The Way Forward Ilm 1998 South Africa — George Verwer

1997 has been a very, very exciting year. I'm not going to go into detail, there's not time, but I think we should before we're just totally swamped in 98. And the first time together in 98, thank God for what he did last year.

The great events here in South Africa, the great events in your country, it's impossible. I don't know if you can imagine how many hours a day I spend reading and praying. And it's impossible to keep up with what God is doing, even through OM, and we are only a tiny part of God's great work.

I think I pray for almost every one of you in this room, some of you regularly. I go through thousands, literally thousands of emails and prayer letters in the course of every few months. And I feel very linked with you and your work, and I want to thank you for your faithfulness.

You may not think you're doing that well, I often don't think I'm doing that well, but I give thanks to God for each one of you, including those that I'm only getting to meet here for the first time. I thank God that OM is a team-led movement.

I'm only a part of that team. And that's great. This has been one of the best years for ICT. I speak especially for Forrest Hill, though I believe it's been a great year for Carlisle. Because we finally, after many years, have moved into a more team-led situation where I meet with my four executives, we don't really like that word, almost every single week.

None of us have the gifts to lead that complicated, challenging team. Chaco, Mary Brinkley, John Wilkins, and Pam, our chief financial person, usually sits in. Ron Goodenough, our chief counselor, usually sits in.

And we don't feel we're the greatest leaders on the team. The far better leaders aren't in those meetings. We're trying to serve them. But God has been doing something new there in Forrest Hill, and as you know, also giving us what is almost like a new building in an amazing way there.

At 420 meetings in 1997, my efforts to cut back were not so successful. But I'm already way ahead this year in cutting back because I'm often more motivated to talk to one person on the telephone than I am to speak maybe to a hundred, perhaps because I've been taking those kind of meetings for the last 40-some years.

But I've been having some new kinds of phone calls with very amazing results, really, more in the past decade. Thank you for your prayers. My wife and I are still a team. We just had our 38th wedding anniversary.

We have four grandchildren. Charlie's birthday was yesterday. If you didn't get our family letter, forgive us. My wife is the one behind that. Not that you didn't get it, but in putting it together. A lot of people, I don't think, realize that my wife is completely full-time, plus in the actual work of OM.

We know not every woman has that privilege. She keeps a database fully up-to-date of 9 ,500 addresses, emails, phone numbers that continually change. She's more likely to go somewhere without me than without her computer.

This has been a little bit of cause of tension. But God has overruled. We pushed a few buttons some weeks ago just to see how many former OMers. We have 1 ,600 former OMers on our own. This is just our own personal mailing list.

One of our commitments as we go forward is to our former OMers. I'm sure all of you are wondering what I have in this bag. I want to keep the book reviews minimal because we're lacking time. But if I didn't give any, some of you would think that I were ill.

Literature, Grace, and the Mission of OM

I want to say that South Africa is one of the most proactive countries in the whole of the OM world for literature. They're also the most proactive country that I know of in the Acts 13 vision. They even have on the literature table, I think it's a South African edition of the leaflet, and the questions and answers that go with that, in case any of you are new and you haven't seen that.

Acts 13, Breakthrough 2000, certainly, to be honest, not taking off like one would dream, but it is encouraging. And it's not something that we ever plan to sort of finish at the year 2000. Something like this may go very slow for a while and then just have liftoff as different shakers and movers take hold of that simple concept.

Here's a great book you may want to pick up. I love this kind of book, The Ten Top Mistakes That Leaders Make. I learn so much when I read these kind of books. Here's one of the books that might bring some balance to Grace Awakening.

Some of you feel Grace Awakening is not totally in balance. The Discipline of Grace by a leader of the Navigators Movement. Perhaps a little more emphasis on discipline. Let's see if you can all read together out loud what it says on my T-shirt.

Can you read that together? One, two, three. Amen. That's a good sub-theme for tonight, isn't it? I've just come, actually, in from Minneapolis, speaking to 500 pastors. One of the more unusual minister meetings in my life, really.

It's one of the few meetings when I had to answer the tough question, are you a Calvinist? John Piper wrote to me this long letter. He's from Bethlehem Baptist Church. This is their T-shirt. I don't even know where I got it.

Had it for one or two years, I think. But he wrote to me. I think he may have been a little embarrassed by that question, but he said these men were mainly of the Reformed Elk. He wanted to know if I was Reformed, like other friends of mine.

He quoted and mentioned Greg Livingstone. I guess I didn't realize that about Greg. But I finally told him on the phone during the interview that I was Reformed, but I had a strong Arminian streak. I didn't hear for a long time, but I did eventually get invited.

It was a very challenging time. I think we'll be seeing a lot more of John Piper. Frontier has already had him as their main speaker there in De Brogne just before we rolled in one year. This is his book that I've been especially pushing since Urbana.

It's there on the table. Let the Nations Be Glad, The Supremacy of God in Missions. This is my theme. In some ways, I'm probably not worthy to speak on that theme. But this is where my heart is. This was the really key book for me at the end of 1997.

I hope that that theme will run not just through this conference, but through the whole of OM. Because it just helps us. I think our morning prayer time was along that line to really get our priorities right.

There's another interesting book, Making Christ Known. It's a summary of all the various documents. Lausanne document. All kinds of documents that have come out of the Evangelical Church over the past decades.

Put together by John Stott. It's certainly a book you'll want to have in your library as in the real way OM. And also Jokowi 82 ,000 builds on that. I've had more feedback last year from giving away this book than any other book.

And I gave away a lot more of other books. But this is the one that brought me the big feedback. The autobiography of Billy Graham. And it came out in paperback this week. But we've got this hardback.

And believe me, somebody is losing money every time you sell this at half price. And I hardly think it's South Africa. So I would urge you to take advantage of this. And then when you get your paperback, you can give this away.

If you need some suggestions as to who you should give this kind of book to, you could perhaps contact Peter Maiden or Mike Light or someone else in the know on these things. But I have to confess I have not finished it.

What I have read of it is very, very powerful. Because this man in many ways is an ordinary apple pie American who made lots of mistakes. He's highly esteemed now. But I will tell you, he probably has more arrows in his back than maybe all of us combined in this room.

It's what he went through, especially in 1957. So I look at these books and I get excited. We have been greatly blessed in OM, receiving books at very low prices. My book for 1998, I don't even have a copy left.

When Good Men Are Tempted by Bill Perkins, the father of a young man just back from OM. I think Gary Dean's part of OM. And I met him in the airport in Portland. He gave me this book. And I knew as I started to read it, the most raw, straight to the gut book for men on the subject of sex that I've seen in quite a while.

I offered it on the radio free the other day at Moody. And I think Tyrone had 250 phone calls in 24 hours. They had 40 on their answering machine. I want to publicly apologize for that. Not giving enough warning.

I did emphasize to write in. I don't know why all these people phoned in, in the land of telephones. Emails came in from Hong Kong and other places requesting When Good Men Are Tempted. And I managed to have a phone call with a publisher shortly before this.

It's a $12 book, which does not warm my heart. And I pulled off a deal to get 5 ,000 copies at $1 .33. I would have preferred a dollar, but we have to be willing to compromise in this kind of ministry.

Other books have been coming to us free of charge. There's one of them, the CEV, full Bible called The Promise. We've been given a gift of 40 ,000 copies. If it's worth $10 each, figure the value of that gift.

It cannot be distributed in the United States or the UK. We're supposed to be a little careful in terms of bookshops. It's more for everything, every other kind of distribution. And if you let your creative juices flow and send an email to Vera or Don Velboom, who I don't think has been able to arrive yet, all we ask you to do is pay a little bit of the free.

We're even willing to negotiate on that. About that time, I was trying to negotiate to get copies of this book. This is another outstanding book that came into my hands because the author phoned me to use a quotation from one of my books.

This is a Promise Keeper's book. I told him it was not for me to give permission to use this because I got it from someone else, and I don't know who that was. But it's clear in my book that it's not me.

But in this amazing book, that song about backward Christian soldiers fleeing from the fight now is written by George Brewer. Peter Conlon, do you know who wrote that? Did you write that? We can try to settle out of court.

When I negotiated to get copies of this, it was in early stages. When I found out it was $17 or $18 a copy, since I'm always involved in many hundreds of projects, I dropped it just to get it for a while.

And in this quantity of literature we recently were given free were over 10 ,000 copies of this amazing book, $17 hardback book, which will be focused on in my meeting tonight. It's my prayer that everybody in the future that comes near an OM person anywhere on the planet will get a free book.

I know that's a dream. Some of you may not like the way that sounds. But I believe if God has been so gracious to us in supplying literature at the most incredible prices and sometimes free, should we not try to bless the body of Christ by giving books as well as selling them and giving them for a donation?

At my book tables now, the first book generally is always free and the amount of money coming in has continued to climb. And the amount of literature is three to four times as much as my old-fashioned pre-paradigm shift book tables.

Truth, Love, and Unity in the Gospel

Turn with me now in your Bibles. I have a number of scriptures. I have so many notes up here. I really need your patience. But I want you to turn in your Bibles first of all to John 14, 6, or maybe I could just quote that.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me. We're especially going to be talking about truth, love, and unity. Because of the tremendous emphasis on love and grace in previous years and messages all of you have, I'm mainly going to be focusing on truth and unity.

Let's look at 1 John 2, 18. I've got my Spanish-English New Testament here. Let's just try to find that real quick. I just let my marker slip out of the page. 1 John 2, 18. There are so many verses on the subject of truth.

I had difficulty making a choice. My children, the end is near. You were told that the enemy of Christ would come. And now many enemies of Christ have already appeared. This is 2 ,000 years ago. Approximately many enemies of Christ had already appeared.

By the way, in my life this is a neglected scripture. I've never spoken on this scripture that I can remember. And so we know that the end is near. These people really did not belong to our fellowship.

And that is why they left us. If they had belonged to our fellowship, they would have stayed with us. But they left. So that it might be clear that none of them really belonged to us. But you have had the Holy Spirit poured out on you by Christ.

That's beautiful, isn't it? And so all of you know the truth. I write you then, not because you do not know the truth. Instead, it is because you do know it. And you also know that no lie ever comes from the truth.

Who then is the liar? It is anyone who says that Jesus is not the Messiah. Such a person is the enemy of Christ. He rejects both the Father and the Son. For whoever rejects the Son rejects also the Father.

Whoever accepts the Son has the Father also. Be sure then to keep in your hearts the message you heard from the beginning. If you keep that message, then you will always live in union with the Son and the Father.

And this is what Christ Himself promised to give us eternal life. I am writing this to you about those who are trying to deceive you. And I feel, and I'm sure most of you agree, that there are many, many forces of darkness that are trying to bring deception into the body of Christ.

I think one of the hardest things for the average Christian today is to accept unpleasant verses. To be quite honest, I found the video quite unpleasant. It's very hard for me to think of what's going on in my human way of thinking that this is some kind of judgment on the people of Afghanistan.

And believe me, if you talk to some people that way, you will get in deep difficulty. And sometimes things like this, in discernment, we keep them in our hearts and share them carefully. You may not even believe that that which was portrayed in the video is true.

God's Judgment, Wrath, and the Problem of Unbelief

But certainly I know in my life I have tried to run away from the message concerning the judgment of God. I have been deeply confused at times by passages concerning God's judgment in the Old Testament.

But I don't believe we can believe the Bible is God's Word and not accept that the judgment factor, the wrath of God, all of that side of things which we don't hear many messages about, including hell and eternal separation from God, is clearly in His Word.

Now, I know that's hard. Maybe it isn't hard for you. But I believe that's what the Word of God teaches. Not necessarily this particular situation about Afghanistan, but certainly that is a real possibility.

Some things in the Word of God that show horrendous judgment upon people in this world don't seem to be possibilities. They are clearly recorded in God's Word. I personally believe there is no other name given among men whereby anybody in this world can be saved.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the Bible's all wrong. Then we surely have a major problem in Operation Mobilization. It makes our other problems look fairly insignificant. I say this because I believe as we move into a new millennium and face the challenges of a new millennium that one of the fiery darts that will continue to hit the Church and therefore hit us is the fiery dart of unbelief which is combined with the tendency to compromise concerning the truth of God's Word.

And I've been amazed in my ten visits to the United States in 1997 nine or ten of the tremendous infiltration into the Church by New Age philosophy, by liberalism. We used to fight against liberalism and now we have liberalism often among evangelical people and we often find that in our desire for unity it is no longer even acceptable to talk about doctrine in certain circles in which we have many friends and supporters.

This is, I guess, one of the reasons I'm pushing this Promise Keepers book which is a bit of a paradox because they're one of the main groups that's being criticized for doctrinal compromise. I'm a great defender of the Promise Keepers because as a movement of that kind I don't believe they can fine-tune doctrine neither to the degree of a local church or to the degree of a missions movement a church-planting missions movement like us.

So their policy probably about Catholics won't be the same as ours their policy about other things may not be the same as ours but they are our brothers and sisters. It is basically an evangelical movement.

Most of you have heard my tape about Promise Keepers and this book is clearly an evangelical book. Some of you who read things more carefully be sure to send me something you find that you feel is not accurate and the plea of Glenn Wagner, the author of this book is not basic old-fashioned ecumenicalism.

It is unity, it is relational unity brothers and sisters loving one another and we've learned, I think, already from Charles Swindoll and his brilliant book something that we already taught ourselves that that unity has to be in the midst of diversity.

Christian Unity and the Danger of Friendly Fire

I want to now read something from this book The Awesome Power of Shared Belief realizing this is not perhaps totally culturally appropriate not necessarily for South Africa but other cultures represented here.

It goes back to the war in the Gulf. It goes back to a story about an L .A .V. and when I read that I wondered what that was. It's a light armored vehicle. It's a vehicle like a tank but much lighter and cruises across the desert at 50 miles an hour.

If you remember over the years I don't read much out of books I usually give you a quote but bear with me to read this. It happened during the war in the Persian or Arabian Gulf. It was the night of January 29th, 1991 in Saudi Arabia.

Lance Corporal Ron Tull was part of the 8-man crew that manned a light armored vehicle L .A .V. in Delta Company nothing to do with Delta Airlines 12 other L .A .V .s were a part of this light armored infantry group that established a camp 37 miles west of Kafi a coastal town Kafji about 10 p .m.

The silence of the desert was rudely interrupted by an excited voice over the radio L .A .I. L .A .I. this is recon 30 Iraqi tanks are coming over the berm. Corporal Tull better known to his friends as Tully knew this was it.

He and his crew climbed into the L .A .V. and Tully settled in behind the wheel. His assignment was to keep vehicle in formation avoid collision with other L .A .V .s and watch out for tanks. What made this job especially challenging was that it was to be accomplished.

While the L .A .V. was speeding across the desert at a clip of 50 miles an hour suddenly a missile from another L .A .V. exploded into an Iraqi tank 30 yards to the left. Just put yourself in that situation.

Just moments later a second tank was hit 70 yards ahead. Fighting this close was unnerving but Tully's crew swallowed hard and continued to move on with their mission. No one in Tully's L .A .V. saw the USA Air Force A -10 fighter swoop out of the sky behind them in an attack dive.

The pilot aimed a heat seeking missile at an Iraqi tank but heat radiating from the L .A .V. guns and rear exhaust confused the missile's guidance system. It altered course abruptly and fired into the left rear of Tully's L .A .V.

The explosion blew the gun turret off and threw the L .A .V. into the air like a tin can hit with a shotgun blast. Tully felt bomb fragments penetrate his back. The force of the explosion slammed him into the steering wheel and then throwing him out of the vehicle into the desert sand his face black with burns his back fractured in three places.

Tully miraculously stumbled 15 yards from the vehicle before collapsing face down in the sand. When he came to in the hospital he was informed that he was the only one of his crew to survive. The other seven marines in the rear of the L .A .V. were killed instantly by their own Conrads.

It's called friendly. The body of Christ is in tremendous pain in the world today people in some places are even leaving the church by the thousands and some becoming agnostics including an interesting number of ministers theological students and even former missionaries.

The church is suffering in many ways and we don't have time to go into detail. But one of the things I think that hurts us the most as we work very closely with the churches and much of my work is with the churches is what they call in this book friendly fire.

It has a number of other names that are less friendly. It happened a number of times in the gulf war perhaps happened in every war. As I try to think on the subject of unity the future of O .M. I have this heart cry that somehow we would beware of shooting one another.

I could give you specific examples of where negative things stated by a brother or a sister in O .M. have been an enormous hindrance to another brother or his field or his ministry gossip can go around the O .M. world almost as fast as an email.

We now have a number of books on the subject of shooting the wounded. So I'm not speaking, you know something just totally original. We're all vulnerable we're all weak and I'm sure I at times have engaged in friendly fire without realizing it trying to point out some truth trying to defend some situation.

I said something negative maybe about a field about a brother or a sister and that has been used by the devil as a hindrance. Maybe someone else picked that up. I don't know the specific case and decided not to go to that field on the basis of that generalization that I may have made that friendly fire that I may have engaged in brothers and sisters we are hurting one another in this movement.

If you don't believe that ever happens I'd be happy to receive your correspondence. I'm not interested in giving a bunch of you know, details the spirit of God has to convict us. But as we go forward we realize with the movement now this size with quite a few of us moving into our senior years and eventually moving out of our leadership people outside of OM.

I talked to many of them. They will tell us your more difficult days are ahead. Someone came to me at Prairie Bible Institute which has gone through tremendous struggle in their period of transition and they sort of challenged me to make sure I have my successor in place and Peter Maiden's successor in place.

People even asked me. People outside of the OM asked more bold questions often than people inside OM. As we face the next decade it's going to take everything we have from God's Word and the power of the Holy Spirit to maintain our unity.

And I think of that exhortation to maintain our unity in the bond of peace. We are committed to truth. There are many other verses from 2 John and from the book of Jude I wanted to read encouraging us to defend the faith to stick to the truth.

Some people no longer want to be called evangelicals. It's quite interesting because at the same time many other people including many people who have been called charismatic want to be called charismatic evangelicals.

Some of you may be charismatic evangelicals. Some of you may not like that term but we are all in this movement just for the sake of some degree of definition evangelicals. We believe the Bible is God's Word.

We believe the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. There are situations that I'm in where I don't use the word evangelical in the prayer movement that's behind the prayer breakfast. They tend to always just talk about Jesus.

I'm still wrestling to figure out this movement but Doug Coe, one of the founders was one of the very first speakers at one of the conferences similar to this in 1961 in Madrid, Spain. Doug Coe I'm sure could see how we were the kind of movement with our extremism that could get into tangents.

And he gave a message so that's a long time ago 1961 that I'll never forget he said focus on the Lord Jesus. Focus on the Lord Jesus. I believe that should be our focus. But at the same time if someone tries to emphasize that to the degree that we have to leave our other precious and major truths of God's Word then I cannot accept that though.

I'll be happy to love him or her as a brother if you study the history of O .M. I brought some old tapes with me not to give away. We don't have many got these put together in an album by my old friend John Wright.

Tapes for leaders. I think many of you have seen these Hans Strom leading a small team. I listened to that recently. This is all vintage from the 70's pitfalls of leaders. That's by me. Personality conflict.

George Miley. Somehow John Wright seemed to put the rest of the tapes by me. But there's another series in which you get a wider range of speakers. If you'd like one of those vintage leadership series requested by email to Vera or maybe a big piece of paper.

Maintaining Unity Through Leadership and Structure

I think one of the things that marked our movement from the earliest days until now is the emphasis on love and unity. Always in our conferences superseded emphasis on evangelism even prayer discipline many other things that we became known for.

In fact in the very first conference for the summer campaign of people going into Mexico 1960 a few months after Dreena and I were married Greg Livingstone was just passing through every night. Many of you have heard this I say it again every night of that conference we spoke only about the fruit of OM.

And sometimes when people say off the wall things about the early days of OM and there are off the wall things you might remind them that love was always our greatest aim. And I believe that's one of the reasons we have held together for 40 some years.

In fact I think in the original orientation series something I've been listening to lately as part of the 40th anniversary I didn't quite get through it and listening to my own voice was almost like listening to another person because they are very very old.

But it is amazing the strong emphasis on unity. We sort of take this for granted in OM this movement would have split. We've dealt with many potential earthquakes in this movement over these 40 years that could have split Dale and I could have split.

We were close to it at one point. But this emphasis on unity combined with brokenness combined with the mercy of God and the grace of God kept us together. And I hope that as we go into a new millennium with far more people far more complexity far more problems let's be honest friends we are going to have to work at maintaining the unity.

It will not come just through nice prayer meetings it will not come just through an occasional time of fellowship with a brother and a prayer. We will have to work harder on unity in the next 10 years than in the previous 10 years.

The OM that exists today is not the OM of the 60s or the 70s. The OM today is more the OM of the 80s the 90s and of course with roots going back. And so when I defend certain things or speak about certain things I'm not speaking about the original George Verwer OM that's easier for me actually I'm speaking about the consensus OM.

I'm speaking in the light of the policy manual that you put together and that I believe you should attempt to follow. I'm now part of the OM that belongs to the general council not to you not to me not to your little nationalistic group whatever flag you may fly but belongs to the general council the people.

The OM in the 80s became a movement of people and the ordinary person who is just as important as any of you. And may God forgive us as leaders of our arrogance because sometimes we have been arrogant and I at times have been arrogant.

May God forgive me. There's outward arrogance and there's very subtle arrogance but whatever it's never from God. And in an amazing way God gave us unity in intensive long meetings to put together a policy manual which of course will continue to be changed and ratified but by the people of the movement as complicated as that may be.

When we think of unity we tend to think of unity between brothers and sisters unity between one team and the other and unity on a personal level. But I wanted to attempt to talk about something a little bit different that I hope will help continue to lay the foundation for the future.

And I must be honest that for the first time in my life I'm speaking mainly thinking of the day when I no longer will hold this leadership position. I don't know when that is. Maybe Lord can take me at any time.

And we have written into our notes what to do. Area leaders brought this into our discussion. What do we do when Burwer goes. What do we do when Maiden and Burwer go together. We ended up in the same plane with Hicks the twin hits the two Hicks.

This was an exciting flight. All the Americans got bumped up to business class. Peter Maiden was in the smoking department. He eventually got out of that but he couldn't sit with his own wife. I think Pam was back in there sucking up smoke.

My wife and I were in discount seats. We were mighty happy. I'd rather be with my wife in the economy class than in the business class as a lonely bachelor any day. But that was an exciting flight. We're so thrilled.

They got upgraded. They even let me come up there and feel the air. But I wanted to let them get on and watch the film so I didn't bother them. So this message tonight is a little unusual for me. And if there's some Burwer straw in it you'll forgive me.

Because I'm finding my way. But I have so many people talking to me about this. Most of you know Dale Roton is a lot older than me and just became 60 a few days ago. And yes July 3rd is my day. They send all contributions to special projects.

They'll be matched. But people outside of OM including godly people including donors they want to know what are we going to do. Is Burwer going to do a Billy Graham. He's still running the Billy Graham organization at 79.

Since I esteem him since I converted through him since he's one of my members mentors. I've wrestled a few things and I just want to say with all my heart I am not going to lead Operation Mobilization at that age or anything near that age.

We are a totally different movement from the Billy Graham association and I know others that have hung on and Billy Graham I'm sure does it in a very gracious way and he delegates. But I felt and I've shared this with the area leaders that most of us should consider serious change in ministry at least when we get to what is the retirement age in most countries somewhere in the mid 60's.

We know that's changing. We know in India we got that miracle number 59. So I guess tonight if I were an Indian I'd have to give in my resignation but they'd open up a new ministry for me tomorrow. We're not talking about necessarily leaving OM though some will prefer to do that.

That would not be my choice but I do believe God wants us to think and plan ahead. I believe we not only should have team leadership on the running levels of OM teams fields but I believe we have put together without realizing it a structure of team leaders on an international level.

Let me introduce them to you. You probably already know them. The first one I'd like to introduce to you is Mr. and Mrs. board member. Mr. and Mrs. board member will have to play a more increasing role in the movement.

I would challenge you to get your board in place in your country unless you have a special situation of which there are plenty. So you contextualize what I say. Hey, into your situation. I don't think the history of OM.

OM's boards have properly been told. I wish I had time to tell you the movement was born in 57. By 58 we had a fairly solid board in position starting to move certainly in control of the money that I was responsible to.

By 1958 within three months after arriving in Britain we had perhaps an even more disciplined committed board in place in the British Isles that I was subject to. Some of them are with us today to this day.

Well, Valgrave came just a few months later but very early days. Mr. Dally came also in the very early days. I think the original ones have gone on to be with the Lord except Mr. Steele. I can remember the very moment when these men from Manchester challenged me to get my act together and get a board more time.

Probably of you as a field leader needs to be given to board members but many people would say that you are not the one that should actually exclusively choose them. That itself must be really a board decision.

You can recommend but I would urge field leaders not to be heavy handed in just recommending their personal friends into the board and to even be willing to have on the board people who have the courage to disagree with you at the same time.

Brothers and sisters I would beg of you to try to get board members men or women. We've had both from the earliest days in Canada. Men or women who understand something of the ethos of what this movement is about.

Our greatest blessing can come from godly board members. But greatest problems can also come from board members who may not believe the Bible is God's word who may be universalists or masons. We cannot just bring anybody because they look nice or they have something to contribute into our boards.