Christian Service Meeting (Senders & Goers) — George Verwer

Our loving Heavenly Father, as we come to you this morning, we would recognize the immense privilege that is ours to be but a tiny little company of that great family of yours throughout the world and all down the ages, some in glory now, brought there through the saving grace of the Lord Jesus.

And we still here below, following in that pilgrim path that leads to glory. And we are indeed, we own it before you, Lord, the most privileged people in the whole world. We thank you for our brothers and sisters in every place, those who worship you in many different tongues and from many different backgrounds and culture, but our brothers and sisters in Christ.

And we join with them in our prayer this morning in lifting to you all praise and worship for the grace that met us where we are and brought us to know Christ as Savior and made us all one in Him. And we thank you this morning, Lord, that you are the Lord God omnipotent who reigns.

And we ask with the prophet, why do the nations tremble and the earth rebel? Why is it that people can't see the glory of your majesty and the greatness of your love? And you have put us here, Lord, as we own before you in this world, to be the light and the salt that the world so desperately needs.

The Church’s Responsibility to Proclaim Christ

And Lord, in a world of violence, a world of tremendous need, a world where the problems that overtake us are seemingly insoluble, we bow before you with this solemn responsibility to go and proclaim Christ to this world.

Lord, we know the cost, we know how difficult it is in this, our own land, but we're here this morning to own before you that that is our privilege and that is our responsibility. But we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor.

And we praise you, Lord, that you have already won the battle, the victory as the Lord's, and that there is a coming that great day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

We gladly confess that this morning and we pray that we may know that in our own lives. And on this particular day and at this particular meeting, bring to our notice, again we pray, what it means to own you as Lord of our lives.

And so, Lord, we commend to you all that shall be done in this next hour. Bless those who will be speaking to us, especially any, Lord, who are not used to speaking to a great crowd like this. Give them great joy and peace and give them great liberty in what you've given them to say.

And may their various words to us blend together to be the word of the Lord to our hearts today. And bless your servant, George, as he finishes the meeting for us. Give him, we pray, great power and unction from your spirit that we may hear Jesus and respond to him with the gift of obedient surrender this very day.

And so have your hand upon this meeting. Bless us and make us a blessing in this world today. We ask it through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. This morning, our text is taken from Romans 10 to, 10, one to 15.

Romans, verses one to 15. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.

Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God, and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. Christ is the end of the law, so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

Moses describes in this way, the righteousness that is by the law. The man who does these things will live by them. But the righteousness that is by faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven?

That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the deep? That is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith we are proclaiming.

That if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

As the scripture says, everyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame. For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

How then can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?

As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. Thank you, Telmo. Can I just say before the first speaker comes, would the owner of the orange Ford van MUM906V return to your van immediately, please?

The owner of the orange Ford van MUM906V. It's our privilege on this day to have three or four people who come and speak to us about the challenge of God's service that they know themselves at home and overseas.

Karen Minder’s Medical Mission in the Central African Republic

And first of all, we welcome Karen Minder, who's going to speak to us who's been working in the Central African Republic. If you draw a cross through Africa, from north to south and from east to west, where the lines meet, you come out in Central African Republic.

It used to be the French Equatorial Africa. That is where I have been working as a nurse midwife for the last four years. It all started at Cape Henry Bible School, not during my year of being a student there, but a year later, when I heard Ellen Redpath make an announcement.

If there is a fully quiet nurse amongst her students who likes it very, very hot, elephant meat to eat, lots of mosquitoes, and almost only black people around her, then this is a place for you in Central African Republic.

Although part in me said, no, no, this is impossible. I knew with a certainty that I never experienced before, this is where God wants you. And it turned out to be true. And all those wonderful promises became reality.

AIM has started to work in three places amongst the Zanda tribe over 40 years ago. Churches, hospitals, and a trade school have been built. There is no need to evangelize a country because many missions have done that already.

But the existing local churches need to be strengthened. African pastors run the churches, but many of them are tired. They would need spiritual refreshment and good spiritual training. In our area are 15 small churches and three have recently lost their pastors due to adultery.

I have been asked how I manage day by day. Usually there are three or four missionaries on one station. We live in good brick houses with metal roofs, not like some visualize in mud huts and grass roofs.

Soon after sunrise, about five o 'clock, we start the day while it is still quiet and cool. A helper comes to get the wood stove going to prepare the meals and clean the house. Later, the hospital work will start with prayer time with our seven Zandi nurses, and that really binds us together as one in Christ.

All morning, our head nurse and I see patients. There are up to 100 every day. We teach something new to our nurses. We talk to people. I often have to try to diagnose something that I've never seen before, or I get frustrated if we don't have a certain drug and there is no way of getting it.

Our mission doctor only comes two or three times a year to do operations, and the African doctor in a nearby government hospital is not much help because he's drunk most of the time. The afternoons, I'm at home, but always I have to be on call.

I'm doing office work or go out visiting. Sometimes, people come to see me. Like those two pastors who walked more than 10 kilometers, they asked me to listen to their own personal family problems and to talk about it and to pray with them.

They didn't realize, but that really made my day. By 6 p .m., it is dark, and we run a generator for our station to have some electricity for two hours at night. One of our greatest problems is being so isolated.

Central African Republic is a landlocked country with very poor road conditions. There is no public transport. Since the capital, Bangui, is over 1 ,000 miles away, we are really cut off. Our only connection to the outside world is through small mission planes, which come in from Nairobi in Kenya every four to six weeks.

And in between times, you can exercise your patience. A letter or a tape sent by folks who care can be so meaningful. It's almost like being visited. Let me give you a couple of prayer requests. Let's pray for strengthening of the church.

Pray for a couple to come and work on our station, someone with a heart for church work. Pray for more young Africans to go to Bible school, to become pastors. Pray for someone to teach the children how to grow in Christ.

In my time out in Africa, I have learned I can trust the Lord for new strength for each day. And although I had a lot of hard times, I have never regretted having come there, and I hope to go out again next year.

One of the remarkable challenges to me at a very practical level, did you realize we've had a Japanese reading in English and a German speaking in English? I wonder how well we'd have done reading in Japanese and speaking in German.

We are an isolated country, and it's lovely to have folk from other lands. But there's a witness in our own country, a tremendous challenge. Christian Services won the world over. Mal Caladay, who's working with the Scripture Union team, is gonna tell us a bit about witness in the schools of our country.

Christian Witness in Schools and the Mission Field at Home

Five years ago, I was invited to a missionary meeting, not as you've come along now to sit and listen, but as the missionary. And I was really excited, because it meant that the church that had invited me recognized that what I was doing in schools in the local area in Nottinghamshire where I live and work, was missionary work.

And we say, perhaps glibly sometimes, there is a mission field on our doorstep. But I think we say it without really taking it to heart, and we need to let it sink in. There really is a challenge. Just two stories to tell you from two extreme age ranges.

Firstly, an infant teacher I knew several years ago, her first Christmas in teaching, told her class the story of the nativity, and asked her children to draw a picture and write a couple of sentences underneath about what they'd drawn.

And one child, having drawn the picture, put their hand up, and without being sarcastic or facetious, said, please miss, what was the name of the baby? At the other end of the scale, a sixth former in one of the better known grammar schools in the country where I was taking some lessons once, we were talking about who Jesus is, and the nature of Christ's personality.

And he put his hand up and said, how can you say Jesus is who he said he was when he killed 10 ,000 children just for laughing at him? And he insisted it was in the Bible, but it wasn't in mine. The ignorance goes right across all age ranges, and we need to find ways of reaching these children.

We have a saying that everybody goes to school to keep us going in our work in schools. They're not in our churches, but they're all at school. They've got to be there. So if we can get access to them, we can have the chance of sharing with them.

And telling them who Jesus really is and cutting away the myths, the half-baked ideas, the wrong teaching that has built up. RE lessons, assemblies are there and available to be used. Where they're not being done properly, perhaps we can't blame the teachers.

If you're not a Christian, how can you lead a Christian assembly? You can't blame them. And I've found in the five and a half years I've been working in schools, in the 80 schools that I've been in, many of them regularly, that once you've proved yourself that you A, have something to say, and B, can say it in a way that kids can understand, you'll be invited back again and again.

Because many non-Christian teachers are concerned that kids get a fair chance. And they'll let you go if you get the chance. So how can you be involved in all this? Well, first of all, there is a limit, I believe, to what we can do in schools.

I never make an appeal in the classroom. Firstly, because with younger children, I think they'd respond just because they want you to like them. And secondly, because I think it would be irresponsible.

We're there by invitation. The kids haven't asked us to be there, but they'll listen to us and understand. But we can give them the opportunity to come to other meetings at the end of weeks in schools or to special church events, where they can actually find out how to commit their lives to Christ.

Because sometimes I go away from a school frightened. I think to myself, suppose they take me seriously. Suppose they actually think, well, he said the church was worth being involved with and it's got something good to tell us, and decide to turn up at their local church the following Sunday.

And it scares me silly what they might find and think that I've deceived them. So the first challenge for us is, are we ready in our churches to receive children? Are we making the preparations to allow young people to be part of our fellowship in a way that they will not find it difficult so we don't find stumbling blocks in their way?

Secondly, if you are Christian parents, then you have already got the right of access to your school. And there are ways that you can be involved by offering to help out at special services, take assemblies.

I know a Christian parent who complained at her daughter's school about the lack of Christian content in assemblies. The head turned around and said, well, I'm not a Christian, but if you want to do it, come along.

Now her and two other Christian parents go in every week and take an assembly in that school. There is an opportunity for you to get involved. There is an opportunity for all of us to pray, to pray for Christian teachers.

It cannot be easy to be a Christian teacher in schools today. To pray for Christian pupils who find it hard to stand up and to pray that there might be even more access for the Christian gospel in our schools.

Local workers in schools have grown up a lot over the last five or six years, but there's still lots of areas where there are no local workers working in the schools. If you have a local worker, and if you don't know whether you have one or not, ask me afterwards, I'll tell you.

If you have a local worker, find out what they're doing, pray for them, back them, encourage them. And if you haven't got a local worker, perhaps you could be the person who goes to the, when you go back from here to your homes, gets all the church members together from churches in your area and say, do we need somebody to do this work, to share the gospel with young people?

What are we going to do about it? Because no local worker can exist without the prayer support and the financial support of the local churches. Perhaps even you could be the person who could be that local worker.

In September, 1981, I'd left the job that I was doing. I was a community worker. I'd left it and I applied for lots of jobs, not really knowing what to do. But for the first time in September, after a couple of months of just generally applying for jobs, I sat down and I prayed, Lord, I haven't a clue what you want me to do, but I want to do what you want me to do.

And two hours later, a man knocked on my door and said, we're looking to appoint a local worker in our schools in this area. Your name has been suggested. I've come to ask if you'd be willing. Now, I'm not saying somebody will turn up within two hours of you praying, but it strikes me that in our schools, there is a lot to be done in all sorts of ways.

Perhaps God's just waiting for us to say that we're available. One of the things we like to do in the Christian service meeting is to point out that for many people, being a Christian is witnessing where you are in your daily work.

Christian Vocation in Policing

So this morning, we're going to have a slightly unusual interview. I'm going to interview with a Christian policeman, Bob Sharp, and who better to interview a Christian policeman than a JP? Maurice Rowlandson, JP, will interview Bob Sharp, our Christian policeman.

Well, Bob, it's interesting to know that you can be a Christian and a policeman, but I wonder, did you start off perhaps as a boy with the dream of being one? You know, boys have ideas of being engine drivers and firemen and that sort of thing.

What about you? Well, I thought a fireman was my first choice. I had visions of a big ladder and sort of rescuing damsels in distress. So, though, at the back of my mind, obviously a policeman, but I think my first choice was to be a fireman.

Good. You know, I'm tempted as a justice of the peace to say, officer, I see you have some notes there. Are you wanting to use those notes in your evidence?

As you will know, these are notes made at the time to refresh my memory.

Good. Good, well now, tell me, do you see your work as a policeman, as a Christian vocation?

I see it as any Christian in any walk of life, be it in the office or in the factory. They are called there to work, but also as a Christian, and so therefore should portray the Christian faith and let the light shine in the situation in which they find themselves.

Did you actually feel that God was calling you to this? Did you actually have a call to this service?

I felt, after a while, I served in the Royal Air Force, and when I was leaving, I was seeking the Lord's will as to where and what I should do when I left, and I was led to the police service.

Now, I'm sure that you, Bob, like many of us, are concerned these days with the breakdown of law and order. How do you see your work as a Christian policeman in that particular sphere, and what do you feel is contributed to that?

Well, look, I hope every police officer go into a situation, they will try and do his best to deal with it, be it marital problems, domestic, but at the end of the day, as a Christian, I try to look beyond what I see, and I think it was Bishop Pat Harris said last night, remember what you were before you were a Christian and who you might be if you weren't a Christian, and so I'd hope that when I deal with situations and any Christian policeman would realize that there is more to it, and the reason is because these people don't know Christ.

Now, I'm sure, Bob, you would realize I'm, as a magistrate, sitting often on the juvenile bench, and one of the things that appalls me is the number of very young children who are hardened criminals. For example, just the other day, we had a young boy of 12 who asked for 96 cases of burglary to be taken into account when he was charged.

How do you feel this has come about with children today? What do you feel is the contributory factor to that?

I believe it's lack of influence in the home. I believe that you can't really blame the children for the things that they do because they've got no teaching, no guidance from their home. I believe just recently, I think it was Dr. Royce Boyson was pointing out the number of one-parent families we have.

Now, children see that there's no longer any need to be married. There's no morals to be involved, so therefore they take it for their parents, and really, I think that if there's no teaching in the home, then I think we must expect that children will go off the path.

Now, here's an interesting question for you. Suppose that you were apprehending a motorist, for example, who perhaps offended in some way, and when you got to interview him, you discovered, by some means or other, that he was a Christian brother.

How would you deal with that?

I would hope he wouldn't quote to me the verse that he's no longer under law but under grace. And he would be treated the same as any other person. He should know better, in fact.

I'm sure a lot of us here would like to know, how do you find it possible to be a Christian and a policeman, or the other way around, a policeman and a Christian?

Well, every job, no matter where you are as a Christian, has its problem, and obviously the police service is no different. As I said, I would hope that as a Christian, I try to look beyond perhaps what might appear to be on the surface, and realise that the problem is that these people are sinners in need of a saviour.

And no matter what I do or my colleagues do, at the end of the day, if you don't have a personal relationship with Christ, then really we're just putting a plaster over the wound.

One final question, Bob. You, in your work, will be dealing with a lot of bad things, crime, drugs, immorality and that sort of thing, assault and arson and all sorts of bad things. In your own life, how can you reach the understanding of what Nehemiah 8 .10 says, that the joy of the Lord is your strength?

Well, as a Christian policeman, unfortunately, I can pray about things. When I go to situations, I pray before I go there, because you never know what's going to be around the corner. So I just commit things to the Lord, leave it in His hands, because He knows best, and just leave it there, and it's always worked out good.

Thank you, Bob. Thank you. Now, after we've sung a hymn, I'm going to ask Janet Blackburn, who's a teacher in northern Nigeria, to speak about that work. Let me get a spectrum of what God's doing and what He may be challenging us to do.

Meantime, we're going to sing in the convention praise and give you a chance to stretch your legs, number 196, one of Graham Kendrick's songs, Restore, O Lord. We sang it in the sort of hymn singing the other night, and we sang it far too slowly.

It ought to go at a good pace. I've had a little word with the music. I'm no good at music, and I'm sure I'm wrong, and they're right, but I've told them to sing it at my pace nonetheless, because I'm the chairman, you see, and...

But I think, young people, we expect it to go well. Restore, O Lord. It's a great new hymn. 196, convention praise. Please stand.

The Challenge of Islam and Christian Witness in Northern Nigeria

The night of the Muslim fast month of Ramadan begins,.

The Muslims fire a gun on our racecourse to show the Muslims that it's now time to begin fasting. And on that night, there's always a strong impression of Satan's power over the thousands of people in the town who are Muslims.

He is behind the challenges that Islam brings to the church in Muslim lands, and he keeps millions in fear and in ignorance of the truth. Islam challenges Christian beliefs. It denies the Saviour. They say Christ is only one of the prophets.

He is not God's son. Islam denies salvation, but they say that Christ did not die. There's another challenge, a different kind of challenge that Islam brings to Christians. There are devout Muslims, people of great integrity among people who follow Islam.

Christians working in a Muslim area, in offices, schools, hospitals, are known to be Christians and are observed by the Muslims with whom they work. In northern Nigeria, they say seeing is better than hearing.

There's a sense in which Christians have to earn the right to speak. This is a challenge to biblical teaching and practices in areas like business, civic life, family life, marriage. If we don't follow what our Bible says, if we don't serve the Lord with our heart, then we have nothing to say to a Muslim.

They see before they hear. Islam also challenges the understanding of Christianity, especially among young people and young Christians. If you're living side by side with Muslim students in a school, their ideas can rub off on you.

In many schools in Muslim countries, there are Christian students, but what does the term Christian mean? It may mean that the person is born again. It may mean I have Christian parents, or I have a Christian rather than a Muslim name, or I am not a Muslim.

Some of the things that we have in Christianity, the words that we have to describe different aspects of Christianity, may also be used in Islam. For instance, for a Muslim, prayer means something that he does five times a day, reciting set words, going through prescribed actions.

Christians regard prayer as talking and listening to God. But if you're teaching Christian students in school in an RE lesson, maybe if you're discussing prayer, their ideas are more on what the Muslim thinks of prayer.

So there's a great need for Bible teaching to young people, so that they will clearly see what the Bible teaches. Fasting for a Muslim is a way to gain merit with God, but this is not what the Bible teaches.

There are other examples that I could quote. So there's a challenge to the church in Muslim countries and in every place where Islam is active to take young people's work very seriously, to use every opportunity to win them to Christ and then teach them and show them how to be disciples.

These are some of the challenges to one's teaching in Muslim areas. There are opportunities. It depends on the country. In some countries, religious knowledge can be taught by those from overseas in secondary schools and at higher levels.

Other places, there is restriction on evangelism of Muslims, but even there, the need to help Christians is very great, as we've seen. Maybe you're a teacher of another subject, technical subject, science.

So there are opportunities for teachers in mission and in government schools for these subjects. Most countries have in their schools scripture uni or similar groups where Christian teachers in the schools can help the students to be involved and to get to know about Christ.

There are camps and conferences to help out in the holidays. Plenty of opportunities to do Christian work and to challenge young people to faith. Mission schools have made a great contribution in Muslim lands, but now sometimes it's not possible to get people into those countries teaching mission schools, but it's possible to be an associate missionary working on contract in a government school or college and there the Ministry of Education provides the need for visas.

A Christian in government service abroad can be linked up with a church or a mission in the country where he is for fellowship and for service with the church in his free time. Missionary societies can help with advice and orientation on the overseas situation here before people go.

Being an associate missionary is not an easy or a soft option. Many face more frustration and red tape than the missionary does, but there's opportunity as a worker in a government or business situation to meet people and witness to them, people that the missionary has no access to because he does not move in those circles.

Islam is spiritually dry and very needy, but God says the desert and the parched land will be glad. The wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom. They will see the glory of the God, our God.

They will see the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our God. On occasion like this, we'd love to bring someone to the platform who has recently heard God's call to service and responded to it. We're delighted today to ask Stephen Carling, a young man who has got to that place to tell us about his call to service and response.

Stephen Carling’s Call to Full-Time Christian Service

I tell you the truth, unless an ear of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. I've been asked to share in six minutes my sense of God's calling on my life to full-time Christian service. May I start by saying that I do believe that God has called me to service both at home here and overseas, hopefully in Africa.

And I realize that's rather a bold statement and possibly rather arrogant. And so therefore it needs unpacking. I think, too, that some confusion exists over the nature of a call. What is a call? Mission candidate secretaries have asked me, why do you believe that God has called you to missionary service?

I don't find that an easy question to answer. I've had to stop, I've had to think very hard. And I've come to one or two conclusions regarding a call on my life. And so I'd like to share these with you.

Now I intend to share these in a personal way, so I hope you understand and forgive me. Firstly, God's call on my life is an experience. And as in all Christian experiences, two things are essential to keep in mind.

First of all, God is absolutely sovereign. And second of all, I am unique. Therefore, I must not remould my call on the experience of other Christians' calls, making it therefore more spiritual and therefore more acceptable.

My call is personal to me because God is sovereign and I am unique. Secondly, God does call people to service. God has a plan for me and calls me to that. And I must respond to that call with obedience.

Indeed, I would share that God has quite definitely convicted and confronted me with His particular word to me to full-time service. And I think that that is fundamental. For if I'm to be confident in the future in any given situation, I must know that it is God who has called me and placed me and not my own human puffed-up desires.

Moreover, I think that God is concerned, more concerned to reveal His will than I am or that we are to find it. And if we're halfway willing and open for God to speak to us, I'm convinced that He will.

He's kept knocking at my door until I've been convinced of everything but the where and the when and the with whom. That's quite a lot of ifs there. But I know that my life has been called. A bit like Abraham, who was called by God to go out, not knowing where he was going.

And I wonder sometimes the problem with me and maybe with all of us is that so much of the time it's not that he's not speaking to us, rather that we're deaf to his voice. And he's been knocking so long and we've ignored it so much that our ears have become deaf to his knocking.

If God wants you, He'll let you know. And He'll convict you of that without a shadow of a doubt. Thirdly, I think a dynamic tension exists between my subjective experience of God's call and the objective confirmation of it by others, such as, in my case, my fiancée, who has an individual call to full-time service as well before I met her.

That was confirmation to me as well. My family, my pastor, my church fellowship, and of course the mission board. If all these people say, yes, we believe it's right, then that's confirmation to my mind, to my heart, that this is right.

My call must be tested and approved. As I've mentioned, God's call on me is not yet to a country or even to a situation. His call, rather, is on my life. I'd like to read out what was read out last Wednesday at the Christian service meeting by one of the speakers there.

And these two verses have meant so much to my life and have challenged me and have caused an echo to come from my life. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 For Christ's love constrains us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all have died.

And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again. His call is on my life to be given to him in full-time service. And it's all of grace and nothing of me.

Thank you for listening. I can very much echo what Stephen said 35 years ago at this very meeting. I stood in this, not this tent of course, but in the tent that was here and heard God call on my life.

No idea what it meant. And nothing happened for 18 months and then God called me to the ministry of the word of God in this country and I knew that was the result of my standing here and saying my life for you.

And in a sense that's what we're talking about today. Whatever age we are, that it's our life. And then, who knows when and where and what it might be. In a moment George Berber is going to come to bring to us the challenge of the word of God on all our lives.

We're going to sing three verses of a hymn before he does. It's either Keswick Praise, the old book 244 or it's Convention Praise 61. It's a hymn that reminds us that we must all go forth and tell. It's a hymn by James Seddon who was a pianist here for many years at the Keswick Convention.

We'll sing the first three verses now and verses four and five later on. 61 Convention Praise, 244 Keswick Praise. Verses one, two and three. This is the end of side one. The program is continued on side two.