Let's turn to Matthew chapter 9, a very
familiar territory.
Matthew chapter 9, I want to share something
that's really on my heart for the whole
body of OM.
The conferences are shorter, the opportunities I have
to share are naturally less, so some of
the tapes that I make here and the
messages I share here that go out all
over the world are my only way of
being able to share to the whole body
of OM that which is on my heart.
And I want to share this burden about
a strategy for workers, a strategy for recruits.
How can we get the recruits for world
missions that we need, not only for the
OM burden and vision that God has given
us, but for other missionary agencies.
Reading from Matthew 9, Jesus went about all
the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues,
preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing every
sickness and every disease among the people.
When he saw the multitudes, he was moved
with compassion on them because they were faint
and were scattered abroad as sheep having no
shepherd.
Then said he unto his disciples, the harvest
truly is plenteous, but the workers are few.
Pray he therefore, the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth laborers into his
harvest.
It's very easy to talk about the recruit
situation.
It looks like the number of recruits for
the year program may be down.
We don't know.
Back doors on both ships are wide open
and people are coming in very quickly.
There are so many different recruiting arms in
OM, so much happening, no one knows all
that's going on.
Now even our European conferences represent less of
a percentage of all that's happening within OM.
It used to be that at one of
the conferences you could get a pretty big
picture of all that was happening.
Now with one ship in Canada, another ship
in Africa, with the size of the India
work, with the rapid growth in South America,
when we go to the conference we're only
seeing part of what's happening in OM.
Needless to say, there is an enormous need
in God's work for workers.
I think one of the beautiful things and
great privileges we have in OM is to
be as excited about other people's ministries to
some degree as we are about our own.
Our burden for workers is not just to
get workers for OM.
It is to get workers for the overall
work of God.
I have quite a few people come to
me now and write to me.
They say, God really touched me through your
ministry and I've joined YWAM.
Hallelujah!
And far more people that have been touched
in the OM ministry have never joined OM
than have joined OM.
You need to realize that.
OM's main thrust isn't to get people to
join OM.
Many people, when they are spoken to by
God's Spirit, are led to remain where they
are.
They're not led to join some training program.
Let's not think, you know, OM or whoever
else is the only way to train disciples.
The local church is still one of God's
best ways to train disciples.
I'm in the midst of reading a very
thick book just published on eldership in the
local church.
And again, I've just been reminded of what
God is doing and how much more God
wants to do in that sphere.
This means we cannot measure, you know, all
that's happening through our ministry by the number
of people.
We are, I've always said this in the
Western world, neurotic about numbers.
God is still big on quality, and I'm
sure you realize that.
On a practical level, what can we do?
You may say, and I'd appreciate you writing
a few of these things down, because I
have, what can, ask yourself this question, what
can I do as an individual to recruit
for OM?
And let's be really blunt, really honest, if
we don't see some breakthroughs in recruits, certain
sections of OM will have to close.
We are not afraid to close things down.
If you want a list right back from
the 60s of things we have closed down,
I could draw one up, because we have
that flexibility and adaptability.
We don't want monuments, and we know that
we cannot move ahead without people, and to
some degree, the right people.
And one of the greatest dangers right now,
you know, I'm in the area of recruits,
is we presume someone else is doing the
recruiting.
That is the big mistake, and especially dangerous
in a day when our leaders have been
thrust with more administrative responsibilities.
The very day that budgeting came in, the
very day that democracy, in a sense, got
on the increase, we were never sort of
anti-democracy, but there have been changes in
OM.
Many of them have been good, but it
has increased the administrative load on many of
our leaders at a time when also their
families were growing, when at times also very
strong messages were coming on us, like ordering
your private world and taking care of your
family, in which men had to pull back
from some of the work, take less meetings,
including myself, and give themselves to other things.
So a dangerous presumption is that someone else
is doing the recruiting.
Now we know the bottom line in getting
recruits is found here in Matthew 9.
Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that
he will send forth workers into the harvest.
And I believe this prayer burden should come
in to as many of our prayer meetings
as possible.
It should be a vital part of our
own personal devotions.
I don't think there's anything wrong with having
lists of people.
I've heard all the anti-messages.
You know, I'm always listening to anti-messages.
There's nothing that we can do that someone
doesn't have an anti-message about.
I just listened to a real heavy message
on prayer from a particular character.
I mean, he just knocked out all kinds
of things that, I think, have a place
in prayer.
I know they get off balance.
Lists get out of control.
And, you know, with a lack of burden
and real spirit, we're just going through a
grocery list.
That doesn't have to happen.
You can have a list of names.
You can have other ways of remembering people
and praying for their basic spiritual life.
Praying that they'd be willing to go into
the harvest somewhere overseas if the Lord would
lead on the basis of this passage of
Scripture.
Don't just pray vague prayers that the Lord
would send workers.
Pray for churches, that they would be sending
churches.
And do be involved in distributing that book,
Ten Sending Churches, because unless we see sending
churches, it's going to be hard to see
the individuals sent out into the harvest field.
How shall they go?
How shall they preach?
Romans chapter 10, unless they'd be sent.
If the first keyword is prayer, then the
second keyword is share.
Recruiting is often a grassroot operation.
Do not think that I walk into some
big meeting and walk out of there with
recruits.
I may have in that meeting 200 people
that make a commitment, that stand to ask
Christ to be Lord of their life.
And if I get one or two OM
recruits out of that, that would be good.
Life isn't that way.
These people, when they recommit their life to
Christ in my meetings, or they're filled with
the Spirit, or they make a commitment, don't
automatically think, oh, now I should join OM.
Some people, when I speak, don't even connect
me with OM.
And so, if we're going to recruit for
OM, it's not something that George Verwer is
just going to do, or even Jonathan McCroskey,
or other leaders who take a lot of
me, it's a grassroot operation.
And our surveys, which are not complete, show
that the biggest thing leading other people to
come on OM is a friend who has
been on OM.
Remember that.
And not necessarily a hyper-gifted person, not
necessarily someone who had a perfect time on
OM, not necessarily a person who is even
a hyper-gifted communicator.
Friendship is a very important thing.
Prayer is first, share is second.
Sharing with your friends.
It may be a letter, it may be
a phone call, it may be a postcard,
it may be a tape.
We don't begin to use cassette tapes the
way we could.
They're down to 30 pence a tape for
a 60-minute tape.
And just think of what it would mean
to a friend of yours to get a
tape with you and maybe two or three
of your friends.
An ad-hoc tape.
We make a big mistake if we think
it's sophisticated audio-visuals that bring people into
Christian work.
Forget it.
That can be used.
You put together your own little ad-hoc
audio-visual tape, you and your friend, and
get the dog to bark, and share what
God is doing.
You send that to your friends, to your
church.
That is going to cut more ice often
than some sophisticated 25,000-pound audio-visual.
Even in university campuses lately, this started some
time ago, they discovered that university students were
more prone to read a mini-graph, duplicated,
photocopied sheet about some revolutionary thought than something
that had glossy pictures.
Things change.
There's the place for the lovely leaflet with
glossy pictures, but there's a place also for
something that you put together.
Of course, that doesn't mean you should throw
quality down the tube.
For sure, I've written here, your own life,
of course, is the greatest weapon that God
can use to touch other people.
You may not understand what I'm going to
try to say at this point, but I
believe there is a danger, however, to overemphasize
this.
Quite a few messages that I've heard, and
some of the books I've read over the
years, they overemphasize quality of life to the
point that anybody that doesn't feel they really
are some kind of mini-Andrew Murray, really
feels quite intimidated about really doing anything.
And one of the reasons I sometimes speak
so openly about my problems, and failures, and
sins, is to just bring into balance a
lot of the messages that give the idea
that the Christian leaders really have it all
together, because I tell you, they didn't.
And the biographers, when those biographies were written,
did not write on negative things, and they
certainly never touched on the sex issue.
And sometimes even the whole Hudson Taylor story,
beautifully brought into balance a little bit by
Hudson Taylor and Maria, a later biography, that
managed to get a little bit of reality
into it.
So don't think, you know, until you have
your life sort of all together, and you're
Mr. Holiness or Miss Holiness, and you've got
the one-hour prayer time under one arm,
and the power and witnessing on every corner,
and the track distribution machine going, and total
love for all of your enemies, and the
other 68 areas of spiritual reality that eventually
you hear something about in OM, and other
groups, you can't really be used.
I will tell you, in some cases, people
I've seen used in recruiting, were people actually
eased out of OM, because they didn't have
their act together.
Now that doesn't happen to that many people,
but it's amazing who God uses in this
area of recruiting.
And all of us can be involved, and
it's so exciting when someone you've witnessed through,
someone you've shared with, gets excited about God,
comes on OM, and launches out into Christian
service, simply because you've given a bit of
yourself.
Love, of course, is number one, and it's
one of my greatest burdens, as you know,
that we may be a more loving fellowship.
You know something?
Things I said years ago that challenged people
in OM, I can say the same thing
today, people get defensive.
We're very defensive at times in OM.
Someone accuses us of lack of love, or
someone says, hey, you know, you're lacking a
little bit in your hospitality, you're lacking a
little bit in your care of your vehicles,
you're lacking this, you know, get really defensive.
I know, I've done it.
And I have to be five times more
careful what I say.
I mean, as I go over to speak
it to the OM leaders next week, I
say, I can't get away with saying things
I said 20 years ago.
They'll have me in the loo at the
end of the meeting.
You've got to go with steaming, and you've
got to go telling them how wonderful they
are, and how great everything's going, and then
slowly bring in the hand grenade with, you
know, covered with chocolate, and throw it in,
and run.
Someone said to me some time ago, give
us the old-fashioned Verwer messages.
But if you give one, and it happens
to touch one of their raw nerves, often
they don't come and talk to you about
it.
They talk to somebody else about it.
And the lack of sensitivity, and, you know,
what's, didn't Verwer get enough sleep last night?
Is his hostility factor running loose again?
Probably the hostility factor was a factor in
some of those early messages.
But we do want, by God's grace, to
demonstrate more of his love.
And that costs, that costs.
I've just written a few other things here
as I watch the clock.
We just need to go through them quickly.
I think of how God does use letters.
You know, I'm getting the feedback that, that
quite a few members now in the evenings,
I think this was from another country actually,
probably happens here, but there are quite a
few members in the evening just sitting around
watching TV.
You know, TV was not even allowed up
to a couple years ago.
I don't think it's even officially yet allowed
in, among the single trainees, but it's there.
And I don't think any of us have
the energy to fight it.
I think we've got to learn to live
with it.
But I, it just blows my mind if
young, filled with energy people are spending excess
of hours sitting around watching television.
Because let me just tell you, I've already
run the race 32 years.
I might be able to afford, people are
trying to urge me to sit around a
little more.
I have rumors out, of course, that George
Burr watches television, and of course I do.
The amount of total time at the end
of the year, I will tell you, it
would be very, very small.
And I'm not against you watching some television,
but that little machine can rob you of
time.
You can't generally write letters when you're doing
it.
It's hard to talk on the phone when
you're watching.
I've tried that.
You know, when you're young, you're just, you're
just starting in your ministry.
You have to break the inertia.
I have broken the inertia in my life.
My life is half past.
You are just laying the foundation in your
life.
That takes more effort.
When I arrived at Moody Bible Institute, I
had been to Mexico once.
No one was planning to go back with
me to Mexico.
Dale had left and gone to Wheaton.
We didn't know whether we'd ever see each
other again.
I had to start from zero.
And of course, this is why I became
perhaps so extreme.
This is why there was nothing hardly in
my life, except the vision, the work, letters,
phone calls, meetings, slides, etc., etc., etc.
And there's a danger in OM today.
You must understand this.
You may not think it.
OM does too much for you.
You actually think you're joining an organization and
basically the organization is taking care of you.
They provide the accommodation.
They arrange for the food.
They, you know, you walk in, how about
a car?
And, you know, literature.
And one of the reasons that I became
what I became is because I had to
do it all myself, cast upon God.
Of course, and soon I had people.
But those people that you win, the very,
you know, when I got one brother, two
brothers, five brothers in total of us that
went to Mexico that next summer.
Hours with each one of those persons.
Hours, many, many hours.
Many, many letters to the original board that
I was trying to get going in New
Jersey.
The people that were supporting and giving their
money.
Do you think those people would have given
their second gift if they never heard from
me after they gave their first one?
And back then, OM was zero.
It was nothing.
We were only just giving it a name.
And in your life, we don't want to
rob you of the privilege of pioneering.
And that's not easy when there is now
such a structure and such an establishment and
such a mentality.
And this is a great burden on my
heart.
We need to see the spirit and vision
of OM born again in each person, each
year.
Stop thinking the machinery is going to produce
the people.
We know we need some top quality people
in STL.
In God's work, you don't just put a
coin in the executive recruiting machine and expect
them to walk in the door.
There are many things about a spiritual movement
that are basically obnoxious to worldly minded people.
And the way the world operates is by
salary, by perks, by money, by homes, by
a lot of interesting things.
I don't know how much you've studied.
And in our work, we have got to
see a work of the Holy Spirit in
people's hearts.
And if, I tell you, we have opened
doors in the university, we have opened doors
even among professional people, but it takes work.
And it takes that extra letter, that extra
phone call, that extra turning away often from
what you want to do to that which
can bring results for the kingdom of God.
For some, as you go on in more
regular recruiting, if you have a gift in
that area, increasing your communication skills can be
an enormous help.
You know, I'm on the phone with the
man who's in charge of the Dale Carnegie
Foundation work and lining up a public speaking
course.
I'd love to put some people through that
because it's very hard to learn public speaking
among Christians.
They won't tell you what you're doing wrong.
We are not courageous in confronting people about
their communication weaknesses.
My brother communicated very poorly here some weeks
ago, and praise God for a leader who
had the courage to take him in the
side room and talk to him about his
communication right here.
But not many people have that courage, and
so we flounder on.
And this is why sometimes a secular communication
course like Carnegie's or somebody else's can help
us.
I'm speaking there now more of a person
who is a public speaker and a public
communicator.
It's interesting that I've recommended Carnegie's book, How
to Win Friends and Influence People, in the
leadership manual, yet probably less than 50%
of the leaders today have ever read it.
It's just a basic book.
Every Christian ought to be able to do
better than that book.
He robbed it from the New Testament, secularized
it, put it back to us and made
millions.
It's one of the highest, fastest-selling books
in history.
Of course, some Christians, you know, written by
non-Christians.
What can we learn from non-Christians?
It's interesting that if you discover who are
the Christian leaders in the world today, you
discover most of them have learned quite a
bit from non-Christians.
Most of them have studied at secular universities
and colleges.
There are plenty of beautiful exceptions.
Another thing that will help us in the
ongoing task in recruiting, and please slip out
early if you have to go, is to
avoid negative statements about the work, especially in
general public.
I don't have a total answer to this
because I'm not totally against people making negative
statements.
We want to be honest.
I've written right here.
How do we keep this in balance?
But let me just tell you, the stuff
we may say under pressure, that's negative say
about STL, ultimately bounces back and keeps us
from getting the people we want.
That's why many months ago, when there was
a lot of negative vibrations going out, it
takes any negative vibration that goes out of
Brownlee, take two years to get it back,
you know, recover.
Just go.
And the word can get out.
We saw this in a number of teams.
Even within OM, the word gets out, hey,
don't go on that team.
The word was out, hey, don't go to
Danzig Street.
Women are being mugged in the streets.
It's a lousy accommodation, blah, blah, blah.
We had trouble getting people to go to
Danzig Street.
Now the Quinta image is basically positive.
Wow, fresh air, nice place.
That doesn't mean the recruits will be parachuting
out of the trees.
Boy, did you see the way those Marines
parachuted the other day?
That was pretty good.
Anyway, I hope we will understand the importance
of being careful about what we say.
Let's not hang all of our dirty laundry
out in the street to waive it to,
you know, the people that go by because
it creates negative impressions.
Now, OM is continually battling negative impressions.
I just read a letter from a brother
in Asia, said a major Christian leader is
out there in Singapore just taking heavy pop
shots again at short-term work.
For some, short-term is synonymous with OM.
You know that?
Say short-term OM.
And of course, they don't understand that OM
is both.
And boy, I tell you, there's a lot
of people that would be on OM today,
humanly speaking, if it wasn't for some of
the negative stuff, some of which is not
true.
Other items, if they were brought into balance,
they'd be on OM today.
Greater use of literature.
We have so much literature that God can
use.
And we continue to hear of cases of
people that came on OM or got involved
in missions because of one piece of literature.
It's not always a big thick book like
Operation World, though we're certainly excited about that.
Sometimes it's just one page, because I tell
you today, the average young person is not
reading.
Don't think the average person is reading Operation
World.
The average young person is listening, maybe to
Amy Grant, maybe to Keith Green.
They may read a one-page tract or
leaflet with pictures geared to them.
And we have to fight.
I don't know if you heard my tape
on keeping OM youthful.
They are absolutely basic principles.
If we fail to work toward keeping OM
youthful to varying degrees, and that is not
firstly linked with age.
It's linked with adaptability.
It's linked with flexibility.
It's linked with willingness to change.
It's linked with staying plugged in to where
this generation is.
It's a pluralistic generation.
And so there's scope for all kinds of
people, conservatives, liberals, anti-music, music.
There's plenty of scope.
This is why I read many different youth
magazines and try to listen to young people.
And to me, it's exciting that we, some
of us who are older now, have the
privilege of being involved with young people, using
literature, linking people up.
Wayne shared with me the other day, a
girl who wanted to come on OM, she
wrote to the Quinta Watch.
She got a negative, right?
Because she was interested in a particular field.
She got some kind of a negative.
We got on the phone.
Guess where that girl is right now?
She's out in that field.
And you know, don't be intimidated, and don't
let the person you're trying to recruit be
intimidated by the machinery or by the structure.
If they don't get through, you know, they
get a letter back saying, well, we don't
think, you know, it'll be possible.
I mean, now, where leaders used to handle
a lot of this, now it's directors of
personnel.
Some directors of personnel are new.
They're not necessarily gifted recruiters.
They may be administrators.
And so we got to realize that personal
linking.
And I will tell you, if you know
a recruit, and you think a phone call
or a letter from me would bring them
on OM, you'd better get their name and
address to me real quick.
Because, you know, that's my bread and butter.
That's my sleep, dream, wake up recruits.
You know, when I'm jogging, if I see
a potential recruit, you know, I stop and
go.
Well, I have a couple other words.
I know I'm over time.
This is going to produce, I hope, some
results for STL, so they'll be happy.
Sanctified imagination.
Spreading the overall vision.
There are times when we're specifically recruiting.
There are other times, just spreading the overall
vision.
God will bring in the workers.
You don't have to have heavy-handed, manipulative
type of recruiting.
We don't want that.
Spread the vision.
Share the need.
On the other hand, a specific challenge is
one of the best ways to get recruits.
Don't tell somebody, you know, God has given
me a word of the Lord for you.
You know, I got this word for you.
You're to go on OM.
Hey, we don't want that.
But, brother, I think you ought to really
pray about going OM.
You may want to even say a particular
field.
I challenge people to join the ships.
I think people are screwing in the head
not to consider joining those ships.
It is an open door of the century
to be able to live one or two
years on a ship, traveling around the world,
seeing different people, evangelizing, serving Christ.
The fact that more people can't get excited
about this proves that this is a generation
with generally low blood pressure and general lack
of vision and lack of spirit of adventure.
And it just, it amazes me.
So don't be afraid to give people something
specific to pray about.
You don't say, God told me.
But you just share it because people need
a specific challenge.
Be sensitive to what the Holy Spirit is
saying.
Some people need to be actually urged to
stay at home, to be a sender, to
get more rooted in their local church, not
to immediately join OM.
We actually prefer people to have a year
after conversion at least in being grounded before
they come on OM.
Winning pastors, elders, missionary committee chairman, these key
people, writing them, encouraging them, it means all
the difference in the world.
One of our main ministries in ICT is
maintaining relationships with pastors, Christian leaders all over
the world.
I tell you, I don't like to use
the expression, but I'll use it anyway.
It pays big dividends.
You get one pastor, one group of elders
in a church excited and linked with you,
answer their questions.
They all have questions.
Believe me, you may see a steady stream
of recruits coming from that church for 20
years.
We've seen it again and again.
And then I think we need to realize
God doesn't want us to be sectarian.
And in our own thinking, we need to
praise the Lord when someone whose life we
touch joins some other fellowship or some other
group.
I don't think we should groan that maybe
we had a few less short term in
OM this summer.
I think the overall numbers counting Latin America
and all the other places is probably about
the same.
Because in fact there are more people, as
far as we can see, out serving Christ
this summer short term than ever before in
history.
Our bigger burden should be how to channel
more of those people long term.
But even as we think of that, let's
not just think in terms of Anglo-Saxon
missions.
We may have less foreigners in India than
ever before, but we have a similar number
of Indians, and we have many that seem
to want to join.
We can't even handle them all.
And so God is working in many, many
different ways.
And in the midst of the battle, in
the midst of some of the setbacks and
the heartbreaks, when we don't get a particular
person we're praying for, or we find ourselves
short staffed, which has generally been true in
the history of missions.
And we are aligned with mission rather than
with the executive corporation down in the center
of London.
And they have enormous staff problems as well.
So in an age of 10% or
more unemployment, there's no problem getting bodies.
But getting quality, committed people is another story.
Let's pray.
Father, we just thank you for this opportunity
to think together about this all-important issue.
And right now we pray, O God, Lord
of the harvest, send forth laborers into STL,
into ICT, into the ships, out to India
and the subcontinent, into greater Europe and Europe,
into OM, into YWAM, into UCCF, into WEC
and CLC and BMMF, into Overseas Missionary Fellowship,
into child evangelism, into these different radio ministries,
into other literature ministries.
Raise up armies to get into these Bible
colleges and get some necessary training.
Raise them up out of the universities.
Raise up those who are willing to work
behind the scenes, such a crisis at this
time.
Raise up those who are willing to go
out and pioneer church planting among the unreached
people.
And keep us of one heart and of
one mind as we go.
Lord, deliver us from anything less than the
best in our own lives.
Help us to control things that are robbing
us of time.
Maybe it's television.
Maybe it's excessive recreation.
Maybe it's idle talk.
Maybe it's too much sleep.
Maybe it's too much food.
Maybe it's something else.
Lord, you know that in these things we
never find perfect balance.
The struggle is endless.
And we thank you that great vision and
great faith and great accomplishment is not in
the absence of struggle and questions, even doubts.
But it's as we battle through together, based
on your Word, praying to you that you
would do the work.
And Father, we just thank you for the
amount of energy and strength that you're giving
us in this work.
We think of this whole area of pastoral
care and caring for those who are in
preparation and who already are on OM.
That they may be able to make it
through to that second year.
That they may be able to make it
through to join a mission society.
We know this is a whole area which
is so absolutely strategic.
And Father, when we think of it, we
don't want to be overwhelmed.
But we want to be challenged to go
the extra mile.
To be willing to pay the price in
prayer, in discipline, in letter writing, in phoning,
in sharing, in opening our lives, in increasing
our communication skills.
We ask you to give us strength as
we go forward in these things.
In Jesus name, Amen.