Leadership 1 — George Verwer

Leadership and the Need for Spiritual Foundations

Father guide us now as we look into your word and as we look out over history and as we look at facts help us to have minds that can understand and hearts that will obey feet that will be swift to move into action we ask in Jesus name, Amen turning your bible to Ezekiel chapter 22 the book of Ezekiel chapter 22 we are going to try to have 45 minutes to an hour of lecture later on in our sessions less than that and then go into questions and discussion Ezekiel chapter 22 beginning at verse 23.

And the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, say unto her, Thou art the land that is not cleansed, nor rained upon in the day of indignation. There is a conspiracy of her, of her prophets in the midst of her, like a roaring lion revenging the prey.

They have devoured souls, and they have taken the treasury and precious things. They have made her many widows in the midst of her. Her priests have violated my law and have profaned my holy things. They have put no difference between the holy and the profaned, neither have they shown difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hidden their eyes from my sabbaths, and I am profaned among them.

Her princes, and is her leaders, in her midst are like wolves revenging the prey, to shed blood and to destroy souls to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have dug them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord God hath not spoken.

The people of the land have used oppression, exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy. Yea, they have oppressed the sojourner or the stranger wrongfully. Then the key verse, And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found no.

Therefore have I poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. Their own way have I recompensed upon their heads. Saith the Lord God. Amen. When we move into the subject of leadership, there is a tremendous amount of ground we could cover.

It's not as easy for me to lecture on this subject as it used to be. Because for 20 years I've been doing it. Every OM conference, every summer conference, July conference, June conference, August conference, Fall conference, I speak on the subject of leadership.

One of the reasons I believe we have seen the growth of OM and a relative amount of stability and purity and integrity is because of a very strong emphasis in the work on spiritual leadership, training leaders, seeing leaders built up who can lead teams, lead headquarters, lead countries, and eventually lead their own families.

This morning we're just going to cover some basic principles and much of it centers around four statements that I never quite put in the same way I'm putting them this morning. For the sake of my own edification, I'm always looking for new ways to express things.

And I think constantly we need to be willing to change our terminology. Now one thing that is unique about Operation Mobilization, we get to have and we may prove that we're wrong, is that we do not have one stereotyped methodology or way of presenting what we believe.

In fact, it has changed from year to year. The method I used in presenting truth on the first eight orientation tapes I've hardly used since. It's one of the reasons we still have people who listen to those old tapes even though they're out of tape.

And the way I'm going to present this this morning, I've never presented it like this before, though there'll be a lot of overlapping. There's four phrases I want you to get into your hearts. I'm going to write them on the board here, or I'm going to ask, how about you doing the writing?

Because we're recording this and I want you to write those four statements. Moral purity, ethical reality, financial integrity, and doctrinal soundness. Please write these down because this is what we're going to talk about this morning.

We are at this stage, right at the very rock bottom. We're not talking about how to give your team proper food, how to give out literature, how to do this or how to do that. This morning we're right at the very rock bottom of what leadership is all about.

Unfortunately, the leadership manual is in the process of revision. This has been a two-year task. I've been working on it. I submitted it to all the coordinators in Europe and we pulled it apart. Now it's being rewritten and put in better English grammar by Homer Payne.

And Jonathan in Belgium. So we are in limbo as far as our new leader's manual. In any case, you'll be able to read that. And so I want to try to make these lectures a little bit different from the material that I would have given you through the leader's manual.

And we want to really target in on the most basic foundations of spiritual leadership. And that's what we're doing this morning. So please get down these four statements because this is very, very important.

Now it's not easy to get people like yourself to really remember these things. This is why we can speak about much, but you can't write down everything that's said. And even as we speak, I think it's important that we are open to the Holy Spirit convicting us.

We only grow, we only assimilate truth as we're willing to be convicted. And we're willing to allow the Spirit of God to work. At our last leader's conference, in the middle of conference, one of the brothers got up and confessed darkness in his life.

This is the kind of conference I believe in. When the Spirit of God is moving in our hearts and lives. These four principles in mind, which we'll come to in a few minutes. Let's make a few qualifying statements.

The Church’s Desperate Need for Leaders

First of all, there is a desperate need for leaders in the church at this present time. Desperate need for leaders. I've now been in Christian work for 20 years. Almost since the day I was born again.

Getting involved. Within a year or two years, I was overseas. As soon as I went overseas to Mexico, it began to hit me. Began to hit me. The lack of leadership. I lived in the headquarters of one of the largest, most famous missions in the world.

And I got behind the scenes. And I discovered the immorality. I discovered the lack of authority. I discovered the dissension between top leaders. And other things that, as a young man of 20 and 19, I didn't realize were existing on the mission field.

And then, one of our teams, off in the mountains of northern Mexico, was working with this man, who seemed to be such a wonderful leader, who had all the gifts. And suddenly, in the middle of the summer crusade, this pastor we were working with, this missionary, hived off with a best looking girl in the choir, and never came back.

To the dismay of his own wife. And the further I got into the inner sanctuary of missionary activity, in one country after another, then it was Spain, then it was France, then it was Italy, then it was other countries, I realized that so often, people were building their leadership building on a false foundation.

Or no foundation. Or a weak foundation. Now, there's a lot of things you may or may not have in your life. But there are four things you've got to have. God uses all kinds of people. It's been a great blessing to me, to be able to study the lives of many, many leaders.

Probably a hundred, or more. I never cease to be amazed of how God uses different people in different ways. Some of us get our favorite leader. One of mine is A .W. Tozer. But I'll be the first to admit, there are men who break many of Tozer's favorite rules, who are just as much men of God as he is.

You say, I don't understand this. But all you have to do is make a study of men like Buck Singh, Dr. Schaefer, Clyde Naramore, George Sweeting, Billy Graham, and list a number of other contemporary Christian leaders who have proven themselves.

None of them are perfect. All of them under the microscope will have flaws and weaknesses. The Word of God says, by the way, it is not my method generally of preaching to make you flip through your Bible for every Bible verse.

I'm not against that method, but it is not my main method. And sometimes I will just say, the Bible says. And if you don't believe that that's in the Bible, just jot down one word and look it up in your concordance.

So, I'm not against Bible flippers, but that's just not my approach. And I don't believe in running around copying everybody, though I've used that approach at times. It was the method I used in those first eight tapes.

The Bible says, this treasure is in earthen vessels. And to me that is such an important, such an important truth that we should keep in mind. And whether we're looking at Billy Graham or Dr. Schaeffer, late last night I was reading a little bit of the life of Theo Moody, or we're looking at Hudson Taylor or C .T. Studd, or some leader who has never been written up, but is in fact a leader.

The treasure is still in an earthen vessel. And under the microscope, there will be the flaws. And there will be the weaknesses. And though it may frighten some of you, there will probably be sin as well.

These four phrases or principles I've written here on the board, to me are absolutely basic. I never forget when I was talking to a Christian leader in my early days at Moody Bible Institute, he said to me, there are three things that knock out most leaders.

And let's get this straight. A high percentage of Christian leaders get knocked out before they reach 40. Another batch before they reach 50. And by 60, there are not many left. We can talk about Oswald J. Smith at 87 years of age, but he is the exception, not the rule.

We can talk about dynamic Lindsay Glagg, 92 years of age, with a ministry that is unexplainable, whose lifestyle is completely different from many of these other men, and yet, who has been one of the greatest influences in evangelism in the world.

Among other things, he taught Billy Graham how to relax and play golf. Lindsay Glagg, though many things upset me about his lifestyle, is still going strong at 92. Most of you know where I'll be at 92.

God has a wonderful way of working through all kinds of people. All kinds of people. And this is exciting. This is something that brings hope to all of us. God is not expecting you to become a George Fuller, or a George Miley, or any other OM leader that you may respect.

Or a Hudson Taylor, or a C .T. Studd. It's always easier to respect the dead leaders, because you can just read their biographies, and most of their biographies are dishonest. To some degree. Because biographers, many of whom write biographies for a living, tend, at least in the 19th century, the early part of our 20th century, to leave out negatives.

It was not acceptable in the 19th century to put negative factors. When we wanted to produce Keith Beckwith's diary, we were debating the subject. Well, some people didn't feel it would be too good to produce, because it had some very negative things about things he did in secret, and was very ashamed of.

Never read about such things, hardly yet, in anybody's biography, in an open and clear way. Now, the Word of God is not like that. When the Word of God gives us the biography of David, it gives us the most ugly incident of David walking around on the roof, seeing this beautiful woman, crawling over and having sex with her, going to bed with her.

And the baby is born, and a whole gigantic mess takes place, which ends up in death of many of his family, and all the rest. The Bible contains the most honest biographies. Tremendous Samson, you know, boy, doing this and doing that, with the jawbone of an ass and all the rest, and then, boom, falls flat on his face with this girl, and ends up ruining his entire life, except for supposedly his last triumphant moment, when he brings death to a great crowd of the enemy.

But these are the basics I want us to deal with this morning. As I was saying, this Christian leader mentioned to me that there are three things that have crippled, knocked down a high percentage of Christian leaders.

He put it very bluntly. He said pride, money, and sex. You know, I was a little Bible school student, my legs wobbled. I had been thinking about that myself, but hadn't quite verbalized it. Pride, money, and sex.

That covers three of our four areas. If you get these four foundation stones in your life, believe me, you don't have to worry about much else. We almost cover it all. And these are big terms, in terms of their meaning.

Words like integrity, you know, it's like a beam of light coming through a spectrum that comes in as a bright sunlight, and goes out in many, many different colors. Integrity covers a lot of ground. Let's start out in the beginning.

Moral Purity and the Discipline of the Body

Moral purity. A high percentage of soldiers of the war have been knocked out. Through moral impurity. The opposite of moral purity is moral impurity. I once gave a lecture in this very room, why 80 of the people in O .M. will never amount to anything for God.

And it's true. I was recently asked to speak at London Bible College. They already had a regular speaker for chapel, so I had a volunteer session after lunch. They gave me five minutes to speak to everybody in the chapel service.

So I just got up and announced my topic, what I was going to speak after lunch. It's a very dignified, top Bible school in Britain. And I said, some of you may want to come along this afternoon at 1. I'm going to speak on why 80 of all London Bible School graduates will never amount to anything for God.

Boom! There was a sudden silence, and the principal sort of slunk in his seat, sitting behind me. Well, at least they came out to the meeting. But it's true. A very high percentage of people who go to Bible College, who come into movements like O .M., will never amount to anything for God.

Because somehow, in their formation years, they're not willing to pay the price to have this kind of foundation. They allow little boxes. You've all heard messages on the little boxes that spoil the Bible.

They allow little areas of impurity, little areas of dishonesty, little areas of darkness. And the little areas of darkness in the 20s become big in the 30s. I think I once said years ago, I don't know where I got it, that the acorns in the 20s become the trees of the 30s, become the giant oaks when we're in the 50s.

And it depends what kind of acorns you're planting. We cannot overemphasize the need for moral purity. So many are being wiped out. I'm not going to give real names during these sessions. I'm going to give you substitute names, because I'm not interested in waiving people's names.

But I think of a man named John Tree. John Tree has written 12 or 13 books. John Tree was one of the most gifted men I ever met. He came and visited me years ago in the land of Spain. Gifted, writer, researcher, top name in the evangelical world.

He worked for one major evangelical group. Then he went and worked for another major evangelical group. And then he worked for another one. His salary was even higher. Then he divorced his wife, picked up a local concubine, and went all the way.

You know, if you see that happen once in a decade, you don't worry about it. If you see it happen once a year, you don't worry about it. But if someone was exposed to leadership on a world level, and not that much, if I was more, I don't know what I would do.

You see this kind of thing happening every month. Phil Bright was sharing with me at the Expo 72 that several of the men who had been invited to Expo to be speakers were in the moral pit between the time they got the letter of invitation and the time they made it.

And he had to ask them not to come. Some years ago I was asked to speak at the first DACA convention of all the missionaries of Bangladesh then called East Pakistan. And a man came to me there. I wasn't asking for information on moral impurity.

He just came up and shared with me that one of the leading blank denominations, no one named denominations, in a particular country in the east was not able to make this particular set of meetings where he was going to because they just discovered he had six wives.

And they felt really six wives even in the weakest of evangelical churches was a little much. He then went on to share with me that his church in Florida also just had to throw their pastor out because he had multiple wives and the congregation was getting upset especially as two of the wives happened to bump into each other and compare notes.

This brought the roof down and he was fired. Now there are some of you who think these things only happen among liberals and there are some in India who believe that the evangelical assemblies are so much better than the old dead churches.

And they think these things only happen in the old dead churches. They certainly don't happen but I want to tell you in India today many of the living assemblies have a stench of impurity that can match anything some of the old denominations can produce.

The only thing is we cover it better. One of the leading fundamental Bible believing separatist churches in a city in the Midwest discovered after so many years that their pastor was also a practicing homosexual.

It's not liberalism that produces moral impurity it's the devil cooperating with the human ego and the lust of the flesh. Moral impurity knows no bounds. It was my discovery in South India some time ago that one of the more evangelical of the top people in a top denomination he was the homosexual.

He had the good doctrine and the good life together. Unfortunately liberals know these stories. Liberals know and modernists know that at times there have been Bible fronting men who did not have moral purity.

Can you think of anything more contradictory? When does this happen? Well I'm not sure of all the ways it happens but one thing I know is this leadership skills through an intensive training program or any other program whether it's taught by Dale Carnegie or a Christian is dangerous if we don't have these four things in our life.

And this is the present trend in the western world. The present trend in the western world is to teach you leadership skills. How to maneuver and manipulate people. How to win friends to your viewpoint.

How to be successful. How to grow rich by Napoleon Hill. Cyber cybernetics by Houdini. Endless books coming out showing you how to be a clever leader even though morally you may be a lot. And it can happen in OM as well.

We can read the discipleship manual and we can listen to men some of whom know what they're doing and they can teach us how to sell books how to lead people how to encourage a team how to motivate how to patch up friendships how to make peace.

All the skills of leadership. And the clever even carnal brother can come along and he can give all the appearance of being Mr. Leadership but down underneath is rock. Because he doesn't have this in his life.

Moral purity ethical reality financial integrity and doctrinal the word I have I didn't have that doctrinal soundness can you change that? That was just doctrinal soundness. So we're going to dwell on these basics.

And in some ways this first session I just pray that the flames of motivation to be a morally pure man all your life will consume rock. You know sometimes people think that my main burden in any one day over the years has probably been you know what new project are we going to have or who am I going to win to Christ today or what am I going to do for God today?

I'll tell you my one burden some days over these past years has been one thing Lord I want to survive. I want to get through the day without making a mess of my life. It says in the book of Proverbs that the wicked woman the prostitute the clever girl seeks for the precious life.

He seeks for the precious life. Most of you have heard me tell about the group in California that started a blackmail operation on pastors. They sent beautiful women to the house of pastors and these women would seduce do you know the word seduce?

I hope so. I realize we have a multilingual problem here but when a woman seduces a man she entices him she gets him to commit immorality and so these women would seduce these men into bed with them and then their their partners would move in with the cameras and get pictures in the bedroom.

This was actually happening and they were blackmailing one pastor after another. You say you don't believe in the devil? Finally one pastor left the truth out about this situation risking his own reputation and this particular gang of gangsters was were arrested.

I don't want to spend even another minute right now giving more stories all of which have been documented. It's too frightening. I believe these things often times in general meetings especially so much in the public that I believe people who are in leadership training need to realize the foundation you lay in your life now is going to make all the difference in the world all the difference in the world.

What does it mean to the Christian church if Billy Graham now falls in to moral impurity? Would you tell me? What would all the years of his dynamic ministry mean? Well I don't believe it will all be ruined because God is God but I can tell you I can't think of anything that would set back the cause of the gospel worldwide than if this man fell in to moral impurity.

Fortunately as far as every man can ever detect and many of these pornographic magazines have tried to catch him they push girls into his arms and snap pictures they try to. That's why Billy Graham has this this principle in his life he never goes anywhere alone with anyone else except another man or his own wife is with him he just can't afford because the devil is out to destroy him and the more you become used of God in some ways the more the anointing of God comes upon you the more hellish the more subtle the more vicious will become the attacks of the evil one which means the more careful the more wise you will have to be.

What can we do now to lay a right foundation one we can begin to discipline our life in every area. Physical exercise is just one thing for your information as far as I can understand not more than 30 of the people in O .M. pay any attention to our emphasis on physical exercise.

Not more than 30 the ship is probably in India the two fields that emphasize it the most and you can see where we are people just don't think it's important. Somehow the poor Joe does not relate the fact that he does not know how to get out of bed in the morning with the fact that some day he'll probably be in bed with the wrong woman.

He just can't put it together and if you even hint along that line he'll think you're a stone age screwball or something else. But the fact of the matter is that now as young people we have to learn to control our bodies.

We have to learn to discipline our bodies. We have to learn to say yes to the mind and no to the body. Because as Billy Graham once said all of life is habits. All of life is habits. I've seen this among most O .M. leaders that the life is already a series of habits and I could dance a jig in front of them.

It won't make much difference any longer. We have to get men when they're seventeen eighteen nineteen in their early twenties. Or we will not make much impact really on their emotional life apart from a few that somehow in God's sovereign purposes which I never will fully understand are experiencing very unusual growth pattern in their lives.

Our life is habits. This is why in trying to get this people can go through the most fantastic religious experiences baptisms of the Holy Spirit triple baptisms of the Holy Spirit kangaroo experiences lightning experiences double jerk shock experiences and still basically their lifestyle and their habits don't change at all.

In fact I think there is ample proof now that our more religiously emotional people to a very high degree are immoral. The more religiously emotional movements today and I'm not speaking of any one denomination I'm not speaking of the Pentecostals.

There are some Pentecostal churches that are very disciplined. They have disciplined leadership. They are solid churches. I've been in such churches and I personally don't want to tolerate any attacks on any denominational level especially because it's in that level we make stupid generalizations.

You know what a generalization is a sweeping statement. All brethren are like this. All Pentecostals are this way. All Methodists are all Baptists are all Anglicans are. I'm sure most of us have got to a degree of maturity where we don't want to do this anymore because it really is dangerous.

But there have been a number of studies lately. I've got a book down in my hot section of my library called Queer Christians where this man he was a Pentecostal by the way did research showing how many cases religious emotion and religious enthusiasm runs in immorality.

Now I mention this to pastors conferences here and almost always one pastor or another comes up to me and says wow this is what's happening. Well I I never read anybody's book. You know the book The Devil and Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith who was a true person was the son of a pastor in a hyper emotional church in the southern part of the United States. Nothing against southerners that was mildly present but he was really in this hyper emotional atmosphere where everybody was getting.

You know every time a visiting evangelist came in he would leave at least two or three girls pregnant every time almost without fail. Now he was the pastor's son. Very few people knew about this but the pastor's son was really he was on the inside.

And after the evangelist would go away nine months later these babies would be born. Now whether you call them spirit specialized babies or whatever else you want to call them. This just shattered this person.

I have had a number of specific similar cases shared with me. Young pastor's son became so disillusioned with his church with his father with these evangelists because evangelists have been notoriously through the years morally loose because they get these love offerings.

They get lots of food. They never have meetings in the morning since Wesley's day apart from a few cranks and so they sleep in the mornings. They have good meals they have love offerings and they have lots of girls queuing up for counseling all ideal for moral impurity.

Same thing happened within the Roman Catholic Church. Girls came to the priests. There were sort of intimate sessions you know even though there was a little box in the little veil and the girl was crying about moral troubles and she's been thinking evil thoughts.

And they decide they need a personal session. They make arrangements to meet in the office. We have had specific cases in Mexico where girls were ruined because some priest had seduced them into moral impurity.

There were special cemeteries. I did a research paper on Roman Catholicism and I read books that I think very few people have ever looked at some of them written by Roman Catholics showing that in Latin America there were whole cemeteries given over to the babies of nuns and priests.

Whole cemeteries talking about peripheral issues. We are talking about one of the major areas where the church has gone off where the best of leaders have gone off. Anointed men. Men who have led hundreds to Christ.

Men who stood in front of radio. Men who stood in front of television. Most of you may know the story of the soul clinic years ago. I won't give the name of their founder. I studied under him. They had a lot of similarities to O .F.

Through watching that movement I learned what not to do in O .F. Even while I was studying soul winning under this leader. He divorced his wife married his secretary split the movement down the middle.

He is still on television in America today preaching away moral purity. When are you going to get serious about this. When you are an old man it will be too late. It will be too late. I believe now is the time to start laying a foundation of discipline living of practical action.

Like not wandering around when you know you have weaknesses in this area. Even when you don't think you have weaknesses in this area. Wandering around all alone here and there wide open for the devil's attacks.

Disciplining your mind. Getting rid of any magazine anywhere near you that in any way can incite you to lust and not touching. Not spending your money on now when in O .M. and remember what we do in O .M.

What we do in O .M. is preparation. Preparation for when you leave. For when you leave this is what we are concerned about. We know that often times in an atmosphere like O .M. some of these problems will not come in that can deceive you.

That can deceive you. You think well I am not having any trouble with these things here now. So you let your discipline slack and you don't feel that you need to memorize the word of God. And I believe one of the greatest protections against moral failure is the memorization of the word of God because that forces the mind.

And we've got to learn how to force our mind to do things normally we don't want to do. Seeing so much moral fall in our day is because there is so little emphasis on discipline now. I know that in O .M. we border on this becoming an over emphasis.

Admittedly I don't think we've reached that far but we may get near. But in general in the church today this is not true now. At times I felt a terrific guilt complex about speaking so much of discipline and I thought well this isn't spiritual.

And so I I'm always reading other men and recently I was reading Martin Lloyd Jones. Now he was a spiritual man here is a man who has proven himself. He also is in his 70's. He is living a godly life.

He is one of God's greatest. Karl Barth Neo-Orthodox said Martin Lloyd Jones was the greatest living preacher in our day. That's something for Neo-Orthodox to say about an Evangelical and a Puritan.

And yet if you read Martin Lloyd Jones you will see his emphasis is on discipline. And he very much condemns this kind of super spirituality that says well the main thing to do is cultivate a deep walk with Jesus Christ and everything else will take care of itself.

He strongly attacks that because if the only thing you have to do is cultivate a deep walk with Jesus Christ which most people can't even agree on what that is. And we don't need discipline. We don't need training.

We don't need to buffet our bodies. Then why do we have all this in the Bible. Beware of Evangelical shortcuts. Beware of pious cliches. Who said who. What we need is revival. What we need is the Welsh revival.

Do you know what happened to the founder of the Welsh revival Evan Roberts. Somehow one of these four foundations wasn't there. He was finished off in a matter of years never did fully recover. Have you ever heard of the book War on the Saints by Jesse Penn Lewis.

Where did that book come from. It came out of the Welsh revival. Because after every one of these revivals they see these things or their opposites moving in. And so they always write a book on the spiritual warfare.

The same thing has just happened recently in England. Michael Harper one of the leaders of the charismatic movement first writes a great book about all the blessings. What's the next book. He ended up writing spiritual warfare.

England would have been preserved many difficulties if the book on spiritual warfare had been written first we get the blessing on a false foundation. Then comes the destruction. Then in the aftermath we write a book on spiritual warfare as we collect up all the pieces.

By the way that book by Jesse Penn Lewis I'm not sure I can even recommend because some temperaments get completely bound up reading those books. I never finished half of it myself. I myself have taken this policy that I'm not going to over read Satan because it's just not my thing.

I know enough I know too much already about Satan and I want to dwell on Jesus and I want to dwell on his word. Paul said 1 Corinthians chapter 9 I buffeted my body and bring it into subjection lest after preaching to others I become a reprobate.

Can you say this morning that you are systematically practicing the buffeting of your body. Those of you in IT you are in a false world. You know that we told you that from the beginning IT is a false world.

We create somewhat of a false world in order to put some false pressure on you because there's so little pressure often times in OM normally hoping that you will begin to build habits and know when you leave IT we know there will be some adjustment.

We don't expect you to live IT the rest of your life. IT is not spirituality. Normal basic spirituality come from IT. But if you go into IT with the right attitude if you go into IT depending on the Holy Spirit to work despite the weaknesses of the program.

Every program has weaknesses. God can do something and you can build up some habits. I developed some habits in IT even though I started 17 years too late that have not left me to this day. So keep that in mind.

Ethical Reality and Honest Leadership

Are you buffeting your body time food clothing mental attitudes. Double talk. Lying. Many of us do it on a subconscious level. We're not even conscious that we are lying. For example one brother asks you a question.

You give him one answer. Another brother asks you a question. You give him another answer. Now that isn't lying. Is it. But is it straight. Is it honest. Is it ethical. We can deceive people in many ways and it's deadly.

I believe one of the most beautiful words in the English language is integrity. Integrity often is put together with ethics. Ethics doing that which is right. Ethics doing that which is honest. Ethics doing that which is straight.

I think of a particular brother in a top position of our work in India. He's a brother that originally not many people thought was very dynamic. But over the years we saw that this brother was straight.

He was honest. He was trustworthy and that's why he's in that position. We're desperate in God's work. We're desperate for men who know the reality ethical. Some people say you can't even live anymore in certain countries unless you have slippery ethics.