In this sermon transcript, the speaker discusses the practical principles and goals of their movement. They emphasize that they do not want their movement to become focused on buildings, offices, bureaucracy, and committees. Instead, they want to prioritize evangelism and following the distinctives that God has given them over the years. The speaker encourages the audience to read and study the leadership manual, particularly the chapter on ultimate goals and aims. They also mention the importance of leaders being knowledgeable and able to answer questions about the work.

Some of these principles that you've been teaching us over the past years, we really believe that there is a purpose in this. Some of us are going to be team leaders this summer, and we're going to be screaming for help. Some of us will perhaps leave O.N. next year and be in responsibilities back in our home church, where there's an enormous need for committed men and committed women in various positions in the church. Father, when I look back and see that a majority of the mistakes that are made in your work are actually very basic, very simple in looking in retrospect, help us to really receive from you that which we need in preparation for leadership, whether it be in this fellowship or some other fellowship. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to emphasize from the beginning that simply because you have this manual, it doesn't mean you're now a leader. Keep in mind that there's only a few of us here. Ultimately, many hundreds will be listening to this lecture through the tape recording. Little did we dream when we made those original orientation tapes that some of you had listened to that tens of thousands of people eventually would listen to those tapes. Over a period of many years, Wayne Thomas, a friend who's been with me over the weekend, had just finished listening to the extra tape I did on action, counteraction, which was a tape added to the series. And he reminded me that that tape was done 20 years ago in Bombay. That was a late tape. So it's amazing what God does through tape recordings. David Goodsell, who in the future will be involved more and more in helping in our study program, is actually working on a series of questions. I remember, based on this manual, I remember a man who was the head of the Moody Bible Institute correspondence course coming to me, I think it was around 1965, and committing himself to make a series of questions, because he was a specialist in correspondence courses, a series of questions based on this leadership manual. I don't think he ever finished that project, so there's almost 20 years delay. And David Goodsell has come in the fullness of time to do this project. And you may be the first group to answer the questions. Just think of the privilege of that. You all look this morning like you're just waiting for another examination. One of the reasons I like to make these tapes with a live audience is the tremendous response you get from them. Especially Monday morning just invigorates you. Now it's Tuesday morning, of course. Some of you look like Monday morning. Now, you might have guessed that I would start at the end. I would like you to turn to page 51. By the way, most of your manuals have one or two chapters missing. But I want to talk this morning about the ultimate aims and goals of OM as a fellowship. I think also this was an added chapter. This manual has been revised and reprinted many, many times. And one of the important things about this work in which we're involved is that it is growing, it is changing. The Word of God never changes. Our understanding of it changes. Our situation in life changes. And it may be that through this study together we will actually come up with some changes, even in the leadership manual. Maybe before I look into this chapter, I could just read you something from Timothy, which I think is very, very important. There's a lot more good leadership material around now than when I first got involved in Christian leadership, which was when I was about 17, I guess. We started a little group in our home area called the Christian Youth Committee and sponsored film shows and other evangelistic activities, which led in that sort of mini-revival in the high school that I was attending. Most of you, I think, know that story. And I especially recommend to you Oswald Saunders' book, Spiritual Leadership, and his second book, Paul the Leader. But there's a lot of other good material now as well. 1 Timothy 3, it's a standard passage for leadership, but I think it is a good passage and it's worth reading it again. This is a true saying, 1 Timothy 3, If a man desire the office of a bishop, an elder, in some translations, he desireth a good work. A bishop, then, must be blameless, husband of one wife, self-controlled, sober-minded of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy of filthy lucre, money, but patient, not a brawler, not covetous, one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all brevity. But if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Not a novice, recent convert, lest being lifted up with pride, he falls into condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must have a good report of them who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. In like manner must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy, again, of filthy lucre, money, holding the mystery of the faith in pure conscience. And let these also first be proved, then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless. Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober-minded, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their own children and their own houses well. For they that have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith, which is in Christ Jesus. He sings right I am to thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the nations, believed on in the world, received up into glory. What a great chapter. What a great chapter. Notice we have the requirements there for those called elders, and then we have requirements for those called deacons. And we often think, of course, of deacons as practical workers. It may be that some of you will not become elders in your church, but it may be that you will become deacons. Of course at this point you realize different churches teach different things about this. I don't want to get into that. But you will remember that when they had difficulty in Acts chapter 6, and there was some contention, they decided that they must assign seven men of honest report and full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom who could be appointed over the business of the practical side of Christian work. And then it tells about those men who were chosen. One of them, of course, ends up going out being martyred in an open air meeting. To be a leader in a fellowship like Operation Mobilization, it is incredibly important if you know the basics. Once you're a leader, people expect you to be able to answer certain questions. They expect you to understand a little bit about the work. On the ship Dulas and Lagos, they just had, I think, about ten hours. I just finished the tapes. Ten hours basically just on how to communicate to prayer partners, to the constituency, to their friends. Quite amazing tapes going into fine detail. These were main leaders of the ship and they were being asked to stand up and give their little two-minute opening thoughts. It was very interesting the way he approached this. He's the president of the Wycliffe Bible Translators. He took Wycliffe from a very small movement in Australia. He's an Australian. And what he did there is quite amazing. Now he's the president. I know it's, in my own experience, such a great privilege to be able to, especially through cassette tape, listen to so many different people and learn from them. One of the things he emphasized, when you go to your church and you try to present the work of O.M., how easy it is to miscommunicate. So easy. You're there standing in front of your church and you think, boy, this is going to really get them excited about O.M. and actually they're getting turned off by the minute listening to someone who doesn't really have his act together in terms of communication. And I think it's very basic. If you want to communicate about O.M., and many of you do, I realize it's difficult sometimes speaking here in Bromley because we have a wide range of people. There may be some that are planning to leave in September. There may be some only here for a month. And yet you're here this morning in a leadership training session. But like so much in life, we can't fail to go down an important road simply because that road may not be as relevant for one as for another. And I think most of you are in a place where these things will be helpful. Even if you're not being trained for leadership, maybe it will help you understand your own leader. Maybe it will help you realize in a movement growing so fast as O.M., what a desperate need we have for leaders. And you can't just throw people into this. I might say, by the way, that a person's leadership before they come on, O.M., is a factor in whether they're moved into responsibility in O.M. Unfortunately, sometimes it's difficult to even find what experience people have had before they've come. Some people, I think especially the British, are very shy to sort of put themselves before, you know, I'm a leader. Other cultures, people are more willing to volunteer. And you might pray, as right now, we're trying desperately to find the team leaders for the summer campaign. And some summers, most summers, we have to put some people leading a team who've never led a team in their life. And they are scared. And some of them would have had far less experience than many of you. If you end up on a team this summer, there's sort of an unwritten policy that we continually battle with, that people working in a headquarters operation try to get at least a month out on a team in the summer. And I hope many of you will do this. It provides enormous balance. I think of one young man who most of his time in Bromley some years ago was really defeated in his Christian life. Just couldn't get his act together. He banged from pillar to post spiritually. And I will tell you, he went that summer to Spain. And suddenly, because of the crisis situation, he was made the team leader. I will tell you, that young man, his life was completely revolutionized. When he was in Bromley, his spiritual situation was so difficult that he had very serious psychosomatic illnesses. He would double over in pain, fall to the ground. And psychosomatic illnesses, they're still very real at the time. Through that experience that summer of discovering God could use him in a crisis to help lead this team. He had his life turned around. He went off OM. The Lord used him in a real way. He came back for a couple of years. He was used of God in Asia. And the latest I've heard, he's just getting married and pressing on in his spiritual walk. So you don't know what's ahead. I think some of you, when you get on a team this summer, will probably not be the main leader. But because you've been on OM for a year, that leader is going to count on you to be a help. Not to be the vice president that pulls off a coup, as happened in one of Britain's Bible schools years ago. But as someone who can be a faithful man, faithful woman, to be an encourager, to help in some of the practical areas, to be able to maybe answer questions about certain things that that leader may not know. Well, let's take a look at this last chapter, which sets the pace for the manual, and could have been written, really, as the first chapter. It's called Ultimate Aims and Goals. If you want to have an understanding of the OM fellowship, you must understand that each country, each country, is a semi-autonomous unit within OM. And the final authority for that particular country, legally as the board of directors in that country, on a practical level, it's the board of directors and the leaders of that country, and especially the country coordinator. They must work for consensus. They must get unity on what they are going to do. They are then supposed to let us, in Europe it would be Jonathan, the area leader, and sometimes myself, it depends on how big an issue it was, but they are supposed to let us know what they are doing, and a little idea of where the money is going to come from. The more the money can come from within their own country, the less problem they are probably going to have with us, because we allow a lot of freedom to develop different strategies. So in OM we have some very basic aims and goals and policies and practices. And by the way, some of you are thinking about joining a mission society and another organization, even a secular organization, because we want to train people for secular work as much as we want to train them for so-called Christian work. We don't like the term. Anyway, and it's my belief that many secular firms take spiritual principles and put them into practice sometimes better than the church down the road. It is quite an amazing study. But I think whether you are going on to another fellowship or a secular company, to know what are their aims, what are their goals, and it will help you. Let's just read the first part of this. This chapter is in some ways the most important of all. It summarizes our practical principles and goals as God has made them increasingly clear through the years. First let us state that which we never want this movement to become. We start off with a few things that we don't want to be and then it will help us clarify what we do want to be. Now keep in mind that since this was written, we can rewrite the whole thing in different terminology and come out with the same goals. And maybe you want to do a Ken Taylor, have a living leadership manual and rewrite this in what you feel may be more acceptable terminology. Number one, another mission board or denomination. There are many reasons for this. Many of us believe that the local church is the one that should send forth, pray, and care for missionaries. When the local church failed to do this, God raised up, God raised up, we help, looks like a spelling error, and cooperate with these groups whenever possible. But a new board is not needed. Now this already some leaders probably wouldn't agree with. I'm not sure I agree with it totally myself anymore. Because Donald McGovern came along and pointed out from the book of Acts. Is it Acts 12 or Acts 13? I can turn to it in a jiffy. Acts 13. That it wasn't necessarily the church in Antioch that sent forth Paul and Barnabas. But it was five men. And he really got us thinking. And because we got this criticism that God only raised up, and I actually used to say this, so it's just criticism coming back to me. In my early days trying to wrestle with why did God even bring into being O-M-M in the first place? And I tended to think it was because the church had failed, and because in the book of Acts we see quite a range of ways that God is working. That the Lord raised up what today are classified as para-church organizations. I'm no longer convinced of that argument. I have to argue against myself. It does seem that way back in the book of Acts, I talk about this in a series of tapes on the local church, tape one and two, which is part of a leadership seminar over in Belgium. But it does seem that within the book of Acts you have the two units. You have the local church, and you have the team, like our team working in Turkey. Their job is to plant the church. Now the greater problem is for units like STL. They didn't have a big publishing, printing cassette operation in the New Testament. And the greater problem is for things like our audiovisual operation. This kind of thing, gospel recordings, Christian radio publishing, very much are sort of para-church. They're parallel with the church. And within O-M you have many things. You have that which is more easily defined as para-church. You have other sections of O-M like the church planting team in France, and the church planting team in Bangladesh, which really is very clearly the extension, the arm of the church. Again, you're playing with words, but words are important. And when you attempt to explain O-M to your local church, these things are very important. I was speaking to a group of pastors just about a week ago, and showing them how O-M is an extension of the local church, the arms of the local church. And it made a lot of sense, it seemed, to most of them. We don't want to become a mission board. You see, you have people even within O-M say, oh, we're a mission society. Why do we pretend that we're not? Maybe they've never studied what a mission society is. Almost all mission societies have a board. Every new missionary stands before that board. After many applications, after all kinds of paperwork, screening, other interviews, he stands before that board, and that board makes a final decision. Now understand, we are not against this. Some feel that we should move in this direction. Like most live things, there's controversy. But up to now, we look toward the local church to be the screening, preparing, interviewing board. It hasn't worked 100%. Some of the young people who come on O-M don't even have a home church. They got a recommendation from some other Christian leader in that area. We have allowed that, especially for people coming into the early stages, the training aspect of the work. But we always keep our goal. Our goal is young people, especially long term in O-M, sent by their church or assembly. This is one of the reasons we have very close unity with assemblies and sometimes churches that support no other interdenominational or missionary agency. And it's because we put a lot of the responsibility back on the church. Now some churches don't want that. One of the reasons we have moved in Britain with a lot of our new movements into a very authoritarian, I don't want you to ever think that O-M is a little authoritarian. I'd love to get some feedback from you because I don't think you know what is going on in the church. This isn't free for all compared to some churches today. I know there's certain aspects of O-M that give the appearance of authoritarian because of course the whole concept was that people would not come on O-M unless they really believed in these principles. Once we have lost this in O-M, we're lost. Once we come on O-M, as some young people I've met in Bible school thinking how much can I get away with and how many of the rules can I bend or how much this or that can I do that really I'm not supposed to do. Once we're in that, we're lost. You say, well I think O-M is partly lost. I agree. I agree. It's not as easy 25 years later. And there is a generation gap. But the initial concept of O-M was that people were so motivated to serve God, to get into his word, to win souls, to evangelize the world that a lot of these little policies that we created only as we were on the run, they were not that important because our motivation, our goals, our aims were pressing us forward and a lot of those things we were just willing to lay aside for a year. That's why once you don't have the burden and the vision and the goals of O-M, it becomes legalistic. There's no other way. But when you have the vision, the burden and you have that set of goals ahead of you, it's not a legalism. What's a legalism is a joy. It just helps things to be done decently and in order. It gives you some railway tracks that you can move the train on. Have you ever seen a train going across a field without tracks? It's difficult. And the policies of O-M, some of the basic so-called rules sometimes just provide the railway lines to help things run smoother. We don't want to just become another mission board. I don't like the word just. I withdraw that because we praise God for these mission boards. That's their calling. We know there are different structures. There are different ways of doing things. One of the difficulties of our task in O-M is that we have to prepare people for totally different kinds of organizations. Some of you may go back to a brethren assembly. They have a very different way of doing things than the Baptists. Some of you are going back to the Anglicans. They have a very different way of doing things than the little Pentecostal house group down the road. So how can we keep it open enough to prepare you for a wide range of things ahead? Of course, people thought we would become another denomination. Fifteen years ago some people were afraid of us. And I think we have proven that O-M will not become a denomination. Because even the churches we have planted, I can't even tell you where they are. I know there are fifteen churches in France. I can't even tell you where they are. I should because I should be praying for them more. But whenever O-M plants a church, within a year or two we are gone. There is no structural link between our international office here and any church anywhere in the world. There is no structural link. There is no hierarchy. They are units or new churches linked with other churches in their town or there may be a whole new movement. Now I cannot say in the future that as a result of O-M's work there will never be a new denomination born. What does the word denomination mean? A lot of new groups don't like the word denomination. They use it to sort of speak negatively about all the rest of the churches. And they start their own structure, a real New Testament structure. Are they a denomination or not a denomination? If they have a headquarters, they have a hierarchy including apostles, they have films, they have summer conferences, they have structure, bank accounts, leadership training, you name it. And they start new local churches in which people are no longer involved in any other church but only that church, baptizing, breaking bread, etc., etc. Are they a denomination? We are just playing with words. In fact, one strong group in this country just had 15 churches pull out from the main mother saying, we are leaving because it is becoming a denomination. Now of course they have created another denomination with their 15 churches. And you know, when these groups do this, because they don't have a name, they don't want to have a name because that would be a denomination. You know what they get called? They get named after the person who brings the split. That's why in early Brethrenism you have each group named. You have Kelly Brethren, you have Taylorite Brethren. They won't take a name, so we give them a name. And in London you have 52 exclusive Brethren groups. And they would all have different roots. In India, one of the groups refused to take on a name in its early days. The movement that was started by Buck Singh, everybody called Buck Singh fellowships. It just became known all over the world. Finally he decided to change, he even wrote up a constitution. That's a sign of being a denomination, a constitution, and he called it Hebron Fellowship, that was the name of his central headquarters church in Hyderabad. So now some people do refer to it as the Hebron Fellowship. Interesting, isn't it? Number two, a mere opportunity for Christian service. Perhaps this is one of the great dangers of OM today, isn't it? We find we do have people come, it's an opportunity to serve the Lord. And they always wanted to have a little opportunity to serve the Lord. Now in one sense there's nothing wrong with that, as long as there are other things there. But in OM we don't want to be just an opportunity to serve the Lord. There are already many movements before we were ever born where you can serve the Lord. And we felt though in a sense that is part of the time and the program within OM, in early days literature was such a major factor in our work that we were immediately tagged as a literature distribution agency. It's amazing how our work evolved. In the early days there was not this. I'm going back to early, early days now. There wasn't such a concept of a training program. There was more the concept of revolution. A band of young people who really wanted to see the world reach for Christ, realized they had a lot to learn. So the training aspect was there from the beginning. And wanted to get overseas and reach the unreached. The emphasis on reaching the unreached from the earliest roots of OM was a major major driving force. Often we didn't know exactly what we were doing. A little band of three of us going to Mexico and then five of us going back to Mexico. And believe me those people weren't really any different than most of you sitting here right now. They were not a super spiritual crowd. We had tremendous problems on our team. Some of us couldn't get on with each other. One of them eventually thought I was not on the first team. That was very short, just Dale Roton and Walter and myself. We had our struggles. About the next year was a whole summer. And it was more organized. That's when it was really born. And we had disagreements. We got ill. I had the anemia. Another fellow on the team fell in love with a Mexican girl. This was the birth of the social policy. We didn't have any social policy. He thought I was a little Hitler. I thought he was a bit lazy. Why wasn't he going out in distribution? He was in his room lifting his barbells. He was into this exercise business. It was quite chaotic. The Mexican who joined us, we were only beginning to know about his difficulties. We were a weak group of young people who were just learning, learning, learning how to walk with Jesus. And so you know when there's problems on your team, and things begin to go wrong, don't suddenly say, ah, we're back to the real vision of operation mobilization. Because people haven't changed that much. Not in 4,000 years really. Of course, changes are there. We need to be sensitive to that. So we got tagged as a Christian literature distribution agency. We opened six book shops in the first couple of years in Mexico, started a correspondence course. We always in our prayer letters emphasized a number of tracts and a million pieces of literature. Literature distribution agency. And that stream, that early stream of what OM was in 1958, 59, and 60, that stream runs directly into the SDL world. SDL is one of the main literature distribution agencies within OM, but we hope as we indicate here in this chapter it will never only be that. That it will also be the other things which we'll come to in a minute. The rest of OM of course no longer has their main goal of being a literature distribution agency. We do believe that literature is a main tool to use in every situation we're in. You know, even among the Afghan refugees we use literature. We even use literature on how to be healthy. Amazing literature we've been involved in publishing for the Afghans. How to attack worms. This is basic. We never thought of this in the early days. But we do have some Christian literature there as well. And then number four, an institution. Someone recently reminded Dale Roton that that which God is able to use often begins with a man, then it goes and becomes a movement, then an organization, then a monument. Something along that line. And I think most people realize that OM is now in the movement stage. We want to be a spiritual movement. Again, a lot depends on definition of these words. But we sense a spiritual movement. It's thrusting forward. It's going someplace. We're still pioneers, not settlers. We distribute A.W. Tozer's Little Leaflet, Breaking the Fallow Ground. I read that to the leaders at our main leaders' conference a couple of years ago, and I will tell you the Holy Spirit moved upon our hearts to break up some of that hard ground. If you get a chance to read that, I think it's in Pathways to Power by A.W. Tozer. I'm sure it will minister to your heart. We don't want to just settle into institutionalism. More buildings, more offices, more and more structure, more and more committee, more and more bureaucracy. Pretty soon to find a man in an evangelism would be such an unusual event that you would bring out your video camera because everybody has to spend most of their time committee-izing, discussing, planning often things that never do take place. Anyway, it's a difficult area to maintain a balance, and we want to be careful because there are Christian institutions that are being wonderfully used of God. So again, everything we say here, you know, it has to be brought into balance. But I think it's important to understand that simply because we don't want to go in a particular direction does not mean we are condemning what they are doing. It means we want to follow our distinctives. God over these years has given O.M. some distinctives. We're going to be talking about that in these three days. We don't want to lose those distinctives. It's not easy because there's pressure often to copy other organizations. Enormous pressure. But you get one group that wants to copy this organization, another group wants to copy that organization. There are about a thousand major, some of them small, Christian organizations in the world, or far more than that. Which one do we copy? We can just be blown apart by all kinds of different efforts to copy other organizations and in the process lose our own distinctives. There is a sense where every Christian movement must find its own way. It must build on its own foundations, not other people's foundations. And with those foundations there will be the strengths and the weaknesses. And as we see the weaknesses and we're hurt by the weaknesses and we want to remove those weaknesses from our foundation we will find it difficult because the one building block of weaknesses will be glued with the other with perhaps super glue to the other building block of strength. It is not easy in Christian work to just simply separate the weaknesses in a movement from the strong points in the movement. And anything you can do to help me on that I would be very grateful. Because we know there are weaknesses in our hands. We know there are things we need to get rid of. But some of them seem to be tightly glued with certain strengths and we don't want to lose that beautiful solid building block with that broken building block that may be glued together. Do you know they say in some places it's more difficult to demolish a building than to build a new one? I have a close friend who's in demolition. In fact I think he blew up that rollercoaster in that film with, what's his name? Forget him. But the film where a huge rollercoaster was blown up in the film. I think Smokey and the Bandit rides again or something. My friend was telling me about this fantastic demolition job. He then flew to South Africa to do a demolition job. Huge smokestack. It fell the wrong way. Caused quite a lot of damage. So the demolition business is difficult and we want to demolish a few things within our empire, but we don't want the smokestack to fall on our heads as it comes down. So we don't want to just be an institution, and we hope we can say that without condemning institutions. And then number five, this is the most grotesque. We don't want to be a band of Pharisees. Every spiritual movement has within it the seeds of its own destruction. Every spiritual movement has built in it the seeds of its own destruction because every spiritual movement is made up of people. And people have potential to be created and to destroy. To one minute be standing in the streets giving out Christian literature, to drunkards passing by, the next minute to be one of those drunkards. It's not an easy thing to keep a movement alive and fresh and all that God wants it to be. Very, very difficult. If I had known how difficult it would be 25 years ago, I don't think I would have just joined the Salvation Army or some other movement that I admired because I just never dreamed of the pressures and the problems of leadership in Christian work and trying to keep something alive and fresh and to try to see what's written in these books. Calgary Road, we would see Jesus take my life, give up your small ambitions. Why Revival Tarry? Think of how many copies of that book we distributed. I think it's going to stand up against us on the Judgment Day, that book. Maybe with Ravenhill right behind it, I don't know how to say it. Because that book is strong. That book is strong and I just know that we're not living up to all that we find in there or power through prayer or personal revival. I'm not even living up to Hunger for Reality or the literature of angels, Emmanuel. And it's easy in Christian work with our high ideals and goals to end up very much depressed and condemning ourselves. Beware of accusing people or yourself of being a hypocrite. It's a very subtle thing. There is a sentence, if we're really drawing the lines closely, in which we're all hypocrites. None of us live up to all that we have said and preached and shared. Not one of us. Only Jesus Christ himself ever did that. And so when you start thinking of people as hypocrites, maybe you ought to let us know where do you draw the line? Are you saying that you have no hypocritical areas in your life? Maybe you come and autograph my Bible. I ought to have a special section for those that know 100% that there are never any inconsistency or hypocrisy in their lives. We at times do behave a little bit like that. Subconscious, perhaps without realizing. That a group of super spiritual know-it-all, so-called dedicated disciples standing apart and thinking that others should be like them. You know, I'm glad that was written many years ago. Many years ago. Because I think the Lord did show us right from the beginning, our own weaknesses, did begin to teach us something about esteeming others better than ourselves. And it's because of that teaching that many have been able to leave O&M, even after having a very fulfilling time on O&M, and join other groups and other movements and be used in those movements and those groups. That is very encouraging to me. Because I notice in some places that people, they get taught in such a way that it's very difficult to make any transition from that group to a new group. So in a sense it's good that you've got a few negative things about O&M. That's great. In another way, of course, as a human being, I, with my ideals and goals, like to see people more positive. And that will still be my goal, to try to make you more positive. I know I don't come here this week with a main goal to make you more negative. Some of you will have that without any teaching from me. But I've noticed how God uses the negative factors. Because when they had left O&M and they got into something else that was negative, and everything has its negatives, they were a little more ready for it. And there are some, Peter Conlon used this term this week, really helped me, it's a term I haven't used before, that some people have a very romantic view of what Operation Mobilization is. Have you ever heard that term? Very romantic view. I had a letter from someone like that. And he really thought O&M was sort of a combination of Hudson Taylor and C.T. Studds and Amy Carmichael and the Book of Acts, of course, all rolled into one. And of course, if someone has a romantic view of O&M and they come to live in Bromley, they're in for the shock of their life. This is very salty here, isn't it? Very earthy around here. You're praising the Lord and a pile of books falls on your head because someone on the other side is pushing in the wrong direction. Lots of very damned earth things happen here. You park your car in the wrong place and suddenly there, Jerry Davey or the local police department are standing there looking at you. No longer the leader is your own age, some 19-year-old person who you can just take aside. Rather middle-aged gentleman with grown-up daughters. Who knows what new image I will take now. I have people coming to me already calling me grandpops. What are you insinuating by that? What do you think can happen in two days? Let's be patient because we've got at least another 10 months or a year as far as my understanding of these things. So we don't want to just be a band of Pharisees. We could of course, there's many other things that we don't want to be but here are what our real purposes and aims are. To be a fellowship. A like-minded, a fellowship of like-minded believers who for the sake of training, spiritual growth, fellowship, prayer, spiritual warfare, a lot of heavy words here. Unite at certain times for a special all-out effort or special all-out efforts with the goal of reaching the entire world with the gospel. Now there's a strong phrase. Now since that was written, we've had all kinds of subcommittees and unofficial committees coming up and writing things and usually when they're done, it comes out very similar to what you have here. So we don't mind that. In fact, we've got main leaders right now saying we need to sit down and give a statement what we really are. Great! But it would be good before we sit down and decide what we really are to read what we sat down after discussion and prayer many years ago, put what we really are because it helps us build continuity. Let's just read that again. To be a fellowship of like-minded believers who for the sake of training, spiritual growth, fellowship, prayer, spiritual warfare, unite at certain times for special all-out efforts with the goal of reaching the entire world with the gospel. For this reason, most young people are encouraged to unite with us for a summer or a year-long program. Strategy should flow out from basic policy. But when a movement is born, often the strategy comes before the policy. You study the history of the birth. You see, the birth of a spiritual movement is a hot thing, it's a growing thing. It's not a matter of a committee, sitting back in Whitecliffe, New Jersey in 1957 and writing out the policy for a worldwide spiritual movement. We must understand the enormous difference between a spiritual movement and a secular organization. Though many secular organizations have had a birth more lightning-light, more, in a sense, hot and on fire than some Christian organizations. So we have to understand God's providence and God working in different ways in different people. I have to confess I am far more broad-minded today in these things than I was when I first started out. And I know there have been great Christian groups that have actually been born when a group of people sat down and maybe before they did very much, they hammered out some policies. The OM was not born that way. The policies were learned out on the battlefields. They were not even put into print until I think when I arrived in Spain, about 1960 I arrived in Spain. 61 and 62, around that time I wrote the first leadership manual. We had orientation tapes before that but if you listen to those, they're very much spiritual terminology. The tape that deals with strategy the most is the one I added in Bombay a couple of years after the original tapes. Now we are actually typing up, this is happening right now, a policy manual on a computer. I had a phone call last night from Alistair Hubbard who is helping on this saying the first draft is ready going to the area leaders for our May meetings. Of course these policies were in writing most of them years ago because we started putting things in writing and listing our policies but we never put them all together in one manual. The only policy manual we've had is the discipleship manual and the leadership manual. This is why also I have a burden to put a little more emphasis on the discipleship manual and leadership manual in these days because in October some of you are going to be looking at the policy manual though it will not be for general distribution. It will be used by leaders to clarify some of the things that we agreed on. Back in the early days basically I, usually bouncing my ideas off a few other people created the policies. Even this leadership manual was originally written that way. After that we tried to get more and more people revising it so we could say it was a group project. Now policy no longer lies in my court. Policy is ratified and created by the general council and you know you have a voice in the general council. All you do is have to get the ear of one either long term person some of you are now in that camp or a person in a responsible position may only be in the work one or two years but if he's in a responsible position he's to be in that general council that means you can get the ear of somebody very young and he can voice whatever you're on your heart and in God's word a voice is stronger than a voice because if we don't get complete unity we don't move. Now with that we have the agreement it's called the unofficial back down agreement that you know if you're sort of alone and all the other voices are united we have a personal fellowship video over tea and we have operation back down and you know if that hadn't worked it works very effectively I think even better after coffee if that hadn't worked you know O.M. would not be where it is today. Praise God for so many even strong minded leaders who in the vast majority through consensus felt this is the way we should go and we could sit with them and explain some of the definitions what it would mean for his country where maybe he could have the exception because everything then has to be ratified by the individual country by their board of directors then we came out with consensus written into the minutes of the general council meeting was considered within a month or two if there were no major protests as policy so policy you can relax is no longer created at 45 rows walk in fact I find out now that sometimes it's greater joy to run with other people's ideas than it is to run with my own. Now I'd like you for in preparation for tomorrow for you to start reading through this leadership manual as much as you can but to especially study the remaining part of the last chapter ultimate goals and aims because most of the chapters in this manual we are not going to spend much time on. Not going to go into details about food and clothing I'm not going to spend much time on some of these other chapters because I especially am burdened to deal with this last chapter and I hope you'll be willing to just look a little further now on what those ultimate goals and aims are. Let us pray Father we thank you for the opportunity to study these things together we know it is more relevant for some people than others so if there are those that feel this is not so relevant for them may they be humble enough to realize they can learn something and it may be more relevant than they think the eventual leadership in their own home their understanding of leaders, why they think and act the way they do in some occasions and may we Father know what it is in O.M. to avoid certain pitfalls like the plague and to be able to obey you and to follow you with all of our hearts guide us now in today's work help us to have an increased sense of unity of purpose and the dynamic and the motivation that's needed to carry out these goals and aims to reach that which we are aiming for we ask in Jesus name Amen