Om Financial Policy for Omers — George Verwer

Financial Crisis, Waiting on God, and the Need for Faithful Stewardship

I'm sharing some burdens that I believe the Lord has put on my heart concerning the financial situation, and especially concerning the need to wait upon the Lord more, and especially after the September conference, if the breakthroughs have not come by then.

It's my prayer that everybody on OM will be able to hear this tape, though I know those who do not need English, someone is going to have to help them. I especially have in mind those that found the time of waiting after last year's September conference, which I think was the longest perhaps in the history of the work, a difficult time, and a time that brought many questions to their mind.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can have this opportunity to communicate. You know that in preparation for this, I've read many memos, I've read many people's personal letters, talked to people in different parts of the world, and I ask Lord that I may somehow keep in mind all that I've heard from others, plus what I have seen over the past years, what I sense from you now, and also some of the basic principles of your Word.

Lord, at this moment, we're in this sort of stage three crisis, and we thank you for it. We don't excuse anything we have done wrong that has brought this upon us, but we thank you for your power to overrule.

We thank you for the beautiful lessons we have been learning over the past weeks, the reality therapy we have been going through. We know that our tests and our trials are very small compared to many people in your church, in various parts of the world at this time.

We pray especially, Lord, that you would help us to be clear thinking, keep us from generalizations, from overreaction, help us to see the other person's situation, bring into play greater reality in 1 Corinthians 13, that in all things love may be functioning and operating.

Lord, we thank you for so many answers to prayer. We thank you for people that are coming to know you almost every day through this feeble fellowship that you have raised up, that people refer to as Operation Mobilization.

We thank you, Lord, for all of our graduates, our ex-OMers around the world, so many vital ministries, so many millions of people being reached, so many thousands coming to know you through their ministries combined.

We thank you for the whole body. Lord, we believe that testing and the kind of thing we are facing now has an ultimate purpose. Help us to find that. Help us to know the way ahead. We thank you for the oneness we have in yourself, for the unity, and we believe this is going to increase.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I'm sitting here in the same farm where I made those 25th anniversary tapes last July. And I hope that each one of you had listened to those tapes. I hope you'll listen to them again if you have the opportunity.

Some of you have written to me acknowledging that these tapes were an encouragement to you and that you're like-minded with most of that which I shared. And I just want to express my appreciation for that.

Communication, Unity, and the Burden of Worldwide Ministry

I think we have to understand that many of our problems in OM are linked with the problem of communication. We are all over the world. Because of the size of the work, the nature of the work, the number of people, around 1 ,700 plus children, there's never enough communication.

And often as we're communicating with one person, maybe in great depth, other people are being missed. As we're getting on top of one little fire, perhaps of gossip or miscommunication or confusion, another fire begins to burn.

And I believe we need to be realistic that if we're going to continue a worldwide trust in so many nations and so many fronts simultaneously, we're going to have to apply ourselves even more to communication and basic principles of communication, such as avoiding generalizations and believing the best until we can get the facts and even then realizing we may be wrong or we may not have all the facts.

So I'm not sharing this message to any group of people, but just sitting here looking out the window at this beautiful little hill or mountain in front of the house, reminded of those words that if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, we shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence, and it shall be removed.

And that ultimately all that I say here can never be a substitute for faith. And I hope that what I say will increase faith, though I believe that faith, according to Luke 14, must often be preceded and has to be preceded by accounting of the cost.

Now that doesn't mean God never answers prayer when we don't understand the whole cost. Perhaps in some projects that we've gone into, if we had understood all the aspects of the total cost, spiritually, mentally, physically, financially, we may have gone away and not gone forward.

I think some people did not receive as much as they could have from the 25th anniversary tapes because they didn't take any notes. And this is why it was also difficult for them to get specific feedback.

And I hope that if at all possible, you will try to take some notes as you listen to this. I'm especially wanting to answer questions connected with why we hold people back after the September conference and why we hold certain people back or certain people stay back and other people go.

This year after the September conference was a time of testing, a time of trial in more ways than one. And whenever testing and trial comes, different people react in different ways. And certainly we never want OM to get to a place where people are afraid to ask questions.

Unfortunately, sometimes people not only ask the questions, but they give the answers before getting a total picture or a more balanced picture. In the past month since the September conference, in the midst of the many meetings I've been taking in about 15 or 20 different nations, I've been meeting with many OM teams and often sitting down with them for questions and answers.

I've also had fellowship with many OMers, including new recruits. In fact, when I was in Pakistan, I made a purpose to meet with every OMer working in Pakistan. I don't think I quite made it. Because I feel it's important for me to be very, very much in touch with new recruits, even though a larger portion of my time must be in fellowship with leaders.

I've also been able to speak to many, many leaders at considerable length concerning these issues and other issues. And then, of course, in cases where personal contact wasn't so possible, we've had a lot of contact through the post.

The Policy of Paying Bills After the September Conference

I feel strongly that God has given us, as a basic principle, that after the September conference, our overdue bills should be paid. This has proven to be a very, very effective principle for now almost 20 years.

And though I want to be willing to throw away, to change any principle, I feel through my own personal study and fellowship that OM would become very weak and would easily run into greater problems if we just so easily threw away things or changed things that have proven to be effective and that we feel are based upon God's Word.

I don't find it easy at all during the September conference. I think many of you know my own personal desire would be to avoid the conference altogether. It's been, I guess, 22, 23 years of such conferences.

But I'm there because I'm bought with a price. I'm there because I don't believe my own personal enjoyment or satisfaction is the first primary factor in regard to what I do. I'm there because in fellowship with others, they feel I should be there.

I'm there because I love the people in OM. The hardest thing about the September conference is that we try to do so much in so short a time and because, of course, now there are so many people, so many factors, I think it's very important to realize that there is a sense, a real sense, that we are trying to do far too much with too few people in too short a time.

We have discussed this again and again. But if we look into the book of Acts, we see that they had a very, very similar situation. If we look at the life of Jesus, we see that he had a very similar situation.

And it was Jesus who said, The harvest is plenteous and the labors are few. And as long as that's true, as long as the church to a large degree remains without great missionary vision, and in some cases in spiritual sleep, in other cases on spiritual tangents, then the situation of the harvest being plenteous and the labors being few will continue.

And we have to be willing to honestly face the limitations and the problems that this will cause. I think so easily and we start blaming ourselves because we don't like the idea of blaming others. That doesn't seem very spiritual.

And because we are all, most of us, very idealistic, we're often also very hard on ourselves, we long for brokenness, we long for humility, we want to esteem others better than ourselves. And so, so quickly, even in a financial crisis, we, at least some people, quickly blame themselves or at least they put the blame largely within OM.

Unity and Shared Responsibility During Financial Crisis

And the increase of judgmentalism, gossip, criticism, generalizations, overreaction, pendulum thinking, that takes place during a time of financial crisis, especially when there are overdue bills, it really at times is quite staggering.

And if any of you have engaged in that kind of thing, and we all do to some degree, I really pray that you would listen to what I have to share. I don't expect you necessarily to 100 agree, but I hope you'll be able to agree to the point that we will be able to move ahead in oneness of heart, in fellowship and unity, when we get carried away with tremendous discussions on all these different things.

And there are many, many things that we cannot all totally agree on within OM. And if we spend too much time in discussing all this and re-discussing it and re-looking at it, it can drain us of spiritual, mental energy and on a very practical level, time, that could be used more for prayer, for evangelism, for serving, for helping, for giving ourselves to others.

There are many voices coming at all of us in these days, from within OM, from outside OM. We all read different books, we listen to different tapes, we come from different backgrounds, different churches.

I believe the degree of unity we do have on these various issues, especially ticklish and touchy issues like finance, which often touch the raw nerve of the self-life, but sometimes the raw nerve of just practical living, not necessarily the self-life.

And the fact that there are so many voices, sometimes it becomes more and more difficult to listen to some voices. And I'm sure even at the conferences, when some of these very basic things have been explained and when there were question and answer sessions, some people were not even there because they were tired of listening to voices.

I felt the last couple of years that often when I was answering important questions and dealing with important issues, for example, in some of the advanced leadership sessions in the leadership training conference, that many of the people that needed to hear those things and then ask their questions, were there.

But that's one of the realities I have to face and we all have to face. I think it's a problem when a few of us are giving very basic orientation and presenting basic facts about finance, answering some of the tough questions that new recruits and other people have, and yet at the same time other leaders who have to answer those questions later on are not hearing our answers.

They're not able to be or they're not in those sessions. One reason is because they may be out on the front line of their own field trying to win men to Christ, trying to plant churches. And that's why without love and the believing of the best and a deep trust and respect for one another, a movement like OM really becomes impossible.

And this is why, of course, as a new recruit, you may have heard something from me at the June conference or the July conference and you may have heard something slightly different during the time of crisis in October with a leader who maybe was responsible at that time and you may have heard something different when you got out to the field.

I hope that people will not be overwhelmed or threatened or destabilized by the fact that as leaders we don't have total, final, easy answers on all of these issues. We are constantly wanting to grow.

We are constantly wanting to change. And yet we don't want to easily throw away the foundation that we sense the Lord has given to us. I've seen how in the work of the Church people can get going in so many different directions.

Everything can be questioned. And since in many ways in a lot of these issues there is no total, simple final answer, some of these questions and even some of what some may call opposition could be valid.

And certainly some of the arguments or thoughts against holding people after the September conference have a degree of validity. We have to weigh some of these things in our minds. And some of the other ideas that are being set forth for a fairly radical change have a degree of validity.

But the question is, what is God's will? And this is not always so easy. I believe that it is important that in a work like OM there are still some people who are in positions of leadership that can make final decisions.

It is a danger in a work of God that you get to a place where it becomes incredibly difficult for anyone or even any small group to make final decisions. And in OM it is getting more complex because we do believe that everybody's thoughts and burdens should be considered, right down to the newest recruit.

Leadership, Decision-Making, and Organizational Accountability

I wish I could speak to you for an hour on how decisions are made within OM, how we receive input from the men on the boards of trustees who hold the legal and final word and final say in each major field where OM operates.

And what these men feel, what these men think, their input is incredibly important and many major policies have been adjusted and many new policies have come into being because of the continual input on a personal level just as much as on a board meeting level as these men have the input and the oversight and as each coordinator is in subject to such men.

Yet at the same time the work has been able to move forward because these men trust and believe in the leaders on the field where 80 of the planning and strategizing, if I can use that word, and then the executing of plans, the follow-up on those plans must take place.

Yet at the same time the newest recruit can express himself to a major leader in the work and that major leader in the work is at the coordinator's conference or the conference of the general council when final decisions are made concerning basic issues and the decision to hold people after the September conference if finance has not come to pay overdue bills is a decision not made by myself or one or two people though some of us have more involvement in terms of executing it but it's been made year after year by the whole body and probably this year again it will be discussed and that's one of the reasons I'm sharing at this time so that we can have further input so you can know more of what's on my heart and have a couple of months to think about it before it comes up for discussion because in fact the decision we make this September it could be questioned when it should go into effect and since no one has come up with any really concrete better plan as far as I can see we must hold to our existing policy even though it may have some weaknesses and I believe after you listen to this you'll agree that the weaknesses perhaps are not as great as a few people may think.

I've already mentioned how this particular policy has been of such great blessing so many times it's been during this time of the year even though we tried to avoid it before that it's been during this time of the year when somehow there was more prayer more exercising of faith more realization of what it was going to take people suddenly realizing OM didn't have sort of unlimited money and Luke 14 .33 seems to become more alive during this month than almost any other month and there's many proofs of that again this year.

Patience, Waiting on God, and Spiritual Testing

The second point I want to bring out the first being that this has proven to be a blessing and it has proven to work relatively well over so many years is that I believe it is one of God's ways to teach us patience and reality and what it is to really wait upon Him.

We do tend in OM to be a bit in a hurry. I'm probably partly to blame for that we are attempting to do so much we are thought of by many people outside OM as a very work-oriented movement. That's perhaps because they've never been in so many of the tremendous times of worship and don't have a balanced understanding of what OM is.

I think to some degree we must see that if the Lord holds us back even for a longer period of time that it is to teach us something more of patience and waiting on Him. It's interesting how one leader who was opposed a leader of an evangelistic team opposed to people being held back before I could hardly even talk to him about it changed his view and shared with me on the phone this thought that if young people don't learn it now the beginning of their longer term program on OM some of them only are with us a year.

If they don't learn this principle now waiting upon God praying seeing specific answers to prayer before moving then when will they learn that? When will they learn that? Thirdly over the years it has proven to be a valuable time of testing.

Every work of God needs testing. I'm not sure whether this past year 1982 was a longer time of waiting than 1963 but 63 was an enormous test. And yet looking back in retrospect we see that all that waiting and the hassles the arguments even people leaving the work even people feeling that OM was finished at that time was a milestone in this movement.

And in some cases people who drop out during this period of time we've discovered later on it was really better that they didn't go on OM. We discover right now there are people in some of the OM countries out in hard situations.

Leaders are now writing and saying they wonder if this person should have come now. There's no easy answer to that and there's no way forward at World Evangelism without taking a few risks. And for every person who seems emotionally or spiritually weak that goes to the field and doesn't make it so well I would say there's two or three or four in somewhat similar situations even though we may not always realize it who do go on.

And that's incredibly important. That time of testing in 1963 and in other years was very important. I remember that year when we actually left quite soon because there was urgent prayer there was great unity and oneness on heart and it released one of the largest gifts in the history of the work.

Financial Scale, Missionary Expansion, and Living Within Means

Most of the year we do specialize in spending. Just look at the total budget of OM the amount of literature we have produced over the years pushing toward 350 million pieces of literature. We have our vehicles.

We have outreach now into a hundred nations so by God's grace we've been able to keep the permanent headquarters and bases to about 35 nations. I myself have personally ministered in about 55 nations and I praise the Lord that he showed me over the past years to narrow that down in terms of any kind of longer term emphasis.

I believe that this problem that we have of sometimes not getting our teams out fast enough and I as much as any want to see them get out to the field as quick as possible and I believe that you'll see some of the ideas I share here we can avoid teams having to wait.

If this is your goal and your burden then you are right on the street that I want to walk on and let us do everything. It's one of the reasons I'm making this state between now and September to make sure that there are not this mountain of overdue bills in September.

I believe with the changes taking place especially in the ship ministry and in India they've just submitted a budget with new emphasis in terms of control with a stronger emphasis on seeing cash come in and definite breakthroughs for finance before we order literature and before we buy literature a lot of other things linked with the finance committee linked with what God's been showing us with our boards of directors.

I believe we will avoid any extended waiting with the difficulty and confusion that brings the end of September and I want that to be my goal. I want that to be your goal but if somehow we fail to do this that's the key thing.

If we fail to do this then we must not just proceed out of that conference with everybody going forward to their various countries without paying our bills. Of course one dose of reality is that if we're really honest and we're paying our bills the way we should there won't be any money for the travel.

There won't be any money for the travel. So this is not a sort of phony situation that we put people into or an artificial situation that we put people into. It's a real situation we don't especially if we pay the bills as we should.

We don't have the money to get the teams back. I think a couple of years ago I developed the little slogan much travel, many miles, little fruit. Maybe God is trying to cut down on our travel. I want to share some rather radical thoughts later on about the fact that it may not be God's will for so many people to come back to this conference.

And when people do come back they must make sure they have personally trusted God for all the finance connected with the conference and in terms of any travel it would have to be above their regular support but I'll get into that later on.

Preserving Unity While Enforcing Necessary Policies

I think this problem of having to wait for some weeks and the problems that are related with it are small compared to some of the other problems we could be having in OM especially if we fragmentize especially if we lose our oneness of heart and our unity.

Especially if no longer anyone is able to speak out and lovingly enforce basic principles and policies and be able to give a final word when the crunch comes and say look, the policy is this and this is the way the leaders feel about it.

Therefore you cannot do that. Sometimes I or Peter Maiden or George Miley or Jonathan McCroskey or Dennis or someone else has to do that creating policies deciding to go in a particular direction at a coordinator's conference or meeting of the general council without having someone.

Sometimes it's a group sometimes it's individuals in consultation with a group who will stand firm and say this far and no further without such people in a movement. I believe the problems we will go into will make anything we have faced up to now look very small.

Why Overdue Bills Accumulate

Fourthly, let's look at why there are these overdue bills. Thinking in terms of last year let's first of all avoid generalization. These overdue bills are not just because of one field and this past year it was not just because of the ship.

We have to realize certain bills get automatically paid. Generally speaking rents petrol usually we buy petrol with cash generally speaking telephone food usually clothing so many things are paid for therefore other things automatically get squeezed into the overdue category.

Now we have a strategy I believe for cutting down on this. Therefore when we come to praying for funds it's very important to please understand this. It often in fact is overdue book bills and so then we look around who has the overdue book bills.

But in fact those book bills are overdue because hundreds of thousands in cash have gone out for airfares for food for telephone for clothing for petrol for our vehicles for repairs for 25 or more other areas of expenditures emergencies summer holidays most of the summer vacations are holidays that many people in OM now take and that could cost a considerable amount of money.

They are all on a cash basis and so I would beg of you brothers and sisters not to generalize as to why we have such a mass of overdue bills. Certainly one of the factors one of many is that with all the spending the increased cost of living the emergency money that's needed for medical things for travel.

This is combined with the fact that so many people are trying to function on minimum support or and we have to face it especially families are not living if they count especially the ministry they are involved in they are not living within the realm of their income.

Now we have talked about this at great length and I don't want to go into this now but we must face the reality that if by the end of August 50 of the people in OM are on minimum support and maybe maybe a good number of them say 20 are under that we have quite a few by August who are down to almost zero support yet they still have to be flown home even if they are encouraged to go home to see breakthroughs in their churches.

This is why I don't think one group that's praying for money in September waiting should judge someone else who maybe because of difficult circumstances was unable to wait for finance because we are all together we are all eating we are all traveling we are all using to some degree all kinds of facilities linked with that.

The next point under this why are we overdue is the enormous expense. It's just of recruiting these people in the first place we must face as a movement the enormous increased cost especially of the kind of operation that we are dealing with.

The cost of those prayer letters which are the lifeline of communication the cost of all the other communication in maintaining a longer term work simultaneously with launching a short term work simultaneously with many many other ministries going on all at the same time.

Therefore it is legitimate when there is a huge section or chunk of overdue bills in September for all of us to sense that it is our responsibility even on a very practical level and during the year it takes on other implications.

For example right now those of us on OM are under some degree of strain because a lot of money is being spent on behalf of the new recruits their training even some of the money often has to pay for the charter flight before the young people pay that in the office services the prayer letters so many things connected with all these new recruits.

So in a sense we are going through some degree of strain and we have to pray on their behalf. So I don't think if in September there are more new recruits who are having to actually wait where they are before going to the field that they should feel.

That's unfair. And personally whenever I've been able to explain these things with a new recruit it seems they really understood it and no longer had any great complaint. It is more difficult admittedly to try to explain it sometimes to leaders who of course may have a different viewpoint but that's one of the purposes for this particular tape though I don't sense a great amount of disunity on this matter and I'm not making this tape because this is some huge crisis not at all in fact most of the leaders I've already met with and they are willing to press on with the continuing system especially if we implement other things between now and then which is what we are wanting to do.

And one of the purposes I'm sharing this tape is because there are so many related issues that are going to help us in terms of praying and in terms of the work and because I think it's important for the newest recruit who has questions about this to be able to know what some of us as leaders are talking about and thinking about and praying about together.

Controlling Crusade Expenses and Waiting for Provision

Another point just under why we have overdue bills often at this time is because we've just come out of a huge summer crusade with enormous expenses and I feel strongly and I believe most leaders agree that we must get a greater control over summer crusade expenses sometimes a production of huge amounts of free literature maybe $25 ,000, $30 ,000 and sometimes this expenditure is made without enough people being involved in terms of praying and trusting and believing God for that money.

I think on the finance committee we're leaning it must be so when we're in stage 3 but even when we come out we're leaning strongly toward the policy that money must be prayed in before we commit ourselves to large amounts of free literature and even to some degree highly subsidized literature in general there are many things that we cannot easily pray the money in in advance before we go ahead.

Therefore when we can trust God to bring in the finance before we move forward and therefore avoid presumption then we must go that way. 15 years ago when things are much smaller and when a few people were willing to take spiritually speaking and through prayer a much larger chunk of the total responsibility of prayer and fasting perhaps that old system could function.

But I think and I appreciate your feedback on it that we must move back more to definitely seeing financial breakthrough before we go ahead with expenditure whenever possible and that when in doubt we need to pray and talk it over.

And I believe one of the reasons God has allowed us into this time of difficulty is to bring greater control and greater reality in terms of expenditure we must not allow ourselves to think this is a good thing this will reach so many people.

It's wonderful. Therefore we go ahead. No we have to learn to think this is a good thing. It's wonderful it will reach so many people it will accomplish this. Therefore we must wait upon God and see a specific breakthrough in finance that we may be able to go forward with that thing moving on to what I've listed as my fifth point our goal should be to move out within one or two weeks after the conference as soon as the vehicles are ready the funds are there for travel.

We move out. If we want to do this we must start now to give greater consideration to all that's involved and I feel strongly and shared this with the financial committee that if by the end of July and August we are not in a much healthier situation financially then we must take radical steps.

Only radical steps in August will keep us from extreme situations in October and November that we will not be able to cope with and handle. And that will throw us again back into all kinds of controversy about who stays back who doesn't stay back and the excess money that sometimes is spent in the midst of all that.

Therefore I am requesting and the financial committee is basically in agreement that if we are not in a healthy situation in July and August with overdue bills paid that we be ready for some radical changes.

Emergency Conference Planning and Reducing Ministry Scope

We've thought even in terms of not having a coordinators conference it's a good thing. We need it. It builds unity. I can give 20 reasons why we should have it but I think in the future there may be other emergencies where we'd have to consider such a conference financially is impossible.

Bringing leaders in from all over the world and on top of that the wives conference bringing their wives in and often they have to go back early and separate. This costs a lot of money. Therefore considering all the expenditure for September and the last few days of August if we're not in a sane healthy position in August we must take radical steps and this will demand an emergency meeting of the financial committee and it will involve cooperation right across the work.

Another possibility is to have a conference this year if we're still financially in such difficulty only for new recruits only new recruits who have seen of course breakthroughs in connection with finance and then a smaller number of people who can train them the number of leaders we have to help train the number of people at that conference in some ways is unrealistic.

In other ways it's wonderful and we could use even more but I believe God is driving us to deeper reality and to examine different ways of doing things and I'm convinced that a smaller number of people training new leaders could handle a much smaller conference in September mainly for new recruits.

We've heard that some people don't want to come back to the conference anyway because they may get trapped there having to wait on the Lord for money for a long period of time and that would keep them from getting back to their front lines.

I think such people need to understand first of all that if we don't have some financial breakthroughs including for their own field some of these front lines may no longer exist. We cannot put up a building without laying the foundation a solid foundation in terms of our prayer bases our headquarters our prayer bases they're mobilizing prayer.

They're getting out the prayer letters they're processing the recruits they're sending the receipts to these committed people who give their gifts. If we don't have a solid foundation of these prayer bases then some of the action on the front lines even in terms of evangelism may have to disappear altogether.

It's the old question whether you want to limp forward and sometimes in some of our fields we are limping and there's no simple easy answer for that or we don't want to go forward at all. This is a difficult question.

I have been begging brothers and sisters for the last five years that we could slow down and watch our numbers and emphasize quality more than quantity. And yet year after year people come back from some countries and tell me they want 25 more people and we take the people out even if their support is minimum and even if we're not sure they can really make it or have a gift and training for that particular area so that makes it all very very complex.

Pre-Conference Action, Financial Breakthrough, and Counting the Cost

I believe however through extra prayer faith careful spending cut back reality therapy that we can go into the September conference facing the kind of mountain that we will be able to move during that conference and after the conference it will still take a miracle.

We cannot move forward on the basis of human reasoning. We cannot move forward just on the basis of human projection as how much we think it's going to cost and what is our income. That also is not the answer.

We have to trust God for a miracle. We have to believe God for the impossible. But let's believe God for a miracle in May June July and August and not consider October only the month of miracles. And if we haven't seen the miracles and if we haven't seen the breakthroughs in July and August then let's face the reality of our failure.

Let's not just keep postponing the pain but honestly make necessary cutbacks even radical changes until we have the cash. Maybe people should not come back to that conference without seeing specific money come in for all their travel at the time rather than saying well if I total up all the gifts I had over the last two years it shows that I have 200 over the minimum.

We shouldn't even think that way. We should think 200 say over the support level and that can count toward my travel in one way. That's true. But if we all think like that then there's never enough money for all the other endless hidden expenses that we tend to always think the other man is going to pay for.