Third Decade 3.9.1985 — George Verwer

As I was going in to my third decade of being a Christian, I was converted to Christ in March 1955, and now it's 1985. I reprinted this memo, if you look at the top, 82 and 83, and there's a little introduction.

And I said seven years ago, since I wrote this memo, I'm circulating this memo again because I feel that the points presented here are more relevant than ever before. I would appreciate you rereading this memo and praying through it.

When possible, please give me feedback on just one or two areas. I think it's so important both for those of you who are new, how many of you are going into the year program for the first time? Not summer, year program first time.

That's 80 of you. Many of our longer term people, by the way, no longer can come back here because of the expense. Others will be coming next week. Others are recovering from ten or seven intensive days.

Some of us have been in ten days of leadership meetings and training. Some in seven. Some have just been able to come to the General Council the last three days and have had to go back because these different offices have to keep going, especially things like STL.

You know, which is a ministry but also has to function as a proper business. They cannot close. The orders are piling up. Filey, one of the biggest book exhibitions we ever put on in the world, off the ships, they need help.

The Spiritual Heart of Operation Mobilization

So that's a big challenge. So many of you have not seen this before. And I'd like to just go over it together with you because I think you want to know the heartbeat of OM. A brother from a particular country shared with me today, I mainly all day have been having fellowship and discussions with various individuals.

And he said, you know, in my country, the people seem to grasp some of the OM activities, campaigns, crusades, conferences. But he said, I don't think, and he's a long term missionary, I don't think they grasp the spiritual life.

He's known OM for many years, the spiritual message. And we talked about the message of the cross, without which OM and all of its activities is worth very little. And the emphasis on real prayer and communion with God and the emphasis on spiritual life and knowing Christ and walking with Christ.

And I think that may be partly true in that man's country. And that's a country where the people don't get to these conferences. It's a new situation. And they don't know yet, too many of them, the heart of OM.

It's possible to get the periphery activities of OM, you know, track distribution, door to door work, street work, even chalkboard, open air preaching. Lots of activities and miss the heartbeat. This memo is a plea to not lose the heartbeat of what it's really all about.

So let's just look at it. I think we'll just go down to the third paragraph. I do mention in the previous paragraph, second paragraph, the work has grown almost beyond our dreams. By the way, the first ship existed when I first wrote this, not the second ship.

So we thought the work grew when the second ship hit us. You know, we went into outer space, especially OM trying to do all of this with such a very small administrative base. Because all of us were involved in preaching and evangelism, minus those faithful secretaries and a few others.

Consolidated, Spirit-Controlled Expansion

There have been enormous disappointments and setbacks. I think it's good to state that. It's not all victories, and OM's history is not all victories. At times, also, it seems that things are going out of control.

And we now have so many different leaders, programs, and countries in which we are involved. I would like to use a key phrase for these coming ten years. Consolidated, spirit-controlled expansion. We found that much more difficult than it was to write this memo.

And we could not get unity on how fast we should expand. And some felt we were going too slow, and some felt, they proved to be the majority, felt we were going too fast. And that people were getting walked on.

And the thing was getting a bit like a machine. And God brought us to the foot of the cross, and we asked Him to help us have more personal care for each individual. And all kinds of seminars and programs have gone on.

You wouldn't believe it. To try to improve in our pastoral care, in our counseling. A number of men took specialized courses in counseling. To have consolidated, spirit-controlled expansion. Growth is perhaps a better word.

We want both to expand and advance, but we truly want to be led of the Holy Spirit. This means an increase of true spirituality through the entire work. If you're in Dr. Schaeffer's book on true spirituality, I think it needs reprinting.

Dr. Schaeffer once came to this conference in the 60s, and he spoke for three solid days. We actually put a lot of it on film. We were the first people ever to film Dr. Schaeffer. It was from that that he got his vision for films.

Later became the most widely used Christian films almost in the world among Christians. True spirituality. Not extremism on one hand, not spiritual duplicity and lukewarmness on the other hand. It also involves an increase of like-mindedness.

Plus facing our failures and our weaknesses with a new dimension of faith and reality. And you know, we want to go into this conference on this kind of footing. It was my hope that this memo would go into other languages, but I don't think it ever did.

Because it's not easy to translate all this material. If you ever think that OM is not interested in the other languages, I'd like to have a personal chat with you. Because as far as I know, no movement in missionary history has pushed more material into other languages than Operation Mobilization.

In terms of quantity. In terms of variety of languages, it would have to be Wycliffe and the Bible Societies. So, you know, we believe in those other languages. And we believe that there need to be more books written in the language.

Not translations. Books written by Germans for Germany, by the French for France. And we've been involved in that as well. But this memo, maybe it got into some other languages, but I couldn't find any copies.

And this is one of the other reasons this meeting tonight is good that it's in English. OM cannot do everything. Every week a new vision comes across my desk. And I'm already known for being almost crazy for taking on too many things.

Someday I won't even be able to get into my office, which is becoming a warehouse of all the magazines and memos and books and everything. Tapes people send me from all over the world hoping that I'll take on their vision.

The latest vision I've just taken on is the vision of those unreached people's maps. That I couldn't resist, you see. I bought 500 of those maps, even though I don't have any money, much. I got some credit.

There's a field in OM called Special Projects. And sometimes a gift is given to me and rather than just put it into the general working, even though that's always needed, it's sometimes designated to a special project.

Like we have special projects among unreached people, special projects for India, special projects for the communist countries. And I have some credit in that special projects. I don't have any money, any cash.

Anyway, I got credit on 500 of those unreached people's maps. And that is a worthwhile investment to get one of those maps. They are really something. And they're out there on the literature table. OM cannot do everything.

There are many good ideas, plans and visions in which we will not be able to get involved. They wanted us to start OM Japan some years ago. I had letters coming off my desk. And I challenged this one brother.

I said, why don't you go join one of the existing missions that's already working in Japan? Praise God, that's what he's done. He's there now. And our burden is to see the total picture with all the different mission agencies and then find our place.

There are many countries asking us to begin to work. It would be easy to spread out so much that we would come apart in the middle. And that almost happened to OM. But God was gracious. And we got our act together.

We prayed together. There was repentance. There was tears. And we pressed on as one body. We must keep our main goals and emphasis constantly before us. And isn't it good in the beginning of this conference to just have some of these basic goals ahead of us?

You're going to be thinking about your own personal goals. Now, I warn you, don't become too goal-oriented. We're all different. And we approach this whole thing of aims and goals in different ways. Some people aim too high.

David Seaman's in his brilliant book, Healing for Damaged Emotions. And every copy we have here is already sold out. You can certainly borrow one. There's plenty of them around. It points out the danger of perfectionism and sometimes aiming too high.

For some of you, you're going to feel in the next couple of weeks, OM is over your head. It's just beyond you. Challenge after challenge hits you. And in seven days' time, you'll be shaking. Learn to just take it a little easy.

You know, one of the things that's so helped me here all this week, it's a very intensive week for me. For a feeble character like me, it's the toughest week of the year. And every morning I've been out jogging.

I don't jog a lot, maybe a mile, two miles. And it's just, you know, you can jog around here in this old farmland. I went by one field, it was all bulls. Thirty bulls were looking at me. Then I bumped into an Alsatian.

It's always interesting when you're jogging, it's best to stop at that point and walk. But it's so ministered to me, just jogging around these fields, down the woods, burning up some of that early morning energy.

You may say, I haven't got any early morning energy. Well, maybe you need to jog later in the day. But it's great to have some physical exercise. I'm the kind of person that needs to do physical work.

It doesn't have to be jogging, physical work. It just helps me stay in balance when there's a lot of sitting. A lot of sitting. So I thank God for His grace. And I hope we can keep these aims and goals in front of us without becoming neurotic.

Personal Holiness and Spiritual Reality

Number one, to glorify God in a life of personal holiness. Spiritual reality. This is what OM is about. Personal holiness. Purity. Honesty. Integrity. Victory. The main thing this coming week isn't geography.

It's not really, what country am I going to? One minute you feel you're going to Afghanistan. Next minute you feel you're going to India. The next minute you hear another challenge, you're sure God's leading you to Israel.

Next minute you hear a leader in the Arab world, no, better go to Jordan instead. And some people really get wound up. They sit next to somebody at the dining room. They're trying to eat a meal and the guy's laying on a heavy trip to work in the office in Moscow.

And he says, you know, isn't it providential that I'm sitting next to you here today? I think Nigel may have a full message on this. I won't go any further. Just let me say this and you underline it. I didn't have this phrase back when I wrote this memo.

Personal Evangelism and Sharing Life in Christ

Reality first, geography second. Can you say that? Let's say it. Reality first, geography second. It really helps a lot. Number two, to share this reality and life in Christ with others. Especially on a man to man basis.

Now, I didn't put all the scripture references in here because we have messages on every one of these subjects in the OM tape library and in the conferences and get all the scriptures. Maybe I should have put more scripture references.

But this, of course, is one of our main goals. To share this reality and this life in Christ with others. Especially on a man to man basis. We do a lot of other things in OM. Mass evangelism, street evangelism.

Training Men and Women for World Evangelism

But let's not forget that eyeball to eyeball, man to man contact. And for some of you that's going to mean also some serious language study. Number three, to train men and women for world evangelism. Spiritual revolution for work both overseas and at home.

In the streets and in the factories. OM from its early days taught that discipleship can be practiced at home in a job as well as overseas. And I find some OMers are using vocabulary that I stopped using years ago.

For instance, I don't easily tell people, you know, I'm living by faith. Because if they're working in a job, that might communicate. What are they, living by unbelief? It takes faith to get a job and to keep a job.

To be a Christ-like employee. That's also the life of faith. We threw this term out years ago and OM sort of picked it up. I don't like it. Faith mission. Does that mean the denomination missions that pay a bit of a salary?

They're unbelief missions. Or they're salary missions. I want to tell you some of the greatest missionaries in history have gone out from denominations with a salary. Now, of course, if we're just talking in the way of identifying a certain group of missions, we call them faith missions.

Fine. As long as we understand what we're talking about. And we define our terminology. So we're trying to train people for secular spiritual penetration as well as career missionary work. Number four.

Working With Local Churches and Planting Churches

To work with local evangelical churches. And to help evangelists to plant living churches in areas where there's little or no witness. Giving priority to Muslim and other unreached lands. Remember, this was written in 1975 before most Christians were even talking about unreached people.

That's why it would do well to go with enthusiasm to that video on the unreached people. That's why it would do well to at least study that map if you can't buy one. I'm sure every headquarters will get one.

Because this must continue to be our aim. We have so much more information today. Someone said to me, oh, I understand OM is now going into church planting. We were in church planting 15, 20 years ago.

But it is not our primary goal, especially in the summer campaigns. You see, there is a choice of strategies in OM. Try to get this. And it's up to the national leader in his country to decide what strategy of OM's choice of strategy that he's going to use.

And he has plenty of freedom. Now, Brother Issam from Jordan, I hope you'll get to speak with him. We just had a tremendous time together. He is involved in Christian camps. Now, this was never one of the original strategies of OM, Christians' camps.

But OM has been involved in that, working with other missionaries in Jordan. They're not OM camps. We're just helping. And Issam is just on the committee. He's not the guru, director, chief. But he's on a committee.

And that ministry has been greatly blessed of God in the land of Jordan. So we want to work with the local churches. And that will get us involved in a lot of things. In Nepal, we use our trucks to carry the dead out to the secret cemetery of the believers.

They have no vehicles in the Nepali churches. It's a tremendous problem to get anybody among the Hindus and the Buddhists, who all believe in, most of them believe in cremation, to get involved in this.

I don't know if they're still doing it. But last time I talked to one of the Nepali pastors. I used to live in Nepal. And it's one of the most challenging areas of unreached people that OM is involved in.

Mobilization for Evangelism and Spiritual Combat

And Wayne Taves, if you're interested in Nepal, you'll find him very easily, I'm sure. But the strategy will vary from one place to the other. Number five. To engage in mobilizations in which all these goals become reality in our own lives.

While at the same time, millions are reached with the gospel. Does that click with any of you? That was the purpose of these summer campaigns that you've just been through. Double barrel. Have you ever shot a double barrel shotgun?

Boom! I never got into it myself very much. And from the earliest days, our burden was to get young people into a mobilization in which their lives would be changed. In which they would be forced to put into practice what they've been hearing in Sunday school since they were knee-high to their cat.

Simultaneously, to reach millions of people in the process. People say, what is the goal? Is it to reach the millions? Or is it to give these people a training program? What a silly thing to argue about.

It's both. It's both. There is a sense in which Satan does not allow any training program. Satan doesn't say, all right, you get some training and learn how to completely destroy me. And in two years, we'll get together for combat.

Satan is not stupid. From the moment you are born again, you are in real combat. This is why I really believe that some of the ideas that some of the seminaries give about training are totally unbiblical and false.

The idea that you're not ready for spiritual combat, you're not ready to do this, you're not ready to do that, you must just come here and study. So most of these seminary students, and I can tell this is the truth, know very little about prayer, very little about the spiritual warfare, very little about the tactics of Satan.

So what happens by the time they graduate from these wonderful institutions, many of them are wiped out. Spiritually, they may function academically, but they are wiped out spiritually. And I just believe it's part of a con, you know, a trick of Satan to get us to think that there's a period of time in which mainly we're just preparing, we're just training.

There is no such period of time given to us. We are in the spiritual warfare. Now, don't misunderstand that. Because of our long-range program, as young Christians, our priority should be on laying a foundation, study, maybe even seminary, if God leads.

But at the same time, we must have on the whole armor, and we must be in the battle. And I will tell you, the greatest mission field, one of the greatest mission fields God ever sent me to, was Moody Bible Institute.

I went two years to Moody Bible Institute. Half the students I met were spiritually, as far as I could see, just not functioning. They would hardly ever go to a prayer meeting. They even mocked going out in personal evangelism, because it was required.

And in those days, anything required, people were against it. And it was there at Moody, Dale and I had already met. We had already been to Mexico. Boy, I tell you, a lot of things were shattered in my life.

And that's when I started to use the term revolution. I was listening to Vance Havner. He's been ministering the Word of God for 53 years. And he was saying, the greatest mission field... I just listened to this a few hours ago.

The greatest mission field in the world is the church. You may not agree. But Vance Havner has been ministering 53 years. He was sharing his testimony. Vance Havner began to preach when he was 12. A number of years later, he dried up.

He did a lot of study, a lot of academics, and he dried up. And then God. He got into the novelties, all the new novelties in presenting the gospel, and a lot of new theology. God did a deep work in his life, and he decided to turn away from the novelties and get into antiques and go back to the old-fashioned gospel.

Only God knows how many tens of thousands have come to know Christ or rededicate their lives to Christ because of Vance Havner, still preaching at around 80 years of age. Reality first, geography second.

The church, to see the church stirred. I was stunned when some people couldn't see any purpose in bringing the Logos and the Dulos back to Europe for a while. I couldn't handle this. Because to me, Europe also needs revival.

Europe needs the challenge those two ships can bring. Now they're headed away from Europe. Fine. That gives us in Europe left behind a greater responsibility. To follow up. To work for revival and renewal and reality in the church and with the church.

And one of our policies or practices we've been engaging in over all these years is to have training weekends, FFA, that dynamic work penetrating immigrants, especially from Asia, throughout the British Isles, hoping to have a new team this year in Bradford, where there are 30 ,000 Urdu-speaking Pakistanis just in Bradford, England.

A city that suffered much, by the way, where that tremendous fire took place in the stadium. And this summer they suffered from a gas leak in which people were evacuated and many people were ill. Other terrible things have happened in the needy city of Bradford.

But they have these training weekends in FFA to mobilize the church, to work with the church. Some of the biggest events in the early days of OM were training weekends. In London we'd have 1 ,000 in a training weekend, moving out across the entire city, distributing a half a million gospel tracts.

Literature Distribution and Reaching the Unreached

And I praise God that again, various training mobilization weekends and weeks are being planned. Easter in France, Easter in Germany, Easter in England, Christmas in Mexico. Number six. To distribute literature in every possible way, in connection with other forms of evangelism.

In an effort, of course, with other mission agencies, to see the entire population given at least some opportunity to know and hear the Lord Jesus Christ and the salvation He offers. You will never understand OM if you don't understand that.

So, if you want to understand what you're getting into, get to understand that. There's an enormous tension between digging in, say in one people's group, and staying there until you plant a church, as we're doing mainly in Turkey, for example, and among the Afghans, and in many, many, many other situations.

There's a great tension in that, and reaching out, not to the millions, to the hundreds of millions. But I believe one of the purposes that God has raised up OM for is to reach the hundreds of millions.

And in the number of people that we have given the gospel to, we are moving toward the 400 million mark around the world. That is perhaps one of the greatest single answers to prayer in my entire life.

It is a direct fulfillment of the vision and burden God gave us as far back as the early days at Moody and Mexico. Now, because of many, many reasons, we shifted the early vision of OM, which was emphasizing literature much more, because a bigger vision even then was training nationals, working with nationals, to turn their own nation upside down for Christ.

And that led us to make the training of nationals, and then the training of internationals, and then the kind of thing that was born in 61 and 62 when Operation Mobilization was first used as a name. And so the literature ministry became somewhat less, but it's still one of the major goals.

The ministry of STL, based in Bromley, flooding literature out across the world, the French publishing house, the publishing program based in Bombay, based in Lahore, Pakistan, many other publishing and literature programs, one based over there in Vienna, reaching those immigrants that are coming out of those communist countries in every possible way, and all kinds of other things that there's not time to talk to you about.

A Living Demonstration of Biblical Christianity

It's all part of that goal. Number seven, to be a living demonstration of New Testament biblical Christianity, not firstly in word, but in life and in practice. One of the things I like about OM is that a lot of things, we don't let them set in concrete.

This never became the seven major goals of OM. It's just part of the thinking, the foundation. There are other ways to express our goals. There's a new leaflet just published, the seven distinctives of OM.

In the latter part of the leadership manual, which most of you have, others are more than happy to have a copy if you want one. It's got to be rewritten soon, so we want to get rid of these present copies.

You'll find a section on goals and aims of OM, and there are five cassette tapes, leadership tapes, that go with that manual and that deal with those goals and aims especially. But let's move on because I want to finish this, give you time to go to that India special slide night.

Of course, such gold could be divided and subdivided and added to. Now, we're going to have to just go over this much more quickly and hope that you'll read this on your own. Someone once said, OM has got too many visions.

By the way, in OM, a definition of a vision is not, for a word, at two o 'clock at night, seeing technicolor dreams in the back of the old coach. By the way, the last trip we took in the old coach, we brought my daughter's dog, and I think he's left behind in the coach certain little insects that are now attacking me in the night.

I'm still hoping it might only be a mosquito, but pray for us in the coach, three of us living in there. It's cheaper, by the way, when you live out. If you go pitch a tent in the woods, save a few francs.

I don't know if they allow that. All right, in the light of these goals, what are some of the main visions? We stay away from things that might be good, but not our principal ministry. In this category, we include printing and publishing books.

Why did OM just start a publishing operation in every single nation? It takes an enormous effort. France was a very strong work. They had a vision for this. The Lord led that to be the exception. STL was the other exception, though.

STL started as mainly distribution, eventually was pressed into some publishing, especially these magazine books, specialized tasks. But generally, we work with other publishers, and they appreciate that very, very much.

Faith, Prayer, and Financial Dependence

We don't like to duplicate what other people are already doing. There's so much to be done. Then we become stronger than ever on teaching people the life of faith and prayer, teaching young people dependence upon God.

Although faith for finance is only one aspect of the life of faith, I'm glad we were emphasizing that even ten years ago, in a work like this, it is very important. Just as a man who's working in the job, it is very important that he arrive on time, that he do his job well.

Then he will get his salary. So with us, we're not saying we're better than him, but we are saying that if we don't know how to release finance through prayer, it's just not going to work. Please understand that OM is not underwritten.

Do you know what that means? There is no guaranteed money. There is no money to any great degree sitting somewhere. You know how some groups invest money and you live off the interest. Now, if some prayer partner wanted to put some money in the bank and give us the interest, we're not against that.

But we're not doing it or we don't have it. And it's something very important for you to understand that praying doesn't mean we don't believe, and living by faith, trusting God, praying, whatever you want to call it, doesn't mean we don't believe in giving people information.

We have always been very strong on giving people information. We were always very, very hyper-conservative to not give financial information unless people asked. This was discussed in the last couple of years at our general council until we were blue in the face.

And finally this year, the Lord has given us a consensus, a unity, that in a careful way, in certain cases, we can mention financial information. We already started that a year or two ago when we sent that little leaflet to your church so they can know, because the churches have strongly criticized OM for certain aspects of our financial communication.

And in the coming year, we hope we can be a little bit more down to earth in communicating the facts, especially to your churches. Yet more about that at some other time. But we want to teach people a way of living and moving and walking by faith, whether they're in Christian ministry or back on the farm.

Simplicity, Organization, and Dependence on God

Number three, we must continue to maintain personal simplicity of lifestyle, also as much fugality as possible in the work. While desiring proper organization, we must run from organizationalism. We must remain more dependent on God and His main method, prayer.

You still believe in that? You won't easily grasp that because naturally, OM seems so big. And when you first come, you cannot grasp all that we are trying to organize. You will also see wastage. Some of you are very conservative with money.

You will see people who spend more money. And you will have people here who wouldn't feel maybe free to go down and spend 90 francs or what on some fritz down on the corner stall. And there'd be other people that would feel completely happy.

Hilarious about doing that. I'm glad we have that in Operation Mobilization. Because otherwise I think the thing might become something of a cult. Now, there's no easy road. But let's beware of dragging into OM, not spiritual principles, brothers and sisters, our own psychological hang-ups from childhood.

Because maybe your father never gave you a nickel or any money to buy an ice cream cone. And somehow you developed the idea that that was being spiritual. I almost did. There will be wastage. Different OM leaders live in different size houses.

They drive different kinds of cars. Almost all of them are fairly old and inexpensive. There may be an occasional exception when someone is given a little better car. Is that sinful to be given a little better car for God's work?

Do God's servants always have to drive around in something that someone else scrapped? I find that God works in many different ways. People ask why we don't have more new cars then. And with us it's a simple matter of priorities, that when we get extra money and God does give us money, we have a set of priorities.

One, the Word of God. Most people don't have that. To the unreached people, to the millions that have never heard. Number two, the support of an army of national workers as we have in India. Number three, well, I don't want to get into ten different ways that we're using God's money to evangelize films and literature and whatever else.

Quality Over Size and Personal Care

Number four, we must not become too big and impersonal. We should not measure by size, but be concerned about quality. Some of your teams, it's good to see a few leaders here tonight, they're not going to be as big as you're dreaming.

The key, as you know from years of experience, it's not the size of your team, it's quality. I have a secretary right now named Vera. She can do the work of three people. That proves quality. She only eats and needs the support of one person.

She's a single woman, very little to keep her going. Quality. Now, of course, that takes time. Vera's been on a limb ten, fifteen years. I phoned her today. She had to fly home because her sister is very ill.

My prayer for Vera's sister is unbelievable. Migraine headaches have just been top hospitals. They can't figure anything out. She returns home with these terrible headaches. Vera Zabramsky's sister in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Witnessing, Local Churches, and Practical Sacrifice

Well, I don't know. It takes too long to go in depth on each one of these points. But I hope you'll read point four. Point five, we must not slack off in the work of witnessing man to man, door to door.

Every believer is a witness. We don't all have the gift of evangelism, but every believer is a witness. Number six, we must stay in tune with the local churches and the church as a whole. Sometimes shortcuts I mention here can prove to be dead-end streets.

Some young people say, you know, I'm going to mobilize and get my church to stand with me. I'm going home for three weeks. Well, you might get a little disappointed. Some of you, maybe before you go this year, you'll only get a week or two home.

But if you're going to be a longer-term missionary, you may have to spend a half a year or a year at home somewhere, building up that relationship with the church. And OM, that's not, you know, just some kind of secondary activity.

As soon as I leave this conference, I get a week or so at home, and my wife and I are off for an intensive series of four-week meetings in Canada, churches, Bible colleges. And a lot of my work is not within OM.

It's in the churches. OM is involved in depth with about 1 ,000 churches. And that is as key in OM's policy and strategy as all of our great praying, brothers and sisters, because God uses the church.

In December, I'll be going right around the world, ministering in the Gulf and in Singapore and Malaysia and Australia and New Zealand and on to Mexico and where else. I was talking to Raymond Koh, the leader of the work in Malaysia.

He said, look, what title should we give to your meeting among Christian leaders in Malaysia? The Lord just brought this to mind. He wrote it down. The local church and world evangelism. So that, of course, is often the title when I speak to Christian leaders.

Readiness for Hardship and Honesty

Number seven, we must be ready to take up a part-time job in order to support ourselves. We must be ready to move back into more crowded and uncomfortable accommodations. You know, the tendency of man is, and we're all human, including in OM, is we like a little bit of better facility.

Even my own living facility, which has always been unbelievably small and usually a community, four families living in one, you know, long old house somewhere. Then we changed and as our children became teenagers, we finally got sort of a bit on our own, which we recommend when you have teenagers.

But, you know, God may give us a little better facility. There's nothing wrong with that. But we need to be ready. We need to be ready. And I tell you, next year, we may not have this conference center any longer.

They've now put a limit, number of people that we can bring here, and it's way short of what we can do. And I tell you, we are now cast upon God again, and the years of factories and tents and warehouses is not over.

I remember having this September conference once in one medium-sized church, and that wasn't so many years ago, in London. Everybody staying out in homes and churches and basements. No leader had an office.