It's very special for me to be back
in Bolton again.
I lived here 30 years ago, been more
or less around Britain and a few other
places for the last 30 years, so I
don't get back so much, having now settled
in London, a little closer to the international
airports, though my Manchester friends always remind me
of their great airport as well.
I'd like to read something from the Word
of God together that might be considered the
bottom line as we consider this great challenge
that God has given to us.
The first bookshop I actually ever opened was
in a little town called Saltillo, Mexico, and
then another one in Monterrey, Mexico, and then
that was all done while we were going
to Mexico as students, and little did we
know that what is known today as short
-term missionary work was being born at that
time, in 1957.
I was actually converted in 1955.
I did a very good job.
The dates are a little mixed up due
to whatever.
It doesn't matter much, but it is interesting
to just see how God uses the printed
page.
I hope that you already are excited about
literature, and I'm praying that if you're not,
you'll become very excited tonight about the ministry
you can have as a book agent or
just loaning out books.
We now do not just sell books in
Operation Mobilization.
We give away vast numbers of books because
many people will not buy at least certain
books, the kind of books we want them
to have, so we give it to them.
And we send books to men in prison.
We send books as gifts to people like
John Major, Jimmy Carter.
I sent books to all the men of
the South African Cabinet a couple of years
ago.
I had letters back from most of them.
It's amazing where a book can go, and
you can go right down to Wesley Owen
and choose a book specifically for a specific
person or a specific need.
Let's look at the Word of God, first
of all, in John, chapter 14, the Gospel
of John, chapter 14, and verse 6.
I call this the bottom line.
Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth,
and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through
me.
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the
life.
More and more pressure is going to be
on the Church to acknowledge all religion is
equal.
And they'll want to include New Age, they'll
want to include whatever is created out of
the folly of man-made philosophy.
But the Word of God is clear that
Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and
the life.
No man comes to the Father except by
Him.
Amazing.
Turn with me to Romans, chapter 10.
Great statements about salvation, believing on Jesus Christ.
Verse 13, everyone who calls on the name
of the Lord will be saved.
Verse 14, Romans 10, 14.
How then can they call on the one
whom they have not believed?
How can they believe in the one whom
they have not heard?
How can they hear without someone preaching to
them?
And how can they preach unless they are
sent?
As it is written, how beautiful are the
feet of those who bring good news.
Let us pray.
Living God, we thank You for Your Word.
We thank You for the power and the
reality of Your Holy Spirit.
We want to know by Your grace what
it is to walk our talk and to
talk our walk.
To be Your men, to be Your women.
To go where You want us to go
and to do what You want us to
do.
We want to know more about really being
set free from the shackles of the self
-life.
And we thank You, O God, that You
have not left us to wander in the
dark in this sinful planet, but You have
given us a bright light.
And O God, we know You want to
bless us tonight.
You want to motivate us into greater exploits
for You, both here and across the world.
And God, we just present our bodies, as
it says in Romans 12, 1, as a
living sacrifice to You, even at this moment,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
As Operation Mobilization and STL got bigger and
bigger, I think a lot of people just
gave up.
We certainly never hear from them.
So they must have just given up, thinking
the thing just got too big.
A man wrote me a letter and he
said, Please take my name and address off
your prayer letter list.
Your organization has got very big and very
complicated, and I don't understand it anymore, and
I don't feel I'm able to pray anymore.
I don't know what he was praying all
these years, was that we would be unsuccessful,
and that we would fail, and that we
would not grow.
I'm sure most of you have heard of
the ministry of the ships, Lagos, then Lagos
II, and Doulos.
Just in that ministry alone, are more people
than in most mission societies.
500 people in the ship ministry.
That has reached over 100 million people face
to face.
Doulos is now listed in the Guinness Book
of Records, the oldest passenger ship in the
world, right now in dry dock again in
Malta, having just been refurbished in South Africa
about one year ago.
A ship that has a staff and crew
of 300 people, that sometimes has 40,000
visitors on a weekend, going through almost all
of them getting books, Bibles, or literature of
some kind.
We lost Lagos after 17 years of ministry,
and God gave us a much better ship.
We should have sold Lagos long before that,
but we didn't have the courage, so the
Lord just took it gently.
No one was injured, and it's still sitting
there on a rock, in the Beagle Channel
off the coast of Argentina and Chile.
Then he gave us this amazing ship, Lagos
II, which some of you probably visited a
few years ago.
She's now in Trinidad, and soon will be
headed back to Gibraltar, and then southern France,
and by next summer, Lagos II will be
here in the British Isles.
I'm sure you've heard about these ships.
Did you know that the vision for these
ships came in Bolton?
How many knew that?
Well, that's good.
The rest of you obviously don't read much.
I went in the King's Arms pub this
afternoon.
When we discovered it, it was the King's
Arms.
We converted it into a Christian bookshop about
1964, 65, and it was there that the
idea, I lived in that converted pub.
It's still a bookshop, but you just walk
right by that one, and go down to
the left, and you hit West End, more
to your taste.
But you can go in there as well.
What do they call that other bookshop?
It's a funny name.
But I went up there this afternoon, and
I went up to the top room, which
is completely empty right now, where my wife
and I lived with our two children.
My daughter was born here in 19...
Gosh.
She's 30.
And this is the 30th anniversary more or
less of the bookshop and the book ministry
from the shop.
But as I went up to that room,
certainly my heart was filled with praise.
I remember another decision we made in that
room just before the vision of the ship
came.
Ray Lynch came back from Israel.
We had no plan to have OM long
term in Israel.
Ray Lynch was a wildcat evangelist.
He was leading hundreds to Christ.
He went to Israel.
He got arrested, and he came up to
my little upper room there in Deansgate, and
he said, you know, we need to start
a work in Israel.
And what he shared witnessed in my heart.
We need to go to the Jews.
And we made the decision.
Decisions were real easy to make back then.
All I had to do was make it.
And we decided to start OM in Israel.
And then, in that same room, the idea
came about an ocean-going ship.
A lot had to be done.
And it wasn't till 1970 that God gave
us Lagos, and 77 gave us Dulles.
So if there's any famous historical town in
Britain for Operation Mobilization, STL, and the ships,
it's all part of the same family.
It's Bolton, Lancashire.
And we hope that you will spread the
word around and get people to go down
to Wesley Owen and find out more about
it.
And we hope that the managers at Wesley
Owen also will stay informed and be able
to share this tremendous story.
Because God uses stories.
A lot of books are just stories.
And God uses stories to stir people's faith.
Let's go back even further of how this
thing was born in the first place.
It wasn't me.
I wasn't even a Christian.
My whole life at 16 was business, women,
pornography, money, and the fast lane of New
York City.
So I wasn't about to start Christian bookshops.
But a little godly woman put my name
on her hit list and started praying for
me.
Not only did she pray that I'd become
a Christian, she prayed that I'd become a
missionary.
Fancy that!
She didn't even discuss this with me.
Just sort of a name it, claim it
approach.
And then this woman put feet onto her
prayers, like I'm hoping you will also do
with the message tonight, for the Word of
God says that we should not be hearers
of the Word only, but doers.
This woman put feet on her prayers by
sending me a Gospel of John through the
Post.
I noticed those same Gospels of the Pocket
Testament League in the pastor's office.
And God used his Word.
God used his Word to break my heart.
I'm amazed when I find people, really I'm
just being honest, who say they love Jesus
and don't engage in spreading the message.
Spreading the message.
Even if you're mega shy and quiet.
I remember one British gal telling about how
she started to learn how to give out
literature.
She was so scared that the first piece
of literature she gave out, she just lost
it.
I think she left it in a telephone
box.
She just left it in the name of
Jesus and she ran.
But then she got a little more courage.
It is amazing how God uses a printed
page.
Actually someone else left a tract in a
toilet.
And a man went in there to, you
know, do whatever he needed to do.
And while he was sitting he picked up
this tract and was converted to Jesus before
he got out of the toilet.
Some of you probably know the amazing story
of the man who was going door to
door giving out literature.
And he gave out a piece of literature
to a man who seemed very unhappy.
And weeks later he went back to that
home and the man said, Come in, I
want to tell you what's happened to me.
Took him up to the attic.
In the attic was a box and a
rope hanging from a beam.
And he said, When you came to my
door weeks ago I was about to put
this rope around my neck and take my
own life.
And out of curiosity I answered the door.
You gave me this tract.
I knelt here by this box and surrendered
my life to Jesus.
I want to know more about this great
faith that I've now received.
So this lady sent me the Gospel of
John.
I was then buying some literature in a
newsstand and I came across a magazine about
Billy Graham.
Just a secular magazine.
But it was a point of communication.
Some of the books in our shop are
pre-evangelistic.
They aren't all books, boom, just to punch
you in the nose.
They're pre-evangelistic.
Attempting to be a seeker sensitive to reach
the non-Christian with the Word of God.
So because I had read about Billy Graham
and he seemed a little bit normal though
I heard he was a hypnotist so it
certainly was not something my peers or friends
were into.
When Billy Graham came to New York City
it was actually just one night meeting two
years before the famous crusade.
1955 one night.
I went to that meeting.
I sat as far away as I could
because I heard he was a hypnotist and
I watched him through my binoculars.
And God just zapped me.
And when he gave the invitation to repent
and believe on Jesus I was out of
my seat to the front of this great
Madison Square Garden fighting arena.
Trusted Jesus and he came by His Spirit
to live in me.
Things began to move like a tornado.
From that day, that's 39 years ago there
has never been a day in which I've
not experienced something of the power of God's
grace in His Spirit.
I've had miserable moments sometimes up to a
miserable hour.
I saw this verse, Don't let the sun
go down upon your anger.
I did have an anger problem so I
made that a major target.
Of course you get a little extra time
in the summer to deal with those things
but as the winter comes especially here in
the north you better keep short accounts with
God.
Don't let the sun go down upon any
sin in your life.
That's God's way.
And if God could take a character like
me and somehow work each day these 39
years, then I don't know who can give
an excuse.
I'm not a natural Christian.
Even today I don't feel like a natural
Christian.
I don't feel naturally spiritual.
Maybe you feel naturally spiritual.
Maybe your testimony is every day with Jesus
is sweeter than the day before.
And you're just going higher and higher and
higher in the things of Jesus each day.
Praise the Lord.
I'd love to get your autograph at the
end of the meeting.
But that's not been my experience.
Mine has been one of struggle.
One of doubts.
One of sometimes wondering if I could even
go one more day.
One more day.
It's amazing how many people young people especially
think Christianity is boring.
That's why we don't have that many young
people here tonight.
They think this kind of meeting, this is
boring.
Why would you go to this?
With the old kind of fashion old fashioned
Christian bookshops we've had for so many years.
The average young person never go in them.
They never go in them.
They're boring.
They're weird.
What do these words mean?
All kinds of gospel book nook.
That may have been in the states.
I forget where I saw that.
Gospel book nook.
What rock and roll 18 year old teenager
is going to go in the gospel book
nook?
Not too many.
One thing we need to shout from the
housetops to our young people.
I've had the privilege this summer of speaking
to about 25,000 young people in every
kind of crazy meeting you can imagine.
I've just come back from Stellenbosch University.
Can you imagine?
University 2,000 every night at a missions
conference.
All university students.
The final night 3,000.
191 the final night made a commitment to
go into world missions.
Christianity is not boring.
Missionary work is not boring.
How sad that young people today think that
missions that's also boring.
We have this expression.
Nothing more boring than a missionary speaker except
a missionary speaker with slides.
How can these things be?
Could be partly our fault.
I have never had a fully boring day
since my conversion.
I mean I'd like to have one.
It would probably be quite exciting.
You know, a fully boring day.
I've had boring hours.
I've had boring minutes.
I want to be honest.
I've met a lot of boring people.
Never had a boring day.
Let me just tell you real honest because
I don't get to Bolton so much anymore.
If you're not excited about Jesus, you're backslidden.
I'm not saying you have to be as
excited as me.
We're all different.
I'm a more excitable temperament.
I got excited before I was converted.
Maybe before you were converted, you never got
excited.
When I first came to Britain, I was
given this most ridiculous orientation.
A man put me in a big black
suit and he said, you know, you Americans,
you're very offensive, you're outgoing, and the British
people are all reserved, they're all shy so,
you know, be careful.
Well, I'll tell you.
A lot of the wildest people I've ever
met come from Great Britain.
That's right.
Especially when they leave the pubs and start
drinking at the new wine bar.
Then they really start to get wild.
God works in different people in different ways.
But I know this.
Jesus Christ is alive.
And if Jesus Christ is in you, that
is the greatest reality.
You know, some Christians live from one meeting
to the other, which means for some, it's
just Sunday to Sunday.
They have tremendous music and I love music.
Now we've got Walkmans, we can listen to
praise tapes, you know, all day long.
It does tend to irritate the boss where
we work.
But the Lord Jesus is wanting us to
realize, we have to be excited about Him
and live for Him, whether we feel it
or not.
Whether the music is playing or not.
We are committed, as Jesus taught in all
of the Gospels, to deny self, take up
a cross every day and follow Him.
I hope we're all doing that.
I wanted to mention some of the books
that we have at Wesley Owen.
And some of them are on display here
tonight because we like to strike while the
iron is hot.
You can get a book tonight, you'll get
so excited about it, then you'll be down
at Wesley Owen to get a dozen or
two.
And these books that we have brought along
to the meeting tonight are very, very special.
We are unashamed of declaring the power of
the printed page.
Firstly, the Word of God.
This week I was ministering to the leaders
of the Christian Union Movement from all over
the nation.
350 gathered at the Quinta down near Oswestry,
the same place where the OM office that
was here in Bolton for so many years.
Do any of you remember when the office
was above Mr. Baldwin's chemist shop?
Any of you remember that?
A few?
He's in heaven, Mrs. Baldwin is up the
road in an old folks' home, and the
famous OM office is near the Welsh border
in Shropshire, which I can't pronounce, near Oswestry.
I was ministering there a couple of days
ago, and 350 leaders of the Christian Union
Movement, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Newcastle, Scotland, Ireland, were
there.
And they are now going to distribute hundreds
of thousands of this Gospel of Luke to
all the students, or as many students as
they possibly can reach, in the whole of
the nation.
Isn't that exciting?
Things are happening.
Let me mention a couple of these books
that we've put on display tonight.
One of the most significant is Grace Awakening
by a man named Charles Swindoll.
I believe this is probably, at least for
me, one of the greatest books, if not
the greatest Christian book I've ever read.
The first three chapters is very basic, so
I suggest you start reading in the middle,
around chapter 5.
Squaring off against legalism.
And then go right on.
Chapter 6, being emancipated, guiding others to freedom,
the grace to let others be.
That is so powerful.
Grace up close and personal.
A marriage oiled by grace.
Oh, that was the hardest chapter in the
book.
My wife was extremely grateful for me reading
that.
Marriage oiled by grace.
When you read this and get blessed, what
is going to be the natural reaction if
you really love Jesus?
It's going to be to get a dozen
more and give them to your friends.
Even a non-Christian will be blessed through
this book because it's so basic.
It is a bit American, because Charles Swindoll
is an American pastor, but it's a brilliant
book.
Well, I don't have that much time to
talk about all these books.
There's a new one about the ship ministry,
just basically stories, just published by Hodder and
Stoughton a few weeks ago.
There's the greatest missionary book of all times.
I just finished reading it through.
Started in September and finished in September because
it's put in the form of a calendar.
There's November 26th and 28th.
When you get there, you'll be praying for
Vietnam.
That is the most significant missionary book of
all times.
You can get a copy here or go
down to the book shop.
Don't feel you have to read it right
through, though that only takes two pages a
day.
And you'll have covered and prayed for every
nation in the world.
And as the Spirit of God is living
in you, this book will be exciting.
I would encourage you.
A book that goes with it is called
Serving as Senders by Neil Parolo.
I read Acts chapter 10 verse 15, because
that says how will they preach, how will
they go unless they are sent.
There are more British young people that want
to be missionaries right now than we have
prayer and finance to get them out to
the field.
Isn't that amazing?
We're not exactly the poorest nation in the
world.
And as the Church goes, I've been in
about I forget, 70 or 80 nations myself.
OM now has a permanent base in 80
nations.
But as we look out across the world,
Britain is still in the top 10 nations
in regard to potential for sending out missionaries.
Though we know the need here is also
very, very great.
But if the need here is great, where
we do have churches, what can we say
of the people's groups of the world where
the Church in some cases doesn't even exist?
Did you realize that?
How many of you have ever heard of
the 1040 window?
Something you do with double glazing.
How many have ever heard of that?
Just a few of you.
Well, you can pick up this little paper
free.
This was especially produced for the March for
Jesus.
And as I had a prayer walk around
Bolton after tea tonight, I saw a big
sign, March for Jesus, Bolton, next week.
I thought all these marches took place in
the beginning of the summer.
June 25th, the day to change the world,
I was marching in New York City, even
though I live in London.
So the fact that your March for Jesus
is coming next Saturday, I think is so
providential because this little paper was produced for
the March for Jesus.
And we just happen to have a few
thousand left over.
So you can get one or a whole
bundle free by meeting Kevin at our little
OM 1040 window special display there.
The other books are mainly in the back.
What is the 1040 window?
It's a geographical zone where 90% of
the more unreached people of the world live.
I can show it to you on my
jacket.
10 degrees north of the equator to 40
degrees north of the equator, starting by Spain
and North Africa.
That's the beginning of this window.
It goes right across the Middle East, right
on around to India, over to Japan.
The back of this jacket, I made a
mistake.
It happens to be upside down.
I didn't bother.
I just dedicated it to Australia.
But that is the 1040 window.
Listen, there are tens of millions in that
zone that have never heard the gospel.
One of the most exciting things about the
Wesley Owen bookshops around the country, and STL,
the wholesale operation that started in a little
army base in Chigwell, then Atherton.
That's how the bookshop was born in Bolton,
because the wholesale base was in Atherton.
And then we moved it back to Bromley
for many years under the leadership of Jerry
Davey, who's the man that opened the bookshop
here.
And then it moved to Carlisle, because the
associate international leader of Peter Maiden is a
complete Carlisle character, and so we ended up
moving the warehouse there.
If you've never seen the STL new warehouse
that burned down and then was rebuilt, don't
miss it.
If you're driving to Scotland, it's not far
from the motorway, and I'm sure at the
Wesley Owen bookshop they'll tell you how to
find that amazing literature warehouse.
It is one of the largest Christian literature
warehouses in the world, especially anywhere outside of
the United States.
And it started partly right here in Bolton.
I tell you, you should be so proud
of this town.
How many of you are proud of Bolton?
You probably don't even come from Bolton.
I was told when I came to Bolton,
I preached in this Methodist church.
Mr. McKenzie was there, and I was told
that night I was preaching that that pulpit,
Wesley had preached from that pulpit.
If anybody still has that pulpit, we sure
would like to get a hold of it
and put it on our ship.
We could take it all over the world,
and thousands more would come to the ship
to stand on Wesley's pulpit or to look
at it or something else.
Well, that probably won't happen.
God is sovereign.
God in his providence brought us here to
Bolton way back in the mid-60s.
And now here we are in 1994 to
dedicate this bookshop, which may look like just
a small thing.
I mean, when you look at the other
buildings around Bolton, I just went and looked
at the town hall.
I remember here when I went to give
the mayor a Bible.
That was an interesting meeting in my life.
Bit of mythology about that.
I just heard about it today.
But anyway, that bookshop doesn't look that ostentatious.
But it's one of God's powerhouses here in
this town.
And it will never be what God wants
it to be unless the Lord's people here
stand with it in prayer.
We're involved in spiritual warfare.
Spiritual warfare doesn't just take place Sunday morning
in special church services.
Spiritual warfare starts the moment of your conversion
and continues all of your life.
We need your prayers.
We want to see people coming to Christ
because of that ministry.
We want to see Christian literature go out
to every person in this area through various
channels.
We know we're just part of that.
We'd like to see more book agents.
We'd like to see people holding book parties
in their homes.
God's plan is not just for you and
I to get a blessing from these tremendous
books.
But God's plan is that we may bless
others, not only here, but across the world
through the power of the printed page.
We're living in exciting, challenging days.
We need to search our hearts and say,
Lord, what would you have me do?
What would you have me do?
Maybe invest a little more money in the
printed page.
Maybe become a missions mobilizer.
Have you ever heard that term before?
Actually, the word mobilization that God gave me,
it wasn't the initial name.
The initial name of our work was Send
the Light.
The new name, Operation Mobilization, came because of
a fiasco as I went into the Soviet
Union when I lived in Spain when I
first came to Europe.
I learned how to speak Spanish.
I was learning Russian.
I went into the Soviet Union in the
summer of 1961 before I came to England.
It was a fiasco.
Have you ever heard of Brother Andrew Godsmuggler?
How many of you have heard of him?
He's got his book in the shop.
Tonight you have Brother George.
That's my name.
I'm known too.
Godsmuggler.
Because I made a big mistake when I
went into the Soviet Union.
I was arrested by the Soviet secret police.
They thought I was a spy.
They were going to give me all expenses
paid holiday in Siberia.
I got two more days of interrogation.
They discovered all this literature I had hidden
in the cornflakes boxes and in the car,
the printing press I had hidden in the
car.
They were very angry.
Nationwide publicity in the Soviet press and photographs
and then a submachine gun escort to Austria.
It was there in a day of prayer,
broken before God, realizing my efforts had been
a bit foolish and premature.
Then I went into a mountain for a
day of prayer.
I went up the top of a tree.
I was thinking about the war.
The word mobilization came to me.
All the mobilization of the war.
It originally was a military term and God
just gave me those two words.
Operation.
Mobilization.
Changed my life.
Changed the vision of our movement.
Then, before then, it was Muslims and communists
and closed countries.
That's all.
Not Western Europe.
From that moment on, Britain.
Western Europe.
The church.
The local church.
The key to world evangelism.
I moved from Spain to Britain.
Within four months, God gave us 90 British
people.
Within another year, God gave us 900.
And a mission society was airlifted called Operation
Mobilization and its literature arm, STL.
And then Wesley Owen.
And who knows what in the world will
be birthed next?
Somebody came to me and said, Oh, you're
going to get a submarine for evangelism in
depth?
And I said, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
We are living in exciting days and I
want to close by asking you, are you
excited about Jesus?
If not, why not just in a quiet
way as we close, sing or whatever else
we do to complete this wonderful time together,
just pray a simple prayer.
Lord, I turn from my lukewarmness.
I turn from my lack of passion for
souls.
I turn from my prayerlessness.
I turn from my lack of vision.
The Bible says without a vision, the people
perish.
I'm overwhelmed by the lack of vision.
The average evangelical fish just sort of floating
with the tide in the 20th century.
We're supposed to be God's chosen people, not
God's frozen people.
And we need to take some of these
powerful books and get involved in Operation Defrost
before it's too late, as we see so
many hundreds of thousands of people go out
into eternity without a knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Let's not be afraid of old biblical words
like repent.
Let's seek the face of God and believe
Him for an outpouring of His Spirit upon
Bolton and Lancashire and the surrounding area and
that it will then push and guide men
and women out to the ends of the
earth where millions have never even heard.
Never even heard.
How can it be?
Brothers and sisters, we're not here by accident
tonight.
I was booked two years ago to speak
tomorrow morning in Veer Street, London.
And there are no more sleepers out of
Manchester.
Do you know how I have to get
to London?
I'm going to stay with a friend who
I just noticed came in down in, what's
the name of that place, Sandbatch, and then
catch a train at five in the morning
out of Crewe to get to my Sunday
morning meeting.
I'm not here by accident, neither are you.
What are we going to do about what
we've heard tonight?
Let us pray.
Lord, we thank You for the power and
the reality of Your Holy Spirit.
We again dedicate this book shot there in
Deansgate to You, that somehow the impact may
continue to flow to the ends of the
earth, even as it did from thirty years
ago.
Because You answer prayer.
Because You are sovereign.
Because You use ordinary people.
And because it has been Your plan all
along to bless this town of Bolton and
to use it for Your glory, to touch
even the ends of the earth.
We thank You for the printed page.
We thank You for the materials we have
at our fingertips.
But help us, Lord, not just to bless
or be blessed ourselves through these materials, but
also to use them in ministry and to
bless others.
We thank You, God, and we praise You
in Jesus' precious name.
Amen.
And we hope that after the meeting you'll
take a look at this tremendous literature display
in the back with the books that I've
mentioned.
We hope that you'll somehow order one of
the cassettes of the ministry tonight and share
this message with others, especially some young people.
And that somehow some of you also might
catch a vision to sign up as a
prayer partner.
OM is now one of the largest British
mission fellowships in the world in terms of
British personnel serving Christ around the world.
We need more prayer partners.
And you can do that at our little
display table before you go out.
Amen.
Today Kevin completes his last full week working
here in Bolton before going to Bible College
in preparation for mission work in Korea.
I have to say that folks in Bolton
owe a lot to Kevin.
It was Kevin who had the vision for
bringing the shop back into the centre of
Bolton.
He found the site and week after week
he'd phone me and remind me to come
up here to look at it, remind me
to start negotiating with the YMCA, and without
his persistence you would not now have this
wonderful shop in the middle of Bolton.
I've only known Kevin for just under a
year and we've only been running Central Region
as it is now for just under a
year but during that time we've grown to
respect, indeed to love Kevin for his commitment,
for his enthusiasm, for his dry sense of
humour and above all, and you've obviously experienced
that dry sense of humour, and above all
for that mission heart that he has.
And Kevin, it has been a privilege to
know you and the Central Management team just
want to show you a small token of
our appreciation for you.
So Kevin, just come up.
I really feel I've been part of a
family occasion this evening and we have a
new manager coming to Bolton, John Watkins, and
I do hope that you will welcome him
and support him the way that you've done
Kevin.
And perhaps John, so you know who your
new manager is, John could you just stand
maybe, I'm not quite sure where you are.
John Watkins.