In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of training missionaries to deal with people and handle unpredictable situations. He emphasizes the need for planning ahead and shares his own testimony of coming to India and the challenges he faced. The speaker also highlights the importance of maintaining enthusiasm and loyalty in missionary work and encourages the audience to study his booklet, "Revolution of Balance." He concludes by emphasizing the effectiveness of the learning method of teaching principles and allowing individuals to apply them in real-life situations.

I'd like you to turn now in your Bible to Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 12, We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, that are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love, for their work's sake. Be of peace among yourselves. Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men. Rejoice evermore, praying without ceasing, and everyone give thanks. This is the will of God and Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the spirit, despise not prophesying, prove all things, hold fast to that which is good, abstain from all affluence of evil. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calls you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us. Read all the brethren with a holy kiss, by charging by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. Now when we originally thought about these sessions, the plan was for George Miley to take three or four of them, mainly in Bible study, bringing out some of the principles of the Word of God that are important for us to know in OM. And then I would take a few sessions, not necessarily Bible study in the ordinary sense, but going into the Word of God and trying to relay the Word of God with some of the practical things we are facing out on the team. There are a number of things I would like to cover today that I think will be a great help to you as you go out. I'd like to start by giving a little bit of testimony about my own situation when I came to India, and a little of my background before that, because I think that will help you, and many of you are new, understand some of the things that we do, some of the things that we believe. One of my burdens to communicate in these sessions, or at least this first one, is how to maintain a spirit of enthusiasm and loyalty in a work like this. And it isn't easy, maybe for the first month. There are many discouraging factors in this kind of work. Wise is a man who knows what he's going into. And of course, every one of you is free to leave OM, Indians of course, whenever they want. So now you have, especially when you leave this conference, you have some form of commitment. But we certainly would rather have you part roads and enjoy the coming months and just get into something which is going to pull your stomach apart and might help you spiritually. I speak as someone who has had great struggles maintaining loyalty, the very movement that supposedly I began. And that is not unusual. Many founders in history of movements, and the founder was speaking purely of the human sense, even in that sense I like to think of the old lady who prayed for me, being the founder, and I don't even like that term, but initiator, or one of the ones who was there in the beginning. In history sometimes they have left their own work. They just couldn't bear any longer to see the whole thing going the way it was going, and they left. An example of that is James Stewart. James Stewart was a tremendous Scotsman, a man who was in revival in the communist country. Some of you may have seen his books, some of them are in Telugu and other languages. I'm reading one on revival in English. He started a fellowship of co-workers in Europe, and he saw the thing just going more and more off, and he decided he was leaving. He felt God wanted him in the ministry of revival. He had standards of purity, standards of discipline, and when he saw this thing just going off and he couldn't control the situation, he left. Actually, his brother was a first-class rogue who made a gigantic mess, and later on that mission split about five different ways, and actually some other men have picked up the pieces, and God is still using most of those missions. I could give you their modern names, but I won't do it. There are other examples of this. Each year I have wrestled with whether I should stay on in this work. I have no commitment. I've signed no contract with anyone, and there are other men who, if I went, I believe could carry on. I could at least get a year off. I've had many, many people say, I ought to take a year off. That could be the first step. Once I get one year, it wouldn't be too hard to disappear. And so I have also battled with this thing of loyalty. This is my life work. I've been down 17 years in the same thing. I've spent one-fifth of my entire life in conferences. Nothing is new much, you know, to me. And in a movement like this, where we're a training program, where 50% of our people are all new every year, we make the same mistakes every year. I get asked the same questions every year, and when you go through that for 17 years, believe me, you either develop some loyalty and stickability, or you just don't go on. You just don't go on. Contrary to what some people think, I don't really so much in myself enjoy this lifestyle. It's too intensive for me. Give you a little bit about my background. As a young man, I was very lazy. I went in business when I was nine. I had three businesses by 13, and I spent a lot of my time laying on a beach next to a girl. It used to change month by month. And I lay on the beach, and then I'd go in the water, and then I'd come back on the beach, and I would spend endless hours blazing about. I did work. I had to learn to work because I wanted to make money. I had a passion for money. From as early as I can ever remember, I started selling things when I was about eight. And I ran a carnival, a small type of circus in my own back garden when I was about nine, which involved gambling, cheating, everything I could to sap the money out of the local kids who didn't know what was going on. I even sold lottery tickets. I got my mother to bake cakes, and she didn't know what was going on, and I went selling lottery tickets. I sold an enormous amount of tickets for one cake. And of course, it was a rather lucrative little business. At 11, I discovered you could really chisel people by selling them used postage stamps, philatelia. And I became a philatelic dealer under an illegal name, and I learned to sell stamps that I paid half a rupee for, for 30 rupees, 40 rupees, anything that I could get a man to pay. So I've got a passion for money, and one of my greatest goals was never to work. My father was a working man. He was an electrician. He worked hard most of his life, and I said, that's not for me. That's not for me. Other guys are going to work for me. And I'm going to sit back. I'm going to get a car, and I soon got one, and I'm going to... Of course, I'll have to work a little bit. You know, I don't want to be lazy. But this was my lifestyle, always doing something different, very seldom stuck at anything. I went through all the various hobbies, most of them, and was always doing something different. And when I came to know Jesus Christ, and I began to see this message of discipleship, of discipline, of cross-bearing, of loving others, of giving yourself to others, I'm going to tell you, it was an overwhelming thing. I mean, I just couldn't believe that I'd live that way. Especially when I saw God's ideas of conduct, in relation to the opposite sex, it really about knocked me out. It wasn't quite my lifestyle. And I began to see a lot of other things in the Word of God. Fortunately, a lot of this came to me slowly. And this is one of my concerns in OM, is that in OM, if you are young in the Lord, you get an overexposure of truth. Some of you are suffering from overexposure. You've had so much come at you at once. You can't even assimilate it in your mind, much less get it into your feet. And this is where you are going to have to be patient with yourself. This is where you are going to have to be able to discern, well, what am I able to take on today and tomorrow? What am I going to have to wait until next month? And I think that's an important thing. I have never found the Christian life easy. I still have tremendous temptation to go straight back to the world. I don't understand people who say that all flesh and all instincts of the world is totally crucified. I can admire them. I tend to believe they're phonies, but I try to admire them. Because most of the people I know, and certainly in my own life, there's still the temptation to go back to the world, back to the easy life, back to the easy money. What I despise more than anything is those who try to do both. Because I see this is condemned in the Word of God. People who want one foot in the world, one foot in the church. They want to be Christians and evangelicals, but they want to lie in their wallet and lie in their bank account at the same time. All in the name of Jesus. This I don't understand. My Bible says, be you hot or be you cold. I'll spit it out of my mouth. I believe really the lukewarm person will find it very difficult in a movement like this. Lukewarmness to me is perhaps one of the greatest sins the believer can ever have. So I warn you against it. Anyway, to cut this part short, let me just say it has not been easy for me to keep going on these 19 years now that I've been a Christian. It's not been easy for me to maintain loyalty to any kind of organization. I'm basically anti-organization. I'm basically a rebel. I see inconsistency everywhere. The thing that threw me the most as a young believer is that I saw many people come to Christ. I got to know people on a fairly deep level, and I discovered that most of them had major hang-ups. A lot of them psychological problems. And this really, really caused me to do a lot of thinking, a lot of study about people. Why don't people so radically change like the evangelist told us? You know, the way some people preach, when someone comes to Christ, boy, you know, one minute he's a caterpillar, the next minute he's a butterfly. Well, most of the butterflies that I was able to watch with my microscope, they had two or three wings torn and their feet were hanging down, and they were just barely going along, you see. And I thought, well, what is this? Then we hear the evangelist say, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Well, most of the Christians I met, actually, I found rather repulsive, because they seemed so often to be phony. They seemed to be often petty or trivial or jealous, and I became really shaken. I met people who were giving their testimony one minute, and dumping garbage about their brother in Christ the next minute. And I saw so much inconsistency, all kinds of students going to Bible school who didn't seem to have any more reality than people who didn't even know Christ. This really mixed me up, really caused me to wonder where the answers were. And also, I saw that every organization will degenerate. Every organization will degenerate. First generation leaders, quite a few of them will be fighters, and they may or may not do quite well. Sometimes their motivation really is screwy, which is a big thing in my Christian life. When the Lord turned the hot light of His love and power on my motivation, I thought I was going to go up in smoke. This was a very, fortunately, very early stage in my Christian life. I saw the importance of motivation, and I honestly repented to people and confessed my false motivation. And by God's grace, I want to continue to do that. So I'm not that uneasy to be loyal to any kind of organization. This is, of course, why we have tried to keep OM as a fellowship. We want easy come, easy go. And I'm interested in getting people to be life members, and to be sort of die-hard OMers with little OM stamps on their forehead, whether you can see it or not. And, you know, cookie-cut, tailor-made, all the same cliches, the same little eschatology, the same little theology, and all pretending we agree with each other, even if in our spare time we're dumping dirt out about each other. And I had a lot of struggles with this. Is there any scope in God's program for organization? And for something like OM, which has grown fairly big, despite efforts to keep it small. Well, that gives you a little background. I was converted, as you know, when I was sixteen and a half, really almost seventeen. The early months of my Christian life, I was not taught. I didn't belong to any kind of Bible-believing church. I didn't even know what that was. I think that was a great advantage of my Christian life, because being a rebel, if I had got in too early with all the Bible carriers and the theology thumpers and the cliché twisters, I probably would have thrown the whole thing over. Fortunately, I belonged to a good liberal church where I could understand the situation. You see? That's true. I mean, they didn't confess anything. They didn't live anything. Later on, as I got into the evangelical camp, they confessed everything and lived very little. That's where I became confused. I don't know if any of you had similar experience. I don't want to be too honest. I don't want to frighten anybody. That's the way it was for my experience. My greatest battle went when I went to Bible school. I expected when I went to Bible school, I'd find 1,000 soul winners, 1,000 prayer warriors, 1,000 guys on fire, 1,000 men ready to invade the world for Christ, 1,000 guys madly in love with one another, 1,000 men just laying down their lives for one another, 1,000 fellows who had nothing on their hearts but to live for Jesus Christ, to serve one another, to lay their lives down for one another, and to be delivered from sin, Satan himself. Instead, I found the most mixed multitude of falsely motivated, half-dedicated, playground children I'd ever met in my Christian life. Well, my Bible school experience is another story. I don't want to get into that. So the question I want to answer is how to maintain loyalty in all efforts. The Bible says, get this verse. You can find it on your own. I have a kind of mind that loses its way. I don't know where this verse is. Can two walk together lest they be aggrieved? No, they can't. A husband and wife, when they are married, become one. When we walk together with other believers, we have to become one with them. There are several words you'll find again and again in the book of Acts. You can look them up for yourself. And it's, they were of one heart and of one mind. And they were of one accord. Have you ever heard those words in the book of Acts? One heart, one mind, one accord. And it got rather practical in the book of Acts. They even had all things common. And they even sold some of their things and parted them to every man who has need. Have you ever heard those words? They're there. You can look them up. The book of Acts is the hottest thing that has ever been penned by any man in the history of the universe. It's really wild, wild. Any movement that patterns itself, patterns itself after the book of Acts will be definitely wild movement. The day O.M. is no longer wild, I quit. But I'm dedicated in this work to keep it wild. Roy McGonagall may be over there to organize it. I will be here to de-organize it. If it becomes stereotyped and heavy and bulgy and sloppy and fat and bureaucratic and autocratic and all the rest. I'm not against organizing because I'm the one who brought him here. I believe in it. Actually organizing things properly releases more time for your wildcat operations. But if you're all caught up poorly organized then you're going to lose time and you're not going to get the time you want for your invasions, your street meetings and all the other things that we're going to do. Because people are organizing in Europe right now properly bringing people into the work, recruiting them, screening them, giving them books, giving them tapes. Because there's a few people like Graham Scott who's a tremendous organizer, the first captain of the ship who helped pioneer this project. Now the director of our work in the British Isles. 19 years old, P&O line. Because of people like him we can have an army this summer in which 90% of the people are in the streets. 90% of the people in Europe this summer will be in the streets and on the doors and in the houses and in the jails and the pubs and wherever else they can get. And that's the kind of movement I want to be part of. Now one of the reasons I have been able to maintain my loyalty is because I believe that to a large degree the Lord is enabling us to follow the principles that he first gave us. In fact certainly today we're following them a lot better than my first team. My first team, we had no requirements, no applications, no screening. Anybody could have come. As long as you were born again. After all I was a little first year nobody in a big big Bible school where I was already within the first few months considered a fanatic. And people were running in the opposite direction from me. Now where would I find anybody to go to Mexico with me? People don't just throw in their lot with some loose screw who's got some crazy madman plan and boy to convince people to go with me to Mexico in those days was no small thing. I had to offer them some sugar and cream and spice and even some double talk which I like to avoid these days. But we went. We went to Mexico. It was a gigantic team, five of us. And the team was pretty pretty messed up and I won't go into the details but certainly praise God that O.M. is doing a lot better today than we were then. A lot better leadership out on the team. And this has helped me to be loyal. I realized what a poor leader I was in my early days. I realized how difficult it was to maintain any loyalty on the team. One fellow accused me of being Hitler. He fell in love with a local Mexican girl which I didn't think was right but I didn't have any social rules and I didn't know what to say to the fellow. And he couldn't stand the sight of another fellow on the team complete opposite in temperament. One guy was so pragmatic you almost had to push him to move him. And he fell in love with this Mexican girl. The other guy was a wildcat motorcycle enthusiast. He looked like something out of a Marlon Brando film. I don't know how he ever got saved. And these two fellows were on my team and they couldn't stand each other. The other fellow was in sight of a missionary. He thought he almost lost his salvation because he couldn't get victory over certain little habits he had picked up. And he was in a great inferiority complex. And the fifth one was Pauly Mar, our first Mexican who joined us with extremely poor motivation. He was very, very young in the Lord. And believe me, we had a lot of problems. I was sick half the summer with a mean dysentery. I think most of us got fairly sick. We were studying Spanish at the university. We were trying to open a bookshop, start a radio program, a correspondence school. We were out in the open air and we had a lot of problems. And yet we learned through those experiences. I can't tell you how much I learned when I led my first team. That was actually my second team. The first team only had three people. It was a little bit easier. One of them was Dale Roton who was a pillar who left and went into other things for two years and then came back. And I just can't tell you what an effective learning method, the method is that God has given us. Which is give a man some teaching. Give a man something in the Word. Give him some principles of leadership. Give him a manual. Give him some lessons like we're having here in the ship and then let him go out and put him to practice. That's the way he's going to learn. Now you're going to suffer. Mistakes are going to be made. It's going to cost. But the long run results are phenomenal. Who's the director of one of the main missionary organizations today in Bangladesh? A man who was trained in Mexico in 1958. Who's the director of WAC in Madrid? One of our first trainees in Spain many years ago. And you know not that many years have gone by. These fellows are directors of their missions and they're in their late 20's or early 30's. And all over the world there are more than 400 men and women who were trained in this kind of wildcat semi-disorganized program. But they learned how to deal with people. How to deal with problems. How to handle the unpredictable and no matter what movement you get in whether it's the most streamlined like say the Whistler Bible Translators or the most disorganized you will have to learn to deal with the inevitable with the unpredictable with the last minute crisis. Actually I believe in planning ahead much more than some people think. If you've ever heard me speak to leaders you know that. Not that many movements have a 120 page manual trying to teach people how to plan ahead. I do have certain areas where I don't believe much in planning ahead. I have other areas where I believe very very much in planning ahead. I spend a lot of my time on this ship working on things that involve five months from now. I have to for my own itinerary. My October meetings are being lined up. I stay only six months to one year ahead of the whole movement in terms of my thinking my recruiting, my correspondence. I'm working on the people very heavily who are going to come and join this ship in October. Corresponding with them, getting the foundation getting the books into there, making sure my leaders know what we need so they can pass it on to others also and all the rest. And I know this no matter how much we plan ahead the inevitable comes. Life is filled with the unpredictable. I have a my favorite subject next to the Bible is history and as you study history it's just one long series of unpredictable. All the great generals have had to know how to deal with the unpredictable. And actually one of our weaknesses in our end became our strong point. We were a movement through it's very nature, short term, one month crusade, two week crusade, we learned to deal with the unpredictable. And so we God has geared us this way and of course if you ever go into the shipping business you better learn how to deal with the unpredictable. Especially this kind of shipping business. Very very important. So we need to plan ahead we need to organize but we need to learn how to deal with the unpredictable. The last minute situation. You know when the allied forces moved across the English Channel to invade the continent suddenly last minute I said I recall them all back the weather wasn't quite right. What a situation. These men were so sick in the bottom of these boats when they heard they had to turn around I want to tell you there was more than one that cursed dear old Ike. And they had to go back, dead, sick, weak and I think within the next couple days they had to start again. And if you read the story of the Normandy invasion the book is called The Longest Day you will read about a whole list of unpredictable. You read about when Hitler launched his secret weapon the first rockets of history V1 and V2 that destroyed thousands of people in London and you know how those generals of the British Air Force Army handled that unpredictable situation by the massive rapid moving of the guns out of London to the shores because it wasn't any good shooting these things down in London. When they shot them down they just came down to somebody else's house. And if you study war and that includes the recent war with Pakistan you will know that these leaders and men have had to be able to deal with the unpredictable. And God has had to teach us this and make us a shock force. I don't believe all heaven is everybody's cup of tea. I believe most people can take it for a year or two and it won't do them any harm. Because everybody to some degree in life has to face this kind of situation. Even in marriage. If you think you need discipleship to work If you think you need discipleship to work on an OM team I say you need discipleship more to rear a family. I think of couples in OM. We have two. Everything was going smooth for them. They're both very phlegmatic individuals fortunately. And all of a sudden out of the blue both these men in OM have had babies born to them with spina bifida. I want to tell you those two families have been through agony and suffering beyond anything I could ever put an OM team through on a triple IT program. You see nature and life with its unpredictables can take you through suffering and heartache more than I could ever rearrange with all the planning I could ever do. Life is filled with the unpredictable. Many times I'm fellowshipping with Mr. and Mrs. Beckwith. Their greatest joy in life was a young man, their son named Keith, one of my closest friends. In 1956 or 66 Keith Beckwith got in a car with my other close friend from England. These were the two men I trained to take my job in England so I could move out here. Simultaneously early in the morning they had a head-on collision with a huge truck and within moments, seconds, they're both dead. What do you do in that situation? Many, many times I've spoken with their parents. He's actually on our board of directors now, Mr. Beckwith. And he claims that this experience was one of the greatest experiences in his Christian life. There's not an inch of bitterness. There never was. The day that policemen walked to their door and told their one son in Christian service to have another one was dead. Keith Beckwith had everything a young man could want. The way of money, his father was Sir John Langs, number one man for the north of England. Sir John Langs, one of the richest Christians in Britain. And Keith Beckwith, one or two years before he died had given his entire inheritance, all of his money, to the work of God. Nothing left. In fact, the only argument he had with his father it wasn't really an argument, a disagreement, was Keith said, look dad, whatever I have and his father wasn't that rich, don't get the wrong idea, but he had money. Whatever I had, I wanted in God's words. The only thing that in a sense Keith had left were his father's, the brand new car his father had given him. That car was his coffin. It wasn't an OEM car. And it wasn't Keith who was driving. That wasn't easy to take either. The unpredictable, the inevitable, the freaks of nature. I've been greatly helped by a book by Eugenia Price. I believe she's one of the best writers of modern Christian authors. Well, no pat answers. And that kind of book has been a great help to me. Because I have had to stand in the funeral of my best friends when they were 25 years of age and preach a sermon. It's not an easy thing. And I believe that God has raised up this work, this work as a training program, as a shock force, as a guerrilla team. Always moving. That doesn't mean we don't have some men permanent. We've got to have some permanent men holding down the offices so that the troops can move. The Marine Corps have men in the offices. And it takes all kinds. And that's important. But basically, the majority of us are out in the field. We're living in trucks. We're on the move. We're ready for anything, anywhere, at any time, whatever the cost. Open air meetings, church planting, follow-up, mass evangelism, film evangelism, Bible study groups, cycling Muslims, girls' blitz teams throwing a rock, secret teams in unknown countries, which I can't talk about in this meeting. If I ever wanted to, I believe I could write one of the most exciting stories of a Christian church that's ever been released. I'd have to get a good rewriter because I'm not a writer. But I've got the facts. Closed countries, things I could tell you would blow your mind. I was in and out of jail for 16 years, and many times leaving an array of unusual answers to prayer and stories that really make the book God Smuggler look like slow going. You know, our burden isn't to write any books. Our burden isn't to tell any stories. I've run away from all that for 17 years. There's more than 8 publishers that want to write this story. Leading publishers. We're not interested in that. We are interested in carving this reality in the hearts of flesh and blood, not in writing a story in paper and ink. Let your story be written on your tombstone. Well done, good and faithful servant. The praise of men is one of the greatest hindrances to revival. The praise of men is one of the greatest hindrances to spiritual reality. The praise of men is probably one of the biggest enemies we still face in this world. And we must have our utter wisdom and discernment in every possible way in that area. So this is just some of the reasons why I'm, as they say in some countries, hanging in. I'm happy to be a part of this work. I know the weaknesses of O.M. more than most, and we've got plenty. We've got plenty. I know the areas where we desperately need help from God at this present time. I've seen so many of my ideals smashed to the floor that sometimes I wonder if it's worth picking them up anymore, but it is. It is. I am convinced that the church of Jesus Christ, and remember O.M. is part of the church. We are very linked to the church. Despite our outspokenness, we still have many friends in the church. Because actually there are many leaders in the church who really believe, really believe that what O.M. has, as weak as it may be, is desperately needed in the church today. And there are many churches that are patterning, patterning themselves after this. Some of the churches we have planted ourselves, like those churches in Spain. We have been partly responsible for two or three churches being planted in Spain. These churches have patterned themselves after O.M. These churches are sending out teams to plant other churches on the other side of Spain. These churches are having blitz crusades in Barcelona. These churches are doing all kinds of things. In fact, this is why O.M. has left Spain, because the local church is doing tremendous. We have planted at least half a dozen churches in Italy. We are planting five churches this year in France. And we have planted, of course, churches in Turkey and some other places. And these churches are taking on to some degree they will have to modify it for a local church situation. They will have to make adaptations, just like you will have to modify some of these things when you go back, get a secular job, and join a local church. And I believe it's important when you do go back to get involved in a local church. It won't be easy. You'll have to slow down a little. You'll have to modify. You'll have to identify. You'll have to cry as well, as you try to identify with a local church, which is often 30 years behind the times, which is often gripped into a conservatism by a few guys over 60 who long since should have been put in their grave. I've had many, many local church people tell me, we've only got one problem here. Mr. Zuzu, whatever his name is, he needs to die. When he goes, we're going to really move. Well, I've had many, many, many men of God tell me that not many Christians run the race in a loving, realistic way, right through to the end of old age. Many have told me that. In fact, there's an expression that men of God have circulated, that many a man of God has died a wicked old man. The last 10 years of your Christian life are very hard. Bitterness comes in. You see your ideals and your ways changed. You see younger men moving and maybe doing things not the way you're doing. And many, many other things happen in the life of older people that make them bitter. And I just praise God that I've had the privilege of meeting many older men. I'm talking about men over 70. One or two over 80, I had a dear old man come to me in South Africa. He gave me a sweet. I was just a schoolboy next to this fellow. He came up and shook my hand. He was 100. He was 100. People like that really impressed me. I'm not too impressed with the average person, you know, I am, including myself. Nothing more depressing than one good view in the mirror. But, you know, when I meet somebody 100 who's still praising Jesus, passing out sweets and giving out tracts, boy, I think, man, this thing is real. This thing is real. And so it won't be easy to go back in the local church and to just give yourself and to serve them. And this is where we need a lot of wisdom. That's why I wrote that little booklet, Revolution of Balance, which I hope all of you will study. Another reason that I've been able to be loyal to this kind of work is because it is, without question, getting a job done that's on the heart of God. Not the total job. In some countries we do more of a total work. We evangelize, we literature, we follow up, we win souls, we plant churches right from the beginning to the end, the total evangelistic package. In other countries we work more with others who should be doing that job. Some of them are, some of them are not. Most people in OM India do not know what OM India is doing. OM India is a very widespread program. We have not put all of our eggs in one basket. We have our teams working with Phat Sing and with Hebron. Though it's only three men, it represents 30 and 40 men because those trucks move out full. We believe strongly in this work. In fact, I think if we ever went into a massive church planting work, we would move a lot more of our effort in that direction. But, somehow they are not too convinced about moving into the north of India and so we are working with others in the north. We are working with a number of church planting groups in the north. But the fact of the matter is no one at present is making much headway in the north. So what do we do? Give up? Go to an easier country? Go back to Kerala? Or Andhra where you can just about blink in one direction and plant a church? Is there so many believers now? No. God has called us to evangelism. God has called us to reach every Muslim in north India. With the word of God. With open air preaching. Our main strategy as you know is far more open air preaching and talking to people than it is just literature. So with the kind of brothers we got in the beginning stages, I think the fact that we emphasize a lot literature is very important. But I am convinced about this work because the job is getting done. And I am just pragmatic enough to want to get in something that works. You know I had a little bit of business instinct with my three businesses and I know that in the business world if it doesn't work you scrap it. If you are a doctor in a hospital, you operate on sick people, they all drop dead, you may want to change your method of operating. Not in the church. We are operating on people for how many years? Using the same methods for so many years? It's not working but we still keep doing it. No business is that stupid. And I believe there needs to be some radical changes in the methodology of the church. And in evangelism. And in reaching people. Things that I preached about twelve years ago that I felt missionaries were doing wrong and I was strongly criticized for. Today, most mission societies are accepting as standard procedure. And I believe that in many countries if missions don't change their methods and their attitude toward the people and a lot of other things, they're doomed. They've already been wiped out in some places. And that's very very important. One of the radical things, it's not really radical but some people thought it is, is this concept of working as complete equals in the biblical sense. Not foreigners as missionaries hiring little national workers for $25 a month to do all the dirty work. But coming here as brothers and sisters and laboring as equals. If an Indian brother is talented and gifted in leadership, he should leave. If a foreign brother is talented and gifted, he should leave. If there's a draw, okay, we'll give it to the Indian because this is his country. Even if the Indian may have had a little less experience, we would still give it to the Indian. The word of God says we should esteem our brother better than ourselves. And one of the things that keeps me excited about this work we're doing is that God has knit the hearts together of internationals and nationals. I like to call them foreigners. I have in the past, but I'm changing that. Let's call them internationals and nationals. When an Indian goes out of India as an international, he goes back as a national. So let's have internationals and nationals. Of course, we're all one in Christ. Once in a while, for certain reasons, we have to distinguish. Sometimes we have to distinguish between an Englishman and an American. Especially when you go to get a passport. Americans don't go to the British Embassy and ask for a passport. So there are certain practical distinctions among people. But when it comes to serving Jesus, we are one. We are equal. Now, we're not all the same height. We're not all the same height. Different people have different gifts. We have one talent man, five talent men, ten talent men. You know, I'm happy that I don't have to give account for the talents God's given George Mileson. I'm convinced he's more talented than me. A number of areas. Dale Rothstein is as well. Many other OEMers. I just thank God I don't have to account for their talents. I just got to account for what God's given me. You don't have to account for somebody else's ten talents. You feel you're a one talent man? Okay. Use that one talent. If you're a three talent man, use the three talents. Now, I think that's very, very important. If you're a Ph.D., you're going to have to account for quite a bit. You're going to have to use that mind to really roll the devil in a number of interesting ways. But if you flunked out of kindergarten, you may not be required to do the same thing. Of course, you have talents in other areas. I believe that most Christians have inferiority complexes, that they all have more talent than they think. And woe to those who go out burying their talent. Because that's deadly. And the Lord speaks very severely to the man who buries his talent. And one of the burdens of OM, one of the reasons, I believe, in training movements like this, is it's an opportunity to discover your talent. You never thought you could preach. Your leader grabbed you by the stuff of the neck and the back of the truck and said, I'm going for tea. Take over the meeting. There you were. A great crowd of people looking at you. So you preached your first open air message. Lo and behold, the man walks up to you after the meeting and says, you know, what you said really spoke to me. I'd like to accept Jesus as my Savior. And you pass out. And you've taken a new step in your Christian life. And I really believe that people are going to learn in this kind of movement. Some of the mistakes we make are the biggest lessons. Some of the problems we have lead to our greatest victories. We have taken some young men who no one in India, apart from OM, would ever have chosen as leadership potential. No one. They were on the team. Suddenly the leader had to drive the truck to Nepal. They had to get out of the country. Telegram came from Kripak. Please leave country tomorrow. No leader on the team except the guy driving the truck. He looks over and he sees little Joe. He's been on the team for nine months. He's still learning how to wear his dhoti. And he says, look, you're going to lead the team. And that fellow has to lead the team. And when the truck driver comes back, Joe, he's got a mess on his hands. That fellow has learned something. He's begun. It'll take many more years, but he has begun. This is the kind of thing I want to be a part of. It works. It's reached a hundred million people in India with the Word of God. One hundred million people have been given the Word of God with literature and many of those with open air preaching and personal work. Another hundred million have been reached in the rest of the world. Middle India has a big population. There have been thousands who have been converted to Jesus Christ. In Europe, you can't find a Bible school without somebody in there affected by O.M. One school recently took a survey. One third of all the students, one of the biggest schools in Europe, one third of all the students just came back from being on O.M. Some of them saved through O.M. I was speaking recently at BTI, Bible Training Institute of Glasgow. A gentleman walks up to me. Praise Lord, you remember giving me a Bible in where was it? In East Africa. The ship was in East Africa. Mombasa. He said, you remember me giving a Bible? I don't remember. He said, I got saved through the ship's visit to Mombasa. He knocked me over with a feather. Wherever I go, I meet people who are saved through this group of nobodies, who believe in evangelism, who believe in door to door work, who believe in keep on moving, who believe in tract distribution, open air preaching, soul winning, discipling, training, the whole range of evangelism. Who believe not in talking about it, arguing about it, but in doing it. And you know, when you read men like C.S. Lewis and J.B. Phillips, you realize these kind of men, if we could ever have them here, would be more in agreement with us than we dare to think. The man who got the most knit to the work in Europe, when we arrived there, when we arrived earlier than he did, around the same time, was Dr. Francis Shaffer. He once told me he believed the only movement he had any hope for in Europe was O.M. Let's take that as an exaggeration. Because he knew we were ready to change, he knew we were willing to take on new ideas. We had him for three days state lecturing to us at our conference. He hasn't come so much anymore. In a recent letter to me, he said, look, you're the ones who challenge me to write books, so please don't mind if I don't come around so much. He's written about ten books since then, by the way, which made him one of the most famous Christian authors in the whole world. He has promised us to come on the ship sometime. And so it's a lot of thinking people. So they wouldn't agree with everything we do. Who would? I don't. Nobody even knows everything O.M. does anymore. Everything goes out of control. Any spiritual movement that's aggressive, that's advancing, that's moving, at times will go out of control. I have to run around the world about 40,000 miles a year some years maybe only 20,000, just keeping up with this thing. I have to write many letters to people. Please do not start O.M. in your country. We're not coming. I'm not coming. Do it on your own. Use your own name. Well, we're not coming. The work in Canada was born without our permission. We just started. We've been following up on it ever since, and it's been a headache. The work once started in Northern Ireland without us even knowing about it, I had to go over there and stop that. That went off the rails as well. One way I get so upset by these things, and another way I just praise God because in the Church of Jesus Christ if you study the Book of Acts you will see that the Church is moving. You will see that the Apostle Paul was really running around trying to keep things together. You know, I never forget speaking in Holland recently and my good friend, Brother Andrew came. He wrote God Smuggler. He's a real Dutchman. You know I'm a Dutchman by blood, not by passport. And I had just finished speaking to all these Hollanders. A real good thing is happening in Holland. The Pentecostals and the Brethren of Pentecostal are finally getting together. They've been fighting each other for many years now realizing that they aren't really so great as they think they are, and they're getting together. So they had a conference. They were all together. Some had their hands in the air. The others were sort of looking. And I was the preacher for the afternoon and Brother Andrew was for the evening. Well, I'm a little conservative on giving invitations, as you know. I don't give many. Maybe 50 per year. And Brother Andrew and I were having a conversation late in the afternoon, and he said, did you give an invitation? Of course he's he believes in invitations. And I said, well, I didn't. And I said, I thought I'd leave that to you. And he said this. He said, well, since it's easier to cool down a fanatic than warm up a corpse, I think I'll give an invitation. Did you get that? It's easier to cool down a fanatic than warm up a corpse. And I believe that's a good thing to keep in mind. At times we've done a few fanatical things. But I find it a lot easier as international, whatever I am, firefighter, I find a lot easier to cool down fanatics than to warm up corpses. And I've spent a lot of time preaching in the churches. I've preached to about 1,600 of them all over the world trying to warm up the corpses. And with most of them, as far as I've ever gone, they shake hands at the door and say goodbye, or some other expression. So I am really enthused and excited and praising God that I can be a tiny part and my part is very tiny. Quentin Swell says the member that appears to be more important is actually less important. And you can pick up another international coordinator very, very easy, I'm sure. Jesus may take me any day. The member which seems more feeble, that man who unnoticed without recognition just glides on without any patch on the back, month in and month out, working hard, pressing on, victorious. Boy, he's hard to find. He's hard to find. No name on his door. No initials after his name. Nobody telling him what a great fellow he is or how clever he is, how wonderful he is. Nobody writing him any great fancy letters. He's just going on and on and on. His only goal is Jesus. His only motivation is Jesus. He's so tired down here. He's longing for heaven like, uh, I don't know. I don't have a comparison. So let's understand that. And so I just praise God for the privilege of being a servant of the rest of you. That's what a leader should be. And I just want to serve you. Is there anything I can do for you? By a limited amount of time, because that's what I'm running out of. Uh, just let me know. I don't have much fellowship with a lot of people on OS, because I only, I only really get on with sinners. People that come into me, talk to me, have no problems. We sort of look at each other, praise the Lord, have a word of prayer, he goes out the door. You know, I've had great fellowship homosexuals, lust fiends, former gangsters, drunkards, people who are neurotic, people who are all tied up inside, hate the movement, can't stand the leaders. These are people I really groove with, or we really get on. Of course, not many people come into me that honest. And, uh, if they do, it's usually at the end of the conference when there isn't any time left. But I believe in this work. And if I were you, unless I believed in it, I wouldn't stay in it. You're never going to find a perfect work. Don't be like the crazy man who looks for the perfect church. When he got there, it wasn't perfect no more. And the same with you. You go join the perfect church, it'd be a terrible thing, wouldn't it? Because it wouldn't be perfect anymore when you got in it. And boy, O.M. is far from perfect. I've been reading Christian organizations for 19 years. I've read more biographies than probably most people. And, you know, I just don't find where it's going to be much greener on the other side of the fence. A lot of times it looks greener on the other side of the fence. I often think, boy, it'd be a lot greener if I could get off the ship. When I'm on the ship, I often think it'd be better when I get to England. Then I go live in England. I'm one of these people. I have to go back and forth. As soon as I get to England, I think, boy, it'd sure be nice to get back on the ship. A lot of times it looks greener on the other side of the fence. You get over there, it's just concrete. Somebody's painted it green and deceived you. Life is hard. Billy Graham says life at its best is filled with sadness. I find life filled with sadness. I haven't had much in my life, but I've seen it. I've seen Bangladesh. I've seen Vietnam. I've seen people lame and maimed and killed. I've seen too many orphans. I've seen too many neurotics and too many psychotics to think that life is just some little jingle, some little song. And we just run around with our Bibles saying, you accept Jesus as your Savior. It's all going to be wonderful. I know some people accept Jesus as their Savior. They got more mixed up, more neurotic, more confused than before they accepted Jesus. I think Billy knew what he said. Life at its best is filled with sadness. Accepting Christ doesn't necessarily mean it's all going to be easy for you. Becoming a trained disciple doesn't mean you aren't going to bump your head and hit your nose and stub your toe and make a big mess. Praise God, when you do, He's there ready to pick you up. Evangelicals who are dedicated to Christ have plenty of problems. They have marital problems. Bob Pierce, one of the greatest Christians in history, his daughter committed suicide. His wife told him finally to get out. Now he's a separated man. His movement, World Vision, asked him to leave. That man was crucified six times over, but he bounced back. I met him in Bangladesh recently, and even in the past year, he's come back, and God's given him a new experience, and he's going on, actually started a new movement. I want to tell you, with a believer in Jesus Christ, the man who knows the Word of God, there's no dead end street. There may be failure. There may be a heartache. There may be problems. There's no dead end. We keep going and going and going until we meet Him. And I hope, and perhaps it's the greatest thrill of my life, is that I may just keep on going. I love that little song our singing group sings, I'm going to keep on running. Sometimes I don't feel like it. In fact, many days I don't feel like it. I'm going to keep on running. I want to keep on singing. I don't feel like singing. I can't sing in the first place. I don't feel like singing. Sometimes I'm so depressed. This whole movement is getting on my nerves. People are getting on my nerves. Wonderful, excuse me. But, you know, I want to keep on singing. I want to keep on praying. I don't like these nights of prayer. Sometimes I want to scream. Actually, I do. Some nights of prayer, I go up to the bowel and just scream. Then I walk back in and, you know, smile again and say, thank you, Jesus. Here, man, tonight's a prayer. I want to keep on praying. Because that's what the Word of God has told me to do. And I know that Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Let us pray. Father, we thank you that you put us in this thought force. You put us in this wildcat movement. That's the hand, the guts, and the gall, and the fearlessness to believe that you can even bring an ocean-going ship into the seven seas for your glory, and we're standing on it. And we believe, God, that faith is the victory. We believe, God, you've called us to be Daniels. You've called us to be Elijahs. You've called us to be Pauls. You've called us to be...