The sermon transcript discusses the story of a high school basketball team called Red Dawn, who are taken over by Russian and Cuban forces. The speaker reflects on the psychological manipulation used to turn the basketball team into a group of violent individuals. The sermon also emphasizes the importance of finding a balance between pushing oneself and accepting oneself, as well as between going on the offensive and being defensive. The speaker encourages the audience to take responsibility for the spiritual resources they have been given and to not use them as a means of escapism.

At our area leaders meeting, I read a little thing I got out of a magazine called The Qualifications of a Good Pastor. And I thought, well, if these are the qualifications of a good pastor, what should these men who pastor the pastors, what qualifications they should have. And everybody was excited about this, so they asked me for photocopies. And I thought I'd read that to you this morning. It could also be called Operation Impossible. Some of you are praying about going into the pastorate. Some of you are already leaders. It's a dangerous little article in the sense that it can add to our ongoing false idea of what leaders are, because in fact it paints an impossible picture. Very few people ever meet this high standard, but certainly it should be our goal. Let me just read it. The good pastor, we could say good Christian leader, must have the strength of an ox, the tenacity of a bulldog, the daring of a lion, the wisdom of an owl, the harmlessness of a dove, the industry of a beaver, the gentleness of a sheep, the versatility of a chameleon, the vision of an eagle, the hide of a rhinoceros, the perspective of a giraffe, the disposition of an angel, the endurance of a camel, the bounce of a kangaroo, especially for I am the stomach of a horse, the loyalty of an apostle, the faithfulness of a prophet, the tenderness of a shepherd, the fervency of an evangelist, the devotion of a mother. I thought I'd put that on my resignation when I handed it in. Anyway, that's for what it's worth. Let's just pray again. Father, we thank you that you have called us to very high goals. In summary, one word of our burden to be Christ-like. Lord, we do really want to somehow find a balance in this. The balance between pushing ourselves and accepting ourselves. Balance between going on the offensive and sometimes being on the defensive. We ask, Lord, even this morning, in this somewhat difficult subject that I try to share on, that we may have wisdom. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm sure many people, after they've finished one or two years on OM, they have a great burden to go to Bible schools. As far as I know, OM is feeding more people into Bible schools all over the world than almost any movement. One reason is we've never started our own Bible colleges or training schools. I've always felt God has called us to work together with existing schools. The relationship we have with these Bible colleges is really quite encouraging. There's a number of colleges where we can almost just pick up the phone and go at any time. Late last night, I was actually talking to Don Maxwell, the son of Paul Maxwell, who is committed to go back to the subcontinent with us. After he finished our conversation, he said, well, my dad would like to speak to you. His dad is Paul Maxwell, the president of Prairie Bible Institute, where Bert is and where Bert will be taking on quite a significant job. Bert will still be overseeing probably Western Canada, so in fact he'll have two jobs. I'm back at about six major Canadian Bible colleges in October. It was a very encouraging conversation that's only come up now because I think this relationship with the training institutions and Bible colleges is to me so important. Many of you might find that after your time on OM, this is what the Lord has. OM cannot be a substitute for academic studies. People who try that become very frustrated unless they're really people of extra discipline, of which there are not too many any longer. At the same time, I think we need to realize that OM is also trying to train people to be faithful laymen and women back in their home churches. I don't think we should ever look at it as a defeat when people leave OM and go back and take on a secular job. That constant rift that Satan tries to bring between the so-called full-time worker and the man who's working down for the Mercedes-Benz company or some lesser thing, you know, McDonald's, to think that he is a second-class citizen is to make one of the greatest mistakes you can ever make. In fact, in India and in some other countries, it is surely harder to go in secular work than it is to go in full-time work. And in a number of countries, there's intense laziness among full-time Christian workers to a degree of almost scandal because people just drift into it. There's such high unemployment. To get a job is one thing. To latch on to some foreign organization as all these missionary groups are trying to hire nationals is often very easy. Now, I believe God is sovereign, and I think we should also be very slow to criticize groups that do hire national workers because they're certainly usually very sincere, and many of the men that are full-time nationals with them are hard-working people. And some of these groups now have much more supervision, and it's exciting what's being done. Some of the groups are very indigenous, like Friends Missionary Prayer Band that we're linked with in India. Two of their leaders came up to Nepal to talk to me about all their problems. They thought I was going to resolve them in a couple of hours. But the leader of the Friends Missionary Prayer Band is very, very concerned as they're seeing now that the first decade is gone, they're seeing all the various complications and problems come in full-scale. They have over 300 workers, indigenous missionary organization. Anyway, that's a separate thing. I think, however, when we consider ourselves as laymen, if you're thinking of going back into that side of Christian things, you probably will realize at the end of one or two years on OM that you have more truth, and you've been exposed to more truth. It doesn't mean you haven't. Depends how well you take notes and how well you study and how serious a person you are. One thing that's difficult in a Christian group is to force seriousness of purpose on people. God somehow has to do that. Different people are at different stages in terms of seriousness of purpose and seriousness in regard to study. Michael Griffiths prefers people to come on OM a couple of years before they come to London Bible College. That's what he wrote me. Because when they come, they have seriousness of purpose. People prematurely arriving at Bible College at 18 years of age, and there are some serious people at 18, praise God, but there are many who haven't quite got what it's all about. It does make a difference if they come a couple of years later and they know why they're studying and they appreciate the opportunity to study. But in general, by the end of this year, you will have received a lot. You may not think that because you probably haven't traveled that widely and maybe because you haven't been in enough churches around the world or even in your own country. Because today, at least in a lot of the countries I go to, most of the people I minister to would not have one-fifth of the exposure that you would have here in terms of the Word, in terms of just exposure to missionaries, to truth, to challenge, to strategy. And I'm reminded of that verse, to whom much is given, much shall be required. Maybe you thought at the end of this year all that you've been given and all you've received, even the privilege to find one book in that library or one cassette tape that gave you some spiritual food. We all get different spiritual food in different ways. Yesterday I had Andrew Thompson's January conference message. I always like to hear what some of our up-and-coming OM teachers are saying. It's usually fairly encouraging and this was. But even a tape like that, I've also been listening to Billy Graham's messages at the campaign, Ipswich, and now I'm listening to Sunderland. And that is quite interesting. We are responsible for these things we receive. Paul wrote to Timothy. Let's look at those words. 2 Timothy chapter 2. I think we've read these many, many times. And he said in verse 2, The things that thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, it is the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. I can so vividly remember when Dale Roton went really almost extreme on this emphasis. He got it, I'm sure, partly from the Navigators, from Dawson Trotman. There was a little tape circulated around OM in the early days by Dawson Trotman himself. He was the founder of the Navigators and was killed at Word of Life camp the summer that I was converted to Christ. But he would strongly emphasize that whole thing of, as he called it, his little booklet, Born to Reproduce. That used to be required reading for people coming in OM. I think maybe dropped by the wayside. And I feel that this emphasis, of course, needs to be re-emphasized within OM. And I hope that you will, it's not my message this morning, but I hope you will remember that God wants you to find some people that you can be an encouragement to, that you can help. The word disciple has been used a lot. Some people don't like that. The word encourage perhaps is good. And there are many. I think of all these people in Britain that have made decisions to Christ in the Louise Palau and Billy Graham meetings. And a lot of those people, if they don't get personal help, some without any help will go on. God is sovereign. Holy Spirit works in different ways in different people. Many, if they don't get some help, will fall by the wayside. And sometimes a small group or a church helps for a while. We call that group help. They're not getting much personal help, but they're in a good group and they have some friends and somehow they're going on. And sometimes that's enough. Again, different kinds of people. But with many people, they need at least one or two really faithful, I'm going to stick with you, friends who are going to stick with them even if something goes wrong in the church or the group, which often happens. They're going to stick with them no matter what. They change churches somehow or they go to another group. They're going to stick with them. They're going to write them. They're going to encourage them. Sort of spiritual parenthood. I was reading something about that yesterday. The responsibility of spiritual parenthood. I've heard, of course, some people take that to extreme. I don't know how Billy Graham can be a spiritual parent for all his people come to Christ through his ministry. But sometimes we have to adopt. Maybe you haven't led many people to Christ. Billy Graham has seen more people come to Christ through his ministry. All of us put together and he could add a few other groups on top. But he needs a lot of people who will be involved in adoption. Sometimes when you adopt somebody else's spiritual child, there may be less ego involved or less sense, well, I led this person to Christ. It's very difficult for our ego not to get involved in some of these things. When we see one of our own spiritual children, we've won to Christ. Really going on for God. You can rejoice over that. Without your ego getting involved, you're probably a very unusual person. Of course, I think God has the ability to wink at a certain amount of ego. I may not agree with that, but I would classify it as the human factor that the Lord doesn't want us to get so extreme on motivation that anything that isn't purely, totally, absolute, sanctified, Calvary Road, A.W. Tozer, Watchman Knee motivation is discounted in the work of God. I tell you, a lot of Christian workers grew up in smoke, if that were the case. But certainly our goal must be continually that self be slain and that only Christ be given the glory. And I think it's been very discouraging for some of us and we've learned a battle through it when we see how man tries to take the glory for what God is doing. It's so subtle. It can happen after you've been 20 years in the Christian life. And it's something where self has to be constantly dealt with. And those things that you've heard of me from among many witnesses, the same commit that of faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. Take that as a challenge. What you receive this year from the books, from the tapes, from your experiences. To be able to give that to others. Now linked with this, I wanted to just talk briefly about this thing of trying to keep a right attitude toward the organization that we are part of or the fellowship that we are part of. I started work on this July 7th, 1984. There are the notes I put up here. A possible message I want to develop for an advanced session at the September conference. Of course, I never developed it. And so I never gave it at the advanced conference. Some of you know that Bromley is sometimes my sounding board. I try a message here and see how it goes and then work on it some more before I drop it on people like the coordinators or somebody else. But I've been wrestling with this for years and never once spoke on it to any degree. I think of that passage of scripture. I was going to read it but the time is going quickly and I'll just refer to it. In Corinthians where we have this description of the judgment of God coming upon God's people because of their murmuring. They were murmuring, I guess, many different ways, especially against Moses. There was a time when the murmuring was so great, Moses, you know, I quit. He was going to... I think that happened more than once. I don't have any great feedback that there's a tremendous murmuring going on in Bromley. This message came to me in July 84. It doesn't come from... Some messages we may give are linked with something that may be happening on our team. This is not the case. Though it would be unusual if we didn't have some struggles wherever we are in the world with this. But what I've been wrestling with is this tendency to use the organization we're in and with us, that's OM, as the scapegoat for our problems. How easy it is, let me read this, for us to moan about the missionary organization we are involved in, whether it is OM or some other organization. Generally speaking, it's not thought of by many people as such a bad thing to moan about OM or even to speak negatively about OM. An example of that, something goes wrong and we say, oh, well, that's just typical OM. I'm sure we've heard such comments. Most people would think, well, you know, what's wrong with that? And again, I'm wrestling with this and I'm not saying that's totally unacceptable, but I think at times it does go out of control. And what, for one person, is sort of just a joke, for somebody else it's dead serious. And pretty soon, you know, there's a fifth column operation that is about to overthrow some particular line of thinking or some particular policy or some particular strategy and often not always in the most appropriate way. If we did the same thing about an individual person, it would be clearly sinful. Not necessarily that statement, though probably that would be, but other statements that we make against OM and about OM, especially, you know, in our off moments, and that includes me, because this is, you know, something I've been wrestling with. I get very upset with OM at times and swear at it, throw things at it. Not much. I try to avoid swearing, but I've never got, as in many areas in my life, 100% victory in that area. But if we said the same thing about an individual, I mean, people would really be upset. If we said the same thing about an individual, I mean, people would really be upset. You would be confronted. It comes out in different ways, insinuations, different kinds of statements, and generalizations. OM is disorganized. OM is this. OM doesn't believe this. OM, whatever. Often we have been hurt by someone within the organization, but we may not want to admit that or to have the whole thing become too personal. And so we just speak in generalizations against the organization. I've seen this with certain leaders. I think of one particular leader who very seldom people like to directly attack him. He's a kind of person, a kind of situation where people don't want to attack him. But they say things, and if you trace them back, they go back to him. But they wouldn't say his name. They would just say some generalization about this or about that. What are some of the reasons why we should try to have the right attitude, even toward the fellowship? Now, perhaps one of the reasons I've never given this message is because one of my great burdens, of course, is to see people, led of the Holy Spirit, out of OM. To do that, we must not oversell OM. We must not push OM, as if it were the great New Testament Christian movement of the 20th century. I react against the oversell I see, even in the advertising of different organizations, especially some of the Bible colleges. Each Bible college, if you read their ads, you get the idea that this is the place to get God's Word. It would be tremendous if someone ran an ad about the other man's Bible college, but I guess that would be a little too revolutionary. Some of you, I think, know that one of the verses we wrestle with the most in OM is that verse in Philippians, esteeming others better than yourself. To me, it is not good enough to just read a verse and say, we believe that. We must wrestle in our life what are the practical implications of that verse. Is that just a lot of biblical idealism? It doesn't really work. We all pay lip service to that, but then we just all proceed on to do our own thing, to push our own organization, to paint our own house whiter than the man next to them. I refuse to do that. I find that impossible in the way I see the Bible. I remember when Floyd McClum of YWAM came to me some years ago and just shared how the Holy Spirit had spoken to him about the need to be involved with other people and think about their work and esteem them. Through that, our fellowship increased with him and with YWAM. What are some of the reasons why we should perhaps at least give thought to this and try to keep a right attitude? Number one, OM is actually people. Especially when the founders are still around. When the old founders are all died off, and Roton is dead, and Burwer is dead, and Jonathan is dead, and some of these old hoot-owls have been around since the beginning. It will be a lot easier to bad-mouth the organization because they will all be dead and no one will have to face them. But OM is certainly at this age very much still people. When you're talking about OM, it is personal. It is impossible for people who have spent 29 years of their life in one fellowship to not have some personal emotional involvement. Some people more than others. Of course, we're all trying to learn how to handle criticism and if we don't, we won't survive. But in fact, when we do make heavy statements about OM, we are talking about people. We're talking about a group of people, probably not talking about just one. We're probably talking about a group, but leaders are being taught that they are responsible. So therefore, leaders will tend to take the blame. People make these statements, the leaders will feel it at times personally. Number two, speaking against OM is often an escapism. My concern in working on this message, difficult, tricky little message, is not OM. Because I have a deep conviction in my soul that OM will survive as long as God wants it to survive. I wouldn't want to presume on that. Certainly as I measure it now, it is going very, very well the way I measure things. My concern is not OM. OM is a lot of us. If somehow this problem happens, we've had problems for 28 years and we mustered our forces and plotted on through a lot of problems. My concern are people, the people who come on OM. And that's why I think sometimes this kind of moaning is a sign of something that perhaps needs to be dealt with in the life of the moaner. Speaking against OM is sometimes escapism. We are failing to be specific and to really deal with specific sin, either within someone in OM or within our hearts. I have to face the fact, not easy, but I face it, that it is not easy for people to, you know, phone up George Verwer and say, I want to meet with you and really lay something heavy on you. You know, it's great to have a little positive fellowship, but suppose something really were grinding your valves about OM. And, you know, Mr. OM, he's right here, right here in your hometown. They don't have that opportunity in Kerala to, you know, immediate access, just phone up and we can get together. And, of course, I understand, especially my kind of pulpit mannerisms definitely frighten some people. I mean, it's quite interesting after the meeting sometimes, you know, to stand there after you finish preaching and just see the people sort of look at you and all walk out the other door. That's why it's better to shake hands at the door. You can feel really intimidated by all that, but you discover later on through the feedback that some other co-worker is picking up, that the people were blessed out of their socks. And then when you get letters, this is why I work a lot with letters, people who are afraid to go to someone like myself personally often feel free to write. Great, praise the Lord. Write, phone, send cassette tapes. I've had people send me quite a few personal cassette tapes. I listen to all of them. Some of them are very interesting. But it can become an escapism. We're unwilling to go to that leader or to go to that person involved. For instance, sometimes you hear the OM vehicles bad-mouthed, to use a term. And even here in Bromley, sometimes I've heard negative things. But I wonder how many of us have the courage, because there is somebody responsible for the garage, to, you know, just go and just tell them honestly what you feel. See, on the way to do that, we start rethinking things, don't we? And we remember the time that we, you know, drove up in the sidewalk and knocked that old lady over. We remember the time that, you know, we parked the car in Jerry Davey's office and other little things. So we decide, we decide it's not worth it, right? You know, let's have peace. But meanwhile, the insinuation is picked up by somebody else and it goes on and on and on. It may go for a while in a non-destructive way. Praise the Lord. But sometimes, somehow, it quickly turns and it becomes destructive and then people get hurt. Number three, we are using this kind of speaking as a release for anger and hostility rather than really seeking victory, cleansing and crucifixion. That's the best statement in the message. And that is definitely my problem. When I'm bad-mouthing some part of OM or moaning about something, usually it is a hostility problem. I think one of the areas where Christians are very unrealistic is willingness to really deal head-on with hostility. Most of us have hostility. Some of you, English is your second language. You're asking, what do I mean by hostility? I mean this emotion within us that gets upset, that sometimes wants to strike out at someone. Have you ever hit your hand on something or hurt yourself and reacted and hit the thing back, even a piece of wood? What is your reaction when you clobber your finger with all intensity with a hammer? What is your instant reaction? Bless the Lord, all my soul. You know, if that is your instant, immediate reaction, you are either progressing spiritually or you need psychiatric help. And it is only normal, it is only normal, especially under pressure, with a lot of different people, a lot of different ideas, a lot of different counter thoughts going, that we will wrestle with hostility. In your driving, in life in your little apartment, because you have uncontrolled, the more uncontrolled factors in your life, the greater the struggle. And all you need is one person living with you who you feel is an uncontrolled factor. It might be a team member, it might be your two-year-old. It can produce the same headache. And what some of you don't know is that God has put some interesting little team members with you to help you to face that hostility and to face reality in life so that when you have that two-year-old, you will not do as some mothers have done, put him in the oven and turn the gas up. That is an increasing, some things are so horrible, the only thing we can do is laugh. I have not figured out the psychological reaction to that, though there are books about it. But we know that child abuse and all that kind of thing is unbelievably on the increase. And it's linked with man's inability to handle hostility and handle this emotion that tends to want to strike back. I don't know if you saw that film Red Dawn. Wasn't that the name of that interesting little film about these Americans? Red Dawn. It's the story of a bunch of American high school basketball players. They're all kind, nice, great guys. And the Russians parachuted into their high school and took over the nation. Somehow the missiles got knocked out on both sides, and the Russians and the Cubans and the Communists took over this town. And it showed the psychological manipulation that one or two who really wanted to fight used to turn the little basketball team into a bunch of gorillas who just wanted to kill. We don't understand much about this. But if you were being prepared to fight in some army where you would have to kill people, the army training people have to change you. They have to change you, especially if you're the non-killing type, so that you can get psyched up and go out and kill. When the French had to do all that killing in Algeria, that was one of the most hideous wars in the history of my short span on this earth. The whole Algerian-French crisis. It's an unbelievable segment of European history that should be studied. And I remember when I was first in Europe, people telling me about the films they were showing the French troops to psych them up so that they could kill people that they didn't really want to particularly kill most of them. Now that's the extreme of hostility. You and I say, we're not there. But what we are dealing with is in the same spectrum. It's in the same spectrum. So learning to handle hostility, learning how to handle these reactions, these strong emotions, is important. And I think if your strong emotions are being channeled against the organization so that you make these negative comments and say things that really aren't appropriate, you need to work on it. Number four, often our negativism about an organization is a result of a root of bitterness that has not been dealt with. Let's face it, most of us have been hurt by OM. I have. Now who is OM? It's people. When I study it, I realize I've been hurt by people. And I realize sometimes I haven't been hurt by one person, but I may have been hurt by a little group. And sometimes the whole thing gets a little fuzzy as to exactly what and how I've been hurt. And so the easiest thing is to generalize. And I believe it's bitter to deal with that root of bitterness. When I spoke to one of the exo-emer groups out in Asia, where I knew a number of people have been hurt by OM, the bigger something gets, usually the easier it is for people to get hurt with it. The guys leading it can be the most sincere, committed, you know, 16 hour a day, 7 days a week, ministering to people and somehow people will still get hurt. The uncontrolled factors. It's life. One of the things that helps me is I study a wide range of organizations. Very much try to keep up on a lot of things that are happening because you'll still learn from that. And if, believe me, some of the things were only happening within OM, I would really become extremely concerned. But the things that happen within OM, some of them are wrong and we must work on them. They happen everywhere. They happen in little churches. They happen in other groups. They happen even among the apostles. Like the book of Acts and Corinthians. So very, very helpful. And so deal with the root of bitterness. Don't let it worm out and come up in some seemingly more acceptable form. It's the same bitterness and it needs to be dealt with. Often it's a sign of not really trusting and believing God to work all things out according to His plan. You know, if I didn't believe, despite our weaknesses and failures, that God had His hand solidly on this work, you know, I'm getting out. I'm not going to sail on the ship if I'm not sure the captain knows what he's doing on the bridge. Thank you very much. I'm glad. It's a great project. I'll pray for you, but I'm not going on the ship. And I'm not going to stay on this ship if I don't believe the Holy Spirit is at the helm and God is in control and He can overrule and even turn tragedy into blessing. I talked to Roar Hullison's wife on the phone last night who had this terrible experience of sending her little boy out, I think it was close to dark, with a little neighbor boy. Maybe they shouldn't have gone out. They're young. They went out and the neighbor boy was killed. It just happened. Killed by a motorcycle. The parents of the neighbor boy will not even talk to her. There's no communication. They've had indirect communication through a minister. Roar's wife has gone through weeks and weeks of agony. Coming out of that, very good talk with her last night. Difficult things, you know. Life is made of difficult things. We were asked to pray for somebody with a wife and two children going to be dead maybe in three months. What if that news came to you? And I think this is where we need maturity, that in a movement like OM we're dealing with so many different things, so many different challenges, so many different people. We are, by our very idealism, destined to failure. No way the next six months without Jerry, who's carried such a load here, there's no way we're not going to have some problems. Maybe different kinds of problems than we had the last six months. There's no way that there'll never be problems between STL and ICT. Two units within the same body have somewhat different tasks and different approaches. That wasn't even on my mind in this message, but certainly I think it's relevant. Number six, often in our subtle efforts to defend ourselves or to make what we have done seem not so bad, justifying ourselves, we attempt to pull down others or pull down the organization in a general way. You know, the hardest thing sometimes isn't to take the blame and simply say, I goofed. And in some cultures that's more difficult than other cultures. But I'll tell you right now, it is my deep conviction, if you don't know how, to clearly just admit you blew it, you failed, you sinned, or you made a mistake, or whatever, you are going to have problems, especially when you get married. And it's so beautiful when people can just not blame the organization, not blame the other person, but just say, look, I blew it. Maybe others were involved. They have to face up to their mistake. If you feel it's something where they were, you know, just so to blame and you were not to blame, don't talk it out. But don't just suppress it and start murmuring or talking behind people's backs or making phone calls or groaning because the enemy so subtly uses that. Of course, and I'll bring this to a close, there always needs to be a proper channel for sharing any burden or grievance we have about the organization we are part of. We should never think, however, that once we have shared our grievance, that this gives us license now to sort of share it with everyone, especially if it is with a wrong spirit and with any of the well I told them so attitude which doesn't really honor God. It is an area where we have to constantly work for balance because it is important for leaders of any fellowship to really be able to handle criticism. They also must be approachable and there must always be a way open for everyone to be able to discuss things that they disagree with, some which might be truly objective things rather than items such as the ones previously mentioned. Well, time is gone. Let's pray. Father, this is a difficult area. We believe it is better to launch out an attempt to find some answers than to just go on and on with no answers because we will face this, most of us, the rest of our lives. Lord, we are trusting you that we as a body of your people will be able to maturely work toward solutions of our difficulties and our struggles. We will not just swing into generalizations or into any form of cop-out but we'll be able to somehow by your grace face the issues and go sensitively, carefully forward for your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen.