign of health.
Thousands of people in this fellowship, through this
fellowship, are coming to Jesus Christ.
I know in my own ministry I have
the joy of regularly seeing people come to
Christ but I know others are seeing far
more and then a lot of evangelism and
OMS teamwork.
Not all of us are so talented at
getting that guy to make that decision but
we're all witnessing, we're all sharing and millions
are being given the gospel.
Tens of millions.
I am amazed when you think of the
heavy negative against mass evangelism, really quite heavy
in some places, that somehow OMS still reaches
so many millions of people.
It's quite amazing.
I mean, that is one of OMS authentic
practices, marks, and many other things are coming
in.
There's contextualization, adaptation, still millions and millions and
tens of millions of people are being reached.
I'm just so excited about that.
I read these ship reports, I listen to
the ship tapes, almost every single tape that
comes from Lagos too, I listen to.
The Duluth tapes seem to get lost.
I don't listen to those or they don't
come but I get written reports and from
India and from the smallest fields, some of
the smallest fields like Mexico are quite on
the cutting edge in that area.
Number two, young people are still signing up
in big numbers, as big as ever before
except for that one big, huge first summer
of Love Europe and maybe we've caught up
to that by now if we multiply, you
know, everything around the whole world.
There's so many love events going on.
I'm waiting for somebody to launch Love Mars
but young people are signing up.
They're being recruited and praise God, they are
having their lives changed and I get many
letters from those whose lives are being changed.
Despite all these weaknesses, lives are being changed.
One of the wildest pastors in London right
now is Colin Dye of Kensington Temple.
I was at this amazing meeting of leaders
when an intellectual Bible college guy was being
a bit negative about short term and he
was being very perfectionistic about all the things
we must do if we're really going to
reach people properly.
He was going on and on, I think.
There were a number of interesting comments made.
I made a comment, I said, look brother,
I'm in your camp.
I'm very much along this line.
Excellency, perfection, better organized, more language, discipleship.
But why is it, would you explain to
me as I study what God is doing
around the world, why so many jerks are
being so mightily used of God to bring
so many people to Jesus Christ?
And I was serious.
Some of the people that I see being
used of God, they seem to me really
off the wall.
And I tell you, in some ways, I
don't want to even be involved with it.
But people come to Christ.
Some of you people who like to have
everything neatly sorted out, would you explain the
church in Chile to me?
Would you explain the church in Brazil?
They got more evangelicals in Brazil than all
of Western Europe all put together.
Now, some Brazilians told me half of them
were backsliding, but that's true of Europeans as
well, so that's no big statistic.
I tell you, it is amazing what God
is doing through weak, ordinary people who sometimes
even have heresy.
Now, that's heavy.
Have you noticed lately how many people are
accusing others of heresy?
I've got a little book in my briefcase.
About John Wimber.
Now, I've had sort of an, you know,
ongoing relationship with John Wimber, mainly through cassette
tape.
But, you know, if you lived in England,
you've got to face John Wimber.
Books are coming out.
It's a little ancient history now, but the
impact is there.
I just thank God that as far as
I know in OM, that we may have
had our private opinions and thoughts, we never
launched an anti-John Wimber, anti-Vineyard campaign.
I thank God for that.
I think we got close to that at
one point.
But instead, we followed that OM ethos of
just, let's ride this out.
Let's try to see what the good is.
In the old days, we may have banned
his book.
But in the new day, too complicated to
ban any books.
You know, you just had to live with
STL, major distributor of John Wimber's books.
And then, we're not only getting over, you
know, Wimberization, and in comes Hinnization.
And suddenly, Benny Hinn.
I'm going to this big meeting, couple thousand
people I'm speaking to in southern England, and
there are all my books in a small
pile, and I look next to it, and
this giant pile of Benny Hinn books next
to my books.
Contamination, right?
So then I got into the Benny Hinn
struggles.
Talk about a controversial person.
I mean, it's just awesome.
But you see, as a movement, we are
spread so widely.
We have all kinds of people.
Let me just say this.
I think some leaders have made serious mistakes
when they have publicly said things about certain
people and certain movements, not knowing that someone
on their own team belonged to one of
those churches.
Ed Retta now belongs to a Vineyard Fellowship
in Dallas.
And the Vineyard Movement today is very different
from the Vineyard Movement five years ago.
This is a new day.
Things change quickly.
Three top theologians wrote a book published by
Moody attacking Wimber.
And I've got the little red book attacking
those three authors.
And amazing is the guy that wrote the
red book against these three articles proving that
they're bad research, misquotes.
I mean, really, almost unethical.
One guy's office is right across the hall
from the other guy's office at Trinity Theological
Seminary, which, by the way, is evangelical-free.
Amazing world we live in.
And I have read a lot for and
against, and I'm not about to cast my
vote.
We have been stunned lately as Benny Hinn
has made some phenomenal confessions and seems to
be changing.
You may think these things are irrelevant to
Operation Mobilization.
I would then say you're living in an
unreal world.
You may be in some kind of denominational
ghetto.
But we can't think Argentina without trying to
figure out what's going on there through Benny
Hinn and Marcos Witt, probably the greatest Latin
musician of our day.
I've ministered with him twice now.
He and I were bonded like hard, fast
cement.
His music just sends me almost dancing on
my table.
He didn't even know that the churches in
Argentina have the Marcos Witt music and the
Benny Hinn Holy Ghost Jacket and all kinds
of things are happening.
And a lot of us more conservative types
really have our questions.
Meanwhile, people keep getting saved.
You know, so embarrassing when people are getting
saved through these ministries and then they want
to join the ship.
So, you know, last time I was going
off Lagos II or maybe it was a
time before that.
Just before I went off, the Brazilian brother
comes up to me and slips me a
Benny Hinn book.
Of course, they want George River to have
the anointing.
We live in exciting things.
Through it all, thousands of people are signing
up for Operation Mobilization, fighting fundies and charismatics,
evangelicals, Baptists, Episcopalians, probably even a few Catholics
sneaking in.
I tell you, this is a sign of
health.
I know some of you have your doubts.
You're wrong.
Number three.
Another sign of health in O.M. is
that there is a relatively good balance of
people of different ages and nationalities and denominations.
Isn't that exciting?
See people in their 70s working, in their
60s working alongside people 19 and getting on.
The amazing thing is when the guy 60
seems to have more energy than the 19
-year-old.
Let us not take for granted this blending
God has given us.
Even in the leadership, in the leadership structure
as we attempt to move down towards younger
people.
One of the most exciting things to me
is we have a large number of potential
leaders and some already are leaders who are
in their 20s and we've got to fight
to build up that 20s group as fast
as we can.
We have another whole army of people in
their 30s.
The 40s of course is O.M.'s strong
generation and we still have some in the
50s and the 60s.
Not as many as we thought we would
have years ago.
I don't think O.M.'s major problem is
going to be having so many people in
that group in the years to come if
things keep moving but that will go and
India in their early retirement pay setting program
seem to somehow partly resolve that.
I guess we can learn from them.
Number four, people are handling change in a
relatively mature way.
The 90s isn't just a decade of change.
We have been in phenomenal change really right
through the early 80s if you know O
.M.'s history.
There have been hiccups and problems and a
few have left disgruntled and we feel our
mistakes.
I feel our mistakes very deeply.
I feel my personal mistakes but I don't
believe that vain regret will get me anywhere
spiritually.
If vain regret is getting you somewhere spiritually
maybe you can write about it.
How that really helps you to delve over
your past failures.
Why didn't I do this in 1978?
Why didn't I do this?
I find that is generally a real waste
of time and energy.
Those things are in the past.
We must press on looking toward the future.
I believe O.M. generally is handling change
in a mature way.
This week and the weeks that come will
hopefully prove that.
Number five, we are keeping the focus on
people, on their needs, on the fellowship and
on the family.
I want to say something here maybe a
little controversial.
I believe from the earliest days of this
movement O.M. was a people centered ministry.
I don't think in a major way we
should feel guilty because we didn't focus enough
on people, on pastoral care, on counseling.
I know hardly a missions movement and I've
studied a lot that has had more emphasis
on this than O.M. What movements pass
out thousands of copies of books like Healing
for Damaged Emotions?
What movements have done some of the things
we have done in terms of the kind
of people we bring into our conferences?
But the sheer numbers that we were soon
facing, the difficulty when you have a multi
-vision movement to keep the balance, of course
brought in failure and weakness in this area
and we are very conscious of that and
therefore it is completely normal that the desire
for greater pastoral care and counseling and all
that side of things is a major factor
on the agenda.
I don't think that represents radical change but
I believe it does represent mature and of
course sometimes a struggling response to where our
society is, where the church is, where we
are as a movement attempting to take care
of 2,300 people and 6,700-800
children and just a few extra thousand throughout
the year, like 4,000-5,000.
We are bound to have struggles in this
area and I want to say this.
I am very committed to these changes.
It is not going to be easy to
grow because we're in a growth pattern and
to give this kind of care we want
to give.
That's why in a sense we need almost
an extreme commitment here, even if some of
us find it unpleasant, in order to somehow
shift.
This is a big shift OM now.
It's going to take a lot to shift
it.
And we are having too many people go
away hurt, without enough concern, care, and the
Word of God is clear.
If 99 are going well and one is
going away hurt, beaten down, not cared for,
we've got to go for that one.
And that of course will answer a lot
of the questions we have about somehow where
are we in all of this?
It's true in life that sometimes your greatest
victories can be right next to some of
your greatest failures.
When I was giving myself to endless pastoral
care and counseling on the Lagos in that
early year, because of the time consumed in
that ministry, other things went straight through the
cracks.
That's why I believe mentoring, delegating, passing on
part of the leadership mantle that too often
falls on the field leader who's supposed to
be the jack of all trades and the
miracle worker, passing this now on to training
people, passing this now on to other people
who will not be field leaders but who
must be given in a sense an equivalent
place in the movement.
That is so important.
That is an original from me.
I'm learning that from others.
I saw a little of it and I
think it's beautiful when we can have not
one key person in a particular country but
three or four key persons.
I noticed many here somehow or other you
got your number two man here with you.
In a sense that's so important.
It wasn't for logistics.
We wish you could have six of the
people you're mentoring with you.
But that's not the purpose of this particular
conference.
Number six, most of our graduates love us
and stay in touch with us.
That's 82,000 people.
Now they're not all in touch with one
place but I will tell you if we
can ever take a survey of all the
people we are cumulatively in touch with and
then those who are close to us, say
for example Greg Livingston, the number of people
he is cumulatively in touch with, it's amazing.
I find most of our graduates are pro
-OM.
That's a miracle.
Do you know anything about the church?
Do you know anything about a little thing
called bitterness, hurt, unforgiveness?
Got any books lately on these subjects?
Now we have some OM graduates who are
bitter with us and they don't always tell
us.
We have some who are backslidden.
Bad news goes quicker than good news so
when a divorce hits an OM graduate boom,
goes around a grapevine just like Lincoln.
But as far as I can see most
OM graduates and their marriages, some of them
pretty international, most of them are holy.
Again, anything we can do to help those
ex-OMers, we want to do it but
we'll have to know our limitations in the
process.
These graduates and ex-OMers, they are one
of the greatest source of blessing, of finance,
of help in so many different ways.
It's very hard to measure.
They have brought phenomenal credibility often in their
own church.
There are, of course, exceptions to that often
because of a number of factors including shortage
of staff.
We are not able to take advantage, please
catch this, we are not able to take
advantage of all that good will, all that
credibility that is out there.
And we as a movement may be on
a high point in our credibility worldwide right
now.
Don't dream this kind of thing just easily
stays year after year, decade after decade.
And I believe some of these changes we're
making and other things are going to enable
us to build more.
We're seeing this in 82,000.
I could talk about that for hours.
We are opening up the OM network including
friends and many other people to this movement
in various ways and I believe it is
going to be a blessing to millions of
people.
We do not want to be selfish or
greedy with what God has given us.
I wish I could talk to you on
missiology for at least a couple of days
but I'll tell you things are happening in
India.
missions is the mass rapid multiplication of the
small group.
The small mission.
I was on the phone with the best
conversation I've ever had with K.P. Yohanan
since we have been arguing which is a
long time.
And found out his budget has gone up
to about $7 million out of the 6
,000 people he partially supports in India.
To get that money to those people he
works through 500 agencies.
Do you think that's not going to happen
in Brazil?
It's already happening.
Do you think it's not going to happen
in Argentina?
Do you think it's not going to happen
in Korea?
It will be different from country to country.
I never forget being with Ralph Winter when
he got up there and blew some cobwebs
out of my head and said one of
the greatest blessings is the sand lot mission.
Little things just popping up here and there.
That's all OM was, brothers and sisters.
Dale and I launched out.
It was a sand lot.
It wasn't even a sand lot.
It was a mud pie mission.
We were nothing minus whatever.
And we must not become some kind of
sophisticated IBM Rolls Royce of world missions with
all of our policies and all of our
manuals and all of our paraphernalia and all
of our money because we are a big
money agency now.
We must not be insensitive or critical or
careless in our comments and our concern and
our care of all these new groups.
They will make their mistakes.
They will put our backs up at times.
They will distribute funny books.
They will climb towers and try to knock
demons out of telephone poles.
But we must somehow find the balance, loving,
caring, helping them through perhaps some of the
mistakes we made.
We can help them avoid.
OM has one of the greatest possibilities to
serve the body of Christ and other missions
with those ships of any movement in the
world today.
Let's no longer just think OM.
Maybe that's group think.
I don't know.
Let's think how we can bless the whole
body.
I want to rethink the church planting thing.
I was very pro church planting through Mike
Evans.
I am not as pro church planting now,
at least in certain countries.
Because I have seen sending immature people in
to plant a church at the end of
two years generally don't have much of a
church.
That same group, if they were giving themselves
to evangelism, missions, mobilization, encouraging other Christians, leadership
training, conferences, that could result in 100 new
churches.
Because OM has birthed over 100 agencies, including
this K.P. Honan thing.
And the book which I oppose, his first
book, is dedicated to me.
It gets very messy.
I'm sorry.
God will lead different fields in different ways,
but that's certainly something for you to think
about.
Number seven, we are paying our bills.
We are paying our bills.
ICT is out of debt and doesn't even
have an overdraft facility.
These are miracles, my friend.
I know you're hardened to miracles, but somehow
we have learned how to get those demons
at least out of some of the banks.
And when I think of God's provision, even
when secular people look at where OM is
today, they're looking at something that they consider
successful, but needs change, needs updating, needs new,
and all kinds of other things added.
It's exciting.
Number eight, moderate and simple, or somewhat simple
since we like double words, lifestyle is still
holding.
It's holding more than I think I expected
35 years later.
I don't think there's many OM leaders living
high on the hog.
You know, if you think there are some
OM leaders Grace Awakening after you do.
Take a few photos and send them to
me.
We can talk it out.
I think that OM has found balance in
the area of money, lifestyle.
I think we've been set more free from
judgmentalism and other things that are closer to
Phariseeism than Christianity.
And we had more of it in those
early days than we would like to admit.
And it still hangs on.
And it's not a simple issue.
It's not a simple issue.
And I struggle with it.
We all do.
Number nine, people are repenting and being honest.
Isn't it great to hear leaders breaking before
the cross and getting united when they're not
people who naturally have a chemistry?
Do you think that with Peter Maiden and
our relationship it's all sort of spirituality?
We know he's sort of quite spiritual.
We know I'm not so spiritual.
There is an uncanny, God-given chemistry to
some degree between the two of us.
Maybe that's why we're both losing our hair
and he's ahead of me.
But I again and again am surprised that
this Maiden-Verwer partnership continues to go because
we are very different and we see things
often differently and it is just something we
can thank God for.
But it is linked I believe with the
cross, with repentance, with the word.
It's happening right through the movement.
There are amazing leadership teams on our ships.
There's an amazing leadership team in India, amazing
leadership teams in several dozen countries.
Some are better than others.
Doesn't mean there's no problems, no heartaches.
But to me this is a sign of
health.
People are still repenting.
They still believe in Calvary Road.
They still at the end of the day
don't want to go to bed with bitterness
and anger against a brother and sister in
Jesus Christ.
Another sign of health tied in with this
is the fact that I believe we have
improved.
I know some would feel it's only a
little but I believe we have improved in
the whole area of relating to brothers and
sisters and helping better us men to bring
women into more strategic and fulfilling ministries.
We all can think of our failures in
this because the whole man woman thing seems
to be destined for endless challenge in many
ways.
But I think we have improved.
I think the openness, the honesty, the freedom
to share is a sign of health.
That will never be an easy road.
Let's follow what's going on in other groups,
other churches before we put ourselves down so
strongly in that area.
And then number ten, right, that was number
ten, number eleven, good relationships with other missions
and networks.
Isn't that exciting?
These people believe more in what we're doing
than we do.
And you get people like Tony Sargent introducing
me in OM.
It's embarrassing.
Surely he's visited us enough to know, you
know, how many problems and difficulties and how
sin gets into the camp.
We have an amazing number.
I'm talking of hundreds of mission leaders who
really are linked with us.
It's a sign of health.
It's something that should encourage us.
And then number twelve, we are seeing solid
boards of directors develop in nation after nation.
That's not a small thing.
And Network 94 is destined to be one
of the most significant events in the history
of OM.
It's sad when some people just write it
off because they feel it's too expensive.
You know, I could pin any person down
who says that, follow them around and point
out something that they do that I feel
is too expensive.
We're never going to agree on all these
things.
We have thirty-five years of history proving
that older people and business people are not
attracted to OM conferences.
Why don't we just accept that, not blame
them.
We all know the story of dear Mr.
Frampton who finally came to a conference in
Belgium, a man who was used to a
few creature comforts as a multi-millionaire, and
he came in and the door was opened
and there was an empty room with a
piece of cardboard.
Even the new present-day OMers have difficulty
with this, much less, you know, the average
person in some of the countries that we
come from.
God has given us this hotel at half
price.
It's a beautiful place.
There's nothing wrong with beauty.
There's nothing wrong with a vacation.
We set that right about fifteen years ago
whenever, and this is a special time, and
if any of you know key people or
board members are not yet coming, maybe you
can make another try.
There's still a few more places.
Of course that conference is not, you know,
the solution for everything.
It's just part of the equation, but it's
an important part.
The bigger part is that OM now has
solid boards in many countries.
And as many of us founder leaders move
on in God's timing and God's providences, if
you study church history and mission history, you
know those boards will move into a more
significant place in leading the world.
A board, when the founders are around and
the people who actually chose them to be
on the board are around, have a different
ethos than when the number two guy, the
next generation and the third generation move in
there.
We need solid boards.
More XOMers are getting on boards.
Gifted people get on boards.
It's not a matter of how much money
you have.
If there's some on those boards that have
some money, the Lord bless them.
There are plenty of people on our boards.
Money is not the major factor in this.
It has very little to do with it
actually.
In fact, it seems to me quite a
few of our board members seem broke in
the present recession.
And O.M.'s change of mentality is enabling
us to more highly esteem the layman and
more highly esteem all these kind of dear
people.
And if you heard some of my preaching
lately, you know I've changed over the past
few years.
In closing, I want to urge you, in
the light of these things, to make sure
as you go forward to put into practice
what we decide on here, that you will
not underestimate your own ministry.
Please just bear with me a few minutes
because this, for some of you, could be
the most important thing I say.
I feel in O.M. in general, people
are underestimating their ministry.
I feel there's an element of false humility
and I feel I am partly responsible for
it, which is unusual since I'm obviously humility
is not my strong point.
I'm not even sure I understand it.
But anyway, I'm working on it.
But I believe God has given you men
and women here today tremendous gifts.
You are proven.
You have run the race 10, 15, 20,
30 years.
And I believe you should be willing to
be a little more a fool for Christ
and allow your ministry to have a higher
profile.
I think it's sad when so many leaders
don't even have some kind of business card
or a Christian card or something that indicates
they have an address, they have a phone
number.
I think the church is more to blame
for this than O.M., to be quite
honest.
And I must confess I believe the church
in Britain is partly to blame because it
developed and Peter made it when he shot
down true discipleship, shot down a brand of
Christianity that basically developed in the British Isles.
I'm sure he realized that.
And that brand of Christianity was exported, not
just through true discipleship, the number of books
I have looked at lately where the red
light has gone on when I've compared it
with brilliant, Peter Maiden's brilliant message is quite
amazing.
Some of these books really say things that
are way out and we buy into it
and then we wonder why people who have
bought into some of this, many of them,
they don't amount to anything for God.
They really don't.
Though they may look spiritual.
And later on they're the people that sometimes
react against any kind of change.
That is not true spirituality.
And I believe that we need to be
willing to be fools for Christ and have
a little higher profile.
That means let your picture go out.
We're living in the video age, brothers.
This is not the age of talking through
a tin can on a string to your
friend next door who's got another can.
You remember that when you were kids, those
of you who were old?
That was one of my first efforts in
communication.
Shouting in this tin can through a piece
of string.
This is the video age.
If people can watch a video and see
the most ordinary preacher, why are you afraid
to let a video out with some of
your preaching on, to have your photograph used
a little bit more, which cannot be done
if you don't have any copies.
Maybe you think it's spiritual not to have
any copies of your photograph.
Maybe you think you're going to be puffed
up.
You're going to get so proud because somebody
put your photo.
The fact is, when you expose yourself to
a higher profile, you will be crucified a
lot more than if you maintain that little
mousy false spirituality hiding in the corner under
some kind of old hymn book.
Let's come out bold in the name of
Jesus.
And keep the good attitude after the crucifixion.
What are some ways we can do that?
I touched on that thing of photos.
I touched on that I touched a little
bit on having maybe a card with your
name and address on it.
It's nothing new in O.M. It's just
a certain fairly large group of people don't
do it.
To be willing to distribute your tapes.
Why is it we go to a book
table and all we get is Verwer tapes?
We want Fritz Schuller tapes.
We want Gordon Magny tapes if they're not
too extreme.
We want...
Listen, listen.
When you are preaching, I guarantee you if
you're preaching in a service and you put
your Verwer tapes and your own tapes on
the table, probably people will choose your tape.
They want to listen to people they've met.
That's why my tapes don't go well unless
I'm there.
Why not have a good percentage of all
of you people making some of your own
tapes and making them available?
If it's worth going 400 miles to take
one more meeting and many of you do
that, why is it wrong for you to
have a cassette tape or a video cassette?
Do you think that it always must be
someone else that pushes you?
Okay, I'm pushing you.
This is official.
When you produce your cassette tape or your
videotape or your business card and someone comes
to you and says, you know, why are
you doing this?
Say, well, you know, I really didn't want
to do this, but George Verwer, he's the
leader of our work.
He asked me to do this.
What do you think about it?
Throw it back on them.