In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of tailoring the message of the word of God to different cultures. He mentions the Prosperity Code and extremism in America, contrasting it with the mentality in India where the focus is on accomplishing the work without seeking credit. The speaker also discusses the tension between Mr. Hard Work and Mr. Work is Hard, highlighting the need for teamwork and allowing others to share in speaking. Lastly, he mentions the importance of consolidation and prioritizing goals in order to avoid unnecessary stress and tension.

I'm dealing with tensions between different types of people. A leader is a peacemaker. Most of you probably will go back to your team even now and they'll be some peacemakers. Little Paul from Carolina and little Isis from Ethiopia have had an argument, or something. And you're going to go back there and you're going to have to make peace. One of the key ministries that we need to have is building up one brother so that another brother can accept it and understand it. Have something good you can say about everybody. And say it at the right time. Often individually. Appreciation. Commendation. But you have different kinds of team members. Some of you know the chapters, Tudor, Discipleship, and the book Revolution of Love and Balance. I wondered when a lot of my books went up in the fire. Did they? Yeah, a lot of them went up in the fire. Well, they're really hot, those books. Maybe you started the fire. They're not that hot. But you know the different people in the little book with Pseudo-Discipleship. You know, Miss Manhunter and Mr. Slow and Mr. Doublestandard and other people. So I developed some other Mr. and Miss concepts in regard to people. And the kinds of people that are hard to get them together. And some of you may marry one of these persons, and I'm about to tell you that. That will prove to be especially interesting. And so again, my message this morning will help people going into marriage as well as relationships on the team. First of all, there's building peace and helping Mr. Quick and Mr. Slow. You probably have some of those on your team. Mr. Quick, out of bed at five in the morning, usually with a bit of noise. And he's, you know, he's shaved in about three minutes. He's into his Bible. He's ready for breakfast a half an hour or an hour later. He prepares the breakfast quickly, eats it quickly, and he's ready to go. Mr. Slow has spent that moment very, very well on his bed. To see if the morning light has yet peered through the window. And you get these two people on your team. Mr. Quick easily feels he is more spiritual. He's got his verses. Whatsoever you do, do it quickly. And he can begin to think that this other brother is lazy. And so, when he's led to take the morning devotions, and it's good to give different people the opportunity to speak. Don't do all the speaking on your team. Your team is probably tired of hearing you. You're not, you know, Sadhu Sunder Singh, even his great grandson, as far as I know. So let others share. Give them some advance warning so they can prepare. Because a lot of the spontaneous stuff, you know, it's not too good. Let them prepare. If it's the first time, maybe you need him to show you his notes before he shares on the team. But Mr. Quick, he gets brothers. He's got 20 verses for Mr. Lazy. But you know, some people are slow by temperament. They may have a slow metabolism. And it's very important to show Mr. Quick the strong points of Mr. Slow. You may have to show Mr. Quick some of his weak points, especially when he does something in haste and it makes a mess, and work for balance. We need both kinds of persons. The slower, methodical person, maybe if he's a phlegmatic, he will have a little trouble with laziness. Mr. Quick will probably have his own problems. His tongue will be too quick. He may eat his food too quickly. He develops ulcers, stomach problems. He needs a hospital. We pay a thousand rupees for his quick eating. All the books I've ever read on health say it is good to chew your food. Some of you, I haven't been watching, but I have in the past, go through a plate of rice and meat. You know, it's just like one of these dogs. Have you seen them eat? Two dogs. Enjoy your meal. Chew it. Chew it. So that your stomach muscles and your stomach don't have to work overtime to somehow get this chunk of buffalo tail properly digested. Your stomach is very valuable. So Mr. Slow and Mr. Quick will both have their problems. Now, the great event is when they get married. Especially when Mr. Slow marries Miss Quick. I.e., when Ray married Krista. Give me a chance to finish. Because we know they both matured, and they both changed, and now they're probably going at the same speed. If anything, Ray has probably now become a little quicker, maybe, than Krista. Things changed with the middle years, and with several children coming into the situation. But, you know, I'm a guest, Mr. Quick, and I certainly married what I would have classified lovingly Miss Slow. And I won't go into the details. Some of you have already heard of the strain and the difficulties that were created. But we need slow, methodical, pragmatic, disciplined people. They may learn a little bit to speed up. You know, a little bit could help. The other one has to, at times, learn to slow down. And then we have number two. We have Miss Alert and Miss Sleepy. This sister, coming to the sisters, was very alert. She sees a cockroach enter the room. Bang! She's on it. Death to the cockroach, instantly. Miss Sleepy is drowsy. Miss Cockroach has only made his way halfway up her sari. She hasn't even seen it yet. Perhaps a poor illustration. You know, in the mornings, some people wake up slower than others. Some people explode out of bed. Other people crawl out. Number three, we don't want to get sidetracked. Miss Initiator and Miss Plotter. Now, I had to try to put a number of women in this, because if you don't do that today, women slip right on top of you. And in pseudo-discipleship, I had a person write to me saying not enough of the pseudo-disciples were women. They were offended. There is the person, and these two people, of course, we realize we desperately need both types. The Initiator, the person, woman or man, who can start things, who can initiate new projects. Pioneer, and then the one who comes along and plots. People have compared McCroskey and I. McCroskey once told me, I haven't started anything ever. It's not true, I'm kidding. But a lot of McCroskey's ministry has been the plotter. He's had to pick up where I left off. And plot, and keep going. I was in Zobington, I lived in Zobington, maybe two summers, and then Zobington finished. McCroskey picks up Zobington, one decade, like a turtle with a building on his back, plotting along with Zobington. We need both, initiators and plotters. But sometimes they'll not understand one another. Sometimes there'll be collisions. Especially if the Initiator, he's left out. All the credit goes to the plotter. Oh, this guy, he never finishes anything. So, you know, he's written off as some kind of a gospel firecracker, and everybody's admiring the plotter. Or just the reverse. The Initiator, who? He started it. He gets all the credit. His name goes into the gospel gazette, and the man has been carrying it for 15 years. Nobody knows he even exists. And so jealousy comes in. Wrong feeling comes in. Oh, we know that's of the flesh, but it happens. It happens. Maybe you do something on your team, and someone else gets all the credit. What a wonderful feeling. I read, not long ago, something that I don't think I'll ever forget. The possibilities are unlimited of what can be accomplished in any movement, provided the people in the movement don't care who gets the credit. You think about that. I will say that's true of OM India. The possibilities are unlimited what we can do in this work, provided we don't care who gets the credit. Think on that. Believe me, there's a lot to it. And number four, there's Mr. Hard Work. And Mr. Work is hard. Sounds similar. Mr. Hard Work. He may be from Switzerland. He may be from one of the other countries where, you know, they just have such a heavy work ethic, and they just learn work, work, work. And when this Mr. Hard Work gets on the same team with Mr. Work is hard, it's the last thing you want to do in life, there can be a fair number of tensions. We have it in our offices all over the world. The sister who can sit down with a typewriter, and for seven, eight hours, she just goes. She just goes. And the one who sits down at the typewriter, and within 40 minutes, she's wondering when the tea break is coming. And if there's anybody in range, she will be called for fellowship. And she's perpetually blowing her nose, or she's perpetually straightening out her chair, or she's running off to talk to this person, or she's developed diarrhea, and she's always going off to the toilet. Anything but work. We have these kind of people. And the clashes are really heavy sometimes. We need love. Love that covers, yet love that is open. If those two people would sit down to get to know one another, and talk, and play, and understand one another, the fellowship, I believe, would often be great. I've had people actually, through misunderstandings, think that my wife was not a hard-working person. Because her work is not seen. She's behind the scenes. And maybe because they saw her at some moment sitting, reading a book, especially when she travels at times, there's not too much that she has to do. But in her home, as many women, she's unbelievably hard workers. Many times I'm in bed at night before she is, even though she needs at least two hours sleep more than I do, physically. And one thing I know, God has given me a hard-working woman. But oftentimes, if it's not in the limelight, people get judged wrongly. Married women in O.M. get misunderstood, because a lot of them don't have a public ministry. And we need a lot of wisdom in this area. Then number five is Mr. Quality and Mr. Quantity. This has been the argument these days. Now, I've tried to come along as Mr. Quality. I'm often both. But I, you know, out here there's no need to come along as Mr. Quantity. I'm only here a couple of days. I can't recruit more workers for you. If you saw me taking meetings around India, you would know my burden would be recruits. We want to move some people out so we can move new people in. That means more people are going to get the training, more people are going to be discipled, and so in fact the growth is bigger, and the church overall is going to get the greater blessing. It's just a matter at times of knowing how long people should stay with us. It seems to me that the rest of the world, most people only stay two years in O.M., and they go out and they go into leadership positions in many different groups. In India, it's five years, six years, seven years. Now we understand there are some unique factors here. So I'm not criticizing that. Especially if a man is now a main leader. But I think that if the turnover, do you know that term? If the turnover could be a little quicker, we could have a smaller work and be turning out more. We can't hold everybody in O.M. until they've got all the principles and we really feel they're really some kind of ideal perfect leader. We've got to take some chances. Let's move along. The Lord will continue his teaching program. O.M. is not God's only method for teaching people. That's for sure. We need Mr. Quality. We need Mr. Quantity. We need both emphasis. There'll be some arguments, normal. But we'll find our way. Number six, there's Mr. Prosperity and Mr. Poor. Now in the West, you know, one of the reasons I often preach from outlines is that you can adjust your message according to the culture. It's a very important thing, at least in my speaking. The message must be tailored to the people I'm talking to. And so you may learn, rather than preaching from long notes, preach from an outline. Have your heart full, your mind full, have several messages, and then get an outline. You won't wander astray. You can adjust. Now if I was speaking about Mr. Prosperity and Mr. Poor in America, I would talk about the prosperity cult and all the extremism in that area. But in India, we have a different story. We have the tension, at times, between the mentality that sometimes the way has emphasized. Let's keep it simple. I heard him say, as we were walking to the hotel last night, my son mentioned about some converting unit you could get in America and you could put it on a truck here and that could convert the truck current and run a projector. And my son just gave this as a suggestion for running the projectors, and Ray immediately said something interesting. You know, keep the American equipment in America. Ray represents, to some degree, Mr. Poor. No vehicle in Bombay. They're in there. We walk. We go by bicycle. And then we have Alfie. Now, Alfie is, you know, they're very similar to these two. But, you know, he may be a little further over in terms of the equipment. I find a little more enthusiasm with him in some of the equipment we need for the audiovisuals. I don't know where you stand on the Indian vehicle thing, but the Indian vehicle thing, pushing Indian vehicles, goes on the prosperity side. We're bleeding back in supply. 75,000 rupees per Indian vehicle. I mean, to Mr. Poor over here, Mr. Simple Lifestyle, which is often linked with that, that's a great controversy as well, Mr. Simple Lifestyle, especially when he marries Miss I Like a Nice Clean House and the Things I Need for a Proper Way of Life. And there will be much controversy. The greatest controversy my wife and I have had at times are over lifestyle. And actually, she's probably already closer to Simple Lifestyle than you'd hardly ever find a woman to be. But I'm so far over that it caused tension, and I had to surrender. I had to surrender. That doesn't mean she's compromised. Now, my daughter seems to be so influenced by some of the things she's heard me say or others say, she turns around now and accuses my wife of being a materialist. This, of course, brings wonderful feelings into my wife's heart, especially over the dinner table. And then, of course, one of the children may accuse us of eating too much. We don't eat that much in the Miller family, neither do the children. They have a great variety of eating habits. But I like every once in a while something a little special. I'm the kind that can forget eating. I didn't have any breakfast this morning. I get very busy, and I have to forget lunch. And I could jeopardize my health. And I found that it was something a little bit exciting. One year, I did have breakfast this morning. Good night. I didn't have any breakfast. And on the way up, I saw these in the shop. And so on the way here, I was eating handfuls of things. So there I found the truth. But I find that eating, at times, is a terrific psychological boost. And you have something a little special. For you team leaders to once in a while give your team a little special. So give the boost to the morale, a psychological boost. Part of our humanity, they'll work harder. They may love you more. They may not think of you as being such a penny-pinching scrooge. So when it comes to food, Mr. Prosperity, God will supply. When will God supply? Some say steak. Mr. Prosperity, when will God supply? Dahl and leaves. So there can be a lot of controversy, a lot of controversy. And we've got to learn to accept one another. We're not going to all eat the same thing. And a lot... Can I get back to the word I told you this morning? There's a lot of penniness in O.M. A lot of small-mindedness. Really, it must make God very pleased. Making mountains out of molehills. So that Brother A.Q. Arms and everybody else had water. You know, he's not about to lead a revolution of prosperity. And we're not communistic. We're all trying to be equal. If you've studied China and Russia, you know that it's absolutely not working. It is this. Unbelievable Picasso... That's the Spanish word. What's the word? Fiasco in history. We're not all equal. You're not going to be that way when you leave O.M. So don't be too extreme now. And then number seven, Mr. Organizer and Mr. Spontaneous. I've been accused of being Mr. Spontaneous. I love things to be spontaneous. I love to meet people in a spontaneous way. I can't stand sign-up lists. They're already selling me one of these sign-up lists. It reminds me of a dentist. You know, I fellowship probably with as many people as most. I just do it in a more spontaneous way. Now, I know sometimes it's wrong. I have to have my secretary line up things. It's just necessary. So that's me bending a little bit this way, you see. And I've allowed far more planning in O.M. than I originally had. And I believe something I always believed should be intensively planned. Other things I felt are better when they're spontaneous. More and more Mr. Organizers came to O.M. Advanced planning charts, endless paper. And you know, recently I had it proven. That something was so advanced planning that so many things were written. And when it actually came off, it was far worse than anything we had done 17 years ago when it was spontaneous. So neither way is the total answer to that. And when we're moving this fast with this many people, some things have to be spontaneous. Because people's time is valuable. We could have spent hours and hours, days, paper, memos, phone calls, just planning this conference. Getting into all the details. I know people that would put 500 hours into planning a conference like this. You see, if we're going to accomplish what we're going to accomplish, then some things like this, it's better just spontaneous. Ray and I met in Catlinville, we already knew, we already had ideas. Plenty of things were planned, I can assure you. We got together in Catlinville, we talked, we talked coming down here. We met a little bit, we put a tentative program together, and we launched that. I think it's true. Sure, it could have been more organized. A lot of things could be improved. There's nothing you can do that cannot be improved on. But basically, with a minimum amount of time, manpower, and planning, because all of us have a hundred other things to do, we've had a very acceptable, sane conference. And far more suitable to my lifestyle, so you would get far more out of me than you would get in some other situation. The fact that I can come here in a relaxed way, got a big clock staring me in the face, you know, and people ready to nervously send notes up, shut up, we're going home or whatever. I can just come and unload my heart. If I want to give one message or two messages or three messages, want to preach an hour and a half or a half hour, I can just do what I want. I'm going to come again. I'm going to come next year if you let me. At the same time, we need balance. We need balance. Every man, especially when he's in key leadership, has the privilege to some degree of doing it his way. No problem. But he shouldn't force his way necessarily down someone else's throat. And beware of little books on management that come along and say, this is the only way to do it. Because I can point other books on management that I've personally read that will tell you this book is totally up the street, up the creek, and if you follow what that man says, your business will go boom. There's a lot of contradiction in managing principles. And when we're Christians and our priority is people, people, their needs, sometimes we have to blow the hole in our management chart and do something different. And then number eight is Mr. Established Church or Miss Established Church and Mr. or Mrs. House Church. This is a tension in India. Do we work with these established churches? Some of them are denominational. They seem so dead. Some of them are using the wrong translation of the Bible. This thing, that thing. Why do we only work with the living churches? Boxing assemblies, living Pentecostal churches, living Brethren assemblies. In England, of course, where I first developed this set of notes or outline, that is the hottest controversy going right now. Is it the established church or the house church? I say it's both. History shows God has worked through both. The illustration of the new line and the new line skin, the line skin, I don't believe it's biblical. I believe it's an extension. It's taking something from the scriptures without bringing it in balance with other scriptures. They take it to an extreme and basically say what God is doing today cannot be in an old denomination or an old church. The new line, what God's doing today, must be in a new line skin. It sounds great. We fall for it like little theological ducklings and wobble along, but it's not biblical. It's not biblical. As far as I can see, in my people understanding of scripture, this is speaking to the whole new age of grace that we are in now through Jesus Christ and that through Jesus Christ, that's the new world, new life in Christ, salvation in Christ, forgiveness of sin, the grace of God, probably other things. Maybe it includes the church and this cannot come in the foundation of the Ten Commandments, the laws of Moses and all that we see in the Old Testament. Therefore, I feel that there is plenty of new wine in old churches. Plenty of new wine in old churches. I've seen it. I've drunk from it. There's also new wine in house fellowships because the new wine is Christ, his teaching, his life, his love, the Holy Spirit and he will go where he will. Maybe that's controversial. I surely could do with studying it some more myself, but I will not swallow this idea that only the movement of baptism is the real work in India or only the movement of the Pentecostal church or only the brethren assemblies and there's nothing going to come to the Lutherans, nothing going to come to the Anglicans, nothing going to come to the old time Methodist churches or that there is nothing there. No. No. One may have more. One may have more. Their brothers in this room have more wine than some. But we're all part of the new covenant. We're all washed in the same blood. How dare we make second-class citizens of any blood vote believer who loves Christ and is going on by putting a label on his head or because we feel he's not in the really new wine skin. I better not go much further on that. And then there's number nine, Mr. Expansion and Mr. Consolidation. No small number of tensions in O.M. over this. I used to be Mr. Expansion. I used to lead the work. You all know that. No, I just galloped behind it, gasping for breath. Where are they going? What country next? What? Another ship, did you say? Another ship? Another plane? Wait up, brother. I'll get there. I'm coming. So it's true. I've had to change. I've had to change. I've taken up golf, and I go out on the golf course desperately trying to forget the whole mess to some degree. So now I've become Mr. Consolidation. You don't need one more pioneer in a movement of a hundred pioneers. You need someone to come along with a club or a foot or a mallet and say, Down, boy, down. You know, wait another year. We got $100,000 of overdue bills. I know you don't care. You do care. Down, boy. And then, of course, there are going to be tensions. There are going to be tensions. And I just appreciate it. Most of you have been fairly kind in these days that I've come here to help prove and help consolidate. You haven't understood. Some of you said before this conference you didn't understand, and now you do. That encourages me greatly. Dallas Matthews told me that. Very kind. Because you're out of state, we would like to do a little pruning. Where is Dallas Matthews this morning? He had to leave. Probably gone back there to start the pruning. Praise the Lord. But it was encouraging. I appreciate that kind of feedback, and I hope that somehow, even though you missed your expansion, now we can have the unity. I've appreciated John Lee's attitude. I find out sometimes people on paper aren't the same way face to face. John Lee on paper, you don't mind me saying that, if you do, I'll say it anyway. On paper, he comes across pretty heavy. You know, I mean, boy, follow-up church planting, bent columns. You know, he's laying a pretty heavy page after page. And he signs the end, you know. But when we talk to him, and we give him a cup of tea, we talk to him, we bring the doctrine in, and we somehow come to what seems to be a step forward involving consolidation in West Bengal and Orissa, but at the same time, which will definitely be a step forward, allow some degree of follow-up, some degree of experimentation as we attempt to do God's will in that state. And then number 10, there's Mr. Personal Worker and Mr. Mass Evangelist, the one who wants church planting. You know, one thing that gets me a little concerned about the church planters, they seem to be gifted in belittling the non-church planting. And we have people that are definitely belittling, oh, I'm Indian. They're saying things, well, you need to come of age and church plant. Church planting is not the only way to come of age. We mature in different ways. God has given different ministries. Billy Graham is not a church planter. Poor soul has not yet come of age. Neither was Sadhu Sinder Singh. And I can name thousands of other men of God that were not basically into church planting. They believed in it. What they did often led to it, and that's true of all of India, but that was not their primary calling. Never belittle another man's ministry or calling. We don't want to copy what other movements feel is their main thing. Many movements feel their whole thing is church planting. Praise the Lord. You want to help them? And we are, in a way, doing some church planting, but we need to get a big green signal from the Lord in each country and each state when we are to move into that. And there are complexities in India that if we fail to count the cost of those complexities, we could do a lot of harm by prematurely doing something that we're not really called or led to do. There will be tensions, and you, all of us in OM, have to learn to be patient with people who totally misunderstand at times what we're trying to do and who may, in a subtle way, belittle us or make comments that, well, I can tell you we've had a number of people leave OM India because we're not selfish and not trying to hang on to people. It hasn't been such a problem, but if we had been a different style of movement trying to save our people and use them for, say, church planting or something else, then it may have caused us some hurt. But we've had people leave because they felt this kind of thing is second best. They wanted to leave and get into the real, the real thing. It's the wrong attitude. It may be the right work, but it's the wrong attitude. Because my Bible says, esteem others better than yourself. Gospel recordings is not mainly a church planting ministry, but it's a vital ministry. And when the Holy Spirit raises up a ministry, even though it may appear to me something that I don't want to get in, I dare not belittle it, but rather pray and encourage and maybe help, even through that, bring a certain degree of balance. Yes, we're going to have to be peacemakers. We're going to have to work for balance and peace and a lot of areas, and we could list a lot more. I hope you'll do that sometime in some of your Bible study. Let's pray. Father, we just again thank you for the opportunity to share these truths in the way of exhortation, in the way of review, in the way of analysis, analyzing and thinking through what you say, what your words say about many of these different factors that we're up against day by day in our teams and in the work in general. Guide us now the rest of the day. Commit healthy to you as he returns to Bombay. And we give you the praise and the glory for all that you've done in these days together. In Jesus' name, amen.