In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of prayer in the work of missions. They refer to Matthew chapter nine as a key scripture that highlights the need for workers in the field. The speaker also mentions the significance of handling money, preaching, public speaking, and organizing meetings in the context of missions. They express a desire for feedback on these sessions and acknowledge that they may not have a complete understanding of everyone in the room. The sermon concludes with a focus on supporting the work of missions from within each individual country.

This final session in looking at this manual, this book that you led us to put together some twenty-some years ago, and more than that, we once again come to consider your Holy Word, whose final lines were inspired and written close to 2,000 years ago. And we thank you, Lord, that we have written these things down with the one sole goal of obeying you and living out your message in our particular culture and in our particular ministry and calling. Help us, Lord, to see the relevance of these things. Lord, you know that when we don't have such things written down, we often create them as we go along. And so often this means we end up going in many, many different directions. Father, we thank you for the answers to prayer that we've heard about even in the past days. We thank you for what you're doing in the Middle East in a very quiet way, not always the way that we grasp and measure things here in the West. Strengthen Dennis and Bertil, Clint, Glenn, Issam, Brother Kamal, Norm Brinkley, those working with them in those Middle Eastern countries. And Father, we just thank and praise you that many, many lives are being touched. Commit to you the ships, Duluth and Hull. We thank you for this tremendous gift of a couple of thousand pounds that one man gave as he touched his heart up there recently. Thank you, Lord, for Lagos now as she comes to Milford Haven. We ask that this weekend there would be many, many spiritual breakthroughs way there in that Western part of Wales. Thank you, Lord. We worship you together. Commit to you Easter evangelism both here in London and in Germany, and also special efforts going on in many other parts of the world. Guide us now in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I appreciate your patience in this study. I might mention to any that you're in contact with who've been away during this time that these five tapes will be put into a set of tapes that will be available especially for people and leaders in training. Here in Bromley, we're sort of at the heart of OM in terms of administration and information. Just as we had that accident in Pakistan, we're the first ones that know that. We're just in perpetual telex and phone call communication with the whole world right across the world. And this is a big responsibility to really, when we get this information, intercede and pray because a lot of fields, they can't get this information until they get the International Weekly Report, which can be a long time from when the information first takes place. And we sometimes ought to remember those fields that feel a little bit isolated. Think of Argentina, South Africa. Yesterday I had a phone call from New Zealand. Think of Australia. Even places like Singapore and Malaysia, they're closer to the target. They at times can feel very isolated, very out of it. One of the purposes for these tapes is to be able to share some of these burdens with leaders who are out in more isolated places. Okay, let's turn to page 30. I'd like just in the way of reminder to read one of the most important scriptures in all of OM's philosophy and thinking, and that's found in Matthew chapter 9. When you're given the opportunity to share in a church, especially if it's a church that's new and probably hasn't had too many OM speakers, one of the best verses to use are these verses here in the end of Matthew 9. It so easily leads into a brief word of what God has put in our hearts. Because as much as doing the work all around the world, our burden first is to pray, and to pray the Lord will send forth workers, many people who have been touched by the challenge of missions in OM. I would say well over 50% have never come on OM. You see often we think of OM internally. One of the brothers, one of the leaders about two years ago put out a beautiful memo about the external ministry of OM. I don't know if that's the way he expressed it, but we must not think the only way a young person we meet is going to have his life turned upside down is coming on the OM summer campaign or joining OM. That is a false idea. It may be better for his spiritual growth that he doesn't come on. I personally don't like to put all my eggs in one basket. I like to have the Holy Spirit work in people's lives. I often tell people, I don't think the best thing for you is operation mobilization. You work this out in your own culture. We have endless families from North America who want to come on OM. 95% of them we do not encourage, or we make it so hard it just scares them to look elsewhere. Because we know that families coming across from the North American culture find it incredibly difficult to adjust overseas and especially to a movement where the majority of people are still quite young and are not married. That keeps changing of course all the time and many, many other factors. So don't think we just run out, throw the net out, whatever. We catch, we bring in. Just because you came in that way doesn't mean that that is the only way we operate. I think it is so key to realize when we pray, the Lord sends people into many different movements. When I spoke at the Urbana Convention, I forget how many thousands were there that year, nothing like the attendance they have now. Praise the Lord, the people who stood up, I think three or four thousand stood up at the invitation I gave. I'm glad most of them didn't decide to come on operation mobilization. Yet wherever I meet, wherever I go in the world, I meet people who were touched through Urbana way back in 1968. So this is a very important ministry and it's based especially on these verses here in Matthew 9. Starting verse 35, Jesus went to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and sickness. When he saw all the crowds, he was moved or he had compassion on them. To link in the word mobilization, can't do it in this new international translation. He had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into his harvest field. This is one of the priority ministries we have. This is why we try to take time every day and every week for prayer, specific prayer. And this is why also we chose not to build this work on North America, which was a very unusual, totally radical decision back in the early 60s when people definitely, this is even before there was much talk about third world missions. That is the bigger talk now about where missionaries will come from. I'm not even sure we define third world yet, but it is a good challenge. Amazing enough, 20 some years ago we wrote about it here, which we're going to look at in a minute. But people were looking more to North America. Missionary leaders, even British movements were shifting their headquarters to the United States. And yet somehow, without us even fully knowing what God was doing, though it did take a few stubborn decisions, God led us to look for recruits for world missionaries. World missions in so-called decadent Europe. It's unbelievable, those of us from the States, if we'd studied Europe in Bible college in a missions course, which I did. I mean the way they described Sweden and Norway and Denmark and the British Isles. I mean you just realize this is the real mission field. If you want to find the really raw pagans, then you must launch out to Europe. And there was a very strong push. Greater Europe mission, team, some of the big missions were saying Europe. And I was so hit when I came here. And I got to know the situation, especially in Britain, but in other countries I thought, well yeah, it is a mission field, so is the States. But the possibilities for sending workers, strong churches, big churches, Pentecostal churches in Sweden with 10,000 members and a burden and a vision. Brethren assemblies in Spain with 400 gathered at the breaking of bread. Conferences in England where 5-6,000 gathered to worship the Lord. This wasn't exactly the vibrations I picked up, but then when I visited the universities and saw what God was doing in Cambridge and Oxford and in the Christian Union movement, it just affirmed that this area of the world, Europe, could be sending out thousands of believers. And OM was born out of that covenant. Let's now look at this chapter, Born in Europe, roots of course we have already talked about. Look at the first point under revolutionary principles for world evangelism. Internationalization. This principle has been emphasized from the beginning and is now the practice of many of the larger missions. World evangelism is not the responsibility of Anglo-Saxons nor North Europeans alone, but of the whole church. Keep in mind that this manual has been revised, updated a number of times. That may have initially read North Americans, but already when this was revised again, the work in Europe was moving and we were thinking about workers coming from other parts of the world as well. Praise God for what is happening in this area. I might just say that sometimes the statistics about internationalization of missions and third world participation in missions are very deceptive. I've heard fantastic figures of numbers of third world missionaries. My feeble research and reading shows that a high percentage of these people are not working outside of their own country. This would include, when they talk about third world missionaries, brothers and sisters from Kerala working in Rajasthan. Well, I think they should be included. I think they should be included. But when we include them in these statistics, we need to understand what's behind the statistic. Because there's a danger, we find this now in the States and here in Europe. People have the idea, look our part is really finished. I mean really. We hear about all these third world missionaries and they're launching out and doing the job. This is a very false idea because there are vast segments of the world where these third world missionaries are not having yet any input. And where in fact for doing the job, the key would not be whether the person were Singaporean or Latin American or German or French. They are factors but it would be more are they quality long term people who can grasp a language and who can really dig in there for the next 20 years. And God has given us a foundation here in Europe and in Britain, part of Europe of course, that I think we must build upon for sending out longer term workers and for this great task of world missions. So the internationalization of missions doesn't mean third world in UK, Sweden, Germany and America out. No, it means together as brothers and sisters, as equals. And it's easy for us to make statements about the workers we're going to be able to get from this part of the world or that part of the world, but I think we have to count the cost. What it is for example to prepare a man for India who does not yet know English. You've got to add another four years onto the program. And if he also comes from countries where they don't easily support people, especially when they're going literally from one end of the earth to the other, say for example, Argentina to Nepal, the airfares alone would take an entire lorry load of people from London to Nepal. And I believe in all this there has to be the balance between the divine factor and the human factor. The divine factor, God can touch an Eskimo, he gets a vision to work in the Congo for Christ. We're not going to resist that if this is something the Lord is really doing. But you know we find among Christians a lot of fanciful National Geographic thinking. They were up late one night after a long meeting and they read a National Geographic magazine and the page fell open to the section about pygmies and suddenly they felt a warp in their heart or mind, wherever their heater is, that the Lord wants them to go and work among the pygmies. They don't know anything else, they don't know about visas, what nationalities more easily can get into that area of the world. And actually OM has been plagued by quite a lot of confusion due to this kind of sentimental, sentimentalism or this combination of trying to find the will of God in the National Geographic magazine or latest gospel horrendous missionary slide show. We need to think through the issues and I appreciate Michael Griffith's emphasis. The church should be thinking through the issues, not just individuals here and there doing their own thing. The church should be thinking through the issues and seeing what young people should be doing. Here's a fellow in the church that may have a gift of languages. He may already know two or three. Maybe they want to talk to him about launching out to the pioneer among the Baluch people. Rather than this brother that senses that the Lord may be calling him to the Baluchi. He hasn't been able to learn his own language yet. He did drop out of primary school but the Lord has seemingly done a work in his life. I've seen so many people start on the way to some of these hard places and they just never get there. Sometimes it's not their gift. Dennis Alexander was emphasizing this on a tape I was listening to yesterday. Well as you know I have a lot on my heart about this subject but I want to move on. Mass media, radio and other methods. We have always felt that radio – I don't know what RV is. TV. Let's make a correction there. We've always felt that this is an important part of ministry but as our work developed we noticed major radio ministries had already been born about the time we were born. HCJB and that whole thing was going. Transworld Radio also has its headquarters back in my home state in New Jersey. A lot was happening in the radio area. Now we were very interested in radio and I took a crash course of ten days at Wheaton College before I went to Mexico. I think it was our third summer down in Mexico or our second because we wanted to start gospel radio in Mexico. There was no gospel radio in Mexico at that time and one of the great answers to prayer in those early days in Mexico was that we saw a program go on the air. It had to be a commercial program. So we opened a bookshop and our program talked about the bookshop. We played the records. They were all gospel records. Not for religious propaganda purposes only because we were a commercial operation and so we got around that little anti-religious radio broadcast law and this of course perhaps more than anything else excited us that he could answer prayer. The whole thing really wasn't that great. It was a good ministry for a while and through this we saw as we've had to do again and again in O.M. that we are spreading ourselves too thinly. We're getting into too many different ministries. Bookshops, correspondence courses, summer campaigns were beginning, training program, radio and we decided to narrow down and believe that other people would carry on that radio ministry. But we still believe it and we believe in using every form to reach the masses with the greater emphasis on the printed page. The idea was that this manual would always be used in conjunction with the literature evangelism manual. So we didn't go into detail on all that type of thing. Number three, man to man. I wonder when you last read Dale Roton's book Christian Strategy. You can get it in a magazine edition. We've been selling a lot of them recently with C.T. Studd, Chocolate Soldier on the back. It's probably the most devastating of all of our magazine books next to perhaps Why Revival Tarries. The emphasis in the early days of O.M. and may it continue was just as much on man to man as it was literature. For a while with O.M. these two philosophies collided. There was a lot of debate but we felt that the mass evangelistic ministry must be built on man to man emphasis, not vice versa. We always had this expression, Lord give us a man and then we'll give the man a million tracts and let him move out and reach his whole nation. We emphasized that one of the best ways to spread a vision to the man you were trying to encourage and disciple was to go out with him and give out tracts. That emphasis needs to be carried on even more. Number four, esteeming others better than ourselves. I feel it's impossible to understand some of the decisions that we made in O.M. over the years without understanding this Philippians 2.3 concept. For us this was not just a nice scripture verse that we said boy this is what we need in our lives. We sat down and I especially gave a lot of thought to this, how can we put this in practice? That's where more and more the idea of keeping people for a while and seeing them launch into other missions. That's a way of esteeming other missions. That's why when we thought well maybe we should get involved in raising money, we can't condemn groups that raise money in a careful way and we were wrestling with that policy. We thought together with our original thoughts about it and the things emphasized in books like True Discipleship, George Mueller's writings, Hudson Taylor's writings, that the other principle was we could esteem others better than ourselves. Not go into a church negotiating in advance that the offering would come. It's quite common that you don't take a meeting in church unless there's an agreement about the offering and you can't believe the quibbling and the hurt that comes out over who gets the offering. We had said that's the responsibility of the local church. If God puts it on our heart to give us the offering, that's between them and the Lord. We're not going to negotiate or get upset if we don't get the offering. Sometimes in many meetings we've taken the church has got the offering, other mission agencies got the offering. If you were at the ON leadership conference recently, one of the few times that we take an offering in ON, it's when we take an offering for other groups and give it to other people. We're not against taking an offering. We also of course link this with our conviction from scripture of laying aside finance on the first day of the week, which as we say in scripture was done in the context of the local church, esteeming the local church, esteeming other movements. It looked like a disastrous policy in the early days. Terrific pressure came to do more to keep people in OM longer term. What are we going to do? All the leaders are going to leave. There won't be anything left. The Lord has honored this. Every movement always needs more people, let's face it. That's a very part of human makeup, but God has given us many, many long-term people and they are able to carry on the training work as well as the other aspects of the work. Do read that again as you have opportunity. Number five, indigenous and self-supporting work. I've got to watch the clock now, so I'm going to have to give up making extensive comments on each section, though this is one of the most important chapters. But we felt very, very strongly that we should aim toward seeing the work supported from within each individual country, not work in Sweden supported out of the United States. In those days, even a lot of missionary work in Britain was financed out of the United States. Even when All Souls Church wanted to put their lovely basement in, quite large gifts came out of the United States for All Souls Church in central London. We felt money needs to come from within the countries, even in India where this is such a difficult policy. We have aimed for this and have seen quite significant giving in a high percentage of our countries where we're working, especially of course in Europe. Not only did the finance come from within, but far abundant. In fact, there were times when at least certain Americans were actually supported by European money and there were other times of course, vice versa, when Europeans were supported by American money. This has been a major breakthrough to see a solid foundation for support from within the countries we're working. Of course, in certain parts of the world, we hit some really big challenges. You know, even in the Middle East, we had a gift in here, oh I guess it may be a year ago now, I don't remember, it was thousands came from the Middle East. We never have traced down who sent it. I'm 98% sure who it is and he is a Middle Easterner. It wasn't just a foreigner out there sending us a gift. He didn't want anybody to know who sent it. Then number six, short term service. We of course have often been challenged by the Mormons. Not that that was a challenge in the beginning. I don't know, Harley, if we knew they existed in the beginning. But I think it has been proven that short term service is a vital supplement, complement to longer term service. When we launched into this short term service, short term service, very, very few people were in this. There were things within countries. That, of course, short term service within your own country, that predates by a long distance, you can be sure. I remember a team coming to Chicago when I was a student, from one of the Baptist denominations in America, called God's Invasion Army. I don't know if I've hardly ever mentioned this in a lecture, but I remember now the influence that made on me. They were traveling together as a team. They were just working in their own country. Short term work is again under attack because sometimes those who are mainly committed to long term work and missions, they hear the statistics of this vast army in short term, and they wonder why aren't we getting more of these people. There's a failure to understand that number one, society has greatly changed in the last year. Number two, a lot of the people who come into short term work are not long term. There's a whole separate group of people out there who will not be interested in short term, but they will go long term if the mission societies get their act together, if there's more prayer on part of everybody, especially the local church, if there's more obedience, if there's revival, if there's an emphasis on discipleship. A lot of these long term missionary agencies would do well to even partly bypass short term agencies and go after separate long term people. It would be a great mistake if longer term agencies depend on groups like OM. We will get them some people and we have, but it's going to take far more effort on the ground in recruiting by all the different agencies, but often we find different mission societies haven't got a single anointed man on the road who really can communicate to young people and then spend the time with them in discipling and building them up and preparing them for long term service. If they think for example, short term work like OM is the answer, just get one of their workers to one of our conferences and a little message and they're all going to queue up at their door. They're going to be in for some big surprises. I feel it's a mistake to blame short term agencies and OM is only half short term, the other half is now longer term, which if we're not careful can really produce a unique brand of missionary schizophrenia. But I think it's sad that sometimes there's such tension between so called long term and short term. We need both, there are different kinds of people, there are different situations and ultimately we do come back to the economic factor. It's a huge problem right now. In the States churches are really complaining that the mission societies are demanding $25,000 for a one child family if they're going to go to the field. Now if the churches there are complaining, and this is causing a lot of chaos, what are we going to say in Europe? If where the church is much smaller, suddenly this kind of demand comes on them. This is why in OM a nucleus of people are holding out against increased support. We're not even seeing many OMers get their minimum or their full support, much less again increase it. Now we realize to survive on this we have to be subsidized by general gifts. And of course if the general gifts don't come, and sometimes they don't, we're in trouble. But I think if we raise the support too high, after all there's always a volunteer, you can pray in anything you want. We have some people pray in five times their support, it just all goes into the bucket. How do you think some people are surviving? And the word teaches, I remember Dale expounding that scripture in Corinthians, that one man's shortage is another man's opportunity. And later on this situation may reverse. That's why people shouldn't get all guilty when their support isn't coming in, they should keep praying, keep working at it, committing it to the Lord. But your shortage is another man's opportunity. And it tests whether we really believe this is God's money or our money. And the strong principle within OM is that it's the Lord's money. And though we do want to have individual responsibility, that is always balanced out by the focus on God himself. And that the money coming in belongs to the Lord. Well I got sidetracked there. And it's an interesting subject, isn't it? Teamwork and group living, number seven. Teamwork and group living, take this away from OM and you will take one of the most unique factors on how hard this becomes after your children pass six years of age. I of course lived in community with my whole family up until my children were I guess almost ten. I was pioneering and discovering the problems of community life as your children grow up. And you need to discipline them and you got the team sitting there at the table watching with their cameras how you're going to do it. You know most of us, here's another sidetrack but it's a good one. Most of us only get a partial picture of people. By the very nature of my work today, I only have a partial picture. I wish I could get a better picture. Now through being with David Mauldin and some of these journeys together in the coach and going hiking off with him into the mountains, I got a little better understanding of someone like that. And I have a little better understanding of Vera over here. She's been sort of part of our family and Dirk, a little better picture. They have a better picture of me, which of course has got its ugly spots. But one of the problems in OM today is you only get a partial picture. Even Jerry Davey, your leader here, you only get a partial picture even if you would spend a lot of time with him, you only get a partial picture because you know Jerry Davey, 1984. And we all develop. We all change. We're all a combination of many years of input into our lives. And I think one of the things we need to do is to try to understand why people are what they are today. What are the things that have taken place in their life over a couple of decades that have brought them where they are today. And I think that's something that helps us in teamwork and in group living. Generally leaders are not asking you in OM to do something they have not done a lot of, but they may not be doing that right now with their children 16, 17, 18 years of age. Thinking of community life, thinking of spending more time with all the team members as we all sort of want to do and almost become neurotic about in OM. Where definitely over the years leaders have tended to try to pour themselves into too many people at the same time, almost to the point of where they couldn't even think straight anymore. You know when you're very idealistic and OM was built on very high ideals and we don't want to lose them, there's a danger as David Seaman points out in his book Healing for Damaged Emotions and the even more brilliant book about giving up our childish ways, his second book, of how this idealism can create neurosis. And I wonder if even here on this team your idealism, your high goals, may be creating a bit of neurosis, which is creating tension, which is bringing things out in your behavior, which at times are less than pleasant. Now don't let that overwhelm you because in some ways it's a bit normal, but my oh my we need to watch it. Mobility and flexibility, two of my favorite words, are they getting out of date? It's hard to know what to keep and what to change isn't it? Sometimes in my effort to change words I come up with completely ludicrous statements which I must be careful of, like the long-nosed gospel rabbit. And if you could have been at this camp where I was just teaching, after I minister only once or twice they put a skit together based on my testimony. And it was awesome. This group had an imagination that could have flown, you know, old Hughes's wooden airplane. Then they had the, this was, this is your life, George Verwood, felican out with a long cardboard nose, a pair of earphones where the heads, you know, would walk in, a pair of shorts, and he came jogging out and then it was an introducer, presenter, this is your life. It's patterned after a famous TV program. And then they brought brother Andrew, they brought my wife, they brought my dad, and they remembered things out of that sermon. I mean, they're listening. Little details that I just mentioned in passing, you know, about in Thailand where someone stroked my nose in the street. And then they had Ben and Carrie, I think, because I had mentioned something about their movie. Everybody was there. There was a laugh a minute. Now, how did I get talking about that? Mobility and flexibility, two beautiful terms. And then number nine, no closed doors. Another very strong principle in the work of OM, keep in mind the communist world vision predates, you know, I'm almost a Muslim world vision. When I arrived in Spain, I wasn't learning Arabic, I was learning Russian. And it was through that fiasco. Oh yeah, that's what I told them in my testimony. The Russian thing and the tree experience. They had a fellow, brother Andrew came in with a big branch and he had just fallen out of a tree as well. And the end scene was the KGB came in and took me away. That was the final skit. I couldn't figure out why they wanted me to come to this session. I wasn't speaking till eight o'clock and they kept insisting I come down at seven for something very special for me. Anyway, I got some photos of this skit. I might use them for, you know, touching up the manual, making it more presentable. Big thing today is to put pictures in everything. No closed doors. And number 10, mobilize the church. Sometimes people can't understand certain things we're doing. Even for example, the ships being in England at this time, because they don't understand this principle that one of our main goals is to mobilize the church. Now this gives us almost too much scope. This is where OM easily gets involved in almost too many things because there are so many ways you can go about mobilizing the church. That's why in general the aims and goals of OM as we shared in these early tapes are very important and very foundational. There's a lot of scope in your particular country. Suppose I was speaking to a group of country coordinators. There's a lot of scope in your particular country with your leaders under your prayer and board of directors to do what you feel is best to accomplish these goals. And this is why often people coming from the outside, they cannot figure out OM. And they try then to put on OM in terms of structure, in terms of ideas, in terms of planning things that don't fit. Because OM functions more within the individual countries. It's not a matter of a group of people sitting here in London telling them what to do in Jordan or India or France or Mexico. It's a matter of people in those countries understanding their culture, their church situation, what other groups are doing in their country. That's important. And then finding their place for OM France, OM Mexico. We of course trying to maintain unity of the spirit, standing on certain basic principles and basic policies. Want to try to keep all this summit flowing at least basically in the same direction and stand against major disunity or major sin and build in that way as servants one toward another. Number 11, way back so many years ago before anybody was ever mentioning unreached people's neglected areas. And of course basically we're talking about the same thing. The church entering into far more research and getting caught up with far more statistics has produced a lot of material that is very helpful. But if it's not kept in balance, it becomes very damaging. A lot of American statistics are very upsetting to the Europeans. I was reading something again on this recently. And even to the Asians. And what one African recently said about all this computerized material is really quite funny. I read this actually in an American journal. Keep in mind that the strongest opposition to anything one group of Americans are doing, keep this in mind, generally comes from, it's so good for us to understand that. Because we are a huge country. The same is true here in Britain. The strongest opposition to some group of British people are doing, I don't need to go to Germany for opposition to that. I don't need to go back to the States. The British have an unbelievable gift in opposing anything another Englishman thinks of. And that's why we need to avoid generalizations thinking, oh the Germans are against the Americans or the French are against the Germans. Yes, this is true. But the greater tension comes from within each individual country. And then with cross-polarization through tapes, films and books, the whole thing becomes incredibly complex. And we need to be aware of generalizing where particular opposition is coming from concerning any vision or any burden. The unreached areas must continue to be the major thrust. And that's why we're in the middle of a decade in which we're trying to emphasize more than ever the Muslim push. Then God is the provider. We can skip over the section on personal evangelism, which is very, very basic. You may not agree with this method. We've distributed 30 different books on personal evangelism. We've never had one stereotyped approach and we've been criticized for that. The first book we used in our training program was strongly criticized. When the author backslid, we decided to withdraw it from distribution. And this is just something you can read through and take from it what you would like. The printed page, especially important to study if you're involved here in STL, which is the English literature distribution and to some degree production arm. There's some main things we wanted to especially emphasize and main things we wanted to avoid. Over-emphasis on production, down in the middle of the page. Over-emphasis on certain countries. Over-emphasis on the mechanics of the word. I'd love to talk to you for a couple of hours on that section right there. Really for STL, we should have a course just on this little section. Because it'll help you in your work here as you can develop a rather narrow framework. If you have some basic understanding about the overall vision of literature work, why we do certain things. A lot of the tough questions that at times people pop up with in the middle of the year program, they would be answered if people got the bigger picture. So important to try to get the bigger picture. Why we're doing certain things. What are the historical roots? Not that we don't want to change. Any suggestion you have about how OM can improve and change, don't just wait to the next big question and answer session. Often nobody says anything anyway. Maybe fear of intimidation, a normal thing in life I'm afraid. Write it down. Submit it to the weekly leaders meeting. Even though you may not see radical change within a few weeks, that is more of a problem now that OM has bigger and deeper roots. Leading weekend training outreaches, we're going to just skip over that now. Is that repeated, that chapter? No, leading a team in daily evangelistic activities is similar but quite different from leading a weekend training outreach. This is for the person that actually has the responsibility of putting together a weekend training program. So important was that kind of training in our early days and it still goes on was that we put a chapter here in the manual about it. I got a letter just the other day in which a church was still complaining about something that went wrong on a training program here in London 15 years ago. That church still remembers it and they have not touched OM ever since. Now number one, that is wrong before God on their part. What we did back then is wrong on our part but we can learn from it. These churches have long memories and when you are working with a church you have got to try to find out what in OM's past has bothered them. We're no longer one year on the scene. We had some fantastic training weekends here in London but I remember one we didn't have near the number of people that we expected. So people who had planned hospitality, it's a big thing for them, no one came. Churches that were expecting 30 got three. I will tell you I will never forget that weekend. I was as uptight as a banjo being played by a giraffe and I just never forget. Also I have a memory. This is where in trying to communicate our vision often our first amount of time with people has to be breaking down prejudice. Don't try to point out how they have changed so now they can accept us. That doesn't work. It's better to try to show how we have changed and engage in operation apology. I just apologize in the past your church has had some difficult experience with OM. We made a lot of mistakes in the early days. I usually put in unfortunately we're still making some. It usually gets a few laughs. People feel a little relaxed. The attitude that really puts people off in OM is when we come in giving the idea we have arrived, we know it all, we are the great sign. You might as well throw a bottle of cyanide in there and go down the road somewhere else and this is why we of course even put a little section right in this leadership manual though of course within each country there is far more developed on this. Notice that it is quite a few pages. Study that if you have the opportunity. Lastly, handling doctrinal differences. No time to go into detail about that but I think most of you have read the leaflet extremism that also had to be revised. It's now a chapter in revolution of love and balance. Of course there is a lot more to say on that subject and new books keep coming into the scene that we use like love covers. That almost became like a required reading. We gave everybody a copy for two or three summers in a row. Isn't it interesting that even R.T. Kendall of Westminster Chapel has recently endorsed that book. I will tell you that has blown the switches in a few people's heads because the book was not appreciated by certain hardline people from a particular theological background. Handling doctrinal differences will continue to be always in the work of God a major, major challenge. Don't think we have arrived in this area and we no longer have great doctrinal problems. One of the tasks of our little ICT, International Coordinating Team, is to constantly see where there is a doctrinal problem coming, get the right book out at the right time or the right tape. We are tape doctors. We have the right tape for the right situation. You name a problem, we probably get a tape that can help you with that problem. So we want to continue in that ministry. Handling money. One of the books we pushed in the early days was Watchman Nee's book Normal Christian Worker. I think we were the first group to really discover that book. What terrific balance that book brings to his other books. He has a chapter in there about handling money and I just thank God for his bringing men like Steve Hart into the work who believe me when he came put a microscope on what we had been doing before. I was a disaster in some ways I can assure you. There were others helping. He came in and put a spotlight on it and he wrote a positive letter about the handling of money. Then we turned the whole thing to a large degree over to him. Those of you who are involved in the financial side, caring for God's money, recording it. I worked on my finances yesterday, petty cash. It's always a trauma for me. So much money comes through my pockets. Sometimes you go to a meeting and you come away with money in every single pocket. Now that's a blessing you like to get. But if you don't get it out of your pocket soon and I keep changing suit coats. Notice this rag I have on this morning. This is the one I wore in Wales that brought me an entire new suit. This particular old jacket. But I still like it and who knows what it will bring forth this morning. I never planned it that way. It just happens. So read that section on handling money. It's very important. Then preaching and public speaking, lining up and organized meetings, food and clothing. I'll let you study those on your own. They're important but we're out of time and of course the ultimate aims and goals we dealt with on the first two tapes. I would very much appreciate feedback on these sessions. I realize quite a few of you here don't feel you're necessarily the great leaders of the future. But even if you said, well I don't feel I'm necessarily a leader but I appreciated knowing these things. That would encourage me as we have put a lot of time and I've been very conscious of your time. And that maybe some of you would prefer to be having an in-depth study in the book of Revelation at this point, which maybe I would prefer as well, especially if someone else could have done it and I could have stayed at home each morning. So let's have some feedback on this and we'll trust God to use it for his glory. Our God and Father, we thank you that we have had this opportunity to look through this manual together, these principles. And Lord as in these days a lot of discussion is going on about policy and we're now working on a policy manual to bring together more detailed decisions we've made over these 25 years that are guidelines for the work right across the whole world. That you'd give us wisdom and discernment, spiritual balance and above all else, love. The fruit of the spirit, patience and the ability to bring one truth into balance by other truths. We thank you for the wide diversity there is in this fellowship. We thank you that one country can pave their own way, so to speak, in developing their own national strategy built on their cultural understanding and their church situation and linked with the other groups and fellowships that are laboring in their nation. That there may not be a lot of duplication, wasted money, excessive energy loss, but that somehow as the whole body with all churches and evangelical and biblical movements, we may move toward the target of spiritual renewal, mobilizing the church and thrusting labors into the hardest field that world evangelism may be a reality. Granted God we pray in Jesus' precious name. Amen.