In this sermon, the speaker shares his philosophy of leadership and the importance of forgiveness. He emphasizes the need for mercy and how it is rooted in God's love and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. The speaker also highlights the significance of demonstrating love and reaching out to others, even when it may be challenging or when idealism falls short. Overall, the sermon encourages the audience to embrace mercy, love, and spiritual growth in their relationships with one another and with God.

I've just written down some words, my philosophy of leadership, what I'm trying, and I have failed, to put into practice as I live together with you, and act as your leader before God. The first word I've written down, you may want to just write down a few words, even though we put this on tape, I'm sure very seldom any of you get time to re-listen to a Verwoerd tape, but the first word I put down is mercy. If you want to understand some somewhat recent thinking, though I know it has old roots, and so for some of you it's not new, listen to the tape I gave in Peshawar a year or two ago, called, Being Big-Hearted. A phenomenal response to that tape. Now they're putting it into a book, though it's in a shortened form, and I don't feel it has what the tape has, but that's part of life. It's not easy for the choleric temperament, and I am seemingly of that temperament, though hopefully now through Christ the negative things are being brought under the cross, there are changes, but at times the choleric temperament is especially known for you know, hurting people, walking on people, and he's known for being able to get massive jobs done. I've seen many cholerics in operation. It's phenomenal what some of them can get done. I saw one at TEMA who left to top American military position to pull TEMA out of its difficulty a couple of years ago. Billy Maynard's just on the phone with him, and I watched him pull that event off. They put the whole program on him, and they gave him a big stick. They wanted to fly me to Canada. Artaj Singh, who's another sort of very unique Punjabi semi choleric, tried to get me last-minute to Canada to a big event, and I was willing to go. I could have done both, but I tell you when he called Billy Maynard, that was the end. Artaj melted, and I stayed in Holland. But I noticed after TEMA was over things didn't work out, and Billy left. He's back with the military. He's the assistant to one of the top generals in the whole of NATO. Well, maybe you know, maybe he didn't have some of the other attributes. I don't know. Probably did. Just God's providence. But I want to be really committed to being big-hearted on this team and merciful. I have a natural tendency toward extremes. I'm sure I was a hard-liner, if you know that statement on some issues years ago, and I'm sure that streak is still in me. Therefore, at times I do get very upset with what's happening in O.M. I sometimes get upset with what's happening around Bromley. I certainly get upset with the situation in some churches, and the choleric protest, old, semi-angry verver comes out. I'm sure my wife could tell you about that. I think Chris referred to it in the punching bag illustration. But in the long run, I'm committed to mercy, and yet sometimes with my kind of temperament, I need just a little space. I need just some time to think about it. This is why I operate better through Peter Maiden in helping to coordinate the world, and I operate direct. People phone from, you know, they phone from Singapore. They want a decision now. That's not my thing. Decisions now. I need some space. I need to think about that. Maybe even talk to somebody. So as you know, when these hot decisions come, most of the time people phone Peter, and then he, with perhaps as great an understanding of me as most people, phones me, and we can we can talk about it. And in all of our years in working together, we've hardly had any kind of heavy disagreement on the phone, and it's not because we don't disagree. There's some things we do disagree. So the bottom line of my philosophy for this team, and I would ask you to have that philosophy also toward one another and toward yourself is mercy. That's what sent God's Son on the cross for us in the first place. God's mercy toward us. Blessed are the merciful, being merciful toward one another. That's tied in with many other, many other words, and I'll move on to the next one. Love. I guess this is also something where we see a lot of paradox. It's easy to demonstrate love if you're not doing anything. You're not attempting to accomplish anything. You're not involved with people. You're not involved with the church. And some of the people who have seemed to be very, very loving, they discovered later down life's road that they had just never been tested. They'd never been tested. And I think it was, was it Tozer or Dr. Lloyd-Jones, how terrible to get those two mixed up. Brought out how what some people think is a victory is just the fact that they've never been tested. Never been tested in that area. Does anything I long for on our team and in my life on a practical level is more love. And I want to thank each one of you who has shown love. Hospitality House has the greatest opportunity to show that to other people on a day-by-day basis and for every millimeter of love that has been shown by any of you. I just want to thank you. I want to be God's representative that's possible to just thank you. That is what makes the difference. When people come into Bromley, come into Forest Hill, come anywhere. You meet them at the airport. You meet them as they step out of their car. They may be discouraged. They may be angry. They may be confused. They may be ready to overthrow the whole Christian faith. And they find some love. They find somebody reaching out. They find someone going the extra mile. They find someone who cares. Takes them out for a meal. Brings them to their home. This is what it's all about. And I have to watch my idealism. And if I ever hurt you with my idealism, don't be afraid to come back to me. Because I know in our efforts to demonstrate love at times we will be unloving. We'll run out of petrol. There's a book. I hope you'll read it by Smitty's Love Within Limits. So beautiful. And sometimes because OM is over committed, we cannot minister all these people we're in touch with. We just cannot do it if we, you know, use the minds that God has given us. Therefore at times we have to explain, look, we are committed and we want to help you, but we are limited in what we can do. My friend from Maidstone Mental Institution phoned me last night. I hope to see him in Christmas. And he's really doing well now. Some of you remember I've mobilized prayer for him. I felt so terrible that he called me that one time and I didn't rush down to Maidstone and fish him out of the phone box because he was hinting he might commit suicide. But he seems to be very happy now and he called me and somehow even though I didn't do much, I didn't do much. God, you know, did something. It's not easy, is it, to live within your limitations. So why I like, I like the blending of the older people and the younger people on this team. I mean, we don't have any really old people on this team, you know. This is why I like to go to Florida. I tell you, when I go to Florida, I just feel like a teenager. But this is why we like the blending of the different ages on our team because that will help bring balance in this area. You will wonder at times why some of us older ones, maybe we're not doing enough or reaching out enough or showing enough love, bringing tramps in off the street to sleep in our front room. You know, we've got room in our house right now for people. We've got room in our house for people, but we don't have emotional energy. I don't. Maybe my wife does. Emotional energy, organizational ability, coupled with all the other things I'm doing, you know, to start a major hospitality ministry at 45 Rosewalk. I just don't think we're gonna do that. We just use a little space for a little more office and to spread out some papers that may change. I'm sure my wife has some dynamic plans. The third word, the third word, forgiveness. One of the areas where the Lord, I'm sure, has done a work in all of us, is giving us a more of a forgiving spirit. Before you knew the Lord Jesus, probably at times you had it difficult to forgive. Maybe you didn't. Fine, I'm not saying all the unconverted people have all the problems. I don't even have problems acknowledging that unconverted people are doing better than me in some areas, because that's the way life is. And I learned from unconverted people. I'm amazed sometimes of how unconverted people carry on in certain areas in a positive sense. So my philosophy of ministry, and I hope it's yours, is forgiveness. I don't think most of you at your stage in your Christian life, I'm speaking out of the new ones, can understand how much unforgiveness there is among God's people. It is going to shatter you if you get really into the ring in counseling and working with churches. And it's subtle. Unforgiveness among God's people is often subtle. And this is where my own heart may be deceived. And I tell you, I cry out to God to expose my heart, if there's some unforgiveness there toward any brother or sister in Jesus Christ. I guess if you've been walking with God for 32 years, you should know something of growth and grace and victory. And I just want to say this because if I have ever given you, any of you on this team, the impression that I have not forgiven you for something, it's a miscommunication. As far as I know before God, I don't have anything against anybody on our team. In fact, I don't know what I have anything against anybody that hasn't been dealt with because that's the way I learned to operate. And it just doesn't make sense to me, even humanly speaking, to hold things against people. Also, in my makeup from almost my childhood, I always gravitated toward a person that was having problems, perhaps because I only saw my grandfather three times. He was an alcoholic. I finally was with him at his death, near his deathbed, and there was something because of that experience that reached out to the person who was down. I worked with alcoholics for three years and never had much difficulty loving the dirtiest, crummiest, most drunken person, carrying him home, putting him on the doorstep, seeing him accept Christ and turn away from Christ the next day, make a complete fool out of me, which wasn't easy and wasn't hard in those days. So the bottom line of my leadership is forgiveness, yet I'm still learning how, you know, how do you express that? How do you make sure that that is functioning day by day? Fourthly, the fourth philosophy that I have is that I want spiritual growth for every member of the team. I want to see you grow. I could never exist on this team if it was just a matter of getting people to come and work here to get a job done. We want people to grow, and we're committed to spiritual growth. You know, it's amazing how many different messages these days present sort of quick answers to spiritual problems. And I believe in the crisis experiences. I minister quite differently in Bromley than I do when I'm out, you know, in some church where they never heard of OM. We have to get wisdom for each situation. But I believe one of the things, one of the messages God's people need the most, and we're going to have a time of questions at the end of this, so please try to think of some questions, is a strong ministry about spiritual growth. A lot of our problems are not that, you know, you've got this major emotional problem, or you need deliverance in this area, or, you know, you've got this thing that needs to be dealt with, and we need to pray for you, and you need to get zapped for God and get that sorted out. Sometimes that is needed. More generally, the person needs to grow up. They need to grow up in Christ, in His Word, in their emotions, in their mind, in just life, just experiences of life. Thank God that again and again, when people have tried to push the panic button in OM, and make some vast generalization, that people like Dale Roton, people like Peter Maiden, and many, many others were there to say, well, look, what you're saying here is, you know, there's an element of truth in that. I mean, Dale is so gracious. Just watching him is just, you know, I wish I had more movies of Dale. It's one of my great mistakes. One of the things, maybe somebody could go over there and just answer that. Vera can answer it. Chris, push the pause button. Just take it out of the room. Could you do that, Vera? Sorry about that. Any poor person had to listen to this tape. Spiritual growth, and I think, I remember somebody on the doulos came to me really heavy, and he had a word from the Lord. The devil had more or less taken over, was taken over on doulos, and Ichabod was going to be written on the front of the ship or something, which means the Spirit of the Lord has departed. And really heavy. When I first went to Dale about it, I said, look, this guy concerns me. Dale, you know, big smile. No problem. You know, I definitely panic faster than Dale. Part of my temper. But I tell you, after several months, Dale wrote me and realized that he did have a serious situation with a brother who had put two and two and made it six, and Dale, in his gracious way, eased that family off the ship. We had just a few when the ship hit the rocks. Came up with these interesting generalizations. It's fortunate that most people didn't have to read the letters that I've had to read, some of which basically said, you know, God has done this to Judge Owen. Somebody on the ship must have been fooling around. I guess somebody, you know, broke the social policy. Great God of love and mercy. Somebody breaks the social policy, so he throws the whole ship and all the staff and crew on the rocks. Fortunately, you know, and we have a little bit of a more in-depth view of God, and we are a little bit less total answer. Not that we didn't search our hearts over that accident, of course. And there'll always be a mystery when anything happens like that. Even again, a few weeks ago, I had someone write, how was it, express more or less, you know, have you discovered yet fully why God allowed that accident? You know, we're supposed to be still, one year later, researching this. Why has God allowed this accident? We do have a few other things to do, you know, like evangelizing the entire world, but we should perhaps research the accident more, get everybody that was on it and interrogate them all and find out, you know, whatever we need to find out and have a tribunal. Well, we don't want to go to extreme the other way, but I believe that one of the things that has helped us stay sane and on track for God is an acknowledgment that many things have an element of mystery here in this world, and we will not understand. We will not fully understand. We can have our theories. I was listening to a Derek Prince tape this morning, very pro-Israel tape. The more I study Israel, the more I listen to the various preachers about Israel, the more confused I get. I just, it baffles me how men of God can be so totally opposed to one another on this issue, and they all have scriptures, and they're many fine men, and the Lord said to me as I sat in this very hot bath, stay out of it! Stay in the bath, but stay out of the Israel controversy, and God bless all these different people with their different viewpoints about Israel. I wanted to put in the International Update, but I didn't have the courage to do it. Some plea that God loves the Jew and the Arab, and let's recommit ourselves to both. You know, that would bring some interesting reactions, even though it sounds good. Spiritual growth, and I think those of us in the room here, we need just to see this is one of the purposes for us this year. God wants us all to grow. It may be slow. It probably won't be without pain. The old cliche, no gain without pain. I know we in Bromley live in the cloud of a number of failures. One is, we are not enough a training program. A training program means, of course, taking someone, and going with them, and showing them exactly how to do this, how to do chalkboard evangelism in the street, you know, hand-to-hand training. Now, we are doing more than that, than is seen on the surface, because we have relationships, and we learn by doing things together, but we certainly don't have a formal, well-organized training program of that kind. We never have. I'm not sure if we ever will. STL goes through this much more than we do, and there's enormous discussions going on how to improve it. Somebody wanted to go on the ship, they end up in STL packing books. Somebody goes by and interviews that person, and they are a little upset by that, and they don't realize that when they share that, of feeling that they're used, we consider that very important. What new recruits say, you know, is incredibly important. That goes to board meetings, that goes to area level, that goes to field level, and decisions, huge decisions are made on the basis of what the man, even a new recruit, is saying. And it may be that in STL, they will move into hiring. The board is moving toward hiring personnel on a salary, especially if it moves to England, and that is linked with some research, how complete, I don't know, of this particular problem, because we don't want to use people. And if somebody on this team feels they're just being used, you were shunted into this team when you really wanted to be somewhere else, and you're just being used, and nobody cares for you, nobody really loves you, there's no training, no opportunity for spiritual development, like you were dreaming and hoping, you know, we need to talk that out, because we don't, we don't want that. And maybe we could set up a program for you called Operation Stretch, and just develop your opportunities. It's interesting that on the ship, research has shown they can get away with this. They can get people on the ship, throw them into mundane, totally routine jobs, where they feel some of these same struggles on being used. It comes from the ship quite often, but the privilege of being on the ship is so great, it's such a famous ministry, such an unusual ministry, so many are turned down. The privilege of being on the ship overweighs the negative factors of feeling, hey, you know, maybe I'm being used. Whereas other teams, we don't have those big premiums, you know, a new country every month, a new challenge, and all that involves, which is, it's good, praise the Lord, it's part of the ship ministry. So I would encourage you, that there's plenty of scope for spiritual growth on our Bromley teams, but it may not come in the way you expect. Living together, growing together, those prayer meetings with the visitors that come in and share with us, I feel that sometimes people are not getting in Bromley what God wants to give, because their antennas are not up, their learning antennas are not up. Maybe it's because their senses are dull, for one reason or the other. You may remember a message I gave a year or two years ago, why not many people are hungry for God. Mike Wheat was greatly moved by that message and asked me for the notes. I don't know if I ever got them to him, but it's true that one of the problems we face today is that we find people are not hungry for God, they're not hungry to get into a prayer meeting. Leonard Raymond Hill shared with me that people travel 400 miles to come to his prayer meeting in Lyndale, Texas. Of course, he has contact with a lot of people, a lot of people have read his books, just a few out of those are just so hungry for what this man has to offer, they'll go that extra mile. And often if we are not growing, it's because our spiritual antennas are not up, or we're not sensitive to learning from other people. I, in a sense, may be extreme, I just overlearn, I'm too sensitive, I feel I'm a spiritual glutton, I'm taking in so much and I'm not getting a chance to give it out near enough. Because a lot of my meetings, there's no sense giving them, you know, some advanced thing, seemingly advanced, the Lord has given me from His Word when it's just the first time I've ever been there. They're all brand new people, they don't even know what OM is. So my meetings, some of them have to be repetitious. Billy Graham is incredibly repetitious, but that's his ministry, it's to preach the Gospel. And if he discovers an illustration that every time he used it, zap, you know, 300 people come to Jesus Christ, I knew he ought to stick to that illustration. Though he has new ones as well, of course, and is highly gifted. The fifth word I've written down is relationship and friendship. Now this team is built on friendship. Perhaps the biggest thing that keeps me in Bromley, second or third on the list, is a friendship I have with people. It's a little difficult for me to keep motivated in Bromley when I know that I can choose another easier option that would be more enjoyable in some ways, especially when you've been in team and community life for 28 years. And again, we have all kinds of temptations. I use the word temptation so that you can understand that for the present, that is not the direction I'm going. But one of the things that helps me press on in Bromley with the pressure, with the challenge, is the whole thing of friendship. Now I know some of you are new, and you're only beginning to build your friendships. Jerry and I have 20 plus years of friendship, and Jack, and the Morris's, and you know when my children organized a 50th anniversary, and they chose some friends to be there. They could only choose a few. I didn't even know of course what was going on. I walked in the back garden, there these people are. You know, a number of them were people right from this team. I think this is positive. In fact, the thing that impressed Eddie Waxer, here's a man right from the outside, very much an organizer, man of God, with a sports coalition. The thing that impressed him about OM, a number of things, was the long-term friendships and commitments that have stood the test of time. That really spoke to him. And it's not so common in the day and age in which we live. Not that we're the only ones in it. I'm not saying anything near that. But there is a cost to maintaining long-term friendships, because often the people you know the most are the people you can hurt the deepest. And if they're not big-hearted, if they don't have this philosophy, sometimes things can break up. One of the things, the beautiful things that happened through In Touch Reunion was the renewal of friendships that had grown cold or stale, just for lack of contact. Quite amazing what God did there in July at the In Touch Reunion. Only eternity will tell the story. Walls breaking down between people. One of them was Dick Schwart and myself, the leader of OM Benelux back in the 60s, who left and started a counter-movement called Operation Pentecostal Fire. That spoke quite strongly against OM in those days. We were classified in some pretty interesting ways. And Dick and I had a friendship. And even when he left, he felt that I was, you know, he felt that I was a spirit-filled man. But he felt that a lot of people around me just hadn't quite got the filling of the spirit. He expressed it in other ways. We've hardly seen each other in 20-some years. And he came back to that reunion. He said, we're only going to pop in. He came back again. And he brought his wife. And he came again and again. And we walked along that river. And though I've never had anything against him, somehow there was a wall there. And that wall went down. And he said, you know, some of the things I once thought were so important, I've discovered through life are not really so important. And, you know, that's one of the problems when we're young and it still happens to us when we're older is we get our priorities mixed up. We get our priorities mixed up. I'd love to read a couple of quotes about that. So we are committed as a team to relationship, to friendship. I'm sure at times we are going to be criticized for not working hard enough. We already are. We don't, the switchboard doesn't open early enough. And we go home early. And there's not much comment about it. But it's difficult to do everything, isn't it? Emphasize friendship. Emphasize fellowship. Emphasize worship. Emphasize prayer. Emphasize servantship. Emphasize the other 20 major emphases in this ever-minded of a land and still be a total workaholic. And I'm sure we'll probably hear something from this afternoon because someone called the office and no one was there. Now, I'm not saying we're not going to try to find a solution to that. But I am saying that my philosophy of ministry is based on relationship and friendship. And rather than be intimidated sometimes by the criticism, we should try to explain to people what our goals and our aims are. We are committed to being different. We are committed to creating an atmosphere of love and friendship and fellowship. We know some of these things are linked with love. Practical things. And we're working on that. And it's a big challenge. I'm sure for all of us. Number six. And this was crystallized through speaking at Christ Church in Bromley from the pastor there who expressed it in a way that I hadn't heard and I can't exactly re-express it in the same way. But I want to, as the vicar of that church, I want to work with people where they are. And I want you on this team to feel relaxed to some degree about being on ICT. We want to work with you where you are. We're not expecting you to be William Macdonald or Amy Carmichael or, you know, even Jack Rendell or Dreena Verwer or Vera or whoever. And I just want to say we don't mind if you're moving a little slow. We'd like to talk to you once in a while and find out, you know, how we can help. We have a wide range of people. We have some with teenagers. We have some with toddlers. We have some that are just getting married. We have some that are dynamic, non-married, singles. We want to work with you where you are. And I think this is important. It doesn't mean we don't have any standards. It doesn't mean we're going strong. It means we're acknowledging that God is working in different people in different ways. People are coming to us from different backgrounds, different levels of spiritual growth. We want to be patient and forgive me if I at any time have been impatient with you because I do want to work with people where they are. Yet, I'm sure you at times are trying to say to those of us who are leaders, look, stretch us. You know, we don't want to be yesterday. We don't want to be today where we were yesterday. Stretch us. Throw us a challenge. Why do people often go out and join those ships? Do you think those people who join the ships are all fascinated with the sea? No, many of them go there. They want a challenge. They want something beyond them. They want something they feel they can't handle. Many people come into OM, even today, because they want something that's a challenge. They want to be stretched. And it can be disappointing if they get on a team and there's no stretching experiences. You know, how does God often stretch us? Through problems, through things going wrong, through putting people in our midst who we don't understand and they step on our spiritual corns, or anything else along that line. So my philosophy of leadership is tightly linked with relationship and friendship. And we want to work with people where they are and see them become more Christ-like. Number seven, I have to acknowledge, of course, that I'm a pragmatist. It took me years to learn how to pronounce that. Can you pronounce that? I want to get the job done. God, I'm sure, has raised many of us, hopefully all of us, up because there is a job to be done. I want to be, as that song we just sang, totally available. It's my availability that has put me in this present leadership situation. I don't believe it's some little bug in my bonnet, or this is what I want in, or this is going to fulfill some great emotional need, or some other thing. Of course, our hearts are desperately, can be deceitful. I wanted to be available, and when the crisis came, in terms of the leadership, I said, Lord, I want to be available, and somehow He moved me into it. And I believe many of you are here for the same reason. You were available, you prayed the prayer, Lord, here am I, send me. And He sent you. You didn't know it was going to be Bromley or Forrest Tilt, but here you are. At the same time, we have to face the reality of what the movement is expecting from our team. And let me just tell you, I don't want to discourage you, this movement worldwide is expecting double from our team today, what we could get three years ago. Double. Totally different situation. The area level, the new departments, new committees, whole new philosophy has come in several years. We have become a modified democracy that has taken the final decision as something that was sort of between George Verwer, boards of directors, and field leaders, you know, being sort of hassled out. We have taken that and put it clearly in the hands of the General Council. That is all the long-term people in the world. Now, of course, we're having trouble figuring out how this works, and we re-discussed it again. But one thing I can tell you, the changes that we have made make it even more necessary for this team to, you know, to function in a way that will accomplish the task. The sheer amount of correspondence, the amount of giving, the money we have to basically raise our entire budget for our own team. We get one percent from the rest of the world. When they gave us that one percent, they gave us a whole set of invoices that spent the one percent as well, because we had to absorb all kinds of international travel. Even many of the people who came to the field leaders meetings, Brazil, New Zealand, Malaysia, a long list, they all flew in there at our expense, because there are many, many cases in O.M. where there is something we feel must be done, but nobody has the money or will agree to pay the money. The area leaders, if they make a decision, have to look to ICT to somehow carry out that function. Now we're changing, we're developing new ways to get finance. Some of it is scary. We now have regional percentages, regions that are taking a percentage out of the money. After five percent is taken by the home office, one percent goes to ICT. Now regions, and that's going to be coming up for discussion, because some of it sort of snuck through without really much, much approval. So we are pragmatic. We have a huge job to be done. We have an awful lot of work, and we've got to be committed to that work. It's there every day, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. We have to know how to say no, and we're going to be misunderstood for saying no at times to invitations. I'm already doing that, but I'm thinking even on a team level. You may hear of someone that wants to join the team and bring a new department into the team, maybe to do this or do that, and as we pray and as we talk, we say no, we can't do it. We're stretched to breaking point. We've taken on communications. We've taken on personnel. We can't add this team, at least at this present time. Please try to understand. We don't want to be unloving. Now this is not a total picture. I'm still as committed to prayer, I hope as ever before. I'm still committed to evangelism and long for everybody on the team to somehow have some kind of fulfilling evangelism, and I'm committed to seeing us mingle in the community. I want reality. I thank God we're not all living off in some kind of, you know, big old mansion in the woods as a team this size, and that your neighbors are unconverted people, and you're going to have to relate to them, maybe to their dog, and I thank God we're involved in all different churches, and that puts extra time, extra strain. A lot of manpower hours in this room are going into local church. That's not wrong, but it does, when you put it all together, mean that we are still very idealistic about all that can be done in one week with so much money, so much people. This is why I have also fought very hard, my last point, to try to be generous and not put heavy financial pressure on people. Now if you have felt that this year, maybe it comes from yourself, maybe some of it is good, a certain amount of pressure is normal, but we have tried to be generous and not bring people into the grip of excessive financial pressure when we have all these other goals, all these other aims, and in some ways tied into the whole survival of a movement that is under pressure, and I thank the Lord that he has provided so much money for this team. In 1986 we came out of Red Ink. One of the reasons was that special projects was not allowed in the United States, so all the big gifts in the United States that came in from different friends and ministry all went to ICT, including one prayer partner that started to give twenty thousand at a time quite regularly. I didn't feel that was right before God. There's a number of reasons for that in terms of understanding why people give, what they are thinking we are doing with that giving, even if they give it to me personally, which is often the case, and so special projects became established. A lot of that big money went into special projects and then went out to all, almost every single field in OM has benefited from special projects, but we maybe or I maybe went overboard. We did put quite a bit of special projects in ICT, but basically according to CAO we've got word that we're in red, maybe around a hundred thousand, and that will be considerable discussion at area level. I don't believe at present our goal for the coming months is to cut back. Of course, anywhere you feel before God you can save a pound. That's between you and Jesus, praise the Lord. I'm still into that, probably even extreme, but we cannot in the light of this philosophy of ministry, the philosophy of leadership, what the movement is expecting us to do, we cannot start to make as a major aim cut back. Not when with one mistake, one mistake, we can sail a ship, have the main engine break down, have to be towed, pay thirty, forty thousand, who knows what this is going to cost us. I'm not saying we made a mistake, but it does seem that somewhere something happened, and these things happen. You know, work this size, I don't think we're going to get through any one day without something difficult coming down our street. All right, let's just pray. Father, we just thank you. I thank you that I could share this and hope that with all my heart it will help some people understand why we make some of the decisions we do, and just enable us to discuss these things together and ask questions, and to be able to all be committed to some degree to these basic philosophies, these basic core values. And there are many other things that we don't have time to share. Help us, Lord, in Jesus' name. Amen. That's the short time for questions, and tomorrow morning there'll be further opportunity for questions and discussion. Think these things through tonight, come up with your nuggets and thoughts in the morning, when we will also be dealing with where are we going between now and the year 2000, which is something that Peter Maiden has asked every team to give thought to. So we are going to give some thought to that tomorrow. This provides a bit of a foundation, because whatever we do as we aim toward the year 2000, this is what I sense should be the philosophy of leadership, philosophy of ministry, as incomplete as it may be. Now, who would like to ask something of clarification? Whenever you communicate, you miscommunicate. Certainly I do, and I never realized when I launched into preaching and teaching how hard communication was. I don't know how I even survived, but there it is. Who would like to ask something? Yeah, it's clearly for all of O.M. I think it may be confusing, because Viv was our sort of personnel director. The ministries actually are not related, though the gifting causes it to be related. This is an international community, international personnel department. We'll be talking more about that in the in the weeks to come. One of the main aims of this department, many goals, we must find the people that are needed for these slots all over the world, and we must make use of all the people that are wanting to get involved with O.M., especially at times families and married couples who were having difficulty linking. See, a lot of things can be done through the O.M. pipeline, especially if it's, you know, a normal recruit in the summer that's single, they come on the campaign, they go through the basic one- or two-year training. That will continue, but we're having increasing needs for specific kinds of people. We always have, and we need an international personnel department to work with our national offices in tying those two together. That's just one thing. Many other things connected with this, but it's definitely international. We hope it'll help us as well, but it's international, and I think we must think of it as the international communications department, which is part of I.C.T., not call it the I.C.T., sorry, personnel. I'm surely going to get those two mixed up, both coming in the same year. The international communications and the international personnel department are part of I.C.T., because also I heard somebody say I.C.T. communications department. Well, they're not there to communicate about I.C.T. We hope they will, and maybe it got confused because the first thing they did, one of them was the I.C.T. brochure, but there is, that's an international ministry for the whole body. I myself, because of the size of the team, the complexity of the finance, the things we are struggling with, was hesitant for both of these departments to be born within our team. It is not part of some very great expansion vision. I have caused some grief in that area years ago, especially bringing the ships into being and things, but now I am more following other visionaries, and these two departments come from others, and I asked my questions, was strongly discussed, and then I joined the consensus, and so I am in favor, definitely in favor, but I think it's a good example where we are doing something because the whole body feels we should be doing this. That is a stronger, to me, that's a stronger vote than George Burwer, you know, says, oh, let's have a stamp collecting department, which, by the way, we still are into saving stamps. Right, Vera? And many envelopes with good, expensive, commemorative stamps, but I drew a compromise. I know the secretary is extremely busy. We cannot always expect him to pull the stamps off. Save the envelopes and mobilize some children to take the stamps off them.