In this video, the speaker encourages preachers to embrace the use of videos and photographs to reach a wider audience. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining a good attitude even in the face of criticism or persecution. The speaker also mentions the significance of having a higher profile and being willing to be crucified for the sake of spreading the message of Jesus. He concludes by mentioning the impact of lives being changed despite any weaknesses or imperfections.

But I sense that God wants Peter, Megan and I to continue at least a few more years as a team. It's interesting, I had a top article on management I was just reading recently and it pointed out, oh there it is, should the CEO be one person? You know, that's a big buzzword for the last 10 years, CEO, Chief Executive Officer. This article, by a lot of top people put input into it, are saying more and more in the corporations of the world, of course we knew this before they did, you've got to have a team, usually at least a team of two. There's just too much in any fast moving corporation for any one man to be the CEO. Whatever other name you call him, President, Chairman of the Board, there's usually at least two guys that are working hand in glove to try to just keep the whole thing on course. And there's usually others tied right into that. Isn't that a confirmation of the enormous decision we made a decade ago to sort of divide this responsibility? I have to give Peter Maiden three-fourths and let me have one-fourth and expand it. But an interesting article, of course, believe it or not, I think Brother Divakram actually sent me this article. Divakram is really a lot more up on all this than you may think. Here he is, I'm dressed in a t-shirt, he's got a suit and tie on, this is globalization at its best. We're all learning. You expected me to say something about books, but I'm actually talking at this point about motivation. If anybody takes a set of notes and photocopies me those notes with at least 15 sentences, I will give you a 250 pound credit of books. Just a little incentive, any of you that are interested in notes. For 30 years I've been trying all the spiritual incentives and I tell you, some of them don't work. Extra treasure in heaven, they just look at you, big deal. Most of these OM field leaders, they want it, cash in the hand. More than treasure in heaven, I hope they do get both. But really I would like you to try to write some of these things down because though this is a potpourri type of sharing, there are some nuggets here that I hope you can share with others. A lot of the young people in calling out for pastoral care, if you listen carefully, are not necessarily calling out for some close surveillance from some gifted pastoral leader. Not everybody wants that. Many of them are just trying out for communication. They just like to know what in fact is going on on this team. Who is going to lead the team next year? Pastoral care, which I believe God wants us to increase, is something that has many different facets, many different colors in the rainbow. Why am I a little more motivated in the last few months? By the way, even when I say this, I have a fear of losing my motivation. I have a fear of depression. If you don't have any fears in your life, great. You're so beyond me that you'd be lucky if we could have a conversation. But we can try. But I have a lot of fears, and one of my fears is fear of depression, fear of losing my zip, life losing its meaning. My wife, of course, has been praying that I would lose some of my zip, and we'll get into that later when I push one of my other books. But I have been... Don't ask me for a lot of definitions. The British people are the greatest people of double meanings in the world. And by the way, I have brought with me one Mr. Bean video for a late night showing. But let me answer the question. Why am I a little more motivated? And it's because I made this awesome decision to become part of AD2000 and beyond. Yes? I've been praying for one of these for several years. I think I'll present this to my wife. Okay. We need a hundred of those, really, I'll tell you that. I've been wanting to get one of those, and I know we can market those, especially in certain countries like Texas where the people are so big. But somehow, influenced by David Hicks, influenced by John Kyle, influenced by a lot of different people, quite reluctant, though I was always more or less moderately in favor of AD2000, been pushing the leaflet for a year or two. I never felt that it's something that I should become a part of. I did, as I usually do, have some criticisms and reservations, especially about what I felt was an overemphasis on demons and territorial spirits and other things along that line. And as I shared that, when they asked me to join one section of it, I shared my reservation and turned down that invitation. That was the second thing I'd been invited to become involved in. And they encouraged me to share my reservations with the chairman, Paul Cedars, which I had the opportunity of doing in Minneapolis when I was ministering there at Northwestern, and then to Louise Bush on the phone. And I found nothing but very listening ears to my struggles with this movement. And that, of course, encouraged me. And there was the sense that AD2000 wanted or needed the kind of balance that sometimes I represent. And so I went to Colorado Springs, not my normal thing, one of the first times in my life, I guess since WEF in Manila was another one, and Lausanne, in Lausanne was another one. But I haven't always just flown somewhere just to go to meetings. Even La Manila, I was having meetings out there and fit that in. But I went all the way to Colorado Springs just for these meetings. There's not time to go into detail. But my heart was greatly challenged as I met so many people, Ralph Winter, John Kyle, Peter Wagner himself. In fact, I had the joy of openly confronting him in front of the whole group about some of his teaching and just trying to represent what other people shared with me. And that was a difficult experience. The night before, I had actually had a fever, and I woke up in the night wrestling with Peter Wagner in my sleep. Would I have the courage to face him with things that I had said to other people about his teaching? I felt an instant rapport with this man as a person. He sort of got some similarities to me. A lot of extreme people do have similarities, positive and negative ones. But I found him willing to listen, and we had a little exchange. And I probably had moved a few degrees in his direction, especially through reading this, what I feel is a more balanced book on this subject by Steve Hawthorne and Graham Kendrick, Prayer Walking. I've been prayer walking almost all my Christian life. Never even thought of giving it a name. And I think if it wasn't for the ethos of OM, if it wasn't for the influence of people like yourself, books like Grace Awakening and the message of Roy Heshin, of dealing with pride, that I could react in pride to a book like this and think, wow, you know. But somehow, by the grace of God, I just found this book ministering to me. My prayer walking has greatly improved since reading this. New ideas, new ways to do things. I had fantastic phone conversations with Steve Hawthorne. And I believe this is one of the books of the 90s. Now it's controversial. Very straight-laced evangelical people will find it difficult. Charismatic people will not find it a problem at all. And this is why I believe the church needs both the charismatic and the evangelical side and those who blend the two together, as many in OM. In fact, the one thing you'll never understand AD2000 is a very up-to-date movement with all the messiness that that will mean, is that it is a more representative movement of the amalgamation of the charismatics and the non-charismatics. Lausanne was the bridge. WEF, of course, was old-line evangelicals. Changed a lot since the last few years. Lausanne was a bridge. The final Lausanne Congress had mainline charismatic speaking, like Jack Hayford. And in a sense, now AD2000 has taken the leap. And if at times it appears like the charismatics may be dominating, well, numerically, they dominate the number of believers in the world today. So maybe they deserve 60% to evangelical 40%. To me, it doesn't matter. But I'm excited about this amalgamation. I do believe that the church and all Christian activity in the next six years will be extremely messy. I think those of you who want everything nice and ordered and tidy and well-defined, you will probably have a nervous breakdown by the year 2000. But those of you who understand that often the Holy Spirit works in power in very untidy, messy situations, doesn't mean, and don't go misquoting me, that I am now dedicated to untidiness. My wife already thinks that, and it will not help you. Help me to add, and I'm not talking about cleaning up your room. I'm talking about just the way things happen in the body of Christ and the way we sometimes can get bogged down if we try to get things too nice and too tidy and everybody nice, feeling nice about each other and agreeing on every jot and tittle. That is not going to happen anymore in the body of Christ. There are 22,000 different denominations. If you think they're all going to somehow come together and shake hands and get a nice, warm, oozy feeling about each other, you are in unreality, and I pray you'll come out of it. That doesn't mean we don't want to work for unity. So I'm excited about this job. I've now accepted this chairmanship. That's not the CEO job. I better keep this partnership leaflet away from Perry Rickerts. But Perry Rickerts is the coordinator. He's been in it much longer than me. I'm the third chairman to attempt to take on this track. You can understand how I got in it. You keep going further down as you look for something difficult. The track has actually changed its name and its ethos to some degree. But I think we've landed on center now, and we're staying there. It's for the mobilization of new missionaries. When I first started to flirt with my friend Perry Rickerts, who I've known for years, but in connection with this, his goal was a million new missionaries. And I said, you know, if that's it, I'm out. It's ridiculous. It's over the top. The total missionaries now may be somewhere around 200,000. Depends how you count them. And so I got a compromise. My first major compromise, which most of you know is my middle name, was to go down to 200,000. What a drop, you know, from a million to 200,000. I'm sure some of you, if you really think, 200,000 new missionaries by the year 2000 and beyond, Perry tends to think a few years past the year 2000. You're talking about the greatest increase of missionaries since Pentecost. You're talking about something that's never happened before in history. I know all the wonderful stories because Perry gives them to me. But we're really aiming high. We're really aiming high. But it's a result of intensive compromise. We can't go into more detail about what that means. That's not my purpose tonight. Some of you have received letters from Perry Rickards. Some of you are already going to be going to Jiko-A. Jiko-A is the big working conference in Korea in May of 1995. Not a giant celebration, not a challenge conference, though I hope they'll be challenged, but a working conference. A lot of the meetings will be in the track groups. That's scary if Perry and I have got 500 people in our track that we've got several hours every day. Many of you have received letters from Perry Rickard asking you to become a mobilizer, a recruiter. I'm working on a message that I hope to put on cassette, 10 ways or 12 ways to be a missions mobilizer. I found as I joined this track that really we're way behind. Any help you can give us in prayer, correspondence with Perry, distributing the materials we eventually turn out, would be an enormous thing. One of the buzz words that's gripped my heart that comes from these younger men and these more optimistic people is the word doable. That's a new word. It's doable. These people that are in this movement, it varies from person to person. They're not a bunch of clones, but many of them really believe we can reach the whole world by the year 2000, less perhaps believe we can see a church planted in every people's group by the year 2000. Quite a few are saying we've already missed the window of opportunity for missions mobilization and information. Heavy article about that in Evangelical Missions Quarterly this month. Now I could, I'm sure, outdo most of you two to one on negative things about AD2000 and about almost anything else, including OM, which we've seen from all the information gathering we've done in the last year. But I'd encourage you as you read about this, as you go through the AD2000 handbook, there are some of those out there on the literature table that you attempt to be positive, that you attempt to exercise faith. If you want to read something devastating on unbelief, read David Wilkerson's latest article on unbelief. I don't have a chance. I mean, this guy, unbelief, that is the 16-eyed, triple-legged, dragon greater than lust, unbelief. And here I am, oftentimes, paddling unbelief and doubt. And I guess I need to have a phone conversation with David Wilkerson. The last time I met with him was a rather high-octane meeting in which he asked me what I felt was his greatest need. I said, it's really just like me. You need a lot of balance. From that moment, he became more extreme. He detests the word balance, David Wilkerson, but I think he might have a different definition than me. He has, by the way, a phenomenal, fast-growing, amazing church right in the heart of New York City. So I'd appreciate your prayers, appreciate your feedback, appreciate your reading the materials. Now, if my distributors could pass these out. If you didn't get one of these through your post in an envelope together with the first leader's letter of the year, if you didn't get those, could you raise your hand if you are an official delegate at this conference? And we will give these out. Let me show you what they are. World Evangelization. Wonderful correction by David Hicks. Thank you. Is it possible? I had World Evangelism. World Evangelization. I may even be changing my main signature. Yours were for World Evangelism. Last week, I changed it. Yours were World Evangelization. Both are nice, but one is better. World Evangelization. Is it possible? That is the hottest, wildest thing that I have written in a long time. Can you imagine? I am calling for the distribution of 100 million pieces of, not gospel tracts, not Grace Awakening. They are not included in this. That is a separate project. 100 million pieces of missions mobilization material from Bill Drake's newest Red Hot Missions cassette or Fortunato's missions cassette to books, to tracks, to laser beam communications by satellite. I believe it is doable. In fact, I feel so strongly about this. This is, by the way, my AD2000 hat. It is not the OM hat. OM will only do part of this, so I am sure OM already is probably one of the greatest pace setters. If you count STL in missions mobilization material, just think of Operation World that you can ever imagine. Please read this. All of you are involved in this in one way or the other. Most of you are already committed to this. I am preaching to the converted, so I am not going to say more. No, I am sure you have questions. They are answered on this sheet. This, by the way, has hit the evangelical press in England this week. That is how I got it done. They were pressing me for an article, and I put the two struggles together and came out with this and make them out in a number of other mission articles and mission papers. I hope it will be followed by your questions answered about Operation 100 million. In the first paper, I did not even mention money. I thought that would bring too many reactions. Anybody with a brain could figure out it would need a lot of money. I make it very clear we are not expecting that money to go into one organization. It does not even have to go to groups that are related to AD2000. The thing I like about AD2000 is you can buy into part of the vision without joining anything. Maybe you do not like this. It is to have that goal together. Of course, the more you network with something like AD2000, I think the more can be accomplished. Anyway, in the question and answer sheet, I do ask that we could release through prayer 100 million dollars. Now, that seems so much, but God has blessed our little movement that started from nothing in 1957. This year with 20, I do not know, I heard some 23 million figure. That is now excluding STL because it is a donation figure. It includes, of course, some book sales. World Vision has an annual budget of 200 to 300 million. Look at the budget of Campus Crusade for Christ. Look at the budget of the Billy Graham Organization. God can bring in tens of millions. We are not asking this to come into OM. I do not want any more than we can handle. I surely believe we can handle a lot more than we are getting right now. Peter, may you say amen to that? Thank you. Even our accountants might say amen if they are in a good mood. Anyway, we do not have time to go further in that, but I hope you will read it. People say, is this going to detract a lot from Verwer's job in OM? This just so dovetails with what I am already doing. I am already corresponding with thousands of people, some of them only once a year, some of them once every other year. Now, in some cases, instead of enclosing this particular book, I am enclosing some of these materials. That is actually lighter than sending Operation World, which I have been sending out free to hundreds and hundreds of people. I cannot say there will not be more work because there will be. We are wrestling through that, but I believe the Holy Spirit somehow is working through this great network, and I count it a privilege to be part of it. I hope that you will link in as much as you feel that you are able. Let me just mention a few other books that fit into this whole missions mobilization thrust. Some of them, I am just going to mention the titles because the books are there, and you can get them. We have already explained you can give a postdated check up to the year 2000, and we are not joking on that. We already have such checks. You can sign as a field leader and pay through the banking system. You can give any currency in the world. We now are releasing the bargain. Is May Wayne here to take notes on this? Where is May? We are releasing the bargain. Every book you buy, we give you an equivalent value book free. Every book you buy, you get an equivalent value book free. We are going to look and see who bought these books, and I want to tell you those who buy books here, their field is going to be blessed. When the tide comes in, the first million, your field will feel the impact. We have already, through special projects, been providing tens of thousands of dollars and pounds of books all over, not just within OM. You cannot imagine how grateful some of these missions are who want Operation World and have no budget to buy any. George Miley, phenomenal phone conversation. I said George could use 100 copies of Operation World. He was thrilled. They are on the way. Steve Hawthorne, the writer of this book, a shaker and a mover in missions. Do you have any copies of Operation World? No, I don't. I'd love to get some. Ralph Winter went through his 100,000 pretty quick. I said, look, we'll send you 100, keep the money for your own mission agency. Perry Rickards, oh boy, I shouldn't have made him this offer. This guy, he came back within a few days, I'd like 500 for Anastasis. That was 2000, even buying them from Bellboom. So $2000, which I owe. But Anastasis got the 500 Operation World. Perry Rickards got the money. That's financing the AD2000 track and mobilizing new missionaries because one of the marks of AD2000 is everybody's broke. Everybody's broke. It's amazing. I'm sure that's a little exaggeration. Here I am standing in this meeting, I'm a newcomer in the club, and Peter Wagner is giving all these phenomenal stories, demons being knocked out all over the place, revival here, boom, boom, boom. And then he gets up in front of this whole group and he says, but you know, I am not able to raise money. This is something I'm not able to do. Can you imagine that? I jumped out of my seat and I said, how can it be, Peter, that you can see all these things happen and you can't raise money? What about the demons that are hovering over all these banks? You ought to go for them. And we had a few laughs at AD2000. You can be sure of that. So if some of you are into prayer walking and territorial conquests, I would really ask you to put banks on a much higher priority. You can include in that savings and loan, the stock market, and any evangelical fish who's got a bulge in his wallet. Let me mention some of the other books. Look at that one. Can you imagine that suddenly showing up? Mentoring for Missions. This is hot, hot, hot, old, new, middle, 60s club, 70s club, 94 club. This is the book of the decade as far as discipleship and missions, marriage. And it's a young fellow. It's Kevin Pippert that discovered this. I saw it. I said, Kevin, read this. Is any good? Kevin read a lot of books last year. He was excited about this book. And OM needs to put its hands on this book. We need to see this go into many languages. This is a serious book. This isn't the first book to give to somebody you're trying to mobilize for missions. This is for the guy that's serious. Might be a little heavy in a few places. But Mentoring for Missions, a handbook, Leadership Principles Exemplified by Jesus Christ by Gunther Kralman. He, by the way, is moving into that same Harpington office with Perry Rickards and all the YWAM guys. An exciting book. I think actually STL OM Publishing is praying about perhaps producing this. We only have a few copies out there. Friend Raising We've Already Pushed is going very fast in OM. How to Raise Support. She's moving into Harpington. All these people we've just had phenomenal links with lately. Don't pick these kind of books up for yourself, but pick them up for other people. Well, isn't it exciting what God has done in a year and a half with this book? An unknown book is now sweeping the world. I was just pushing the German edition in my meeting yesterday morning. Brilliant cover on a German edition. They're so good often in these covers. It'll be in Spanish. And David Eichelbarger, who's here, is praying about doing 20,000 so that we can make it a shotgun blast rather than a trickle. And to do that, you've got to give copies away. You've got to prime the pump. But this book is going into many languages and is part of the arsenal for the mobilization and training of missionaries. Why should I hold up Operation World? Everybody in OM is excited about this book. Everybody in OM is praying through this book. Everybody in OM believes in this book. It's not true. Many people in OM are not praying through this book. There are people in OM who don't even have a copy. People in OM can't even afford a copy. I've had OM leaders write in the last few weeks, I don't have a copy. I could surely use one. You mean you'll even send me some free? It takes work to push books. And this thing is big. And I would encourage you to study this book. In my notes this morning, I wrote something else down. Do not be afraid of the word missiology. And understand that many of you, I won't say all, many of you are missiologists. Whether you want to be called a missiologist or not, you are a missiologist. You've studied missions for years. You've been in missions for years. When you go back to churches, they consider you to some degree a missiologist. And with this book, have you read the section in here on definitions? I mean there's so much material in this book. I've been twice through the old edition and hardly missed something. I read a lot of missions material on almost every page of this book. So I'd encourage you to make a greater commitment. We would like to help finance some of your fields that are struggling through supplying free copies of Op World. We can't do that right now. We've done some of it. Now we've got to pay our bill, and then we'll do more. Because we feel one of the ways to help subsidize the third world mission thrust, where money is such a major factor, it's not only true there, is to supply them with books. And when they sell the books, they can keep the money to buy more books or to keep going. But it's a way of injecting money into the work where it's very hard for people to misuse. Finance compared to the big straightforward, you know, big kind of handouts. Some say this one is selling even faster than Operation World. Again, if you can't sell that book, you need to go back to kindergarten and whoever taught you anything about communication. You don't need to be a salesman to sell these kind of books. You just have to open your mouth. You have to smile. You have to hold a book in front of them. And of course, hopefully there's children within range. This is the level of the average adult in the average church, folks. Not this one. This is a graduate course for PhDs. Though I encourage people, don't try to understand it all, especially read parts of it and go for the prayer requests. The prayer requests in here are fairly simple. It's all the technology, you know, World A, World B, World C, which I know, of course, all of you know about, but it was complicated to the layman. You can change the world. There's so many other great missionary books and especially if we're going to have a thrust among Muslims, we've got to increase our thrust of books about Islam. Here's an excellent book, Bill Musk, Passionate Believing, The Fundamentalist Face of Islam. Some of you are very heavy into the Islam thing. You probably read these books and you always can see something in it that you don't agree with. But the average person isn't where you are. The average person hasn't read any books about Muslims. And we've got to get down, if we're going to have missions mobilization, we've got to get down to the grassroots. And maybe the ultimate simple book on Islam has not yet been read. Maybe somebody written, maybe somebody here, should write it. I wanted to mention a word about this book. It doesn't fit in with missions, but I know most of you are wrestling with pressure. And I always feel a little bad that probably when I speak I increase the pressure and I don't want to do that. So I'm bringing this book along here with a hoping that if the pressure increases tonight that you can read this book by our good friend Peter Meadows, Pressure Points. Hope for those with the world and the church on their backs. I don't think it's necessarily written particularly for people like us, but the point is very, very clear. The only free book out there is The Sign. That's free. The author gave me a bunch of these. It's just to get your creative juices about the second coming and how much you're going to suffer before you get there. So you can take one of those. Now this book is not available on the book table. This book is only available in plain wrapper from my new helper Chris. This is a very controversial book and it would only be somebody really a bit wild that would distribute copies of it. It's called Restoring the Pleasure and it's a complete step-by-step program to help couples overcome the most common sexual barriers. Now to have the courage to distribute a book like this you really have to have some deep convictions. So let me share my deep conviction. It is my conviction that Christians often in this area have more hang-ups than unconverted people. And some of the most tragic things in OM have never been told because you can't talk about this. It's sexual mess-ups in the marriage that they refuse to even go to a counselor about. They'd rather just go on and on until it hits the divorce courts and they do hit the divorce courts. It's Christians who have this idea that when you're married sex is not really a spiritual thing. It's all right. I hope we're not still in the age where we think it's bad though there are some probably so brainwashed with false things and things that our culture throw at us that they can't help subconsciously feeling that. It's an enormous problem in many people's lives. But I really feel it's a great mistake to put the whole area of sex sex within marriage and single people I know this book offends some single people other single people think it's great. I'm not outpushing it among single people because I've got so many controversies I don't want to get in another one. But for married people this book is brilliant. It's a Christian book it's written by godly people who have years of counseling. You don't have to read the whole book. But I believe the big assaults of Satan on OM in the next few years will be on the marriages. This is the day of marital breakup. This is the day when we're seeing the wives of top pastors just walk out and say hey I'm finished. It's a day of unpredictable immorality. That's why I've been pushing for several years now this book The Snare. I just think it's so brilliant. I just had a long phone conversation with Lois Mowdy. She's willing to be with us at our September conference if we've got any room there for her to speak. But NAVs are republishing her book. We got this special edition done. Just for us somehow. But the official NAV edition will come off. And this is one of the few books. If I had to choose between this one and this one I would push this one. But I think they work together. Let's just pray and then leave these things behind for closure. And I can get into the heart of what I want to share. Lord you know my heart. I'm just so full of these things I want to share. I believe they're significant. I believe that a lot of the things in our movement hinge on whether we're willing to really deal with these issues. We don't have time to deal with these issues together. Therefore it's got to be books. It's got to be tapes. It's got to be our own churches. It's got to be other methods to get these things into our lives, into our teams, into our families, into our churches. And Lord if some of us still have some kind of hang-ups in some of these areas where we can't even talk about these things. Help us to be set free because your word is so clear. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of beautiful verses about sex and many aspects of sex. And we need to be preaching this from the housetops in our culture on television, on radio, through books, through video that somehow we could present the biblical answer to the promiscuity, the immorality and the debauchery of our day. We thank you for men like Josh McDowell. We thank you for the authors of this powerful book. And we know there'll be controversy but Lord we'd rather take the risk and be a little more open than somehow continue to live with so many things under the carpet that eventually blow up and destroy whole churches. Oh God, help us to be realistic and guide us as we look into your word together. In Jesus' name, Amen. Turn with me to the book of Acts. Just give me a minute here. I got the wrong marker. Let's look at this marker. Acts 14. The book of Acts, chapter 14. We find something very beautiful. I, of course, have great struggles with so many different discussion meetings that I have to attend and wonder why we often have to have so many of these different kinds of meetings. We've been having them since the earliest days in the work. And again and again when I've been wrestling with certain things, the Lord's taken me to this passage where it talks about the council at Jerusalem. That's really more in chapter 15. And it talks also about Paul after he's stoned at Lystra. They're rocks, not drugs. He goes back to Antioch. Let's just look at the 14th chapter and the 22nd verse. Just bear with me a minute. I've got that in my authorized version, but I want to read it from this new international. 14 and verse 22. They preach the good news in the city and one large number of disciples. What verse is that? 21, yeah. Strengthening the disciples. We talk about strengthening churches, I think, in one of our statements. Here's a good one. Strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. Would you underline that? Don't expect a message from me on that, but you're not going to get it tonight. But there it is. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and with prayer and fasting committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust. Beautiful example of delegation. Beautiful example of trusting young Christians. So much to learn from that. After going through Pisidia, they called into Pamphylia and when they had preached the word in Persia, they went down to Italia. And from Italia, they sailed back to Antioch where they had been committed to the grace of God. Remember that back in chapter 13? For the work they had now completed. Interesting. Completion. Closure. On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. And they stayed there a long time with the disciples. Now I hope you don't feel that sort of my introductory exhortations and remarks were too long. But I believe there's a biblical basis for coming together like this and sharing what God has been doing. It's not boasting. It's not secondary communication. It's not mainly me who will be doing that this week. It will be many different people as we had in our prayer time this afternoon. And today, in the high-tech world, with so much happening, with so many different groups, so many different people, so many things that OM is touching, we do need extra time to sometimes update ourselves on where we are. You've already had two leaders' letters from me in the last two months. That's more than you had in the whole of 1993. So I lost my motivation with leaders' letters. I felt the communication going from roots and branches and from others, plus my update were enough and I didn't need to write my old-fashioned leaders' exhortations. I didn't feel I was getting enough feedback. I don't know, whatever things popped into my head. But I hope in the light of, especially my 82,000 responsibilities, in the light of all that we're going to have to do to somehow put into practice what we decide in these meetings, that I can be more faithful in communicating to you. I now have, we have e-mail. I don't know how to work it. Mira is doing that. Of course, we've had fax for years. We've got mobile telephones. We're seeing a whole new communications highway hit the world that as God's people we have to make use of for world evangelism. So I hope to be more in contact with you and sharing more with you in 1994. I'm praying that 1994 will be a quantum leap forward in the ministry of OM. Surely that's why God is taking us through all this strategic thinking and strategic planning. And we know from our tapes from Jim Angles that we've got to have the strategic thinking if we're going to do strategic planning. And sometimes the planning is easier than the thinking. But I've written something else down that I hope you'll remember when you leave here. And that is that strategic thinking and planning must lead to strategic action. And that will take a lot of discipline right across the body. I don't think this is the age of discipline. Maybe you can correct me. I think some of the problems we have with young people, their great need isn't necessarily counseling and care. And I believe in that. The very fact that some people have received so much care through OM and I've had much contact with such people is one of the reasons other people fall through the cracks. They get missed with the rapid growth with other complexities. And that's why we're dealing with what we're dealing with in these days. Now I know that some people struggle when certain things are stated that seem fairly negative in the attempt to drive home a strong point. Some people struggle with that because they don't see things quite that negative. That can be used to bring disunity in the body. I could have gone that way. And let me just share how the Lord helped me as I heard so much negative stuff coming. And things look pretty grim at times in certain ways. I was helped of course by balancing statements by Mr. Balance, Peter Maiden and others. But I was also helped and maybe this will help you that when the Holy Spirit is trying to get us to focus on something even though we may have scored B if you know the American grading system even if we may have scored 7 out of 10 when the Holy Spirit is zeroing in He doesn't want you to look at your past scores. He wants you to aim at a higher score. If we graded OM on some of these things we'd get 7s, 6s, 8s but that is not the issue now. The issue now is not looking back. We thank God for all that He's going to do. I'm going to touch on that in a few minutes. But it's to seriously make changes that will enable us to pursue greater excellency in all of these areas. If we were 8 we want to be 9. If we were 7 we want to be 8 or higher. So at the moment of impact when the Holy Spirit is working to some degree we have to forget the past. And not get uptight if somebody says something really weird about the past we're free to correct them if we want to. Amy Carmichael was that way in some of her writings. If you read her little poem If it just blows you away. If you don't understand that what Amy was trying to say is that when the Holy Spirit is zeroing in on you in a particular issue everything will look black at that moment. Because the Holy Spirit is just wanting to get you to repent. To repent of that issue. Not to defend yourself. Hey it's not that bad. Lord I'm not really that unloving am I? You know her little thing about love? But he wants you to deal with that. To repent of that. To get it sorted out. And that's so helpful I believe. And yet God is calling us to unity. God is calling us to decisive action. God is calling us to change. And I believe that little thought that the Lord has helped me with may be of help to you. Let me just read this in the authorized version. Verse 26 And from there they sailed to Antioch where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had fulfilled. I just read that from here. When they had gathered the church together they reviewed all that God had done with them and how he had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles. And there they abode a long time with the disciples. Now as one of the mentors in the movement I don't have that opportunity anymore to be a long time with the disciples. We're way, way down the road. And the fact that my influence as I saw in some paper is less in the whole movement is no problem to me. Don't think whoever wrote that that is upsetting to me. That is so obvious, so normal. And it is my prayer in these years in my life that the greater influence will be from the people that I have imparted myself to. I have no great huge new vision to spring upon you. You think that's a minor thing. I think you ought to thank the Lord for that. Because old founders are known for coming out with cockeyed out of date dooney looney visions. And everybody knows the guy. Knows the guy's gone going off track going to open a five million dollar retirement center in the Everglades. Nobody particularly wants to tell him because he's getting older and you don't want to hurt the guy too much. Founder protection. And founders have done some really bizarre things as they've got older. Now I had the advantage of reading about these people. I don't know who they were reading about. But I don't have that many you know super great visions that I'm inflicting on OM. Now this is the wildest thing I've come up with lately. And I'm inflicting that on the whole body of Christ. You can just take whatever little section of it you want. But that's a very sort of vague it's not vague it's specific in some ways. But each part of the body of Christ as they read this or something similar that someone else has written is that new? They have to take what they feel they are able. My burden my burden is to back up all of you. And others who are not here. Just to lay my life down. And I got this word from the Lord today. I know some people don't like you to say that. I'm not into new revelations. You know I do believe God has to say things to us. You know when I study the book of Leviticus I don't always get the real heavy blessing that I know some of you more Bible student types get. And I do read the book of Leviticus. And I probably need to read it more. But I do believe that as we pray God can bring impressions to our hearts not as revelations but just as practical instruction for our own soul. My wife is surely praying that I'll get more of that. And some of the areas where my wife would like me to improve are not found in the scriptures. The basic principles of course are found there. But I was thinking this today if I'm wrong about this just take what you can. As I look out at all of you and we've been together in this work some of us for 38 years like Dale and I some for only a month like my new helper Chris. Above all else I just want to be your friend and your brother. I'm not interested in lording over you. Not really interested that much in titles. I'm not interested in telling you what to do that sometimes if we're going to be courageous leaders we have to tell people things. Many of us run away from that. Most of you know I have a coward streak. But I would like through all this just to be your friend to somehow feel that if you're in a pinch and the enemy's having a go at you you'd feel free to phone me and say hey could you pray for me. That doesn't take long. That's a lot less time than reading one more of these memos that are coming across my desk by the dozens and dozens which I love as well especially if they're typed they're handwritten ones. We don't get many of those are very interesting but I did get a handwritten one today. So I haven't finished reading. Now why did I read this particular passage? What am I trying to set you up for? Some of you know my methodology. I'm just trying to take some of the pain from what I'm trying to say which is not the exposition of scripture. I'm trying to say from this scripture that it is legitimate to do what I'm now doing. Here are my notes. This is the main part of the message I felt burdened to give at this important conference. I've had it for a long, long time and I've dressed it up and added and subtracted. I have such a negative streak. I've seen so many negative things in who I am lately. I don't think any more really than before. It's just more people. And I know that quite a lot of what we're looking about we're having to deal with negatives in order to go to the positive and so I felt I should just share this. Ten signs of health in operation mobilization. Is OM basically right now an unhealthy movement that needs major surgery? You know, we need to get in there and get a heart bypass, a triple plant, chemotherapy, all of it. Or is OM basically healthy but needs to improve, needs to make, of course, changes, needs to add to existing foundations, focus more, get more things in writing as David Schmitt said. So instead of bombarding you with a lot of negative things, I'm going to just share these reasons why I think OM is relatively healthy at this time. Without the great Verwer influence, without this same ethos in terms of door-to-door work and giving out tracks and late, late, late, extra long prayer meetings, all of which does occasionally happen still throughout the work because our work will continue to be very pluralistic no matter what we say and I just love the idea of boundaries because if we don't set some boundaries the place is going to go really, it's going to get weird. I know you're saying it already is weird but I guess it's a definition. Ten signs of health. Number one, and I want you to rejoice with me because the next three or four days some of it's going to be pretty heavy. Number one, people are coming to Jesus Christ. That is a sign of health. Thousands of people in this fellowship, through this fellowship, are coming to Jesus Christ. I know in my own ministry I have the joy of regularly seeing people come to Christ but I know others are seeing far more and then a lot of evangelism and OMS teamwork. Not all of us are so talented at getting that guy to make that decision but we're all witnessing, we're all sharing and millions are being given the gospel. Tens of millions. I am amazed when you think of the heavy negative against mass evangelism, really quite heavy in some places, that somehow OMS still reaches so many millions of people. It's quite amazing. I mean, that is one of OMS authentic practices, marks, and many other things are coming in. There's contextualization, adaptation, still millions and millions and tens of millions of people are being reached. I'm just so excited about that. I read these ship reports, I listen to the ship tapes, almost every single tape that comes from Lagos too, I listen to. The Duluth tapes seem to get lost. I don't listen to those or they don't come but I get written reports and from India and from the smallest fields, some of the smallest fields like Mexico are quite on the cutting edge in that area. Number two, young people are still signing up in big numbers, as big as ever before except for that one big, huge first summer of Love Europe and maybe we've caught up to that by now if we multiply, you know, everything around the whole world. There's so many love events going on. I'm waiting for somebody to launch Love Mars but young people are signing up. They're being recruited and praise God, they are having their lives changed and I get many letters from those whose lives are being changed. Despite all these weaknesses, lives are being changed. One of the wildest pastors in London right now is Colin Dye of Kensington Temple. I was at this amazing meeting of leaders when an intellectual Bible college guy was being a bit negative about short term and he was being very perfectionistic about all the things we must do if we're really going to reach people properly. He was going on and on, I think. There were a number of interesting comments made. I made a comment, I said, look brother, I'm in your camp. I'm very much along this line. Excellency, perfection, better organized, more language, discipleship. But why is it, would you explain to me as I study what God is doing around the world, why so many jerks are being so mightily used of God to bring so many people to Jesus Christ? And I was serious. Some of the people that I see being used of God, they seem to me really off the wall. And I tell you, in some ways, I don't want to even be involved with it. But people come to Christ. Some of you people who like to have everything neatly sorted out, would you explain the church in Chile to me? Would you explain the church in Brazil? They got more evangelicals in Brazil than all of Western Europe all put together. Now, some Brazilians told me half of them were backsliding, but that's true of Europeans as well, so that's no big statistic. I tell you, it is amazing what God is doing through weak, ordinary people who sometimes even have heresy. Now, that's heavy. Have you noticed lately how many people are accusing others of heresy? I've got a little book in my briefcase. About John Wimber. Now, I've had sort of an, you know, ongoing relationship with John Wimber, mainly through cassette tape. But, you know, if you lived in England, you've got to face John Wimber. Books are coming out. It's a little ancient history now, but the impact is there. I just thank God that as far as I know in OM, that we may have had our private opinions and thoughts, we never launched an anti-John Wimber, anti-Vineyard campaign. I thank God for that. I think we got close to that at one point. But instead, we followed that OM ethos of just, let's ride this out. Let's try to see what the good is. In the old days, we may have banned his book. But in the new day, too complicated to ban any books. You know, you just had to live with STL, major distributor of John Wimber's books. And then, we're not only getting over, you know, Wimberization, and in comes Hinnization. And suddenly, Benny Hinn. I'm going to this big meeting, couple thousand people I'm speaking to in southern England, and there are all my books in a small pile, and I look next to it, and this giant pile of Benny Hinn books next to my books. Contamination, right? So then I got into the Benny Hinn struggles. Talk about a controversial person. I mean, it's just awesome. But you see, as a movement, we are spread so widely. We have all kinds of people. Let me just say this. I think some leaders have made serious mistakes when they have publicly said things about certain people and certain movements, not knowing that someone on their own team belonged to one of those churches. Ed Retta now belongs to a Vineyard Fellowship in Dallas. And the Vineyard Movement today is very different from the Vineyard Movement five years ago. This is a new day. Things change quickly. Three top theologians wrote a book published by Moody attacking Wimber. And I've got the little red book attacking those three authors. And amazing is the guy that wrote the red book against these three articles proving that they're bad research, misquotes. I mean, really, almost unethical. One guy's office is right across the hall from the other guy's office at Trinity Theological Seminary, which, by the way, is evangelical-free. Amazing world we live in. And I have read a lot for and against, and I'm not about to cast my vote. We have been stunned lately as Benny Hinn has made some phenomenal confessions and seems to be changing. You may think these things are irrelevant to Operation Mobilization. I would then say you're living in an unreal world. You may be in some kind of denominational ghetto. But we can't think Argentina without trying to figure out what's going on there through Benny Hinn and Marcos Witt, probably the greatest Latin musician of our day. I've ministered with him twice now. He and I were bonded like hard, fast cement. His music just sends me almost dancing on my table. He didn't even know that the churches in Argentina have the Marcos Witt music and the Benny Hinn Holy Ghost Jacket and all kinds of things are happening. And a lot of us more conservative types really have our questions. Meanwhile, people keep getting saved. You know, so embarrassing when people are getting saved through these ministries and then they want to join the ship. So, you know, last time I was going off Lagos II or maybe it was a time before that. Just before I went off, the Brazilian brother comes up to me and slips me a Benny Hinn book. Of course, they want George River to have the anointing. We live in exciting things. Through it all, thousands of people are signing up for Operation Mobilization, fighting fundies and charismatics, evangelicals, Baptists, Episcopalians, probably even a few Catholics sneaking in. I tell you, this is a sign of health. I know some of you have your doubts. You're wrong. Number three. Another sign of health in O.M. is that there is a relatively good balance of people of different ages and nationalities and denominations. Isn't that exciting? See people in their 70s working, in their 60s working alongside people 19 and getting on. The amazing thing is when the guy 60 seems to have more energy than the 19-year-old. Let us not take for granted this blending God has given us. Even in the leadership, in the leadership structure as we attempt to move down towards younger people. One of the most exciting things to me is we have a large number of potential leaders and some already are leaders who are in their 20s and we've got to fight to build up that 20s group as fast as we can. We have another whole army of people in their 30s. The 40s of course is O.M.'s strong generation and we still have some in the 50s and the 60s. Not as many as we thought we would have years ago. I don't think O.M.'s major problem is going to be having so many people in that group in the years to come if things keep moving but that will go and India in their early retirement pay setting program seem to somehow partly resolve that. I guess we can learn from them. Number four, people are handling change in a relatively mature way. The 90s isn't just a decade of change. We have been in phenomenal change really right through the early 80s if you know O.M.'s history. There have been hiccups and problems and a few have left disgruntled and we feel our mistakes. I feel our mistakes very deeply. I feel my personal mistakes but I don't believe that vain regret will get me anywhere spiritually. If vain regret is getting you somewhere spiritually maybe you can write about it. How that really helps you to delve over your past failures. Why didn't I do this in 1978? Why didn't I do this? I find that is generally a real waste of time and energy. Those things are in the past. We must press on looking toward the future. I believe O.M. generally is handling change in a mature way. This week and the weeks that come will hopefully prove that. Number five, we are keeping the focus on people, on their needs, on the fellowship and on the family. I want to say something here maybe a little controversial. I believe from the earliest days of this movement O.M. was a people centered ministry. I don't think in a major way we should feel guilty because we didn't focus enough on people, on pastoral care, on counseling. I know hardly a missions movement and I've studied a lot that has had more emphasis on this than O.M. What movements pass out thousands of copies of books like Healing for Damaged Emotions? What movements have done some of the things we have done in terms of the kind of people we bring into our conferences? But the sheer numbers that we were soon facing, the difficulty when you have a multi-vision movement to keep the balance, of course brought in failure and weakness in this area and we are very conscious of that and therefore it is completely normal that the desire for greater pastoral care and counseling and all that side of things is a major factor on the agenda. I don't think that represents radical change but I believe it does represent mature and of course sometimes a struggling response to where our society is, where the church is, where we are as a movement attempting to take care of 2,300 people and 6,700-800 children and just a few extra thousand throughout the year, like 4,000-5,000. We are bound to have struggles in this area and I want to say this. I am very committed to these changes. It is not going to be easy to grow because we're in a growth pattern and to give this kind of care we want to give. That's why in a sense we need almost an extreme commitment here, even if some of us find it unpleasant, in order to somehow shift. This is a big shift OM now. It's going to take a lot to shift it. And we are having too many people go away hurt, without enough concern, care, and the Word of God is clear. If 99 are going well and one is going away hurt, beaten down, not cared for, we've got to go for that one. And that of course will answer a lot of the questions we have about somehow where are we in all of this? It's true in life that sometimes your greatest victories can be right next to some of your greatest failures. When I was giving myself to endless pastoral care and counseling on the Lagos in that early year, because of the time consumed in that ministry, other things went straight through the cracks. That's why I believe mentoring, delegating, passing on part of the leadership mantle that too often falls on the field leader who's supposed to be the jack of all trades and the miracle worker, passing this now on to training people, passing this now on to other people who will not be field leaders but who must be given in a sense an equivalent place in the movement. That is so important. That is an original from me. I'm learning that from others. I saw a little of it and I think it's beautiful when we can have not one key person in a particular country but three or four key persons. I noticed many here somehow or other you got your number two man here with you. In a sense that's so important. It wasn't for logistics. We wish you could have six of the people you're mentoring with you. But that's not the purpose of this particular conference. Number six, most of our graduates love us and stay in touch with us. That's 82,000 people. Now they're not all in touch with one place but I will tell you if we can ever take a survey of all the people we are cumulatively in touch with and then those who are close to us, say for example Greg Livingston, the number of people he is cumulatively in touch with, it's amazing. I find most of our graduates are pro-OM. That's a miracle. Do you know anything about the church? Do you know anything about a little thing called bitterness, hurt, unforgiveness? Got any books lately on these subjects? Now we have some OM graduates who are bitter with us and they don't always tell us. We have some who are backslidden. Bad news goes quicker than good news so when a divorce hits an OM graduate boom, goes around a grapevine just like Lincoln. But as far as I can see most OM graduates and their marriages, some of them pretty international, most of them are holy. Again, anything we can do to help those ex-OMers, we want to do it but we'll have to know our limitations in the process. These graduates and ex-OMers, they are one of the greatest source of blessing, of finance, of help in so many different ways. It's very hard to measure. They have brought phenomenal credibility often in their own church. There are, of course, exceptions to that often because of a number of factors including shortage of staff. We are not able to take advantage, please catch this, we are not able to take advantage of all that good will, all that credibility that is out there. And we as a movement may be on a high point in our credibility worldwide right now. Don't dream this kind of thing just easily stays year after year, decade after decade. And I believe some of these changes we're making and other things are going to enable us to build more. We're seeing this in 82,000. I could talk about that for hours. We are opening up the OM network including friends and many other people to this movement in various ways and I believe it is going to be a blessing to millions of people. We do not want to be selfish or greedy with what God has given us. I wish I could talk to you on missiology for at least a couple of days but I'll tell you things are happening in India. missions is the mass rapid multiplication of the small group. The small mission. I was on the phone with the best conversation I've ever had with K.P. Yohanan since we have been arguing which is a long time. And found out his budget has gone up to about $7 million out of the 6,000 people he partially supports in India. To get that money to those people he works through 500 agencies. Do you think that's not going to happen in Brazil? It's already happening. Do you think it's not going to happen in Argentina? Do you think it's not going to happen in Korea? It will be different from country to country. I never forget being with Ralph Winter when he got up there and blew some cobwebs out of my head and said one of the greatest blessings is the sand lot mission. Little things just popping up here and there. That's all OM was, brothers and sisters. Dale and I launched out. It was a sand lot. It wasn't even a sand lot. It was a mud pie mission. We were nothing minus whatever. And we must not become some kind of sophisticated IBM Rolls Royce of world missions with all of our policies and all of our manuals and all of our paraphernalia and all of our money because we are a big money agency now. We must not be insensitive or critical or careless in our comments and our concern and our care of all these new groups. They will make their mistakes. They will put our backs up at times. They will distribute funny books. They will climb towers and try to knock demons out of telephone poles. But we must somehow find the balance, loving, caring, helping them through perhaps some of the mistakes we made. We can help them avoid. OM has one of the greatest possibilities to serve the body of Christ and other missions with those ships of any movement in the world today. Let's no longer just think OM. Maybe that's group think. I don't know. Let's think how we can bless the whole body. I want to rethink the church planting thing. I was very pro church planting through Mike Evans. I am not as pro church planting now, at least in certain countries. Because I have seen sending immature people in to plant a church at the end of two years generally don't have much of a church. That same group, if they were giving themselves to evangelism, missions, mobilization, encouraging other Christians, leadership training, conferences, that could result in 100 new churches. Because OM has birthed over 100 agencies, including this K.P. Honan thing. And the book which I oppose, his first book, is dedicated to me. It gets very messy. It gets very messy. I'm sorry. God will lead different fields in different ways, but that's certainly something for you to think about. Number seven, we are paying our bills. We are paying our bills. ICT is out of debt and doesn't even have an overdraft facility. These are miracles, my friend. I know you're hardened to miracles, but somehow we have learned how to get those demons at least out of some of the banks. And when I think of God's provision, even when secular people look at where OM is today, they're looking at something that they consider successful, but needs change, needs updating, needs new, and all kinds of other things added. It's exciting. Number eight, moderate and simple, or somewhat simple since we like double words, lifestyle is still holding. It's holding more than I think I expected 35 years later. I don't think there's many OM leaders living high on the hog. You know, if you think there are some OM leaders Grace Awakening after you do. Take a few photos and send them to me. We can talk it out. I think that OM has found balance in the area of money, lifestyle. I think we've been set more free from judgmentalism and other things that are closer to Phariseeism than Christianity. And we had more of it in those early days than we would like to admit. And it still hangs on. And it's not a simple issue. It's not a simple issue. And I struggle with it. We all do. Number nine, people are repenting and being honest. Isn't it great to hear leaders breaking before the cross and getting united when they're not people who naturally have a chemistry? Do you think that with Peter Maiden and our relationship it's all sort of spirituality? We know he's sort of quite spiritual. We know I'm not so spiritual. There is an uncanny, God-given chemistry to some degree between the two of us. Maybe that's why we're both losing our hair and he's ahead of me. But I again and again am surprised that this Maiden-Verwer partnership continues to go because we are very different and we see things often differently and it is just something we can thank God for. But it is linked I believe with the cross, with repentance, with the word. It's happening right through the movement. There are amazing leadership teams on our ships. There's an amazing leadership team in India, amazing leadership teams in several dozen countries. Some are better than others. Doesn't mean there's no problems, no heartaches. But to me this is a sign of health. People are still repenting. They still believe in Calvary Road. They still at the end of the day don't want to go to bed with bitterness and anger against a brother and sister in Jesus Christ. Another sign of health tied in with this is the fact that I believe we have improved. I know some would feel it's only a little but I believe we have improved in the whole area of relating to brothers and sisters and helping better us men to bring women into more strategic and fulfilling ministries. We all can think of our failures in this because the whole man woman thing seems to be destined for endless challenge in many ways. But I think we have improved. I think the openness, the honesty, the freedom to share is a sign of health. That will never be an easy road. Let's follow what's going on in other groups, other churches before we put ourselves down so strongly in that area. And then number ten, right, that was number ten, number eleven, good relationships with other missions and networks. Isn't that exciting? These people believe more in what we're doing than we do. And you get people like Tony Sargent introducing me in OM. It's embarrassing. Surely he's visited us enough to know, you know, how many problems and difficulties and how sin gets into the camp. We have an amazing number. I'm talking of hundreds of mission leaders who really are linked with us. It's a sign of health. It's something that should encourage us. And then number twelve, we are seeing solid boards of directors develop in nation after nation. That's not a small thing. And Network 94 is destined to be one of the most significant events in the history of OM. It's sad when some people just write it off because they feel it's too expensive. You know, I could pin any person down who says that, follow them around and point out something that they do that I feel is too expensive. We're never going to agree on all these things. We have thirty-five years of history proving that older people and business people are not attracted to OM conferences. Why don't we just accept that, not blame them. We all know the story of dear Mr. Frampton who finally came to a conference in Belgium, a man who was used to a few creature comforts as a multi-millionaire, and he came in and the door was opened and there was an empty room with a piece of cardboard. Even the new present-day OMers have difficulty with this, much less, you know, the average person in some of the countries that we come from. God has given us this hotel at half price. It's a beautiful place. There's nothing wrong with beauty. There's nothing wrong with a vacation. We set that right about fifteen years ago whenever, and this is a special time, and if any of you know key people or board members are not yet coming, maybe you can make another try. There's still a few more places. Of course that conference is not, you know, the solution for everything. It's just part of the equation, but it's an important part. The bigger part is that OM now has solid boards in many countries. And as many of us founder leaders move on in God's timing and God's providences, if you study church history and mission history, you know those boards will move into a more significant place in leading the world. A board, when the founders are around and the people who actually chose them to be on the board are around, have a different ethos than when the number two guy, the next generation and the third generation move in there. We need solid boards. More XOMers are getting on boards. Gifted people get on boards. It's not a matter of how much money you have. If there's some on those boards that have some money, the Lord bless them. There are plenty of people on our boards. Money is not the major factor in this. It has very little to do with it actually. In fact, it seems to me quite a few of our board members seem broke in the present recession. And O.M.'s change of mentality is enabling us to more highly esteem the layman and more highly esteem all these kind of dear people. And if you heard some of my preaching lately, you know I've changed over the past few years. In closing, I want to urge you, in the light of these things, to make sure as you go forward to put into practice what we decide on here, that you will not underestimate your own ministry. Please just bear with me a few minutes because this, for some of you, could be the most important thing I say. I feel in O.M. in general, people are underestimating their ministry. I feel there's an element of false humility and I feel I am partly responsible for it, which is unusual since I'm obviously humility is not my strong point. I'm not even sure I understand it. But anyway, I'm working on it. But I believe God has given you men and women here today tremendous gifts. You are proven. You have run the race 10, 15, 20, 30 years. And I believe you should be willing to be a little more a fool for Christ and allow your ministry to have a higher profile. I think it's sad when so many leaders don't even have some kind of business card or a Christian card or something that indicates they have an address, they have a phone number. I think the church is more to blame for this than O.M., to be quite honest. And I must confess I believe the church in Britain is partly to blame because it developed and Peter made it when he shot down true discipleship, shot down a brand of Christianity that basically developed in the British Isles. I'm sure he realized that. And that brand of Christianity was exported, not just through true discipleship, the number of books I have looked at lately where the red light has gone on when I've compared it with brilliant, Peter Maiden's brilliant message is quite amazing. Some of these books really say things that are way out and we buy into it and then we wonder why people who have bought into some of this, many of them, they don't amount to anything for God. They really don't. Though they may look spiritual. And later on they're the people that sometimes react against any kind of change. That is not true spirituality. And I believe that we need to be willing to be fools for Christ and have a little higher profile. That means let your picture go out. We're living in the video age, brothers. This is not the age of talking through a tin can on a string to your friend next door who's got another can. You remember that when you were kids, those of you who were old? That was one of my first efforts in communication. Shouting in this tin can through a piece of string. This is the video age. If people can watch a video and see the most ordinary preacher, why are you afraid to let a video out with some of your preaching on, to have your photograph used a little bit more, which cannot be done if you don't have any copies. Maybe you think it's spiritual not to have any copies of your photograph. Maybe you think you're going to be puffed up. You're going to get so proud because somebody put your photo. The fact is, when you expose yourself to a higher profile, you will be crucified a lot more than if you maintain that little mousy false spirituality hiding in the corner under some kind of old hymn book. Let's come out bold in the name of Jesus. And keep the good attitude after the crucifixion. What are some ways we can do that? I touched on that thing of photos. I touched on that I touched a little bit on having maybe a card with your name and address on it. It's nothing new in O.M. It's just a certain fairly large group of people don't do it. To be willing to distribute your tapes. Why is it we go to a book table and all we get is Verwer tapes? We want Fritz Schuller tapes. We want Gordon Magny tapes if they're not too extreme. We want... Listen, listen. When you are preaching, I guarantee you if you're preaching in a service and you put your Verwer tapes and your own tapes on the table, probably people will choose your tape. They want to listen to people they've met. That's why my tapes don't go well unless I'm there. Why not have a good percentage of all of you people making some of your own tapes and making them available? If it's worth going 400 miles to take one more meeting and many of you do that, why is it wrong for you to have a cassette tape or a video cassette? Do you think that it always must be someone else that pushes you? Okay, I'm pushing you. This is official. When you produce your cassette tape or your videotape or your business card and someone comes to you and says, you know, why are you doing this? Say, well, you know, I really didn't want to do this, but George Verwer, he's the leader of our work. He asked me to do this. What do you think about it? Throw it back on them.