One of my old tape recorders that I
left here at Westwatch, going to serve a
good purpose here.
Lord, we praise you for your mercy, your
grace.
You know our hearts.
We're here to learn, learn.
We're here to grow.
We're here to do some real thinking.
Yet we're all different.
Even our minds sometimes process information differently.
We need your help.
Just to be able to shift gears a
little bit from the theme of the day
to what I'm sharing this evening.
Lord, I thank you for each brother and
sister in this room.
Thank you for the powerful ministries they've already
had.
And Lord, if we can improve on those
ministries even a tiny bit, we would be
encouraged during these days here.
We do find our hearts crushed by Rwanda
at this time.
It's no pretend.
We can't pretend that we can relate to
that.
We want to.
We have to cast this enormous, enormous pain
from this upon you.
Thank you that something seems to be happening
a little bit in some positive realm.
We pray for all these UN people who
are going there.
So we look to you now.
And somehow we just want to bloom where
we are.
We want to accomplish tonight what needs to
be accomplished for tonight and leave for tomorrow
that which we cannot possibly do tonight.
Thank you, God, for this place.
Thank you that we are being now given
two years more starting next May with really
no strings attached.
Just show us how we can continue to
use this place for your glory.
We're reminded, O God, of the network of
relationships you've given us all over the world.
Thousands and now tens of thousands of people
who are interlinked with us.
We long to bless them.
We long to serve them.
We also long to see the breakthroughs among
the unreached people, whether it's in the 1040
window or an extension of that window.
Help us now as we cast upon you.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Okay, next thing, if we can get this
out.
This is closely aligned with the main thrust
of my talk tonight.
That looks like something I gave at an
OM leadership conference.
Some of those tapes, I'm afraid, are quite
a while ago and I can't remember.
Let me just say this.
You may not be a tapeworm yourself or
someone who listens to tapes, but some people
on your field might be very grateful for
the opportunity to hear some of the tapes.
They don't all get to conferences like this
with the selection of speakers that you are
able to listen to here, but some of
them may find it helpful to listen to
some of those tapes.
None of them are copyrighted.
Can we preach the gospel to everyone?
Turn to the inside, please.
Can we preach the gospel to everyone by
the year A.D. 2000?
That is the theme for tonight.
We're going to get back to that.
Let me just explain that this particular article
is only a tiny part of what I
want to try to communicate to you tonight.
This is largely about my burden and vision,
which many other people have, to see a
great surge of missions mobilization material going out
to the church in many languages, because many,
many languages are left out of missions literature.
Operation World is only scheduled to go into
a few languages.
We are working on that as part of
our literature special projects.
We desire to see Operation World in 25
major languages.
If we can do that, it will be
accessible to 80 to 90 percent of all
the Christians on the planet.
I can hear somebody immediately complaining about the
other 10 or 20 percent, but just thinking
of 25 languages for Operation World is basically
impossible.
I haven't met anybody that's thinking about it
except me, unless they picked it up and
hadn't told me about it.
I don't think Patrick Johnson is quite geared
up to 25 languages, but he wouldn't be
opposed to it.
With a book like Operation World, you have
to move fairly quickly.
I don't believe Operation World is the key
piece of missions mobilization literature.
I believe it varies from country to country,
from church to church.
I include what denominations are putting out, missions
are putting out.
Probably 10 million pieces will go out this
year, as it is.
That's a guess, pure guess.
But I would say if we're going to
do the job that I believe God wants
us to aim at, we need to see
that multiplied tenfold.
It needs to include cassettes, videos.
We have the Jesus video for the unsaved,
but we have no equivalent video for mobilizing
Christians.
Generally, in the course of history, you've got
to mobilize the Christians in order to reach
the unsaved.
I certainly don't want to take money, because
this project takes money, from distribution of Jesus
films and New Testaments in the middle of
the Muslim world to go to missions mobilization
literature in Chicago.
That's not the vision.
But I believe we've got to do both.
Different people have different callings.
And that if this takes off, we will
have more money to buy New Testaments than
we will know what to do with.
But if it doesn't take off, then I
don't think we're going to reach those goals.
Now, there is a set of questions and
answers.
The moment you read this, you've got questions
if you've got a brain.
And we'll be having questions at the end
of this session.
But I have a set of questions and
answers based on that.
And if that's not around, I will try
to send some down.
Because we're limited in what we can do
this evening.
This also has gone out to many, many
thousands of people.
It's bringing some interesting response.
Okay, next item.
Pass this out.
We're always introducing you to materials.
The item I want to introduce to you
is not actually the Christian Herald.
You don't have enough there?
One for a family.
I didn't bring enough of these.
I'll give this one to...
It's not that strategic anyway.
Not everybody needs this.
The main reason I'm giving you this, and
I'll give it to you.
This one you can have.
I just wanted to point out, Tony Sargent's
newest book.
Tony is so linked with us in this
work.
His new book has been given a full
page spread.
Here's a picture of Tony.
We're on page 8.
Position of the Soul.
Sacred Anointing.
This is a...
I guess it was Tony's thesis to get
his doctor's degree.
Now, Dr. Tony Sargent.
This is about the preaching of Dr. Martin
Lloyd-Jones.
That's really just a book review.
But there's probably no church in the world
linked with this as much as Worthing Tabernacle.
Tony now is making five or six major
OM trips a year.
And in some ways is sort of unofficially
involved with ICT.
He's also on the oversight group overseeing the
work in India where he's just been again.
And I hope you'll have contact with him.
We're told we live in the information society.
I know that I'm an informationaholic and I
also distribute information at an incredible rate.
One of the reasons I do that is
the amazing feedback.
The stories of people being linked, people being
converted, just because they got this little paper
or this address or this particular book.
It's quite amazing.
Okay.
Because, yeah, that's of course something you've all
learned as leaders, how to get more on
the airplane, shoulder bags, knapsacks, waist bags.
Just a plea for your prayers for the
international coordinating team, a team that is growing.
And the strategic plan will force quite a
lot of growth on our team.
And we need your prayers.
We want to serve the body.
And so this is our prayer letter with
so many beautiful pictorial letters going out, at
least for the present.
I'm just every other month doing this sort
of old-fashioned letter.
And it does bring results.
Like the man who read about the matching
fund, and I think Peter Maiden already told
you, wrote me a check out for $10
,000 to match this $20,000 from Singapore.
The man from Singapore just called me the
other morning.
He said, do you have the $20,000?
I said, yes.
It's getting a little embarrassing because I have
more than $20,000.
And we chatted for a while.
He upped it to $40,000.
So the matching fund is $40,000 plus
the $40,000, which would be $80,000.
And you may want to give some thought
to that because our experience is that matching
funds are very interesting.
Anyway, if you put this letter with the
ICT photo brochure, have all of you had
this?
Anyway, there's extras over here.
It will help you know who you're praying
for.
And I especially appreciate prayer for Philip Morris.
I just talked to Philip on a phone
actually from the woods.
He's made this very, very important decision today
to go ahead with further chemotherapy, including this
sort of special kind of transplant that's somewhat
new, radical.
You have to eventually be isolated for, I
think, almost a month.
And that's it.
When they give that to you, they can
never, they can't apparently give any more.
Philip was leaning away from that for a
while.
But we had a special prayer on Monday,
especially for wisdom.
And he has decided to go that direction,
of course, saturating it with prayer, which is
what we've been doing.
And again, we'd also ask your prayers for
Bill Drake, who's just having such a phenomenal
ministry.
He's just come back from concerts, tours in
Northern Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Southern Africa, and pray
because it's a challenging life and musician in
Operation Mobilization.
So I wanted to give that to you.
Now, all these books that I brought are
all free.
I would like you to take them after
the meeting tonight.
In fact, if you look through the book
and you don't want it, you can just
stick it back on the bookstore.
All the books in here are also free.
Again, you don't have to take a book
if you don't want.
But you actually help our ministry when you
take a book.
Because we're trying to get books out around
the world so that they're available and accessible.
And the price of postage has just gone
up, up, up.
And so we're not just grabbing all the
time big boxes of books and shipping them
out because you don't have always the money
to pay the postage.
But every book here, almost every one, has
a purpose.
Let me first start with a book on
theology.
Some of you are theologians.
You like to read about Christ.
Is there anything greater to read about than
Christ himself?
Peter Lewis, in some ways, is another Tony
Sargent.
And through Tony, we got to know him.
He has a powerful church.
And we're all being at two weeks' time
and nodding him.
An amazing man.
I hope we're going to see him more
on our ships and other parts of the
world.
He's in great demand as a speaker.
But he came out with this book, which
I've been just getting my spiritual teeth into,
The Glory of Christ, the whole theology of
Christ.
If you don't have your theology, Christology, if
you don't have that right, everything else is
going to be wrong.
Because he's the center, he's the roof, he's
the walls, he's the foundation.
So that might be a book to start
with.
I think you know what you pay for
these kinds of books these days.
These are not books we're trying to get
rid of.
I do buy them at special prices.
And I also buy them to encourage the
authors.
But this book is just out.
I think it's already reprinting.
It's selling very well.
You're talking £9.99. That's $15.
So that's available.
I think you're aware of the snare and
our burden to minister to people and help
them avoid sexual entanglements.
This woman's book is brilliant.
She will be ministering at the conference this
year, New Recruits Conference, hopefully on the day
when there will still be a lot of
people there from the previous conference, Lois Mowdy
NAB Press Book.
We brought one golden only, just in case
you didn't have it.
Now this book may still be around, O
.M., but the behavior that I have to
hear about quite often indicates that it is
not being read.
So here's a brand new book on tent
making, Working Your Way to the Nations, A
Guide to Effective Tent Making.
And to me, books like this are diamonds.
There's probably not that many of these in
Britain.
It comes from the William Carey Library.
I got it from Pasadena.
But if you're looking for a serious study,
there's things you have to do when you
go through this, on this whole area of
tent making.
Boy, there it is.
This came out, I think, in connection with
W.E.F., World Evangelical Fellowship.
Brand new.
Prayer.
XOMer Ian Newberry, working in France, has a
great ministry of mobilizing people for prayer.
And to me, missions mobilization and prayer mobilization
must go together.
A ministry of people like David Bryant and
others has to go side-by-side with
a ministry of recruiting, a ministry of mobilizing
in other ways.
And if some of you are interested in
this kind of very serious study of prayer,
it's basically a study of prayer in the
local church.
Again, it's a workbook.
Again, it's a book not in bookshops.
You won't find it in the average OM
book table, but it's unusual.
We used that at an OM conference some
years ago where we used it as material.
If there's material in there, would that be
useful for OM prayer meetings?
I think there's some in there.
Some material in there definitely could be used
in an OM prayer meeting.
And I hope, I appreciate you mention that
because one of the things I would like
all of you to do is help in
declaring war against boredom in an OM prayer
meeting.
It is completely ridiculous that a prayer meeting
gets boring.
It should be one of the high events
of the week.
And it takes planning, it takes preparation.
We know there'll be moments of intense spiritual
warfare, which for some people may be boring
because they're not in it struggling for the
souls of men.
This is another book that has shot right
to the top of the OM reading list.
We needed this book three decades ago.
The story of reentry, whether it's OM or
YWAM or any other group, from mission service
back to one's hometown and home church is
frightening.
And the more material we can get to
help people with reentry.
We've got people raving about this book.
We've had other materials.
Some people managed to get them in the
past.
Most people never got them.
We had reentry conferences.
A few got to them, many never got
to them.
Now we have something simple, easy to distribute.
And I'm sure you already have a copy.
Feel free to take an extra.
Another book that is just going bonanzas right
now is friend raising.
Building a missionary support team that lasts.
When you take a book like this or
you invest in a few dozen of these,
I don't think you can go wrong.
Most of our people in our movement are
struggling with this.
Leaders 25 years into work are struggling with
this, living under false guilt.
Right now there's probably at least 100 people
contemplating leaving OM on this issue alone, which
is so ridiculous in a world where there's
literally millions and millions and hundreds of millions
in the hands of God's people.
And some of it is just waiting to
be asked for, not necessarily saying it's easy.
But I do believe there are some basic
principles.
God's been teaching us.
I think of my own nephew.
He had no support.
He comes from a little dinky church.
George Cooper.
He went to this seminar they have in
Atlanta on how to raise support.
He decided to take it literally.
That's a good way to take some of
these things.
Go back and do just what they taught
him.
He had all the support in a couple
of months.
It's exciting.
This is another golden oldie.
Went out of print in this country because
it wasn't selling fast enough.
I don't know how that happened.
So we brought them in for Moody.
Their edition is better anyway.
Oswald Saunders, a great New Zealander who only
died a couple of years ago.
Even in his senior citizen years he was
writing a book a year.
But I don't think any of his books
are better than that one.
So if you missed that, I don't think
any of you missed that.
If you have, there's the opportunity.
Now, as I look around this room, it
seems to me almost every single person is
married except the leader of the group.
But she is an incredibly mature person.
So she will not find this a problem.
This is the book.
Okay, take it easy.
This is a book that every married couple
should look at, read, anyway.
Let me just say this.
My experience, and I've been counseling married people
ever since I was a baby Christian, is
that Christians often have more hang-ups than
unmarried people.
They bring spirituality in in a wrong way
to the whole sexual issue.
It just breaks my heart.
Even though one day in Dubai, no, three
days in Dubai, I wasn't there to do
any married counseling.
I was just so brief.
These people that came to me, Indians, just
married, one or two years, and we slipped
into my Kay's office for a few minutes,
and she began to share, constantly arguing.
As we began to talk, we realized, though
they had never shared this with anybody, there
was, as far as sex in their marriage,
zero.
Absolute zero.
It's not unusual.
And marriages often come apart because this is
neglected.
Someone once said to me, if you've got
this side of your marriage together, you can
handle all kinds of pressure.
If this goes, those other things get magnified.
And the enemy has a field day.
And the story of difficulties in OIM in
this area, no one has ever told.
They're too ugly.
But this poor soul, who's been in it
a long time, knows the story.
So when you see me pushing this book,
and we distribute it in a network, in
a plain wrapper box, because he gets accused.
Just like anything else, that book could be
used by certain people for a lust trip.
There's a lot of things around us that
can be misused.
And that's true of that book.
It's true of other things.
That's not going to stop me from distributing.
I can assure you, people have misused the
Bible.
Especially the cults.
By the way, does that all...
Oh, two other items.
One is very linked with tonight.
This is the 82,000 handbook.
I think most of you have this.
Again, another very hard to get book.
But you can get one here.
And you need at least one, because when
you have only one, somebody else wants it.
And then you have to part with your
only copy.
And another unusual book on missions that's produced
by Mark.
The Changing Shape of the World.
How many of you have seen this?
We all saw it.
Peter made it and brought it.
Okay.
Did you all get a copy?
No.
I got a copy.
Anyway, there it is.
There's one now.
Okay.
Now people are reading it during his message.
That's all right.
Please use it.
Three other items that I'm not giving away
because you have too much to carry.
But there are some copies around.
Serving as senders.
Don't give up using this.
The New Edition, Chapter 8, is about OM.
This is just so significant.
I mean, how...
how we sometimes in OM can spend so
much time on issues that if we really
look carefully our periphery to what we're actually
attempting to do and leave to one side
in a gold nugget like this is beyond
me because the number of serious sending churches
in the world today is not that great.
Most people would say you're talking about less
than 2%, 3% of the churches.
And to take meetings in those churches, to
talk, to get started and not giving them
some tools so they have something to carry
on with is crazy.
Even in famous churches like First Baptist, Atlanta
Charles, Stanley's Church, when they discovered this book,
maybe they didn't discover it, I think they
sent it to them.
That's the same thing.
They immediately made everybody in the missions committee
read it.
Many missions committees are not reading missions books.
They have that job.
I would have thought everybody in the missions
committee needs a course like this two weeks
or more in which they could focus on
what they're doing.
Anyway, that's an old one.
Here's a new one.
I'm hesitant to push this.
I wish I had an hour to talk
to you about territorial spirits because if you
don't realize that's one of the hottest issues
in the evangelical world today, you must be
functioning under a log somewhere.
I even had another strong letter from Dulos
urging me and the movement to really get
into real spiritual warfare.
Stop just fiddling around with whatever they're doing
but let us not throw away the concept
of spiritual warfare or territorial spirits or spiritual
mapping just with one sweep that there's nothing
in it simply because some people have gotten
extreme.
In any case, in OM we try to
take a middle position.
We don't want to just come down hard
on some young Christian who's just come from
a spiritual warfare conference in his home church
and the first thing you do is try
to blow him out of his socks.
Let's go sensitively.
I talked to Steve Hawthorne on the phone
about his book and the more I read
this book the more excited I got.
He's a salesman.
He wrote me and sent me a sample.
I ended up buying 500.
He said to me, you must have read
How to Win Friends and Influence People.
He said to me, realize that you've been
in this for years.
Sales pitch.
Well, thank you.
I don't know why I didn't write a
book.
So I phoned him up and just told
him what a discerning person he was.
That's right, Harold.
I was the one that when I got
fished into, we're talking about fishing, fished into
the 82,000 movement with a fever one
night in Colorado Springs was wrestling with whether
I had the courage to stand in front
of the Peter Wagner and confront him about
territorial spirits and some of the things that
he said.
To give you the background on this, my
phone calls with Paul Cedars who wanted me
to get involved in 82,000 and with
Louise Bush and with others, I said the
prayer track seems to be extreme and it
seems to me it's going to shoot the
movement in the foot.
I thought that would maybe turn them off
and say thank you very much.
We don't want you in 82,000.
It swung around the opposite way.
We need this side.
We need this viewpoint in 82,000.
Please come.
Then they gave me this chairmanship job of
the track for the mobilization of two missionaries.
Here suddenly I am in Colorado Springs.
Peter Wagner is giving his report.
It's really spectacular.
Would I have this burden?
Would I have the courage to confront him
anyway?
God gave grace and I did confront him.
I very much like him.
His answers to the questions were very poor.
Other people then really came into the ring
and this whole area of territorial spirits and
spiritual mapping is one of the hot discussion
areas in 82,000.
The thing you need to understand and I'm
jumping ahead of myself now, but the thing
you need to understand about 82,000 is
it's not an organization.
It has not one theological position though it
is basically evangelical.
In some ways it's messy.
I would encourage you to read this book
and to keep your eyes open on the
subject of territorial spirits.
Perhaps you'd pray about taking this position with
me on it that spiritual warfare is not
just one thing and we must not confuse
one aspect of spiritual warfare like for example
moving in prayer against evil and demon forces
in Afghanistan and call that spiritual warfare.
Spiritual warfare to me is everything that happens
from the moment you're born again defending yourself
against the attacks of the enemy, offensive efforts
into Satan's straw holes even as a daily
Christian.
I have a fear of some of the
language coming out these days from things like
some of the spiritual warfare emphasis, some of
the spiritual mapping emphasis, that's George Otis Jr.,
is that we create another level of language.
Already as missionaries we're separate from the average
person by language.
They don't know what we're talking about, 1040
window.
We have to explain what that is.
I think in Swiss country it's double glazing.
And so, we're already having enough problems in
the area of language and we have churches
like Willow Creek that have set the example
in adjusting language to reach totally pagan people
and I know there's dangers but I see
a lot of validity in that.
I think the same is true as we
spread the vision of missions that we, especially
as we stand among ordinary people in the
average church, we must watch our language and
some of the language can really get bizarre.
Young Christians, grab it.
It's like running down the road with little
sticks of dynamite that are already ignited.
Lastly, a book that brings other books into
balance.
This came out of the tragedy in Cape
Town when that church was attacked by terrorists
and many, many people were killed.
Our ship was in the port at that
time.
I ministered in that church four weeks before.
There's a few of these around the corner.
If you want some, I could get some
more down here but we didn't bring extras
today.
Let's just take a moment to interact on
what I've just said.
I've presented a lot of materials.
You've got an equal to a seminary theological
course here.
Let's have some reaction.
Anybody want to ask me about anything that
I've just shared?
Because one of the methods I use in
communication is when I'm giving a book review,
you're getting several messages if you're intelligent at
the same time.
That's all I'm going to say tonight on
territorial spirits if you want to ask me
something on that hot issue.
That's all I'm going to say tonight about
prayer walking.
I'm going to open for questions before I
give part two.
What do you think is the key?
Let's talk about one key issue.
There's the definite teaching that on-site praying
is where it's at.
The church has spent literally millions to fly
people all over the world for on-site
praying and standing against the demon forces in
that area.
I'm not going on record that I'm totally
against this, but I think it just needs
some discussion.
The last thing we want to do is
quench anybody who's interested in praying.
Let's be careful.
There's not that many around.
I'd rather see a guy on a tangent
on a prayer walk in Istanbul than in
a bar in Vancouver.
You're agreeing with that, right?
I agree.
We want to make sure that people understand
that effective prayer can take place from their
own house.
A lot of people don't have the money
to go on these trips anyway, so we
don't want people to think they cannot be
in a major prayer assault for Cairo or
Alexandria or wherever without going on a journey.
What about the church prayer meeting which needs
to be revived, restated, restructured?
Another thing, of course, that's important, and they
love the word balance.
George Otis, who I talked to, Peter Wagner,
they do want balance.
Balance means different things to different people, but
I think they're open.
One of the most important papers on this
subject is actually written by Mike Wakely.
Peter Wagner got that paper.
I got his letter back.
It was very gracious.
It was just two sentences, but it was
very gracious.
Seriously, he said, we want to look into
this and hear what you have to say.
In some ways, Cindy Jacobs, one of the
women in this whole thing, is more over
the top than even others.
I understand recently in one of their meetings
in California, somebody really jumped up after her
message.
It was heavy, heavy confrontation.
One of the things that was distressing that
we confronted our brother on was that he
gave the idea that all prayer up until
these books was more pietistic, confessional type of
prayer.
When he answered one of the questions, that's
what he said.
Oh, he brought, really.
Patrick Johnson moved into the ring.
Other people moved into the ring because that
is not true.
To say that the people that came before
this type of prayer didn't understand intercessory prayer,
which is the different name for intercessory prayer,
would be a great mistake.
Tied into that also is to make sure
we don't give the impression that in one
tape that I listened to, I've listened to
a lot of material on this, it gave
the impression that the people who were there
before were really sort of wasting their time.
The missionaries who were there without these tools,
without the maps, were really sort of wasting
their time.
I think that's a great mistake.
I think they would pull back from that
now.
But we need to honor those who have
been out on the field.
Maybe they didn't understand spiritual mappings and didn't
have diagrams of all the demonic strongholds.
I'm sure some of you are quite new
on this.
Probably have made a decision already now not
to go into it.
But different temperaments react different ways.
Others can't wait to get Peter Wagner's books
and George Otis's journals on spiritual mapping in
Chicago.
My last comment on this is that it
does seem to over-focus on evil.
And one of the things that helped this
become popular was Peretti's book, which in some
ways was a great novel, but it was
a novel.
But it laid the groundwork in some of
these films.
It is a tough area.
We can't run away from it.
Most people in OM are reading.
We do hear different styles praying sometimes in
OM meetings.
We don't want to hit people on the
head for that.
Sometimes we may want to have a chat
with them privately, especially I'm nervous if the
ships, all the range of people on the
ships, start moving into this.
I can just imagine people on the bow
moving the demons away as they move through
the water.
Because one of the greatest stories of some
of these guys is that they've broken the
power of the Bermuda Triangle through this kind
of praying.
The Bermuda Triangle power has been broken.
You should see some of the letters I
have as to why the Lagos sunk.
I'm not going to publish them.
To not think that some of God's people
get into superstition, across basic simple faith, into
superstition, is to be naive.
Someone else?
Chuck Colson.
How much...
I mean this stuff is really good.
I would really like to see that.
We've got so much that's good that's being
pushed.
I think we should move more into being
a little more relevant politically.
Chuck Colson's stuff is great.
I'm just reading another one of his books
now.
The complexity is that Chuck Colson has, even
in the last few weeks, become a major
pusher in the Catholic, Unite with the Catholic
movement.
That's just happened in the States recently.
He's always moved in that direction.
If you read his book The Body, 82
,000 tried originally to work in evangelism with
the Roman Catholic Church.
The meeting in Singapore, the Latin Americans walked
out, and a lot of people did a
lot of thinking, a lot of praying, and
a specific stand of 82,000 was that
Roman Catholics were targets.
Not to cooperate in evangelism, but to be
evangelized.
I understand, I may be wrong on this,
that David Barrett, the man who produces the
big books in statistics, that's when he said,
I think he sort of distanced himself from
82,000.
There's quite a strong feeling that this 82
,000 is too narrow.
I think one of the reasons that Chuck
Colson and others, I think Bill Bright is
tied into it, are moving into more collaboration
with Catholics is, of course, because of the
abortion issue in which we would find ourselves
quite close to Catholics.
Some of those other issues, and of course,
that is tied into the fact that there
is this phenomenal pressure on the church to
be holistic.
I don't think the church has the spiritual
reality to be able to respond positively or
properly to the holistic challenge.
And so, we're finding Christians just running into
trying to do all different kinds of things
instead of finding out their giftedness, where they
fit in, what does God want them to
do.
There's a rushing in, and people are experiencing
burnout, getting glued.
Of course, we've seen what's happened in the
abortion issue with so many in jail and
just so many complexities.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have done that.
To me, it's just a complex issue that
my heart just aches.
But I personally think OM's position is probably
not going to move, and not just because
of me.
I think it's a consensus that the doctrinal
issues connected with Roman Catholicism are too big.
They cannot be put in the area of
peripheral issues that we don't really have to
worry about and just unite on more basic
things.
We do have a lot in common, doctrinally,
with Roman Catholics, but the other areas are
huge.
So that's the latest thing with Colson.
I've been trying to get together with Chuck
Colson, and he's indicated he wants that to
happen.
And he, regardless of this, what I've just
said, will continue to be one of my
heroes without any question, and I will continue
to read his books and follow his material.
And thank God for such a man in
the Church in our day, really.
But we can see some interesting things down
the road.
Sometimes, when we're talking about a particular thing,
we don't think it's relevant.
But if you're involved, like some of you
from the ship, if you're involved in counseling,
with a lot of OM people, you'll discover
that a lot of these things that these
books are talking about and that you're going
to hear during these days are more relevant
than you think because the Church is so
pluralistic.
You've got people, imagine, we have people at
OM coming from fairly tight brethren assemblies, where
the guy who just came from a vineyard
church, if you don't know what vineyard is,
you know, I realize you've probably been out
seeing Muslims converted and not worrying about vineyard.
Praise God.
But you might want to think about it
in the future because John Wimber, the founder
of Vineyard, has moved from his emphasis on
signs, wonders, and miracles, he even said he
doesn't really want to talk about that much
anymore.
He's already talked about it.
If you're interested in that, go read his
book.
His thing is world evangelism and planting churches.
And we have Ed Retta who's in a
vineyard church in Dallas.
I just ministered in a great vineyard church
in Canada about a year or so ago.
So how do we keep this together, these
people coming together?
It's not going to be easy.
And I think that's one of the reasons
we see the need for this kind of
advanced leadership training to sometimes get into issues
that maybe normally we haven't gotten into before.
And I think it's also the reason, one
of the reasons why I believe we need
to more widely read.
Reading Christianity today to me is just basic.
To know what is going on in the
body of Christ.
To get a few Christian magazines, to get
also secular periodicals and magazines and read.
I know we all have our limits.
To me, it's very important.
Someone else?
Anything else before I move on?
I guess I've opened the door to many,
many things, too many things maybe.
Okay, let's pray and then I'll share this
final thoughts.
Lord, I just thank you now that I
can move on from these different areas, all
of which have some degree of relevance into
the heart of what I want to share
tonight.
I don't like that terminology because some of
those other things are just as important.
But you know what I'm trying to pray.
Help us now.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Why has George Verroer become the chair of
the 82,000 track for the mobilization of
new missionaries?
What in fact is 82,000?
Is it relevant?
Where does OM fit into 82,000?
I think this is an important issue since
it looks like there will be more OMers
at Jiko-A in Korea in May of
1995 than almost any other organization in the
world apart from perhaps Youth with a Mission
and maybe one or two others.
Even without my involvement other people around the
world were getting involved.
I got the list of national coordinators of
82,000.
Suddenly discovered this person is responsible for this
area for this country for that country.
We are in this.
Now we're not in it sort of in
a total official sense where we've all taken
a vote and we're all sort of running
down the road.
We're in it in the sense that different
people have gotten involved at different levels.
I guess Dave Hicks was one of the
first to get officially involved.
I around that time also went to one
of their conferences in the Baltic states with
all these Russian pastors from all over mainly
through the invitation of Thomas Wang who's been
a friend for 25 years was really the
spearhead leader.
He's now the chairman and the spearhead leader
is Louise Bush another person that I can
link with.
David Hicks came to us some time ago
at area level talking about all this.
He's on the USA board and said he
felt we should have the area leaders meeting
in May of 95 in Korea.
We usually meet here.
We have been thinking of meeting in other
countries because of some of our globalization concepts.
We're meeting on the ship in November in
Italy.
That will be nice.
Two ships together.
We meet in a lifeboat between the two.
We somehow agreed that we'd all go to
Korea as area leaders.
I guess one thing led to another.
These conversations with different people.
Then I was challenged first by Dave Hicks
to consider being a chairman of this particular
track.
I have never hardly been the chairman of
anything all through these years.
It was a very hard decision.
I discussed it with a lot of people,
especially Peter Maiden, and decided to go for
it.
I then went to Denver to get my
basic orientation, meet some of the people.
I've been working at President ever since.
I would say at President it's certainly not
taking more than three to four percent of
my time.
I try to mix things.
I might write a letter sending this manual,
but the same letter will offer them a
free OM news video, which I send out
by the hundreds all over the world.
We'll have some other enclosures about OM.
We send hundreds of these things out every
week.
It's usually carrying a double thrust.
I think the ultimate decision in this came
because I really believe that this is something
that's on the heart of God.
The church now is so big.
There are so many Christians.
There are so many churches.
We know many of them are struggling.
We know there are two sides.
There are ten sides to every story.
At the same time, if you read some
of the materials, you realize closure is more
possible than ever before.
Did you ever think you'd hear George Furrer
using the word closure?
Probably not, right?
You old timers, you're not old teeny poppers
in here.
I like the word closure.
Ralph and I think I would take up
the theory of Ralph Poynter, this is not
a big thing if you don't agree with
this, that there is a difference between evangelism
and, I would add, and all that involves
building the kingdom and pioneer missions.
Building the kingdom, there's no closure until Jesus
comes.
Evangelism, there's no closure until Jesus comes.
Multiplication of churches, no closure until Jesus comes.
But pioneer evangelism, if we use Ralph's definition,
there's possible closure because it means the establishing
of the church.
We're not in pioneer evangelism in Kent.
Now, it gets more confusing because if there's
a whole load of Gujaratis living in Kent,
you have a pioneer evangelistic situation.
And as we look at people's groups, I
don't know if you understand the whole thing
of people's groups and how complex it is
and how different, you know, even Ralph has
a whole different number than the adopted people
movement.
Franz Caleb, a guy from Norway, I've talked
to him one minute.
I got Ralph on the phone about this.
He actually wrote about it in Frontiers Magazine.
By the way, Frontiers is taking this article.
I'm hoping they're taking the question and answers
as well, but maybe not.
They're going to 120,000 people across the
world.
That's an example of what can happen when
you get in a network.
82,000 is a network.
It's not an organization.
It's obvious that in many countries not that
many people are going to really get with
it, though it may change after Jokowi, but
it's a network.
And the fact that I can take a
tape like how to be a missions mobilizer,
which normally would maybe distribute a few thousand
at the most and get them around maybe
OM, somehow can get into this network and
go out to 500 major leaders across the
world.
Somehow an article that I write in my
attic over Christmas gets in this paper which
doesn't have a very wide circulation.
Next thing I know it's in Spanish.
Next thing I know it's in Ralph Winter's
Frontier Missions magazine, supposedly read by 120,000
people.
This is what can happen through networking.
And now that 82,000 is very much
into email, it's just incredible the information that
you can get a hold of, the names,
the addresses, and the contacts.
And of course one of my greatest burdens
in all this to try to keep things
simple, we want to be an encouragement to
the body of Christ.
The people are there, the churches are there,
to some degree the money is there, but
without massive love and encouragement a lot of
things are never there.
Whether you're talking recruits, you're talking pastors, do
you know how many pastors in the United
States right now are trying to get out
of the ministry?
You're talking thousands.
They want out.
The Southern Baptist went through an earthquake a
couple of years ago that has never settled.
Never settled.
I don't know if you follow that, Colson
talks about it quite openly in his book,
The Body.
And as we go out with our teams,
as we go out in our own ministries,
as we go out with the ships, literature,
with whatever, to me one of the bottom
lines is we want to be an encouragement.
Often when I'm speaking, as I was Sunday
morning, even on a missions conference, my first
thrust isn't missions.
That's there.
My first thrust is to try to, by
the grace of God, encourage the people.
People are sitting in that audience.
They're hurting.
They're contemplating divorce.
They're unemployed.
You just come along and hit them in
the head with a 1040 window.
They don't know what is this about.
And if we come in, still one of
my top ten books is Grace Awakening, with
a grace awakened message sharing our own struggles,
sharing God's grace for weak people, I believe
it will go much, much further.
It's much, much more relevant.
And then, tying the knot.
Tying the knot.
Missions tied together with basic spiritual growth.
I told Louise Bush that I wouldn't come
in to this movement unless I could bring
with me certain other emphases.
And I mentioned this one.
I guess it was on my mind at
that time.
I feel to not have a major thrust
toward purity among God's workers and missionaries, while
at the same time trying to multiply everything
by ten, is counterproductive.
We've got to have both.
There has to be the quality with the
quantity.
In our forward plan, probably you've noticed that
the quality thrust of the forward plan is
80%.
20% is probably quantity.
Still plenty of quantity, especially when you consider
that in OM, a lot of the quantity
is on a national basis.
You never understand OM's forward plan unless you
understand the plans that are taking place in
all these different countries all over the world.
When you put the international forward plan, many
aspects of it, some in print, some not,
with the different national plans that are coming
out as a mile a minute, you might
understand a little bit of what's happening.
So I'm convinced that the movement should align
ourselves with it and take ownership.
What does that mean?
Let's take ownership of these goals.
Two major goals.
The first is the gospel for every person.
That's not such a problem for OM because
it's been our thrust from day one.
We want everybody in the world to have
the gospel.
That means by literature, by radio, personally, by
personal evangelism.
There's no limit.
If you want to read about a bizarre
plan, read about saturation track and Paul Eshelman.
And through 82,000, this man who I
was always quite distant from, who's really one
of Bill Bright's number two people, who's in
charge of the whole Jesus film ministry and
raises all the money, seven, eight million a
year just for Jesus films.
By the way, we just had a go
-ahead through this link, something I've been working
on for a couple of years, that's going
to put tens of thousands of Jesus films
on our ships.
Tens of thousands.
You'll be able to give them out like
books or sell them for a donation.
I don't know what the strategy is.
Not for me to decide that, but Bernd
Kolker just told me a couple of days
ago, it's going to happen.
Why not?
In Canada, they're going to give out Jesus
films door to door.
The rest of the world, you get a
gospel tract and it may be on newsprint.
In Canada, they just gave out this Rolls
Royce evangelistic book, Why Am I on This
Planet by that guy Dirksen.
Almost every door in the nation, the thing
is worth about ten dollars.
At full color.
In this country, they just spent seven million
to give out booklets to everybody's house, even
though the more I talk to different people,
it seems a lot of them never got
delivered.
That was the seven million price tag, minus
the plus.
And now, what's coming behind it is free
video.
At your door.
And this is tied in with what is
called saturation evangelism.
The problem is, when you get to the
masses up there in North India, I think
you're still mainly dealing with tracts and gospels,
and so we'd like to see that change.
And there's no reason why in North India
in the future, if you felt it was
an acceptable strategy, that you couldn't have four
or five thousand Jesus films available in your
little warehouse to just distribute openly.
None of these things is the total answer.
It's all part of the equation.
But the first goal of the 82,000
movement is the gospel for every person.
All the different tracts, and you can read
about the tracts in this manual, are directly
and indirectly tied into that.
The emphasis on the cities, with Viv Gregg,
the emphasis on saturation evangelism, I'm trying to
get tied in also quite a bit with
the mobilization of pastors, and it looks like
this is going to open the door, if
we can see the finance, to getting powerful
material into the hands of pastors all over
the world.
And the number of men in ministry in
India is quite phenomenal.
It's interesting that in our prayer meeting last
night, Marjorie Murphy gets up, XO Emmer, now
the secretary to a man from Africa who's
in charge of the whole worldwide Anglican decade
of evangelism.
Little Marjorie's right in the middle.
She went to this key meeting, I think
she was the only woman in the meeting.
She wasn't even an Anglican actually when she
was down in Atlanta.
I guess maybe she's done some summersaults since
then.
They in September are having, of 95, a
major gathering of their people from all over
the world.
Saral will be leading that meeting.
Saral has his retreats right here in West
Orange.
He's the African.
I just referred to in charge of the
whole Anglican decade of evangelism.
Forgive me for talking too fast.
The amazing thing is what God is doing
in so many different groups and churches and
denominations.
There is a sense that some of it,
well, we don't particularly need to know about
it.
On the other hand, shouldn't we be worried
about working more together?
Shouldn't YWAM and OM be working more together?
We know in some cases it's not practical.
They will agree to that.
Other cases it will be practical.
I know that since taking on this role
with the YWAM or Perry Rickards as my
coordinator, it's drawn me closer to YWAM.
I've been over there to their headquarters in
Harpington.
YWAM is a lot bigger in this country
now.
A lot of Amsterdam has moved to Harpington.
They have this phenomenal facility there and it's
exciting.
I went over there and had some time
also with Lynn Green who is one of
the main leaders of youth with a mission.
Let's move on to the second goal because
the second goal is tough and the second
goal I'm really struggling with.
At present it seems to me really impossible
especially if we're thinking of the year 2000.
That's why they have put the word beyond.
They don't want to get hung up on
a date.
The second goal is the church for every
people's group.
That means a church within walking distance, reasonable
walking distance, different people explain it in different
ways, and every people's group in the world.
One thing that may help you in talking
about thinking about unreached people, sometime we're talking
about peoples and we would put all Wolof
people, all Baluch people, all Uyghur people in
one group.
We're not thinking at that moment geographically.
We're just thinking of this people, all Welsh
people.
They're all over the world but we're thinking
just Welsh people.
Now when you get this big book of
unreached people's group that's not the way they
listed in the book.
Because in the book, we have some copies
of that book put out by the adopted
people movement.
They list linguistic, ethnic, as well as geographic.
What does it mean?
It means that wherever there's a group of
Tunisians there's an unreached people's group.
Tunisians in Paris, unreached people's group.
And as I went through the book it
was very interesting because it's so difficult doing
this.
The book has to be revised every week.
Try to just grasp what's happening in the
world today.
How many cities have little pockets of Bosnians
right now who weren't there two years ago?
Every one of those groups of Bosnians is
an unreached people's group and they need to
be reached.
Bosnians coming to Jesus in Vienna won't necessarily
mean there'll be a church among Bosnians in
Toronto.
Problem?
So when you think of establishing a church
in every unreached people, especially when you think
geographic, it begins to blow your mind.
I might say another one of the reasons
I wanted to align myself with this movement
is because I find that I have such
a great negative streak, a great cynical streak,
that I can find problems almost anywhere and
get myself really discouraged within seconds and I
decided also that I'm fellowshipping with a fair
number of people who seem to have a
similar problem and get memos written by people
who seem to have a similar problem.
I decided that I'd like to fellowship a
little more with some of the optimists.
Amen.
Thank you.
Even if they're naive and foolish.
No problem.
Rub up on you.
So whenever I speak in public I try
to make it clear and I think I
did in my article that when it comes
to the second part, the first part of
course is impossible as well because we have
6,000 million people in the world and
just reaching them all with a gospel is
perhaps bigger than some people might, bigger problem
than some people may think.
By the way, another thing that throws difficulty
in this, no one seems to get an
agreement or it seems to be very hard
to get an agreement on what it means
to be reached.
Even Patrick Johnson is finding this problem in
his amazing book Operation World and anyone who
doesn't have two copies of this as you've
already heard me say is a backslider so
I hope you're contributing.
You can come forward and commit your life.
Please do pray that it will soon be
in French.
German edition is just out in a minute.
Good, we might match you and give you
another 500 free but don't write that down
right now.
It's on the page now.
It's on the page.
But when we come back to the whole
thing of the church and every people's group
and for every people, it is big.
It's a struggle for me.
I'm trying to not say things that are
foolish or that are over the top but
I want to say this.
Isn't it worth aiming for that?
Since we're not saying it's going to be
done January 31st, the year 1999, it's worth
aiming for that and mobilizing the church in
that direction.
What if by the year 2000 we've only
got half the people's groups in the world?
That would be phenomenal.
And if we don't aim at that, it
seems to me it is definitely less likely
it's ever going to happen.
To get, for example, more workers in the
1040 window, more workers among the unreached people
which we know the largest single block group
are Muslims, it is going to take a
lot of shifting.
Even among the young people.
I'm in this church on Sunday.
They're talking about young people going to Argentina.
We don't need more British missionaries in Argentina.
We could use a few Argentinians, red hot
Argentinians in Britain and they're going to come
by the way.
The Brazilians are going to come here.
Because when they're told about Britain and Brazil,
you know how we oversell things as missionaries.
When they're told about Britain and Brazil, this
place sounds really bad.
So the Brazilians are targeting Britain as a
pagan nation.
They say they're going to come here by
the thousands and they're going to then, when
they finish this off, use this as a
launching pad into the 1040 window.
I only heard that recently.
I haven't done my homework on it.
But it sounds exciting.
But if we're going to reach this great
block of people in the 1040 window, which
is one of the main focuses of the
AD2000 movement, there has to be some real
painful shifting of the thinking, of the praying.
I might say for the sake of my
brother Kurian that in most of these meetings
I talk about the Muslims of India because
if there's any block of people in the
world where I feel this movement has not
counted the course, has not realized how far
we have to go, it is the Muslims
of India because we can say 140 million
Muslims more or less and yet the church
is only being born.
Now I always try to bring that into
balance.
Say we know many of these people have
received the word of God.
So the first part of the vision we
could say is moving.
They've had the word of God.
They've seen Jesus films.
They've heard messages.
Many of them have because they're all mixed
in India, they're all mixed together to some
degree.
But planting churches takes more than that level
of exposure.
And right now that particular block of people,
and it's somewhat true in Pakistan and moving
right on westward, we just don't have that.
It's very sobering to some of these people.
I guess this is one of the reasons
they want to embrace OM because they know
that this is our passion, that we could
reach this great block of people.
So though it seems impossible, though we see
the enemy on every side, we're reminded of
the challenge of Caleb and Joshua who somehow
were set free from grasshoppers, I'm sure you've
all preached on that chapter, those of you
who preach.
It's a great sermon place, Caleb and Joshua.
You always get response from that message.
I call it sometimes grasshopper mentality.
Remember the people didn't want to go into
the promised land because they said, we are
as grasshoppers.
But Caleb and Joshua, they decided to aim
high and they went and we know the
story.
So I would encourage you to take ownership
of your own 82,000 vision, to consider
how you can get involved in more missions
mobilization.
Surely we should be seeing more recruits.
I find people are defending the numbers at
Love Europe.
They compare it with last year, but what
happened to the numbers we had in 1989?
Why don't we compare it with 1989?
In 1989, we had many, many, many hundreds
of Americans in Love Europe.
Many hundreds of Americans.
The main group to go to Love Europe,
we mainly want Europeans.
This summer so far we have 40 Americans.
Now we know there are a lot of
other love events.
I know all the different sales talk.
Of course, I am in the middle of
it.
But I believe we could with some changes,
with some steps forward, we could be seeing
a lot more people coming on our Love
Europe and other events.
But we've got to start in the beginning.
The beginning is missions mobilization, recruiting.
Of course, we can go back before that.
We've got to have a forward plan.
We've got to have a strategy.
We've got to have an organization.
We've got to have a structure.
We actually do have some of those things,
by the way.
In fact, I feel that OM has phenomenal
railway tracks.
We have phenomenal structure.
It all means improving, but to have this
phenomenal structure, two ships, XOMers, 80,000 XOMers,
80,000.
They've all got married.
That's 160,000.
Most of them are married.
160,000.
They've all had kids.
There's a quarter of a million just in
the family.
A quarter of a million.
Some of them are only one years old,
and we need to be patient, you know,
before we get them into the 82,000
movement.
But a lot of these XOMers, they never
hear from us.
They never hear from us.
And I see this bigger vision, which isn't
just OM.
It's bigger than OM, and a movement always
needs something that's bigger than itself.
It's something we can feel free to challenge
our XOMers.
Get into it.
Be a mobilizer.
Get the tapes.
Get the materials.
Get to the local meeting.
Get to the conference.
All kinds of events just beginning to mushroom
all over the world.
And for us, a movement of our ethos,
to sort of sit back because some things
there we don't like.
Sit back because somebody's got some rhetoric or
vocabulary or reading a book that we don't
think that's not where OM is.
OM is visionary.
OM is, we're risk-takers.
We're ready to fellowship with Peter Wagner.
We'll fellowship with his grandmother.
We'll fellowship with Louise Bush.
And I think we've got to somehow agree
to disagree and lock hands and lock hearts
with our brothers and sisters in this movement.
It is evangelical.
It is focused.
It is also broke.
Which, of course, that's the OM ethos.
I'm excited about it.
Well, thank you very much for listening to
all that.
Now we need to open for some questions.
It's a network and everybody has to find
their own money.
I am, at present, trying to find money
for my particular track.
The way I do it at present is
I give Perry Rickards hundreds and hundreds of
copies of Operation World.
He sells them and keeps the money.
Sold five hundred to the ship at a
discount.
Not paid for one of the first major
mailings and our particular track, I think, is
at least one or two years behind some
of the other tracks.
For Jikoe, they have a strategy to raise
money.
In other words, for the Korean Congress, where
they're expecting five thousand people, they have a
definite strategy for raising money.
They realize that is their responsibility.
Korean Church is probably the number one pay
setting church in the 82,000.
In fact, they have, instead of 10 or
15 tracks, 10 tracks is 82,000 approximately,
I think they have 50 tracks.
They will run simultaneously next to this international
Congress.
By the way, they're paying all the room
and board for all people from the two
thirds world.
Not people like us, but people from, say,
Argentina, from the Congo.
We got to find our own money.
That's another major mountain, but we're going to
be taking meetings on Sunday morning in Korean
churches some of us.
Some of you probably heard that for network,
the Koreans were the first group to just
put some money in the network.
They brought 4,000 with them and another
1,000 for Momentus.
Everybody went to network because it was a
little Korean momentum that was given to us
at the dinner.
Pastor Oak was there as the chairman of
our board.
Pastor, one of the largest churches in Korea,
he's just knit with us.
I'll be speaking probably in his church Sunday
morning when I'm there.
Korea, it's exciting and they have a definite
financial strategy for Korea, but everybody else is
sort of on their own.
Every time I get a chance to get
on my feet and I'm going to be
one of the speakers at the pre-Chikohe
event.
I'll be speaking at Chikohe at our track.
This is something we need prayer for because
a large segment of time in Chikohe we're
meeting in our tracks and I'm the chairman
of that.
You've got to get a program.
You probably also know Frank Fortunato is in
charge of music for Chikohe.
Bill Drake is probably going to be there,
but we have to put a very powerful
program together for our different tracks and there
will be meetings also according to nationality.
It's around the 27th of May 1995.
I don't have those exact dates memorized, but
I can get them easy enough.
They may be in here.
As I was saying, whenever I get a
chance to get on my feet, I really
speak to them about development.
Again, it's amazing how people can be so
visionary and have terrific philosophy and often lack
the nuts and bolts side.
The thing of fundraising, somehow the Lord has
taught us a lot in these past years
through the many different methods we've used over
the years.
I am convinced God wants to bring in
big money for the community.
I really believe for this mission mobilization, God
wants to give $100 million equivalent.
I'm not talking OM at this point, but
if we're going to think and pray big
as AD2000 does, we have to think big
money.
Otherwise, it's ridiculous.
Again, I find myself getting so discouraged because
it all seems so impossible, but at other
moments I just get so filled with faith.
I believe it's going to happen, but I
go forward in much weakness and much inadequacy.
After you read this and you read some
of the other materials available, I think you'll
have far more of the heartbeat of what
God is doing.
Phenomenal things in Africa.
You cannot forget Africa.
Africa is just exploding, yet we can be
such a blessing with materials, with catalysts, with
some degree of mentoring.
They also can mentor us.
Latin America is exploding.
Many parts of Asia are exploding.
What can we say about China?
To me, I'm sort of pioneering to put
Operation World into Mandarin Chinese.
People think it's a bit crazy.
Why should we leave millions of believers out
of the picture?
Because they supposedly can't pay for it, or
we can't get the capital to finance it.
I'm praying for the money to finance the
Chinese edition of Operation World.
Now, we may end up compromising and only
produce children's Operation World.
That's a lot easier, though.
It's going very slowly right now.
It's amazing how the enemy is constantly there.
All of you know this in your work.
The enemy is just constantly there.
That's one thing for me to talk here.
It's another thing to go out tomorrow and
do it, and deal with the problems, and
get on the phone, and sort things out.
It's not an easy road.
Someone else?
Yeah.
I got a couple of invitations to go
to Chicoy, and I got two questions, two
problems.
One, all those tracks, there's naturally cities, and
I don't remember which city.
And the question that goes with it, is
it really worth it to go there for
that, or all the thing that I'm doing
for AD2000 and Vision 2000 Canada that I
worked before and worked after.
I'm really questioning if I should go there
for those few days to be involved in
this international thing of talking about cities, or
should I be in another track?
I think it's a good question, and it
brings to the surface a very important issue.
Of what value are these big events?
This is where I was Congress question, 25
or more years ago, and I was struggling
personally.
This is OM just being born.
I said, look, we got to have somebody
there.
I think I have somebody, Greg Livingston, to
go to Berlin.
Then, Lausanne, and I was still struggling with
all the money.
We have different ideas of how money should
be used.
I was asked to take a little seminar
in Lausanne on literature, and I went, and
I remember Dr. Schaefer, he was playing a
vital role, John Stott.
I got bucksing to meet with Dr. Schaefer.
We had a little night of prayer.
We got kicked out of the room, but
I came away from Lausanne studying these big
events, absolutely convinced the Evangelical Church needs these
events.
Lausanne is specifically stepping into the backseat to
some degree.
I just talked to one of the head
men to let AD2000 take the lead in
terms of evangelism.
They're still in evangelism, but for now they
see AD2000 as they seem to be the
shakers and the movers.
WEF, World Evangelical Fellowship, it sounds great, they've
got lots of strong points and weak points.
They also are sort of rolling with the
punches.
Though there is some complexity in these different
movements on a national level, definitely there is
the sense that Chikohe is the event for
this decade.
There will be no Lausanne.
This is it.
If this were to happen in every year
I'd say no.
But it's once in a decade.
This is going to be a mid-decade
event.
Also, if we think it's a lot of
money to do this conference, then I think
we ought to quit trying to evangelize the
world because this congress is a drop in
the ocean next to the money we need.
Now, that's hard for some people to swallow,
especially the small-minded types.
Brothers and sisters, we have got to see
the releasing of hundreds of millions to evangelize
the world so Chikohe can come there to
get our act together.
It's going to be a working congress, not
just a pet paw.
Be with our Korean brothers and sisters.
They just had the world parliament on religion,
a total cocktail, demon worshippers gathered together with
the liberal Anglicans.
A wild thing if you read about that.
The National and World Council of Churches, they
have their big bonanzas.
Is the evangelical church somehow going to turn
inward and not be willing to have any
international events where God can weld us together
more?
Also, one of the things I noticed about
Lassonde is that people on the periphery of
the evangelical movement, by going to Lassonde, getting
in touch with people like David Schaefer, then
there was the Manila Lassonde too, it changes
their lives.
Now, there are certain people, they don't need
these big events.
It probably wouldn't hurt them to go.
There are other people that these kind of
events are crucial for them.
Personally, I think, Andre, if you possibly can,
that you should be at this event, especially
since your area leader is really the pioneer
of 82,000 into OM.
But it means you're going to have to
cut some other things out.
It means also you've got to have people
that you can delegate, faithfully delegate to in
Quebec so you don't feel that another two
weeks away, you're going to come back to
the disintegrated work.
It's all a battle.
Don't misunderstand what I'm saying as I share
these things.
What's our timing here?
We have zero minutes left.
No problem for me, but I don't know.
Let's have time for a few more questions.
Yes?
The letter that was sent out to Australia
and myself about this and asking if we
would get involved in these replies by the
end of February, we actually received it in
the beginning of May.
I think it went to CMAIL.
Did that come from Parry Records?
Yeah.
I wouldn't worry about the dating on it.
I'm sorry about that, why they sent it
to CMAIL.
I'm just beginning to try to figure out
how they're doing some of these things.
I know that they have their ideals as
to when the people are going to be
applying, but it is certainly not too late
to apply.
The whole process is very complex.
Good.
Well, you don't have so far to go.
Any other questions?
I see at least two of you here
from the ship ministry.
This is another interesting thing.
With our two ships we have a range
of friends and contacts across the world that
are phenomenal.
Do you know how little we do with
these people that we leave behind when we
sail away?
In many of these countries, I mean, let's
face it, if they get a letter, if
they get a thank you letter, they will
be mighty happy.
The very momentum of the ship ministry and
the intensity of it means we need follow
-up.
I see the 82,000 movement as something
that is going to help follow up on
when the ship is down.
Some of these people get to Jokowi and
they meet us there and might even be
able to have some kind of reunion for
people that have been linked with the ship.
There's not many things apart from Billy Graham,
I can name a few other things, that
have the international friendship as our two ships,
where people have been on the ship.
There's some sense of bonding.
Other things are very much on a national
level.
In California it would be Charles Lindahl and
somewhere other place it would be someone else.
There are people in most countries that have
a more in-depth input than we do,
but on a wide sweep international OM just
has an amazing range of contacts, friends, converts,
and 82,000 Jokowi and all that comes
after that.
This thing moves national and moves regional.
I just think it has a lot of
possibilities.
OM is not getting any less wilder.
It is getting wilder.
I have more work than ever, more relationships
than ever, more paper than ever, more memos
than ever, more responsibilities than ever, more team
members than ever, but God's grace is sufficient.
My wife has just come through a major
time and taken care of my father for
two months who flew off yesterday, so we're
encouraged about that.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you for this movement that
you've raised up.
We thank you for Louise Bush.
We thank you for Paul Cedars.
We thank you for John Richards of India,
another one of the major leaders, Thomas Wang
of Chinese background.
We thank you for all the Koreans shaking
and moving in this thing.
We thank you for people from different nations.
We pray for Europe that seems to be
the most behind when it comes to this
particular movement, except perhaps here in Britain.
We think, Lord, of the tie-in with
the Dawn movement, the tie-in with Lausanne
and WEF, the tie-in with the Jesusville
movement, the tie-in with Patrick Johnson and
the adoptive people movement.
We thank you for thousands and thousands of
network tie-ins all over Africa and Latin
America, Comey, Baum, and many other things.
Lord, we do believe in many ways we're
living in the most exciting time in history.
As, Lord, the race increases, the gamble also
increases, the problems, Lord, as we know, many,
many enemies, from raw paganism to fundamentalistic Islam
to lukewarmness among your people.
We're not unaware of the enemies.
We haven't focused on that tonight, 45 enemies
of AD 2000.
But, Lord, we try to somehow think positively
and believe that we could see everybody in
the world being given the gospel by the
year 2000 and at least a long way
forward in planting a church among every peoples.
Give us wisdom and balance as we go
forward together.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Amen.