In this sermon, the speaker discusses the original vision of reaching every creature with the word of God. They emphasize that training was not initially a part of their vision, but rather the goal was to share the gospel with everyone. The speaker acknowledges the challenges of maintaining unity and loyalty as a movement grows larger. They also mention the importance of planning and the current focus on pastoral counseling and budgeting within their organization. The sermon references Acts chapter 15, where Paul and Barnabas continue to teach and preach the word of the Lord and decide to visit their brethren in every city.

You may begin to notice a strange quacking noise in the background. This is not because George was speaking in a farmyard, but is due to a fault in the recorder George was using. We hope it will not distract you from the subject matter of the message. Here now is George Verwer. What God is doing through the Owen Fellowship today. As I've always tried to specialize over the years in spending a lot of time with other groups and other movements, often speaking in their meetings, I've noticed how in OM, and I think it's good, we are very self-critical as an organization. We especially see this during the September conference when we literally dissect OM to little pieces. Of course, we've been doing that for about twenty-some years. We saw this in Katmandu, absolute ruthlessness about some of our own weaknesses and failures, and much repentance, and even leaders going to New Brothers and acknowledging wrong attitudes, or repenting and putting things right. And I think this is beautiful. When it comes to other groups, we need to be very slow to criticize. We need to make sure we have our facts, because it's easy to generalize. It's easy to see something about a group or hear something, because it's difficult when you have a lot of work to be very much in depth, involved with other groups, and so you can make a generalization. I believe one of the strongest, most important policies and principles of OM is our definite goal to train and graduate people into other groups. It's hard to win in this. If people have two fulfilling, exciting, tremendous programs within OM, they don't want to go to other groups. And, of course, then that doesn't fulfill a major goal that's on our part. On the other hand, of course, if they have just a total disaster in OM, since they usually talk about it a little bit before they go, that doesn't always help the work either. But at least if people don't have such a great time when they're in OM, they're a little more ready to look around and esteem these other groups, and it's been wonderful how some people have left OM not so happy and have become happier in other groups. Praise the Lord. This is good because it's at least going uphill. God has his sovereign ways of working. But I think in the light of our openness and our freedom to criticize, and sometimes we even have sessions where people can really open their heart and share the negative things, and all this, I think, is helpful when kept in balance. I thought it would be good, because we may be getting into some of this in the coming days, to just share some of the tremendous things that God is doing through this week fellowship. I know I need to do this. I launched out 27, 28 years ago with some very specific goals. A little idealistic, of course. And I look back and I try to see, you know, how are we doing in connection with these goals. And so this is perhaps helpful for me. There are many scripture verses that come to mind. I think, for example, of Acts chapter 15, where we find Paul and Barnabas continuing in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of the Lord. And then some days after, Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city. It seems like a bit of a last minute bit of inspiration here. O.M. has gone through the year of emphasis on pastoral counseling. We've gone through the year of emphasis on budget. Not that we're out of those things. We're still just getting into them. And now we're into the year of planning, as area leaders we're going to meet for four or five days, and we're going to do some planning. This, of course, is only possible because each area around the world is getting together and drafting up more paper than any human being probably will be able to read. So we can have planning. And I believe this is good. You almost know what I'm going to say after that, when it's kept in balance. Because, in fact, if you study the book of Acts, you'll discover that a lot of the really big things that happened, there was no planning. And there was no planning for the 1904 revival or the Hebrides revival. And there wasn't much planning that brought into birth most missionary organizations. And if, in our effort to have more planning, we lose the sensitivity to the power and the leading of the Holy Spirit, we will surely be in great trouble. So Paul had a burden that came after waiting upon the Lord. And he said, let's go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord and see how they do. And Barnabas determined to take with him John, whose surname was Mark. You remember before, this man didn't do so well. And Paul thought it not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia and went not with them to the work. And the contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed on to Cyprus. And Paul chose Silas and departed being recommended or commended by the brethren unto the grace of God. You know, we see here the very tight linking to sending forth this team with the Church and how it was the Church who commended them forth, of course, unto the grace of God. That brings that into balance. So Paul had a plan, but the plan was immediately stricken with difficulty. And it ended up in a very unique separation in the work. I don't want to get into that. But notice later on in verse 5 of chapter 16, and so were the churches established in the faith and increased in number daily. As you know, another major emphasis, some of which originally ran very head-on into O.M.'s emphasis to some degree, is Church growth. It's been a real joy on this last trip to read books on Church growth. And of course, we were very blessed by the visit of Donald McGovern a couple of years ago at our conference. I wonder if we really listened to what that man was trying to say. We see here that the Church was growing. And I think as we try to measure what is happening through O.M., we must not firstly ever look at just the number of people on O.M. It's interesting that even the great Campbell Morgan, preaching in London 80 years ago, felt a need to give a strong warning to the Church, this great expositor at Westminster Chapel, against overemphasis on numbers of people. And he shared how here he was at Westminster Chapel, the place full. He was considered one of the great preachers of all times. And yet he pointed out that the little chapel down the road with maybe 50 people could be that very night seeing more of the power of God and the reality of God than their whole big chapel meeting. Let's always beware of preoccupation with numbers. I think this is actually one of the problems of Church growth, which has become very, very controversial now. And anything people write, someone else writes the opposite or writes something else. But sometimes you have to define your terms because in certain statistics for Church growth in Africa, everybody is in those statistics. Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, cults, extremist groups. If it's any way near Christian, it's classified as Church growth in Africa. So some statistics I'm sure you realize we have to take with a grain of salt. But truly one of the ways that we want to grow in the future is by seeing the Church grow. If the Church is growing, we are growing. Because we are not the Church in the technical local Church sense. We are the Church in the larger sense. And if one of our teams goes into a particular area of India and they are used to God to directly or indirectly start a movement that results in a hundred new churches, that's growth, even if that team leaves and goes on to another state. And for someone to come along years later, as we've had in India, and say, Oh, O.M. is not doing anything in that state anymore, is of course somewhat of a miscalculation. Do we measure things by what O.M. is doing? Or do we measure things by what God is doing? Somewhere we are going to have to decide that. Because if we decide the former, then of course when you leave O.M., you are not going to be too interested anymore in what O.M. is. And that's easy, because you get in other things, you're busy, it's not that you don't love O.M., but life is life. It moves and you get very occupied. But if you're always able to see, even if you become, suppose you become even very strong on the local Church, and you even may decide that something like O.M. or another mission society really isn't what you want. You want to just be your own local Church and set out on your own local Church and start something that's connected with your own local Church. That is happening by the way. Before you do that, you may want to do a little research on how that goes. Because it's producing a lot of complexities on the mission field. When just some little Church in California or Boston, totally apart from any mission society, sends out an independent worker to India. Of course, as soon as he gets there, he needs help. So he'll be on O.M.'s doorstep, you can be sure. And he'll be doing everything he can to get some degree of credibility, which is a little bit difficult, I mean to work without any credibility at all. But all how I long in these coming years to really see our relationship with the local Church, to really see the workers coming on O.M., commend it out whenever possible. We'll still have our back doors. And as a training movement, we'll still be relatively easy to get into for training. But that somehow those who come back for that second time might be commended out to the work of God by their local body and their local fellowship. I think it's so exciting the way some of you have got real roots into some of the Churches here. We know that no road is a totally easy road. Some of your local Churches have a very different view on some things in O.M. Fine, unity is in the midst of diversity. Don't expect a local Church in Bromley to have the exact same light viewpoint as Operation Mobilization India or the Middle East. And if you have the maturity, you will be able to amalgamate that which you're receiving from other sources, including the local Church, with that which you receive from O.M. And that's beautiful. What I wanted to point out here, however, in verse 6, is how these men launched out in their particular plan, it wasn't planned very far in advance, but some degree of thought, they launched out in verse 6, that when they had gone through Perga, forgive the pronunciation, and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. And I believe what we see here in Acts 16.6 is something that sometimes happens. They were actually forbidden by the Holy Spirit. One of the most powerful messages I've ever read, and I'm hesitant to even circulate it, I know how quickly people go to extremes, and I'm sure this article needs balance, needs other facts stated, but A.W. Tozer's article, The Waning Authority of Jesus Christ in the Church, is still one of the most significant prophecies given to the Church in our generation. If we miss that, I hate to know what else we're going to miss in the process. So the Holy Spirit forbade them. After they had come to Mycenae, they attempted to go into Bethany. Now, they must have had some discussion in prayer as to what to do, so they launched out in their second effort, but the Spirit allowed them not. And they, passing by Mycenae, came to Troas, and then, of course, there was the Macedonian vision. So God certainly has a unique way of working and a way of guiding his people. And I know that the word balance is overused, I guess, by me, and I know that if I give a certain definition of the word balance, I will also be against balance. So I hope you know generally, from listening to me, what I believe about balance. But I come back to you from this trip very, very excited. It's been my privilege in the last two, three years to visit almost every single team in the OM world. There are some exceptions, very distant places where the expense would be enormous to go. And in India, where I have not been able to go to the teams, but all the major leaders, two or three years now in a row, have been able to come to me. And I believe that God is doing fantastic things. I think we need to understand this. OM will always continue to receive a lot of criticism. Someone felt that OM was now just so accepted among all the mission groups, and is now part of the big league. And so there wasn't much criticism coming. And he felt this was negative. He felt if you're booed and you're doing something, you're going to get criticized. I agree with him. OM, of course, does have more acceptance and does have many friends, and we don't want to go out as I think we almost, at least seven in the early days, may have done without knowing it, almost purposely being obnoxious. This is not our calling. But believe me, there is still plenty of criticism against operationalization, and it's more subtle than ever before. Whereas people will not come face-to-face with me and lay the cards on the table. They will use innuendos with my co-leaders. They will use more subtle methods. Recently we had a letter from a very close brother accusing us or saying that OM is mainly a movement of the statist quo, especially our Muslim world. Now that, of course, doesn't always warm the hearts of those who read the letters out there battling on in the Middle East with bullets flying over their heads. And one dear brother wrote, I believe, one of the most historical letters in the history of OM. It wasn't the one who the letter was directed to. It was someone who got the carbon copy. In fact, the one who got it was so impressed with this piece of dynamite that he circulated it to his fellow missionaries and said, this is what some of the other missionaries think about us. Well, those who did it also know how to receive it. But I think that's a good question. Has OM sort of become a symbol of the statist quo? Are we now belonging to the 60s group? Fantastic generalizations are made, even about, for example, the age of the leaders. Supposedly all the leaders, according to generalizations, are the same age. Well, I do fellowship a little bit with the leaders, and I can assure you that all the leaders are not the same age. Now Alfie Franks is the exact same age as me. And he was even born on the same day. I can't tell you what day that is. But God has brought into OM a whole second level of men in their 20s and early 30s who he is using and wanting to use as much as those who are in the upper 30s and the mid-40s group. We even have some, of course, beyond that range. And we have from the earliest days. When we make a decision about something, when we are trying to decide or evaluate something, it's important not to make too many generalizations. This means that there's got to be a lot of study, a lot of thinking, a lot of research, a lot of interviewing. Anyway, let me quickly just share some of the fantastic things I believe God is doing that will encourage our hearts. As we battle here often in the nitty-gritty, often behind the scenes, and we're wrestling sometimes with very small things that seem to be just related to what we're doing here, it's so important not to lose the overall vision and not to fail to see what God is doing all over the world as a result of your faithfulness here. And I think as we have this as a foundation, then we can build far more effectively. Number one, literally tens of millions of people are being reached with the message of Jesus Christ. Now, this is incredibly important, incredibly important, because this was the original goal of all of us. The original goal of all of us was training. Did you know that? Because when I launched out at 19 years of age to Mexico, I didn't have any thoughts about a training program. I didn't have the word training in my vocabulary, but I know it. Our vision was to reach every creature with the word of God. We didn't even have at that time too much vision for church planting. That came in later. But we felt, and we were greatly influenced by the literature movement of that day, we felt everybody in the world should be given the gospel at least once, at least once. And this was one of the most unique factors about OM. And the miracle is that we've been able to maintain that vision for 28, 29 years because that is not popular. It's now considered superficial. It was viciously attacked by the church growth people. Statistics of people reached with a piece of literature or preached at don't even go, they don't fit in the computer. They're not allowed in the computer. You can read pages and pages and pages. I've been doing it lately, just defining the word reached, just defining the word reached. The U.S. Center for World Missions launched one particular view on this. I read 10 major missionary leaders who've all gunned down the viewpoint of the U.S. Center for World Missions just on this point of the word unreached and the word people. We are having more conferences, more discussions, more debates on the meanings of words in the entire history of the church. And there are pages and pages and pages written just on those two words, unreached and people. We don't want to be against it, but because somehow OM has kept this vision and has kept this goal, we have been able to reach 250 million, 300 million, maybe 350 million, no one knows anymore because these estimates have always been conservative, people with the word of God. Now, of course, if someone defines that this reaching people is not included in the definition, all right, fine. But most will at least agree in terms of minimum evangelism, and we know that's not enough, 250, 300 million, maybe closer to 350, have had a piece of literature. That is very important. Most of your literature groups have that as one of their main goals. The Bible Society considers it very important. Many church leaders, not all, consider it very, very important. And that was one of the first earliest goals when there was only three of us and only 12 of us praying night and day. That was our goal. That's what we worked toward. That's what we planned toward. And we've reached it, at least halfway. Of course, population explosion hit us so hard sometimes we have been almost wiped out when it comes to that particular goal. That's one of the things that really encourages me about OM, that we haven't lost that initial vision for reaching the masses with all the other things coming in, church planting, in-depth follow-up, training, ships, which of course were part of that vision, that somehow this is still going on with almost increased intensity. And you know one of the most encouraging areas is France. You'd probably expect me to say India. We know that's very encouraging in terms of reaching the masses, without saying. But here's a land in Europe where I can tell you it's been, at least for the last ten years, not popular to think about mass distribution. Mike Evans, one of our most gifted men in the area of church planting, also starts a publishing house, also has a relatively good study program, language program. He's got a lot going in France. It hasn't all been easy. And yet, to our amazement, has never lost the vision for reaching the masses and a couple of million pieces of literature are again being prepared for this summer. I can tell you that is very encouraging to me because I don't mind absorbing new things, but I don't want to throw away the goal and the vision that God gave us in those early days. So I'm excited about that. Let me go on to the second thing, that one of the fantastic things that God is doing is turning people's lives upside down. Again, in the early days, thank you, in the early days, we didn't think so much of training. Training would have been considered a little too stuffy for us in the early days, really, quite honestly. I mean, you generally think of training for dogs. My daughter paid 50 pence for a training program for her dog. On the other hand, let's not argue over words. We've taken the word training into great, but it wasn't, you know, the initial vision. And I think that often the answer lies in a mingling of new visions with the original vision. Let me share the original vision. Radical, revolutionary, total transformation of a person's life so that he becomes an absolutely, totally committed fanatic for Jesus Christ. Now, obviously, this is not in terminology these days, but that's what the goal was. And we expected people to have crisis experiences. Of course, later on, the process came in. You know, I've read all over the world saying, the crisis not followed by the process becomes an abscess. And, you know, where do the dentists fit in? But it is encouraging to me, whatever terminology you use, that people are being radically changed through coming in contact with his fellowship. Just look at this last weekend. I've read 150 plus feedbacks, personal letters from the people at this last weekend. I will tell you, that decision, many of those made, will have more radical effect on their life than their conversion experience. Many people, when they're converted, let's face it, especially the way things are today, they don't change much. I mean, they do change. And the seed for radical change is there, and that's what conversion is. But many stay in the same job. Their parents are happy. That's why it's a little different when a Muslim comes to Christ than when little Johnny down the road comes to Christ whose parents are already members of the local church. You don't want to despise that. And I just feel that we are seeing a lot of people still go through a radical change as a result of their contact and their time of training, work and service with Operation Mobilization. 37,000 people approximately have graduated from Operation Mobilization or finished a short term on their end. You must keep in mind that includes people who are with us even for a few weeks. We need to work on that statistic and find out how many have been with us on a year or two year program. What an exciting thing to be in Calcutta. In God's providence today, Faye Farris, who used to be here with STL, arrives in Karachi five years after she left STL. You see, it takes time to get through the general training and preparation that a standard mission society requires. And people who say that we're just another mission society, I can't understand how they could study OM and come up with that conclusion. I guess, again, it depends on definition of terms. But if you apply for a standard proper mission society, you have to go through a lot of paperwork, a lot of applications and screening and deputation work, and there's nothing wrong with that, as the Lord leads and enables you. And remember, when the Lord led us to Europe in those early days, within two years of being here, we sensed this must be a thrust. OM must be a thrust that came out of Europe. At that time, there were many, many major mission movements in the United States, great movements. And quite a few of us felt, could God do something in-depth and real and lasting here in Europe where the soil was not as ready, where there were many, many adverse winds? And I think it is a miracle what we have seen God do here in Europe, not in any way putting down what the Lord has done in other countries as well. By the way, I just had word that Canadian recruits for this summer are way up, pushing 70 or 80 already, compared to other years. So people are having their lives changed. People are receiving training that is enabling them to go on and join other missions and join other societies or work within their own culture, as so many of the Indians are. Not without struggle, not without problems, not without some heartaches. And this is why one of our important ministries in OM must continue to be, as much as we are able, to encourage these ex-OMers to visit them when we are on the field, to send them literature, in some cases more in India, to help them financially. If not ourselves, due to a shortage of finance, sometimes to link them up. Everything in India becomes seemingly five times more complex than back here. I've written down these words. Building a worldwide network of beautiful relationships and of people who respect each other, have a commitment to each other, and are convinced about the principles to varying degrees that we stand for. We've taken a big step forward in India to have a new category of O-Emer, called the Associate O-Emer. You know, in all of life we're wrestling with terms, aren't we? Actually, we've already had Associate O-Emers for a long time. Tal Brook came to me and said, he's Associate O-Emer for life. I said, oh, OK. I better take that to the General Council. But praise the Lord if there are people who are so linked with us and feel such a relationship with us that they want to be considered Associates for life. I think we have to leave that decision to some degree with them. You know, one of the reasons that works for Tal Brook is because he takes the initiative to come to where we are. We can't organize everybody's travel. When we're having a June conference, we send many personal invitations out, we put in the prayer letter, y'all come, y'all come, O-M, North American Conference. But you know, not that many come. But if you personally got on the phone and asked them to come, I also do that to some degree, they often come. You know, someone like Tal, who feels a link with us, he comes, because he loves us, he wants to be with us, and there are others in that category as well. It's difficult to be able to have the personal link with all these ex-O-M-ers that we would like. Praise God for this little paper in touch that the Lord is using to link people together. I'm getting letters from people I've not heard from in 15, 20 years. Mike McKinley, who was one of the really early radicals in O-M at Moody, just had a beautiful letter from him. He's been in Spain all these years. He says, I don't write anybody in Europe. He writes people in Spain. He stayed in the same area. Here's an ex-O-M-er that was touched in the very earliest days at Moody. He separated from us in Spain and went his own direction, and yet he's been in Spain all these years, working. And there are hundreds and hundreds of people like this all over the world. They're not part of our organization. They don't wear our little badge, but they've got a degree of the same vision, the same drive. It's a work of the Holy Spirit. And you can't put a work of the Holy Spirit into an organizational chart or anything else of that kind. You can, of course, to a degree. So that is very encouraging, this network of like-minded people. Even in small towns in Pakistan, I found ex-O-M-ers that I believe even existed. I was staying in a home. You may have heard this on one of the tapes. And it didn't seem there were any ex-O-M-ers in that town. There had been, but they'd moved away. Small town. Rahim Yar Khan. And when I went to the next place where I was speaking at the annual retreat of the International Christian Fellowship, another group we're very involved with, I sat down next to a lady to thank her that I'd been able to stay in her home, tell her about her dog. She had a dog, and the dog howled all night. I brought him in and put him next to the bed, and shut up. You don't do that, by the way, in Pakistan. And she then shared that she had been on O-M France in the Summer Crusade, and that's where she got her vision for Pakistan. There are people all over the world like that. They don't make big publicity about it, but they're there. And that, I tell you, is something very challenging to me and very motivating to move again into a summer campaign with the enormous amount of work that's involved in recruiting, processing these recruits. You see, we need to understand, when we do think of the numbers of O-M, which we've been trying to keep under control, maybe 1,500, 1,600 people, it's hard to get the figures because certain people don't want to be on the computer, certain teams, and so there's no way to get an exact count because of security reasons of the number of people on O-M. But it's around 1,500 or 1,600 adults, probably a few more. Then there are always people involved at any one time, various kinds of volunteers, short-term personnel, paid personnel. And so, of course, the actual number of adults working at any one time in O-M is much higher than that. And then, of course, quite a few hundreds of children. But while this is going on, this longer-term or what I like to think of short-term, you've got both. Keep in mind that you have probably 400-plus people within O-M who basically are longer-term, past-second, third-year people. That's a lot of people to have simultaneous together with all these two-year people. But here's what some people don't seem to grasp, is that in the midst of doing all this, 12 months a year, we have to process thousands and thousands, upwards of 10,000 or more people have to be processed. That in itself is a training program. You know, my own son has applied to come on O-M. He hasn't been accepted yet. Sitting in his room, listening to those early orientation tapes, I tell you, has brought a few little ripples into the O-M household. But all those people who even get in contact with us, there's a catalyst effect on their lives. Some of them, of course, turn away as a rich young ruler. That's not very encouraging. But many others, through those tapes, which in itself is a teaching program, through those powerful books, we take these books for granted in O-M. One of the great sins of O-M is taking the blessings of God for granted. These books, these tapes, the opportunities we have to sit in this room and listen to the men of God that the Lord brings across our path. I'll tell you, many of these dear believers I fellowship with in Asia have none of this. And they have no excuse for not going on for God in the joy-filled life. And my heart, I must confess, my heart lies with the poor of this world. And it takes me a lot of grace to just come back and to let my love go to those who have so much, so much of this world's goods. Because my Bible says, he who has much of this world's goods and sees his brethren in need and opens not his heart of compassion, how does the love of God even dwell in him? You say, well, then you need to love him as a sinner. Okay, I'll do that. But as I spent most of my time in Pakistan with the poor people who had so little and who were so appreciative of my little feeble ministry, I thought, Lord, this is where I perhaps should be. We, of course, when we get among the poor, those of us from our background, we can destabilize and we have to watch out for what we do. And again, the Lord has to bring us into some degree of balance, to use that word again. So I'm very excited about what these exormers are doing. And linked with this, I am very excited, if you're keeping track of this, I don't know if we're at number three or four, about the relationships God's giving us with churches and other fellowships. You know, this is so important. We are one body. And I saw this in Pakistan, even with bishops. You know, I haven't fellowshiped with too many bishops in my life. It's not been my major scene. I'll delegate that off to other more intelligent types. But in Pakistan, to have fellowship with, over the last two trips, at least three or four bishops, one quite a long time, a man committed to seeing Muslims come to Christ, a man who God has touched by His Holy Spirit. Just the way that OM has been able to ride the crest of the charismatic controversy is a miracle of God. Very few groups have been able to do it to the same degree. So that a large number of people of that background and that persuasion are tremendously happy in OM, they're motivated, they're winning people to Christ, and yet they're not dividing the body. And they're working side by side with people who come from an absolutely different church background. You know, somehow that just excites me. And somehow that's one of the reasons also that we've been able to continue every summer and year to get such a large number of people involved and not get caught up fighting over denominational labels. One particular bishop is a strong, charismatic, born-again man. Vision for the Muslims. You know, am I going to cut off my fellowship with him? And some strongly exhort me to do this. You should see the letter that I get on this line. Am I going to cut my fellowship off with this bishop who, though he's a foreigner, has a Pakistani passport? You know, to me, when I consider what's going to come on the television here next week, produced by some of the higher church people and the scholars, quote, of the church, three devastating weeks of the most destructive television against Jesus Christ. At least that's what the articles say that I've read. Just to meet a bishop who's born again, loves Christ, wants to win souls, and baptize Muslims. Somehow that just overcomes any areas where he and I may not be alike. He gave his blessing to this pastor's morning we had. And a couple of weeks later, when I got back from Nepal, there were 30 or 40 Christian leaders who I was able to share for a couple of hours these burdens and these messages. You know, everywhere in the world now, we can hold a leaders conference and leaders will come. They want to hear. What do we have to say? God has given us a credibility. And God has given us an open door with other groups, fellowships, and local churches. That is phenomenal. And I believe it has laid a foundation for much, much more to take place in the coming years. And not necessarily by just adding more numbers of people, more structure, greater bureaucracy, but by seeing a deeper, more lasting work of the Holy Spirit in people's lives. Another one of the things that really encourages me at this present time is what we continue to see in the area of recruits. We've only got a couple of minutes left. But it truly is amazing that even at our age as a movement over 25 years, we have such a fantastic voice among the youth. There is no question whatsoever that OM is not growing. We are still growing too rapidly. We have still more people than we can actually properly handle. And finance. And when you think of that Leaders Conference, Peter, how many were there? 700, 800 registered or in the main meetings? And then over 1,000 on Sunday. There must have been 1,400, 1,300. You know, this is quite amazing. We actually turned people away from that conference. And it looks like we're going to have more recruits this summer than ever before. In fact, the growth of the summer campaign has brought a fair amount of discussion. We don't have a place to house this number of people. And when this came up for discussion, we were looking for alternatives. As you know, June, which was once just a tiny little effort with a very small conference in itself now, is involving hundreds of people. We are growing and therefore some of the pain we experience, especially here on this international coordinating team and in this one of the bases of coordinating OM, these pains are natural growing pains. We need to make some changes. We need better organization. We need, of course, men who also have this gift and yet also have the spirit to life and the kind of commitment that we want to continue to stand for. I tell you, we need to pray right now for all our recruiting offices because they have a magnificent job. Because you see, every year improvements have been made and yet to implement these improvements, the health forms, the questionnaires, the commendation letters, it takes people. It takes committed people. And the bigger a movement gets, the harder it is to move in one mind and one heart and with a fairly strong, relatively narrow momentum. It's very difficult. Some of you have heard this important message. I gave it on Toulouse, I think, sailing up towards Spain. I saw the tape the other day on why today it is so hard to maintain loyalty and to keep moving, to keep moving in a united direction. It's incredibly difficult. And one of our biggest tasks we have in Bromley is to continue to build loyalty toward God's word, toward these principles, toward this vision God has given us, not just here, throughout the entire world. That's why memos go out from here. That's why tapes go out from here. That's why a lot of other phone calls are made and a lot of little special meetings take place that you may hardly hear about until they're over. Well, there's a lot more I could say. The encouraging breakthroughs that we're beginning to see in the Muslim world, certainly one of the most exciting things happening in the world. Do not think for a minute all these people out and on are sort of just one or two year trainees that haven't quite got their act together yet. There are a lot of those. And God is using them. But there are a lot of people out and on now, you need to grasp this, who speak the language fluently, are doing an in-depth work with people. And some of them are beginning to see breakthroughs. As you know, there in one particular country in Asia that I'd not like to particularly mention on this tape because I'm so sensitive to how false publicity goes out when there are breakthroughs in an in-depth way that really seem to be possibly something phenomenal because the church has such a tendency to make big publicity. And I will tell you, the big publicity coming out of the states right now by certain groups is turning people's backs off in Asia and causing divisions more than you can ever know. They have to live with it out there. And we are dealing with very hot political situations, very hot political situations in which people get killed. And in a strange way, we saw, was it just yesterday or the day before, someone connected with a British council in Greece. Murder. Quite shaking since we were staying with a British council in Pakistan. The man who's the head of the British council there. Not council, a consulate, but council which is a cultural group that doesn't have anything to do with politics. And so generally they're not thought of as people that are going to be hit. OM for the last 15 years has moved in church planting. We've always tried to keep it small and make sure it was that. That was the vision for the particular country. Treating each country separately. A lot more is going to be done in this area. But I still believe that one of the main things we will do is continue to train church planters. Don't think again that something is only happening when it's happening within OM. If God uses us to see a man converted to Jesus Christ to give him a couple of years of training and basic experience, then he goes on outside of OM to plant a church. Praise the Lord. Ebenezer Sundaraj received ten years of, was it five, years of training in OM. And his wife received more. I remember the day we separated in great love and he joined Friends Missionary Prayer Band. He's the leader from North India. He came up to Nepal to be with us for those days. They planted one hundred small groups among the tribals. Fifty groups among I think mainly more outcast Hindus. There's a hundred and fifty new living groups. It's not in OM. It's nothing we put in our magazine. But it's all part of God's plan and God's way of growing. God's unmoving Book of Acts program across the world. Well, as usual, we've run out of time. I've really only given you half of what I could about some of the things that are really encouraging me, challenging me, motivating me to press on and not be weary and well doing knowing we shall reap if we faint not. Let's pray. Well, I've written here the whole thing about prayer. I wanted to emphasize the mobilization of an army of prayer warriors instilling in those people the vision for the world and just share about the tremendous number of prayer partners that God has given us. And in so many ways, they are really the background of the work. And then I wanted to emphasize more the whole thing of what God is doing in terms of the literature ministry. You know, something that's old, like STL. Sometimes when people are talking about the ongoing work of OM, they don't even mention it. It's been around for so long. I mean, it was the original vision in some ways together with the reaching of the masses. The first thing I did when I got to Mexico was open bookshops. Within a couple of years, we had six or seven. Then we felt because CLC was so much into bookshops and because we saw lives being turned upside down through doing this work and then many other ways to get the word out, literature out, take it to them door to door, you know, street work and the whole thing, the bigger part of OM shifted to what today is thought of as traditional OM. But the STL vision, which has experienced phenomenal growth when we think of the adding of the Georgia warehouse alone, which we're still shaking with, trying to bring it into the USA audit and other little things, which with governments is important, it really is quite amazing. And then I wanted to emphasize OM's catalyst ministry because we don't just automatically grow bigger and bigger and sell everybody on OM that we're the group to belong to and sign up here and give you a membership card and we make it easy for people to leave, that there's over a hundred other movements that have been born. It was no easy decision to tell new life in Switzerland, who I think way back then were called OM, that really we didn't feel we should do a major evangelistic thrust into Switzerland and that if something like this was going to happen in Switzerland, it better have its own roots and let it be Swiss and they'll have more freedom in the area of finance, leadership, and a little baby was born, new life. And now we meet this big grown-up out in Nepal, out in North India, and we have united campaigns, they get a lot of good vehicles, you know the Swiss know how to, they don't need a repair, they just buy and send them and it's just so exciting. And there's many, many other examples where because we've maintained our uniqueness and are not trying to copy other people or be a so-called full-fledged mission society, we have been able to produce a hundred other different movements of all kinds, which we still haven't got finally catalogued, but we have been working on that. Well Peter, did that give you ten? Lord, we thank you that we've had this opportunity just to share a little bit of what you're doing around the world. Not that we are not aware of failure and weakness and tremendous need for improvement, which has always been true and always will be true, and has been true of every other movement in history as well. Keep us, Lord, from being intimidated because of our failures and some of our weaknesses, and enable us to build on a positive foundation of understanding that you, the Holy Spirit, are in charge of this work, and you will lead us, you will guide us, and that according to your beautiful way, we shall continue to see this healthy growth, and by your grace, we shall continue to see many more breakthroughs. Lord, you know, especially our burden for this decade is to see major breakthroughs in the Muslim world. We believe this is a goal given by you, and we believe, Lord, that we must move the whole movement to some degree into that direction that we may see a breakthrough in the Muslim world. Give us wisdom, especially in what goes out as publicity, and what we say. But by your grace, may we see breakthroughs in Turkey, in Sudan, in Jordan, in Lebanon, in North Africa, among the Afghans, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, and other places, especially the giant subcontinent of India where we have soon 100 million Muslims. We thank you, Father, that you have laid a foundation, and you have given us some men who are committed, and who are of one heart and one mind for this vision. And by your grace, we shall go forward, and we shall reap if we faint not. We pray and ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.