In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of delegation in leadership. They highlight that true leadership cannot exist without delegating tasks to others. The speaker also discusses the concept of redeeming time and identifies three main areas where time can be redeemed. They mention the significance of forming others and sharing a vision, particularly for a lost world. The sermon concludes with a mention of the leadership manual and the need for studying and understanding its content.

Are people coming or not? Everyone picked up their leader's manual from their postbox? Now please go to the postbox and get your manual. While we'll pass some other things out. This is a very interesting memo, drafted up by Celestine Fernando of Ceylon, called Guidelines for a Christian Board and Committee Member. And I thought he really put a lot of thought into this and has distributed it to the boards of directors. We have now about ten boards of directors in OM, and because of the work being indigenous to some degree in each country, please study this memo. It's got some very good principles. Some of you, almost all of you, sooner or later, will be sitting on some committee meeting or board meeting. And if you could get these principles into your life, you may not agree with every point. More formal than some of our board meetings would be. But keeping in mind that this was drafted up by someone who's meeting on rather high church committee meetings, Bible-sided committee meetings, I think you can see it is a fairly good piece of material. One of the most valuable things you get here on the ship for your leadership are all kinds of materials, memos, you know, you take some leadership seminars that I've read about, they charge you 25 American dollars just for the materials because of the price of paper. And when I think of all the books we give people on this ship and the other materials, all we ask is that you make use of it. Don't lose it. Leave it laying in the men's dorm or under your mattress because you may not be able to study it all. Here, you know, to a great degree, but when you leave you'll be able to look back and you'll be having valuable materials that you will be able to reduplicate. Because if we are ever going to meet the leadership crisis in the church, it's not just a matter of us learning how to be leaders, but it's us eventually being able to train leaders. And those of you from India, you know how quickly we're having to train new leaders. And there are so many gaps yet. Another thing I want to give out right now, if you don't already have it, is called Prophets and the Green Palms, a biblical study on bribery. Do any of you, if you already have this, don't take it. It's a reprint from an article in Christianity Today. It's a very interesting Bible study on bribery. Many of you will be facing this problem in your leadership, whether it is right for a Christian to pay a bribe. And sometimes the bribe may seem to be the shortcut to getting the job done. And so I give that to you and trust you will study it. The next one is not seemingly so relevant. It's called Accidents in the Home. Today we had an accident on the ship. It cost someone the top of his finger. And it's a real miracle on this ship we don't have arms, hands and legs dropping off here and there. But accidents don't just happen on ships, they happen in homes. And I am... From the very beginning in OM we taught and emphasized safety, lectures on driver safety. We have the OM driver's license system. And some of our OM headquarters, to be quite honest, are extremely unsafe. Electrical wires going from one corner of the room to the dictaphone on the other corner, carefully placed that you may get strangled from walking into the room. And this article is taken from a book called Avoidable Deaths. And it's quite interesting. So read it. The life you save may be your own, may be your own child. Friend of mine, his little son went out into his back garden. Very wealthy man, nice home, everything taken care of. Bare electric wire out in the back garden. Little boy grabbed it just recently, two years ago, was electrocuted on the spot. And it's the reason I give out these things. I don't know how relevant this next letter is, but I'm going to give it out anyway because I don't like to waste paper. This is a letter I wrote on February 18th, the first voyage of Lagos. Thought it would be interesting for you to see this. Crossing the English Channel from Rotterdam to London. Four years and a couple of months ago I wrote this letter in fear and trembling. And I thought you might be interested, for the sake of history, to read this letter because it was either given out to you or throw it in the sea because both sides are used of the paper. But it may help fix the date in your mind of when the ship sailed. Because people give all kinds of quotes. Oh, how long have you had the ship? Many people ask that. Five years, six years, ten years. You get all kinds of interesting answers to that. Okay. Now if you'll take your manuals. Has everyone got one of these? If it isn't, it's in your post box. Now this is about one third of the fourth edition of the leadership manual. First edition I wrote in Spain in 1961. Then it was revised again. And we're now working on a new edition. And we want to go over this. Now didn't I, before you had a manual, didn't I cover several of these chapters down in the lower school room? Who remembers? Okay, well we're going to be briefer on the first chapters then because we haven't got time. In your exam, your first exam coming up, you especially will be responsible for the content of this, for the content of the one set of notes I gave all of you on qualities in leadership. If you don't have that, see Ed. And we hope you'll do a little studying in the next days. Okay. The introduction we won't spend any time on. We emphasize very much the life of a leader. First chapter, we haven't numbered these chapters because we're waiting until we complete the whole thing to see the best order to put them in. Of course, this manual in its final form will be printed. We did speak about delegation, follow-up on delegation. There can be no real leadership without delegating. Even in these ports that we come into, so much more can be done when we delegate things to local people. We've touched on that in several of our lectures. Redeeming the time. We've dealt with this to some degree. Listed the three main areas where we can redeem time. Forming others and sharing the vision. One of the early lectures we had was on this whole thing of having a vision. Can you share a vision that you don't even have? Vision for a lost world. Maybe I'll stand up because I can't see the people in the back there. It's a funny place. It always seems to be tilting. I've given a number of very important pointers here that I want to just look at toward the end again. Not attempting to push our burden and down other people's throats. The bottom of the page. Avoid giving people the idea you're superior. Three, take every opportunity of inviting those who have shown an interest to the prayer meetings. Visiting individuals who show interest in the work. I might just mention here that the main way we get recruits for OM is personal man-to-man sharing. Messages help. OM meetings help. Film strips, slides. The thing that makes the difference is one person excited who's been touched through the ministry by the Spirit of God contacting another person. Writing them, then meeting with them, sharing. I've noticed a number among the Singaporeans have said they heard about OM through a friend. A friend challenged them. And there's no better way for spreading the vision than that. Those other points are self-explanatory. By the way, it's interesting when people are studying the leadership manual but not even read and studied the discipleship manual. We often get interesting experiences where the leaders forget what's in the discipleship manual because they are supposedly responsible for teaching. Often you will be asked in OM to lead a discussion group on the discipleship manual. So it's good to know the content of that little blue book. There's the Indian edition, the Asian edition, and there's the Western edition. Okay, social relationships. The next interesting chapter. This becomes more and more complicated as we get involved in more and more cultures and countries. And I want to give opportunity for you to ask questions about the social policy. I'm sure without even reading this you may have some questions. The discipleship manual outlines this and this page or two here just focuses in on certain areas. Anybody want to ask anything about OM social policy? Anything that's come to your mind as you've thought about this and how it fits in? Know that basically people, even in the West, is very unusual for Europe. Our policy is very, very unusual for Europe. Though many Bible schools are more strict. But if you are not, we're somewhere in the middle. But we feel when people come with us just for a summer or short term that we really have to lay all this aside. Not because it's wrong, but because we want to get down to business. Also, people during their first year should not get involved socially. They meet someone, they're interested, they should wait on the Lord. One of the best things we can learn to do before you end up waiting on a wife the rest of your life, learn to wait on the Lord in regard to this decision. Now, after the first year, a person, of course, can get permission from their leader depending on the country they're in and what the social standard is of that country. In the West, most countries, you can of course get permission to meet together. In India, this has been a bit of a controversy. Actually, at one conference, we allowed some of the people just about getting engaged to meet together. This brought quite a few complaints from other departments of the work. So, we really are at times in a quandary of how this should work out within India. Basically, when people do meet together, it's in the presence of others and in most cases the parents, of course, have given the necessary permissions and go ahead. We try to keep this thing into the parents to a large degree, though some of our people don't have parents. Any question on this you'd like to ask? You know, I am social policy and your part as a leader becomes especially interesting when the leader of the team is breaking the policy and the follower has to come and remind him that he thought this wasn't supposed to be done on Operation Mobilization. Anything you want to ask on this? Well, not if she's still on the same team. Of course, sometimes we change people. First of all, this problem is not so relevant to India because the teams are not generally mixed, though you get some interesting headquarters situations. But in Europe, and to some degree here on the ship, the teams are mixed, mixed teams. Of course, teams that go out and take meetings on the ship are mixed, but teams that go out in general evangelism away from the ship are not mixed. This is where it takes a high degree of maturity to just really come to a place where the thing is broken off. I think also these situations should be immediately shared with the leader over you to take his suggestion whether he thinks you should change teams or press on or he wants to sit down with you together, the three of you and decide, look, it's really over, but we need to press on with the job. Anything else you want to ask? Some of the biggest problems in Christian leadership center around this area, believe me, counseling people, encouraging people, motivating people to stay free from these difficulties, find that when people get caught up in what they feel is love, time only tells whether it's love or lust oftentimes, that they become very irrational, very irrational. And some of the most spiritual people have done some of the most ridiculous things. And you as a leader will find yourself in very interesting situations trying to give counsel. Anything else you want to ask on that? Good question. What's the policy on interracial marriage? We have no policy against interracial marriage. You can marry whoever you want, Eskimo or Congolese. But we do have advice to people concerning marriage in general. And our advice is generally Luke 14, to count the cost. He that goes forth to war with so much, against so much, may find himself being mocked. And there are a lot of tensions in cross-racial marriages and international marriages, cross-linguistic barrier marriages. A lot of problems. To me there's a lot of problems, you know, marrying someone who's very, very similar to you. And you need to count the cost in that. So we just say more problems, more differences, more costs counted. Now, you know, Em, sometimes when we feel the barrier is very big and we're really not happy about it, regardless of race, we say, look, why don't you leave, O.M., and pray about this for a while and then come together. And as some of you know, we've had the worst experience in some ways yet. We've had very, very few experiences like this. But a girl on the ship fell in love with a Filipino young man. She's a French girl. We weren't really happy about this. Not because of race. Because of time. It's not allowed. Any real time. So she left O.M., went back to France, flew to the Philippines, married him, dragged that poor brother back to Paris, and she has ditched him in Paris. She has left him in Paris. She's gone off to Germany and has joined a false religious cult. He comes knocking on the O.M. door in Paris. You know, why didn't anybody tell me about these things? So I think he's now returned to the Philippines. What a tremendous mess! Because they've not counted the cost and waited and taken advice. And I believe, of course, some interracial marriages, depending on the people, would work better than perhaps them marrying someone in their own back garden. But it's examining the facts. Some people say, I believe God can do the impossible. I've had a number of people I've counseled. You know, here's a girl, she's got three eyes instead of two, and she's got all these different problems. I believe God is the God of the impossible. You ask the brother, how many souls have you trusted Christ for in the past year? Well, how much money have you prayed in? Well, he hasn't seen any breakthroughs in these other areas, but he's going to marry this three-eyed girl and believe that it's going to all work out. You know, to me, I don't go for that. So I challenge people who are going to attempt some of these impossible marriages, why not try a few other impossibilities first and build up to this big step? A lot of unhappy marriages because of lack of wisdom in this area. I think in interracial marriage, a lot depends on where you're going to end up living. If you, as an American, are going to go to Africa and marry Jill from Congo, fine, if you're going to go back and live in London. You'll probably not have much of a trouble. London is very cosmopolitan. You'll always find some people who will accept you. But if you're going to go back and live in Alabama, you may want to do a little rethinking. So where are you going to live? I know a number of cases where Arab young men have married girls in England. We had one years ago against our advice. While they were living in England, it was fine. But when they moved back to the Arab world, where the relatives come bombing into the home, dominate the home, and the young bride just, you know, they just went out of their heads. So it makes a lot of difference where you're going to live. Because often, interracial marriage has become more difficult when the in-laws are around. Do you have this term? The in-laws, you know, mommy and daddy are there. And mommy never really felt that her little son had the best wife. So she was constantly pecking away at the poor wife and reminding the son that his wife couldn't really cook like mommy. All this kind of thing. Incredible pressure. That's very destructive. Any other question on the social policy? And you people are going to be often called on to advise people in these areas. I can't counsel 900 people in OM, 2,000 who come with us in December, 15,000 who have been with us for the last 14 years. And that's why we have sessions like this where we can share so that you can counsel others. Any other question on the social policy? Again, the age difference is just one of the many barriers that you have to count. You've got the age problem, you've got the intellectual difference. Here's a young fellow that's just barely getting on intellectually. He marries a graduate from the University of Delhi who mastered in psychology and Hinduism. I couldn't hear what you said. No, no, two subjects. One major, one minor. So all these things are factors. I think they're more important than age. Some people also are more mature at 20 than other people are at 30. We have had people from the West in OM who I don't think got out of adolescence until they were past 27. And others at 19, they're very mature. So the age, actual number in age, is not the main factor. Of course, if she's too much older than you, you'd better give thought to who's going to be the second wife when she kicks the pocket. Sorry. Forgive the slang. Dies. Passes on. All right? Any other question on this subject? Let's move on to publicity. Very few people understand OM's policy about publicity. It's one of the areas, number of areas where OM is somewhat unique. We do not copy these ideas from others. Very much they were in parcel of the early vision that God gave us to avoid publicity. Then all of a sudden they see big headline paper, ship arrives in Sarawak. They think, well, you know, what is OM's policy? The publicity that we do not allow and are against is basically Christians getting publicity among other Christians. We are not against publicity that will bring the unconverted people into a meeting or onto the ship. That has always been from the very beginning. That is for the sake of getting the gospel, getting people into the meeting. We are against publicity in Christian magazines, especially when it exalts personalities. So all the Christians feel that this brother is such a great man of God and the devil sees that and he says, well, let's challenge that. The more publicity we get, the more we become a target of Satan. Oftentimes. Of course, after a time, it's impossible to avoid publicity. But let's do what we can while we can. I'd be very honest and careful in this area. Also, we're not interested in getting involved in competition with other Christian organizations. Our group is greater than your group. We are more dedicated. We win more souls. And all this kind of thing, which happens when there is so much publicity going on. And I think it's in Proverbs that says, don't praise yourself, let another man praise you. And of course, in itself, it needs to be balanced off with other scriptures, especially in regard to true humility. We especially are against personality cults. The greatest ways you can hinder a man of God is talk a lot about him. And we want to be talking about the Lord Jesus. It doesn't mean we cannot refer to men of God. God's treasure is in earthen vessels. He uses men. Praise God that there are a few people setting examples for it. But our first thing is the Lord himself. Any question on this publicity? It's not that it's not allowed. It's just that we're very conservative in it. We allow some articles. If it's a Christ-centered article, it doesn't exalt man. It's just basically factual. We often allow it. Again, especially if it's in a country where there's not that many articles. In the states, we seldom allow it. The states are not lacking for more stories. We allow very little publicity in the states and in England. Whereas in other countries where there hardly are any Christian magazines, they really are looking for local challenges like we've just released a big article about UP in one of the magazines in India. So here again, we want the wisdom of the Lord. Supposedly, these articles ought to be read by the leaders before they're released so that they're careful and factual. Christians do tend to exaggerate. It is a sin of many Christians to exaggerate. I have to grab myself sometimes. In the midst of emotion, we don't mean it. We say something and then we have to grab it and pull it back to its right proportion. But when things go into print, it's especially dangerous because someone repeats it, repeats it, someone else puts it in an encyclopedia as final fact. Another question on publicity. Yes. No. We have spiritual revolution. It's very unique to India. Our thoughts about publicity back in the early days were even against that type of thing because we felt every mission is turning out their little paper. With their pictures of their leaders and with this and that. We don't want it. Let's stick to our simple little duplicated thing. Greg Livingston launched spiritual revolution in India. He felt there was a need for a challenged paper in India. In India, back then, there was... Any other question on publicity? A lot of vain boasting goes on among Christians. Vain boasting. This also we want to avoid in every possible way. The best publicity, if that question came up on an exam, what would you say? Is what? Anybody remember that from the old manual? I don't even know if I put it back in here. Still here. What is it? Let's read it together. Get that into our head. Our best publicity is a holy Christ-like life. And you know, more than ever before, some of you have heard me preach on this, many of the Christian terms, sanctification, dedication, filled with the Spirit, baptized in the Spirit, crucified life, consecration, abundant life, dedication, these words are losing their meaning. What do these words mean anymore? We've been throwing them around for so long, we've seen so little of it in practice that the words lose their meaning. It's just like onward Christian soldiers marching as to war. What does that in fact mean? In the United States, I would say it means that after the meeting we march off to the pizza stand or the hamburger stand. Weekly reports and monthly reports. Now, in O.M., we in many ways are a loose organization and a tight fellowship. I was just reading some material on leadership to warm my heart up before coming here because I'm always studying leadership. I just read through a whole set of new notes on leadership someone sent me and I was quite amazed. This man represents a style of leadership that would be quite distinct from ours. He emphasized that communication is more important than structure. I dare to say that Singapore, being very much a technological state where technology has become God and organization has become God is very similar to the United States, Sweden, Switzerland and a number of other places. The same thing is happening in India. And so we become more and more structure conscious. But communication is much more important than structure. For instance, you can draw yourself a little organizational chart to show what job everybody has. I'm not saying that's wrong. But if those people are not communicating with each other, what are you going to have in Christian work? Chaos. Chaos. There's got to be communication. Sometimes I think OM is a little weak on structure. It's not easy to decide how far to go. But we've got to have communication. Yes. Yes. I see them. Things disappear here very quickly. We see them. We'll send them on to the Salvation Army. Okay. So let's talk about weekly reports and monthly reports. This is part of our effort to maintain communication. I don't know if you realize that every OM leader worldwide who's been with the work for more than a couple years is related personally in fellowship with the other leaders. We get together. We fellowship together. We spend time together. We only move in a sense as far as our fellowship will allow us. This is why we have also fought to keep OM small. Now 900 people may sound like a lot to you. But remember that of that 900, 400 or 500 are moving on next year. The number of permanent people, longer term people, are smaller. That is a factor. One of the great advantages of OM is that we are able to expand and pull in. Expand and pull in. Depending on the situation. We've even closed fields for a year and opened them up a year later. We did that in Israel. I think one of the curses of Christian organization is that we are afraid to close anything. Long after God has departed, we are still going. We are still pressing on. Carrying on our little program. Keeping the structure propped up. Here is some old Anglican church in the middle of India. We've got them in Calcutta. The Church of Scotland. It's air conditioned. 20 people in this mammoth building come there Sunday morning. Theologically dead. Everything is dead about it. But the building is still there. Millions of dollars of rupees worth of property. Fellowship is very very important. Especially in a movement where there is quite a fair number of fairly radical ideas. Now some of our ideas that were radical 15 years ago now are being expounded in top new missionary textbooks. As being a sensible way to approach missions. Many top missionary experts would say that working as we are in this ship moving into an area helping the church reinforcing the church is a better way to carry out missionary work than some of the older fashioned ways of doing it. But some of our ideas 10 years ago were considered really harrassed in some missionary circles. All this means communication is essential. These reports will never get done without a little bit of discipline. Which some people don't seem to have. As a leader you need to write things down that you're going to determine you're not going to have your breakfast Saturday morning until this is done. You've got to be very firm. This is going to be done every week. Even if you get somebody else to check up on you. Because a lot of other people will be dependent on what you do. People this year have not been faithful in a number of countries in sending me their weekly report. So I go to write my international monthly which I write every month. I've been writing every month for 17 years. I've failed a few times. What am I going to say in it? The monthly of course is easier to write than an international weekly. I write an international weekly to prayer groups all over the world. Many times I sit down and write this I don't have a report. By the way India is more faithful generally than Europe on these reports. And that means India is going to get more prayer. Half the weekly report I wrote yesterday or the day before as soon as the letters came from Singapore was about India. Any other question or any question on this? A weekly report only goes to your main line of leadership above you. If you're a team leader in BR it would go to Ron Penny it would then go to Ray Eicher and then to myself. The leadership up. It is not for the public. If you have a few extra copies you can do what you want with them. The monthly report is turned out by the base headquarters and goes more widespread. The monthly. The weekly. Yeah I think that's a change they made in India. But originally it wasn't supposed to. They don't do that in Europe. Prayer letters. Now this is a whole separate lecture in itself. And I'm not going to go into it. But learning how to write a good prayer letter. Looking over other people's prayer letters. Seeing how they do it. A lot of people's prayer letters very hard to read. It's just print, print, print, print, print. No break. No space. No subtitles. And people read half way and stop reading. So there's a number of very good pointers here. Anybody want to ask anything on that? Yes. Yeah. The whole idea is that that be made a matter of prayer. And we have said and maybe this should be changed. A brother can't believe God to find one disciple who's willing to turn out his prayer letter providing he's willing to pay. You can't always expect the person to pay. We can send the money from the office. No, the idea is not. That is a mistake in our thinking. That has come because many have paid. But the original policy is that to ask someone to send out your prayer letter you have got to supply them with the money to send it out. So you can buy the paper, etc. I think it is important to understand that to some degree these policies vary from country to country. In fact, it is very important for you to understand this. In every country, in all areas, our work is different. Because we are trying to build an indigenous work that is not controlled. The work in a country like France is not controlled from England. It is controlled from France. And it is a unique French work. Very French. And the same is true in other countries. So each country is different. And we don't expect, for example, all the brothers, when they first come into the teams in India, to all start churning out prayer letters. These are brothers that are coming with us for six months or a year. They are not sure of their future. And in the present situation, if all these people started churning out prayer letters, I mean, it would be ridiculous. And so each situation has to be worked out. Ideally, it should be a person's home church. And I feel that some of the brothers in India, when they leave OM to go on into other work, one of the things they are going to have to do first is spend some time with their home church. And if they neglect this, they are going to shortcut their service. Because I have been observing the Indian scene now for 14 years, pretty intensively. The various, quote, missionaries going to North India. Very interesting. To watch them getting shot out of the saddle and go home. That is not anything against India, because the same thing is happening to foreigners launching out. And I think sometimes because they don't have the prayer backing and the local church backing, they are just out there, you know, on their own. And we know the situation is complicated and hard, but we must not give up on that. Now, of course, to send a prayer letter out to 10 or 15 people, you can do that on your own. Type up carbon copies. But when your list gets bigger, they are restored. Other question? Leading a team in daily evangelistic activities. At this point, I want to leave the manual a little bit, let you read the rest of it. I want to know what are some problems you felt you had out in the teams this past week. Did you learn anything about leadership? And believe me, you learn a lot more out there, hanging around than you will sitting in here in your air-conditioned seat, listening to me babble on. So, who has learned anything? Or has any question? What are some mistakes you made over the past 7 to 10 days? Did you take enough literature? Did you plan ahead? Did you delegate? Did you follow the things you have been learned? Or did you forget it all and just launch out in your normal helter-skelter, mixed-up way? Who are the leaders? Who are the leaders of these teams? Chaco has got a big grin on his face. Are you the only leader? Ray Lynch? Alright, well, Chaco is a liberated brother. He's open to hear comments about problems. We can't be honest with one another. We're going backward. And it may not reflect on him anyway. Any comment? Chaco, do you want to make any comment? What do you feel are some of the weaknesses? Problems? How did the line-up department... No line-up. Sam was too small. Was that a VW or the Transit? And you know the chief engineers have just axed the Transit. There weren't any more Transits. That's interesting. Because it's too hard to load. It's too hard to load. It's a bit of a surprise to me. But we don't normally face this problem on the ship. But we do sometimes. Transit can carry double or triple what a VW can. Or at least double. You can always protest that. Go up to Rex. He'll give you some good... Yeah. It seems to me one of the things we should have done here, we knew there was going to be pretty good sales, is ship literature ahead by local transport. I would say that could have been done. There is local transport here. It would have had to been done the moment we got here. We would have had it some days later. It must have been somewhere where we could pick it up. Somewhere mid-Crusade where we could have our depot. Again, it's easier to say that now. Anything else you feel you learned from this time out? Maybe we should look at this a little bit. Though I think our time is up, isn't it? It's only an hour. We usually have an hour and a half, but today is only an hour. Okay. Well, please study this. It goes right... What's the last chapter that we have so far? Lining up and organizing meetings. Is that in each one? That is a very important chapter. A brand new chapter is not in the old manual. Preaching and public speaking, working with your own church or assembly, leading a team in daily evangelistic activities, which we're just on. So, read that. And I'm around until next Thursday. We hope to jam in as many sessions as possible before I leave. And we hope that this will prove to be very, very profitable. Let's just close in prayer. Father, we want to commit right now the journey down the river. You know the things involved in that. Getting into the next place. Brunei, we may have your wisdom, and you would open the door into the old town, into the old port, if that's your will. Thank you for this manual, contributions of a number of people that have gone into it, especially Dr. Homer Payne and Jonathan doing the final revisions. Help us to digest this, to apply it. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. If you want to make sure you receive the remaining part of this manual, which is quite a valuable little thing, before you leave the ship, see how much of the manual you have, and then tell, probably David Hicks, I'm going to ask to stay on top of this, or Hans, that you would like the rest of the manual from chapter so and so on, give him your home address, and maybe you'll get the rest of it. Because it has not come from its final revisers in Belgium. It probably will not be here by the time I leave. Okay.