How Will I Respond Tv — George Verwer

I have a real burden for this session that somehow this could be very, very practical. I know you've had a lot of ministry and you'll continue to have ministry. I hope that last session was also somewhat practical.

Multiplication Through Visionary Missions Mobilization

But I just believe that if we could capture what it is to be a visionary and missions mobilizer, that potential of even a small number of us like this is without limit. Because God's method is multiplication.

At the same time, we must not be naive that multiplication is just going to happen automatically with the general kind of half-hearted action we get these days so often. I'd like you to turn with me in your Bible to 2 Timothy, chapter 2.

I always appreciate getting cards. And I hope that if you have a card, a prayer card or a card with your address on it, you could pass it on to me. It would have been worth coming here just to meet my brother Franca from Serbia.

Apparently we did meet or he heard me preach in Chicago at Moody many, many years ago and now he's there in that tremendous mission field. I hope you meet him and pray for Serbia. So many people in the world reject Serbia because of the war.

As God's people, we're not into that. We're into the Love Serbian movement. We're into the Love All People movement. And it's just exciting to have a conference like this with people here from these other countries.

And I think if God's people had a little more discernment, we'd have a lot more here to meet these people. But let's move with what God has given and then he'll give more in due course, right? 2 Timothy chapter 2.

I know this is familiar, Graham, but I'm going to read it anyway. Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.

Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus. It's powerful, isn't it? Of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth and tangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

God has called us to be soldiers of Jesus Christ. I know that terminology is no longer popular. Actually, I think it was the last time I was preaching at Cambridge University. I spoke in that famous round church on the Sunday morning and a lady was upset with my message.

I think I got a little bit loud and some of the Anglicans don't like volume. I got this note, thank you very much for ministering here, but you don't need to shout. We Anglicans are not deaf. It actually said that, the note.

In my experience of 32 years ministering among Anglicans, quite a few of them do at least behave as if they're deaf, especially when it comes to world missions. Then I had another note from that meeting.

I have this natural ability to offend people. The other note was, why are you using military terminology? This is not acceptable in the church. What am I going to do with my Bible? We are soldiers of Jesus Christ.

That doesn't mean we carry guns and shoot people. It means we're disciplined, it means we're committed, it means we're on the attack. The Bible talks about spiritual warfare. The Bible in Ephesians 6 talks about armor, put on the whole armor of God.

Every comparison like that, of course, has its limitations. We're not like secular soldiers in every way. We're not going to put you in tanks after the meeting and send you in the first tank through the tunnel to Europe.

But the part of this passage that I wanted to emphasize to launch this sort of practical training session about how we respond to this challenge is verse 2. Things that thou hast heard from me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

Taking the Gospel and Missions Vision to Ordinary Christians

Now we're going to learn at the end of this week, and a lot of work has gone into this conference. A lot of work. I haven't done anything hardly until this morning. I've announced it and prayed. And a lot of work has gone into this.

But we're going to learn, I think we've learned through this, the average Christian does not go to missions conferences. So if we're going to see this vision explode, we've got to take it to them. We've got to take it to them.

Now we said the same thing in terms of evangelism. The average British person is not queuing up to get into church on Sunday morning to be saved. Believe it or not, they are queuing up to get on the golf courses.

I took up golf. I mean, it really shocked people when I took up golf, because I used to make all these remarks about golfers, and that was bad because my spiritual father, Billy Graham, was a golfer. Anyway, I was told that I was going to come into a midlife crisis.

There was this book, Midlife Crisis. I was feeling great until I started to read this book. All the terrible things that were going to happen to me. And so I took up this midlife sport, golf. And I'm amazed at the number of people in this country who play golf and worship this sport.

It's amazing. The number of golf courses within 25 miles of here is just unbelievable. This is one of the only countries in Europe where the poor man, by the way, can play golf. If you go at 3 in the afternoon, you get a twilight fee.

That's what I like to go, 3 or 4, twilight fee. It's just getting dark. And jog from hole to hole, which is upsetting to other golfers. But at least you can get the whole thing done in less than an hour.

It's sort of a new kind of a sport. So if we're going to reach people with the gospel, we've got to take it to them. We've got to take it to them. The streets, the highways, the hedges, and modern communication, television.

Some of you right now are on television. We need to cry out to God for more of the gospel to get into television, to get into radio, good quality contextualized material. Not just some, you know, American banging his American Texas drum to a tune that nobody else in the rest of the world can understand what the tune is, much less dance to it, speaking figuratively.

And as we think about world missions, this vision we have to reach all of Europe with the gospel, we have got to realize we have to take the message to them. So this is my plea, that we will respond to the challenge of this morning and other challenges by becoming committed missions mobilizers.

Now some of you already are, and I know I'm preaching to the converted. But let me give my own testimony. I found that God in the last couple of years has wanted to improve me, change me and improve me on the points where other people rated me very highly.

I'm not good at rating myself. And I always emphasize I got to work on my weak points, because I have plenty of them. So that's full time, working on my weak points. But in the recent years, I guess I didn't totally abandon it, but in recent years I felt the burden to work on my strong points to improve every area, every area of my life by the grace of God.

Sometimes it's a very slow process. And in our own fellowship, we are in the midst, we're just coming to the end of it, of one year of what's called strategic thinking, strategic planning, to attempt to improve every aspect of our ministry across the world.

It's a very hard process. Some of the old timers, they especially don't like it. You and I know one of the things that's hindering what the Holy Spirit is wanting to do in the church is so often tradition.

One of my favorite non-Christian films is Fiddler on the Roof. Tradition! Tradition! I can't quite sing like that guy. But oh, how our hearts break. How our hearts break when we see so many people unable to move forward because they got some little tradition in their church.

They've always done it like that before. You know the funniest thing now? The New Church Movement, which I've been involved with for 20 years, they've got their traditions. They are worse than some of the churches they came out of.

They've got their tradition, and you can't get in there even to talk with them, much less break the tradition. It took the other ones 200 years. The new churches, it only took some of them 10 years. We've got to be willing for change.

This isn't 84, it isn't 74. This is 1994. This is a day where your little son can go onto his computer, punch a few buttons, and pull pornography out of that computer that you couldn't get for 25 pound in London 20 years ago.

And little mommy and daddy don't even know what's going on. We've got to be ready for change, and that means there has to be a commitment to growth, to change, to excellency, to attempting to improve every area of our ministry.

Now that's why I'm convinced this little book we have on the table, Grace Awakening, is so important. Because if we try to bring change in an ungraceful, non-grace-awakened way, we will make a mess.

People get upset with each other, they start arguing. It's interesting that in missionary work, most of the people on the field, places like Pakistan, India, all these places where I've been involved, most of them are fairly strong-minded.

To get to the outermost part, to get to the hard places in the regions beyond, and we know it can be also hard right here, takes fairly strong-minded people. You've got to get through a lot of minefields, a lot of opposition, and get out there.

Guess what happens on the mission field when all these strong-minded people get out there together, try to work? They fight among themselves. You know, as you pray for missionaries, you're praying for ordinary people.

And there are ugly missionaries. People who are very narrow-minded, very strong-minded, that's a deadly combination, narrow-minded and strong-minded, oh my land, that's fusion. Anyway, very narrow-minded, very strong-minded, they get to the field, they have their own ideas, they've read their particular books, they believe it's got to happen this way.

We touched about that in the earlier session. Unwillingness to take advice from the people there, or take the time. Because different people in the country you go to will give you different advice. So you can sort of choose what you like and not listen to what you don't like.

Because in some cultures also they will try to say things that are courteous and pleasing. And we hear some of those things initially and misunderstand. We don't listen a little more and give the person, by being approachable, give the person to share some of the things that are bothering them about the way we're going on about something.

I don't want to get back into that, but it does concern me and I can assure you it concerns me when I think of my own fellowship and some of the mistakes we have made and continue to make around the world.

Video Cassettes and Communication Tools for Missions Mobilization

So, taking this message to others. That should be our response. Therefore it is completely logical for any serious missions mobilizer who is here to arm themselves with some of these tools like these video cassettes.

I've already ordered some of them. Imagine, if every one of us took a few of these videos we can share, we can then even choose which ones we want to share. If you come here you have to take the good and the bad.

We trust it's all good. But with a video or a book or an audio tape you can have a different tape for different audiences. We have been trying to make massive use of video cassette. It's been uphill all the way because the Christian tradition, which is 30 years old, we don't use video cassette.

We don't use video cassette. Do you know what modern advertising companies are doing now? You know what they've just discovered? In some places there's more results sending a video cassette to a potential client than running advert prime time television.

And so instead of a big company spending $100 ,000 on an advert they put $50 ,000 in video cassettes, send them to particular people and they're seeing phenomenal results. How many of you have ever heard of the Jesus film?

The Jesus film. It's an amazing story. I was just with Paul Eichelman, the head of the Jesus film ministry part of Campus Crusade for Christ and just talking to him is an inspiration. They are producing tens of thousands of Jesus film videos.

They only cost $5, $10, 5, 6, 7 pounds. We used to pay $1 ,000 in the 60s to get a film. We were big into films from our earliest days. $1 ,000, $2 ,000 for the projector, $1 ,000 for the film. As you show it so many times, it's history.

Now we've got the video cassette. We still use film, though the big screen video will replace 16mm film in many parts of the world in the near future. And now we've got CD-ROM and what they call the big mega information highway that's going to be plowing communication into our homes like never before in history.

As God's people, we've got to get with it. If we want to spread the vision for world missions, we've got to use video. This happens to be OM World News No. 5. A professional video team from Australia take you to France, take you to Germany, take you to Berlin, Turkey and up into the hills among the Kurdish refugees.

We have hundreds in Britain who subscribe to this. Now we're talking here not evangelism. Give a whole similar message about evangelism. Right now we're talking missions. We're talking missions mobilization.

And you and I need to make use of the tools. A great mistake to think somebody else is doing this. George Verwer is doing this or OM is doing this or YWAM is doing it. Those of us who are in full-time ministry and yes, we are doing some of these things, we are only scratching the surface.

We are only scratching the surface. Unless there is a grassroots movement in the church among ordinary people who don't think this is their thing. Most of you are here because missions to one degree or other is already your thing.

Especially on a morning meeting. In the evening, probably we'll pick up a broader base and there will be people who are on the periphery of missions. There may be a few here this morning. Fine. We've got to not think about this in the context of those who already have missions as their thing.

As their thing. We've got to think. Where is the average Christian? Now take for example this book Operation World. The publisher, which just happens to be OM, though it's a united effort with OM and WEC.

And in America they sold the rights to Zondervan, a big publisher which was taken over by the secular people, but it's still a Christian publishing house. They are so excited because in America they produced an edition of 330 ,000 copies of Operation World, unheard of almost for missionary books.

I told them the other day, talking to the director, we're only scratching the surface. Those copies are largely going to people who already, already are interested in missions to some degree. That's good.

I believe in that. How do we get that book into the hands of people on the periphery? What about pastors? Many American pastors, it's true of British pastors, and pastors in general, they are on the periphery in terms of world missions.

They have too many other things on their plate. Survival, preaching, theology, divisions, pastoral counseling, divorce, abortion, bum, bum, bum, bum. One hundred things the average pastor is supposed to be doing.

And I'll tell you one of the reasons increasing numbers of pastors are having nervous breakdowns is they can't live up to the expectations, especially of a few of the people in their church or some people in their church.

We need to pray for our pastors. And if we go to attempt to bring a greater missions vision to our pastor, read the book Grace Awakening First, or try 1 Corinthians 13 if you want something shorter. That's absolutely atomic.

1 Corinthians 13. It's got to be a grace awakened approach. I wonder how many of you have already thought of the idea of maybe taking this morning's session or last night's session or tonight is going to be really powerful and giving that video to your pastor.

People on the periphery are not going to give their hard earned money to buy these things. You and I will. We've got to give it to them. Let me share my little vision. You ready for a little vision? My vision is to see 100 million pieces of missions mobilization literature go out in the next few years.

100 million. It's going to cost somewhere around 100 million dollars or 700 thousand pounds. This is a little contribution I'm making to the AD2000 movement. I brought this vision in. Ralph Winter is excited about it.

He's already in this kind of thing. He's going to publish an article I wrote on this which was just produced in Evangelism Today. He's going to publish it in his little paper that goes out to 90 thousand people.

You say, well who's going to do this? This is not something I'm going to do. I'm going to be part of it. Whatever part God wants, maybe it's, I hope several million, OM can be involved and maybe 5 million, 10 million.

We've got these ships. We've got a lot of people. We're constantly distributing missions material. But this is a burden for the whole body of Christ. Again, we're not going to be able to measure it in detail.

We're praying that every Christian who loves Jesus will get involved in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Everybody who loves Jesus Christ is going to take ownership of world evangelism. I don't need to give a message at a conference like this on the biblical basis of missions.

We know this is biblical. We know Jesus taught this. We know this is what we read about in the book of Acts. We're on down the road from there. And now, we want to get the church to obey. Sending. Can you imagine the potential of the British church to send missionaries?

Do you know one false cult in the United States has 50 ,000? 50 ,000 on their two-year program. I don't want to mention their name. They're from Utah. 50 ,000. Do you think that's superficial? A great mistake some Christian leaders made was to condemn short-term work as all being superficial.

That cult had already proved that in two years when you're committed, you can do a lot. And they don't have the Holy Spirit. From our churches in Britain, we should be able to launch 100 ,000 short-term workers if we count summer workers.

I like short-term to think minimum of year. But many people short-term they think a summer. Well, anything. I was with Colin Dye of Kensington Temple. He was sharing and he said to me that he found people going out from his church even one week when they came back.

They were different people. We should be able to get tens of thousands. Yes, even this summer. Tens of thousands out for a few weeks in France or Belgium. Now, it may seem like a lot of people those nations are big.

There are many churches in some of those countries. They're small. But what I'm saying is that there is scope for short-term teams if they go through the right training to be a help and to be a blessing.

It's not the answer but it can be part of the answer in many of these lands. And with the open doors in Eastern Europe even places like Albania it is staggering to the imagination. But that is not going to happen unless there's a grassroots movement.

And there's not going to be a grassroots movement unless you and I not only become missions mobilizers in our minds and say we believe in this this is good but we actually do it. My prayer is that we may go from here actually doing these things.

Practical Mobilization: Churches, Pastors, and Sending Churches

Distributing missionary videos. Distributing missionary books. Writing letters and putting mission material with it. Having prayer meetings in which we focus on world missions. Talking to the leaders of our church in a grace and waking way how we can improve the missionary thrust of our church.

Maybe giving them serving as senders first to prepare the way. If you have any clout in your church trying to put together a fund to get your pastor on the field. Pastors need to get on the field. They need to see that helps them to somehow take the blinders off that keep them from looking beyond their own church.

There are phenomenal examples of this in this country. I think of Tony Sargent of Worthing Tab his new book about Dr. Lloyd-Jones is just out. Worthing Tab is one of the greatest missionary sending churches in all of Europe.

They're not boasting about it I can assure you. Tony Sargent the pastor has averaged 4 to 10 missionary trips a year for the last 15 years. And the church has not suffered. They have other people who can preach.

If you're in a church and only one guy can preach you're probably in trouble. He's not training anybody. He's not mentoring anybody. So Tony launches he's just been on Logos 2 in Latin America now he's back in the church.

And the money that they see released from that church the workers they see released is quite amazing. Now there are other churches like that. Quite a few actually. But they're still a small group relatively speaking of real sending churches.

And this is where we need to multiply what God is giving us here. Through video through personal sharing through serving through the distribution of missionary materials. And that means that we may have to invest some of our own finance.

One of the things that amazes me and I know I have a tendency toward extreme and I'd ask you to forgive me if I say things that are over the top but I cannot understand why people aren't giving more money to build the kingdom of God.

I cannot understand that. That vision gripped me when I was only 17. And I had an opposing struggle. I didn't want to spend anything. I wanted it all to go for world evangelism. And that got me in trouble.

It was extreme. Now if that's your problem you and I need to have personal contact. If you're one of these persons you never spend any money on your wife never money any money on your children. By the way if you have that kind of viewpoint as I had you should never get married.

You stay single. You can pull it off if you stay single. Just live in a tent on the nearest beach and put all your money into Bibles and tracts. That's the way I thought. In fact when I met the girl who was going to become my wife see no matter how spiritual you are you are incredibly human.

And this incredibly human guy saw this beautiful looking girl at the desk when I got out of a lift in an elevator at Moody Bible Institute. She blew all my... I had been two years on a fast not dating because that was one of my struggles.

I thought cold turkey. I saw this beautiful girl and I fell in love with her. I thought well this can't be from God because it feels too nice. I was a little bit into asceticism. And then I walked right up to her.

I think the first conversation I said you're probably not going to the mission field are you? Because you know I wouldn't even talk to you if you weren't going to the mission field. And you know she was very surprised very shy quiet girl.

Why do you say that? Well none of the really good looking chicks around here are going to the mission field. Anyway we ended up a year later getting married. Just had our 34th wedding anniversary. But I wouldn't spend any money during that what do you call that period when you're trying to win her over?

Courtship. No money. I wouldn't even put a coin in a vending machine. In fact word got around that I was teaching that to spend money on these sweets was from the devil. I actually never said that. I inferred it but I never said it.

It was big. I was extreme into God supplying. Let me just say there's nothing that's beautiful in the Bible that you can't go extreme on and make it ugly. Anything beautiful you can make it ugly. And that's one of the specializations of Satan.

Get people into tangents. Get people into dead end streets. And I was moving that way but somehow I had the influence of that Bible college I had the influence of the word and of men like Alan Redpath who happened to be preacher in Chicago that time that great British preacher.

And so I was constantly repenting and trying to sort things out. But I remember sitting by the beach one day and since our meals were already provided at the institute we weren't there for lunch but I thought we're not going to spend any money because the meals were already paid for they're gone.

And yet as I was sitting with my fiance I think we were engaged by then she wasn't staying at the institute. She was somewhere else. She was hungry. I was so extreme I would not buy her lunch. I instead prayed Lord miraculous provision.

Some people came behind us and had a picnic. When they left they threw their brown bag in the rubbish bin and I went I don't think I said in the name of Jesus but I went into the rubbish bin and got the bag and opened it for my fiance and there was a sandwich that was unwrapped never touched and she had her lunch.

Now was I extreme or not extreme? How many say I was extreme? Raise your hand. Guillitano didn't put his hand up. Thank you very much. After the wedding I didn't even believe in weddings. We got married after the Sunday morning service.

Sermon. Boom. Didn't believe in honeymoons. We headed for Mexico. Evangelism. I decided I wasn't going to spend any money to get to Mexico. Had this beat up old van. Broken window. I didn't repair it.

It was sub-zero. The window was broken. This was our first night after our marriage. I can assure you my wife told me later she was having some struggles. I did break down freezing in the night. We had to drive through the first night which is now illegal in OM because of a number of factors.

Because I didn't want to spend any money to stay anywhere. We couldn't stop in this beat up van with a broken heater. We had to get to Texas in the heat as quick as possible. But I broke down and bought her a cup of hot chocolate.

Balance was beginning to come. It's beginning to come. The next night we had to get a place to stay. I went to the telephone book. I'm not exaggerating this. I went to the section where there was pastors.

It was a small town. Random chose a pastor. Went to his house. Knocked on the door. I said we're missionaries going to Mexico. We need a bed for the night. He gave us the master bedroom. And he gave me a dollar the next morning which I was praying to get my money back from the hot chocolate.

Of course to get to Mexico to get to Mexico in a van you need petrol right? You need petrol. I took the wedding cake. There were two wedding cakes. And praise God people didn't eat too much. I took this is the truth in Wheaton, Illinois I took the wedding cake to the first petrol station and I said hey I'm trying to get to Mexico you give me some petrol I'll give you this cake.

It blew his mind. He'd never had that experience. He gave me a free tank of petrol. I did the same thing the next morning. It was a Christian a brethren guy I'll never forget it. He gave me oil and gas and didn't take the cake.

400 miles more down the road next petrol station this guy was not a believer but he was a cake lover. He took the cake. He took the cake. We got to Mexico 2 ,000 miles without spending any money just selling my wife's possessions and other things along the way.

Well somebody once said to me when a movement is being birthed when a movement is being birthed this was the birth of OM. We didn't even know what God was doing. I didn't have all this in my head. I was going one step at a time.

But when something is being birthed often there has to be extreme things that God allows to birth it. When it's birthed of course it has to become more biblical more balanced and that's what's happened in Operation Mobilization.

Of course we had some people leave us some people felt you know we turned away from the original preaching when I started to become a little more sane a little more balanced. Of course living in Mexico those first days I didn't want to spend any money on food but we weren't at Bible college anymore with all the meals paid.

So I had to give some of the first money for food. This was wild. I went down to the bazaar my broken Spanish and tried to trade gospel books for these tough bizarre market Mexicans. They didn't want any of my books so I wasn't getting much food.

And I remember once actually giving my wife chicken bones. I said look if you boil these up we can get some soup out of these bones. And my wife was so submissive anything I told her to do she did. And that's another story I gave her Ephesians 5 from the first time we met.

Not even the whole chapter you know just submit submit boy and she was so committed to that and that worked. That was beautiful for several weeks. Then she started to read she started to read these other verses.

You know love your wife as Christ loved the church. Help! It's very difficult for my type of person. Those days those early days in Mexico was God's anvil as He broke me. I shared about that experience with a Mexican lad.

And God had to break me and I found myself apologizing to my wife. I found myself starting to spend money. To this day I find it hard to spend money on anything but that which is for world evangelism.

But God many years ago now showed me that I was off. I had a wrong view of culture. I didn't understand the human factor. I certainly didn't understand women. And I learned to joyfully spend some money even on myself and of course my wife, my family.

Eventually I had three children. I'm now a grandfather. But it was a hard road for me. I almost didn't make it. My marriage could have broke. We've got to keep changing. Now maybe your problem is not the same as mine.

Maybe your problem is that you tend to spend a little more money on yourself and on things that four weeks later you look at that little thing sitting on the shelf and you think now what is that actually for?

That little bit of junk is not only not going to help world evangelism. As you look at it you're trying to figure out how it's even going to help you. Again, I want to bring that into balance because I believe that as human beings we will waste.

We will sometimes waste. And how wrong it wasn't me after I learned how to spend to then be so cautious with my wife on what she did purchase. And when I discovered she wanted to purchase a few knick-knacks.

Do you have that word in England? Knick-knacks. That's ultimate junk. And yet there are shops everywhere. Shops everywhere trying to sell you. My wife got into purchasing spoons. Little spoons. Have you ever tried to eat your cereal on these little spoons that they sell?

It says, you know, Cornwall or Stratford-on-Avon. And soon, then she wanted to buy this board with these little, you know, hanging all the spoons. So there in my house, a disciple's house, were these little spoons that nobody could eat with.

Finally, I said to her, Honey, buy a spoon. In fact, I broke down and I bought her one of those spoons. Praise the Lord. Several weeks later, the Lord delivered her from that. If any of you would like to buy some small spoons, could you see me after the meeting?

Biblical Stewardship, Sacrifice, and Giving for the Kingdom

The Word of God says it's good you can laugh because in missions it's a lot of laughing or a lot of crying. There's no middle road in missions. But the fact of the matter is the Word of God says it is more blessed to give than receive.

The fact is that in Acts chapter 2 when the Holy Spirit was moving in power, people started to sell their own possessions for the kingdom. The fact of the matter is a man in chapter 4 gave his own house to sell for the sake of the kingdom.

And the fact of the matter is that we have passages like Luke 14, 33 that we read before. Except you forsake all that you have, you can't be my disciple. I went naturally extreme on that until I hit Philippians.

My God will supply all your needs according to His glories and riches in Christ Jesus. Of course God prospers His people oftentimes. That's such a major controversy I'm surely not going to get into it this morning.

But sometimes we are playing a game of words. Has God prospered operation mobilization or has He not? With two ships and two and a half thousand people and properties and houses all over the world. Not that many private houses but headquarters and coordination bases like our big base in India.

But if God prospers you, first of all, I don't believe it's just a blanket rule. You just throw out for everybody like some kind of formula. But as God does prosper individual believers, it's for the advancement of His kingdom.

It's not for you to build up your big home and your fat bank account that you can live comfortably the rest of your life. And I'm not speaking against comfort. But God is calling us to build the kingdom.

And when hundreds of millions are without food and without the gospel as we sit here this morning, how can we not become a little extreme at times? I remember being with Brother Andrew in the Netherlands.