Ilg Mosbach - Part 2 — George Verwer

Thank you. Rodney, could you just come up and, it's just to show that it's, I'm not the only one getting this vision to use these globes. Somebody sent me this postcard. I thought we could, you know, pass it around.

Just, you know, it just shows the vision is, you know, is catching on in some unexpected places. And that's, that'll be an encouragement to some of you, you know, who are a little slow and need encouragement.

Also, Stuart McAllister is such an extra distributor. I wonder if you could distribute this. We gave this out in an envelope to many of you, but if you didn't get a copy of our little international coordinating team newsletter, just a plain vanilla newsletter, we'd like you to have that.

Just raise your hand. Most people have this if you're leaders, but if you don't, perhaps raise your hand or just pass it around. Because I think sometimes we forget that the purpose, the priority purpose of a prayer letter, whether it's full color, that's one of the most brilliant things we produced this year, the India Department.

There's hardly any of these left, by the way. I've got a few private copies in case you missed it. Thirty years in OM India with these terrific photos. I mean, anyone who ever throws that away, I would have thought really needed some counseling.

But it's such an encouragement. But the purpose of a prayer letter is still to mobilize prayer. And so, though this is a simple letter, it's got some urgent prayer requests. And I'd like to just, for a moment, just focus on some things that really are my heart for prayer, not in order of importance.

Prayer, Missionary Recruitment, and Answers to Prayer

But one of them is Bill Drake. Bill Drake and his wife coming into OM is a miracle. In 35 years, we've had hardly any professional musicians ever attracted to our movement and stay more than a summer.

Now, Bill has not the kind of guy that's running around with a big head, if you know his background. And he and I are bonded like cement because we're both such needy, struggling, doubting characters.

And we've been ministering now for a year and a half or two. And he's come back. It's a bigger step for his wife and him to come back to a house that was in the middle of major repairs. And he soon launches out to Belgium, to Denmark, South Africa, Northern Ireland.

They have two children. And I believe Bill is going to be one of our really key, he already is, recruiters in the years to come. For us not to be just overjoyed with this answer to prayer would indicate some brand of schizophrenia, which I'm hoping is disappearing.

But he needs our prayers. You know, if someone came to me next year by a slip of the tongue and said, boy, isn't it great Bill Drake is just doing so much better at recruiting than you are? I tell you, that would bring such joy to my heart.

Because number one, my first burden in the next few years is not firstly my own personal recruiting agenda and the little I can accomplish through that. It is to work through a network of recruiters in between Perry and I and others.

We hope to build up literally a list, a functional list of thousands of missionary mobilizers and recruiters. Some of you are about to sign up. An item of praise is this magazine. I've studied Time Magazine since I was 14 years old in high school and took a course in which I had to read this.

Don't always agree with everything, and they did publish one of my comments some time ago. Tony Campala then wrote me and asked if I'd work together with him in New Jersey, because my article to Time was, it may have been Newsweek, I get both.

But I was so thrilled to see Time featuring Billy Graham. Unfortunately, the European edition didn't have him on the cover. It had the blood crisis in Germany on the cover. But the inside was a phenomenal full picture of Billy Graham and a huge article.

There's the photo. I just praise God that the man that helped bring me to Christ has stayed out of the cesspool of immorality, has stayed out of the nuthouse of financial fooling around, and is still married to the same woman and has been an example of godliness all of my life since I started studying about him two years before my conversion.

Billy Graham at 75. There are a few of these hard-to-get souvenir issues. I bought them extra that are available. That's an item of praise. I wanted to give some other prayer requests, but I'm very conscious of time, so let me move on and touch those perhaps as I go.

Christian Discernment and the Influence of Media

I wanted to just introduce a relatively new magazine and tell you about this group that we are networking with. It's Ted Bear, and this is his movie guide. Now we need to realize, I know all of you already do actually, the power of the media through cinema and movie.

This is going to increase through CD-ROM. The type of pornography now that's coming over a PC is worse than you can pick up on a video. Video moved pornography in Europe, I believe, at least 50 more than what it was.

And I'm in constant, regular contact with people hooked on pornography. It's awesome. And I know some of you are battling with pornography, as I do. And I hope that you'll not be in the dark about it.

It's so easy to be watching even a newscast on television. Suddenly you switch a channel, and there it is. And if you're like me, sometimes you just don't get it turned off in the first few seconds as you should.

You may think it's harmless, but it creates a rut in your mind. And the more that water trickles through that rut or that sludge, the deeper the ditch. Well, that's not the main burden of this magazine.

This magazine is to show good movies that we as Christians can recommend. Ted, only by a miracle of God, will last another year. He's just lost his biggest donor. People don't subscribe to this because it's $2 an issue.

Christians are not that interested in the media. I'd ask you to pray for him because it may all go under. He is in touch with the top producers in Hollywood. And there are things happening in answer to prayer in Hollywood and in the cinema world, both in England and other places.

And I hope that, again, we can do much more in film and video. Just like this little skit tonight was so powerful. Five years from now, four years from now, you won't remember. A lot of the other things said here, but probably something from that skit will stick.

And I just praise God for the increase of mime and drama. I'm a Mr. Bean fan and loaned one of those out to Fritz the other night. I heard some tremendous laughter coming from the upper chamber of the house I'm living in.

But I estimate with some of you, a little development and, you know, we wouldn't need Mr. Bean. But you'd have to, you know, look at that to see what that means. I'm excited about what we're into in these days.

Leadership, Personal Weakness, and Difficult Relationships

And I know all of us, as we go from here, our burden is how do we implement this? Where do we go from here? I want to make sure I didn't lose my notes, my keynotes. I've got lots of notes, but these are the final ones.

So I put them in my pocket because I really believe God has put this burden on my heart. I know you're on information overload, and it's not easy to speak tonight. I think I do know why you're in OM. I think most of you, if not all of you, are in OM because you love Jesus and you believe in his word.

It's not an ego trip. And what I've read about power and about ego, about leaders going astray, it just makes me just shrivel inside and say, Lord, I just want to stay a million miles away from all of it.

I believe real leadership is a daily crucifying experience. We're constantly having to do things we don't want to do. We constantly have to go to places we don't want to go. And we will be often misunderstood.

Some of it, of course, will be our own fault. Other times, it'll be other factors. One of the latest books I've just started to read is called Don't Let the Jerks Get the Best of You. These books are not available yet because, you know, I'm censoring them first.

Don't believe that. But some of you remember years ago, Joyce Landorf came out with a brilliant book called Irregular People. Unfortunately, she was shot down by adultery shortly after that and left the ministry for a couple of years.

She is back, by the way, in ministry. God is using her. This is a similar book about irregular people. The wording may be too strong for Europe, though this is a British edition. But it's basically advice for dealing with difficult people.

Our experience as an OM is that one difficult person can cause you more grief and more problems than 40 other people all put together. And you may feel that you've got some jerks in your life or some irregular people.

I think as you read the book further, you will discover that you may be the jerk in somebody else's life. So it looks like an exciting book, new leadership book. We've suddenly been deluged with leadership books.

I still read them because I find so much gold in other people's material. Developing the Leader Within You. Wonderful, meaningful help for everyone at every rung of the leadership ladder. I don't even like the term, but it has a good intro by Ted Engstrom and it looks to me like a very strategic book.

Responding to Missionary Challenges and Cultural Opposition

How do we respond to this challenge of this week? This is awesome. How do we respond to these decisions we've made as we go from here? Some of us within the next few weeks will be alone in different places.

We won't be with a crowd. Fort won't be playing the music. Rodney won't be chairing the meeting. You'll be alone. I know if you're single, that's probably a bigger battle than most of us face who are married.

Some of the people I've come to esteem the most in this world are single people. From William McDonald in California to John Stott in London to other people that are not famous at all, but who have been my close friends and who battle singleness from the female side or the male side.

Some of you know I also have very close friends, probably get in trouble for saying this, who are basically struggling with homosexuality. And I consider homosexuality one of the greatest challenges facing the Church of Jesus Christ today.

To sort of pretend or to lay the homosexuality problem to one side is to be out of contact with reality, with what's happening, with churches splitting, with all kinds of things that are happening just in connection with that one thing, which is just one of a hundred things we're wrestling with in the Church of Jesus Christ, trying to be on the cutting edge and building the kingdom.

I wanted to take a moment to thank every one of you for your commitment. Maybe you don't need a word of thanks from me. I've written to most of you this year, and I certainly do appreciate you. I don't have to fake that.

I don't have to act. Just being here and being with you is very challenging to me and to my wife. It's frustrating here, but I've learned to live with frustration. I hope you will as well, because I believe the frustration level in OM will actually increase in the next few years.

And I remember a great Asian preacher pointing out that when we're relational, his name was Ajit Fernando from Sri Lanka, speaking at WEF in Manila, when we're relational, it gets very messy. And there's bound to be a lot of frustration.

You think of what our brother, who may at one minute be the great star preacher at Urbana, has gone through in Sri Lanka. Very few people actually know what he has had to go through in Sri Lanka in the past couple of years.

The anti-Christian drive in Sri Lanka right now is greater than it has ever been before in history. It is very ugly. They are comparing Christians, putting them on the level of the Tamil Tigers, and say these two scourges, the Sinhala people, not the Tamils, these two scourges are destroying our Buddhist culture.

And it's in the newspapers, and it's very heavy. This is happening in other parts of the world. Somebody just gave me this article about 300 Afghans who are now Christians. This is in the Peshawar newspapers just recently.

Gordon, if you've seen the article, you probably gave it to me. But when you read that, you think what a pack of lies so much of this is. But to be a newspaper reporter in many of these places and to write stories, you don't actually have to be very committed to the truth.

And that's not a shot against journalists, because there are many great journalists who are committed to the truth. Some of them die for it out in the front lines in Bosnia. But a lot of journalists are looking for a story.

They may be anti-Christian. And that article I just read about Christian work there among the Afghans is quite scary. And I'm sure when some of you out in your fields start reading what's hitting the press, in Western Europe we have a different kind of attack from Satan through the media, but it can be very unnerving.

Overcoming Overwhelm Through Biblical Faithfulness

When you're no longer a big group with great primitives, you're just on your own somewhere, and you can feel that it's just too much. There is a danger that we could go from here really overwhelmed. That's a danger for me.

I need to get back to England and get on the golf course and try to forget the whole thing. Fritz and I were both sharing after we played tennis this morning that it's probably the only two hours we just played once in the beginning of the week and once in the end.

I lost both times, bless the Lord. But it was probably the only time this week, except when we were dead asleep, that we weren't thinking, thinking on something or reacting to something. You should be at the breakfast table at Fritz's house with Tony Kirk and me, and Bertil comes in, and I thought we were going to launch some kind of a missile.

But it was actually wonderful, and I'm sure a lot of the great times here were the times behind the scenes, over lunch, and walking alone together. It's exciting. But we could possibly go from here sensing, especially for our particular field, a sense of being overwhelmed.

How am I going to make this happen in my field? I sat in the first part of the European regional meeting here yesterday, and we could feel the awkwardness of it, couldn't we? That's so normal. Don't be intimidated if occasionally you have meetings in which you feel awkward, you feel intimidated, you feel you're not getting anywhere.

We are human beings. No one can take this kind of information overload challenge and not at times feel awkward and intimidated. But as we press on, reacting biblically, compassionately in a Christ-like way, and making strong use of the word of God, I believe we can make it through victoriously this great adventure in which we are now involved.

I wanted to especially also just incorporate here a word of thanks to all the members and especially the leaders. One of the few teams in the world that has more leaders than I think we have recruits and followers, including long-term people who aren't necessarily in leadership, though they have leadership gifts, and we're not intimidated by that.

But God has given us a fighting team. Do not think in any way this team is somehow some bureaucratic, fat, organizational thing. This is a fighting task force, strike force operation, not easy to understand, and I think you'll discover in the future as you begin to read about massive changes in management that in some ways we're already there.

That's the latest business week, the Horizontal Corporation. And as I was reading through that, it would take a lot of study just to understand it. You've got seven pages and incredible diagrams and charts in here on the Horizontal Corporation.

You will, I think, discover that in some ways we are already there. Let me just show that one little chart. The Horizontal Corporation. We're not going to be intimidated by such things to just copy the world and the companies of the world, but we can learn something.

One thing I learned from reading a lot of business material is just what my business and professional people are up against. And believe me, brothers and sisters, our people in secular jobs who are providing the money for us, supporting us, their job is often tougher than ours.

We should not have any problem esteeming these people if we really have our heads screwed on. Some of these men and women that I'm in touch with would pay big money to be here this week and be in on this.

Gordon Stanley, a businessman who's on the board in the States, was just sharing with me before the meeting, just, you know, the privilege and the joy, forget how he expressed it, of being here and wishing more of our USA board members could be here.

And that's one of the goals of Network 94. Now, to become a little more focused, I want to urge that we respond by using the Scriptures. As we think of different things, struggles, visions, goals, aims, I think it would be good in the weeks to come to find Scriptures in our Bible study that are linked with these things.

We haven't actually done that so much during these seven days. Most of us haven't sat here with our Bibles open quoting Scriptures at Peter Maiden or reading Scriptures. I'm not saying that's wrong because everything we're doing at OM, I believe, is built on the Scriptures.

But I think as now you have time to go from here, you may want to open your Bibles and respond using the Scriptures to the things that come to your heart and to your mind. So I was doing this in preparation for this message tonight.

And I want to just share what God has given me from the Scriptures as I struggle and battle and attempt to do God's will in my life and in my family. The first Scripture that came to my mind as I feel overwhelmed and weak is found in 2 Corinthians.

You already know my struggle sometimes to find Scriptures. I'm going to ask your forgiveness that I'm using my old Bible that I got the day Greg Livingston and I got off the ship in Bombay or I got shortly after that because that's when I lost my Bible.

In other words, this is the King James or Authorized Version. Most of you have modern translations which I generally preach from. But just to help me be a little more relaxed and for a number of other reasons, I'm going to read from this particular famous old Bible.

The Sufficiency of Grace in Weakness

And I want to start with that passage in 2 Corinthians about His grace being sufficient that all of you have preached on so many times. 12th chapter, 9th verse. He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee.

This is after Paul prayed for the thorn in the flesh to go three times. An amazing passage. One of the things that thrills me and I'm going to inject a lot of little things but they'll be brief. I'm not going to go as long as the other night so please relax.

I've got a two-hour car journey after here to get ready for a church meeting in the morning. But I'm going to inject things. I was so encouraged by all the notes that you all took the other night. And I'll be using that as an illustration all over the world.

It did cost me a lot but it's worth it. And I've discovered quite a few people didn't take those notes because we made that little offer. They just take notes all the time. And I find that so encouraging because I think a lot that we received this week from all sides, not me, it needs review.

And I certainly will be reviewing again and again the material that I have received here. And I, of course, am still listening to the tapes from Hyderabad. I'm about halfway through and I wish I could talk to each one of you who gave messages because it seems to me some of you got a few bugs in your bonnet but that's normal for preachers, including me.

But what a blessing to listen to those cassette tapes. So I just wanted to inject that I think one of the beautiful things in OM is how we keep together people who have different views on this whole healing issue.

I mean, we really do have a wide range of views. And how we work together, it's beautiful. It's going to continue to be a difficulty because it's an area where the church has never agreed. Almost every other month we have a book on each camp coming out, shooting up the other camp to some degree.

And one of the things I like about OM, including OM 1994, is people are reading a wide range of books. It really is quite amazing. He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness.

Do you believe that? We do feel weak as we face these challenges. I mean, I certainly do. I mean, the area leaders could call an emergency meeting tonight and I'd be out with joy. There'd be some pain.

But I am ready to turn over the mantle of the international leadership of this movement. I think the early 60s is a normal retirement time. India is being 59. It doesn't mean you leave the ministry, but it means you turn the mantle of your particular job over to others.

And I don't think it's wrong for us to be praying and thinking concerning that, even though it may be some years down the road, the years pass very, very quickly. And I feel God has already been preparing me for that.

Meanwhile, let me say this. I believe it is a mistake to go around continuing to parrot that OM is field-led, because it is basically a nonsense statement now within OM. It has left its original meaning.

The original meaning came from Hudson-Taylor and OMF. That OMF was field-led. It meant they led the work from within China. Hudson-Taylor, if you know anything about OMF, very strong mandate on the general director to this day.

OMF is still field-led because it's led by a man named Pickard, David Pickard, and he leads it from Singapore, which is the field. Not led from England, where they all came from in the beginning. That was the very beginning.

Then they came from many other countries. We had this concept, and wherever I was, that's where I was leading the work and then we were leading the work. From the very beginning, I don't think, and you can research OM's history, there was any dictatorship going on.

It was a consensus thing, hyper-pragmatic, where I generally consult with the person who's closest to the particular action on a particular area. So, if it was France, you can be sure back in those days, I was talking with Mike Evans and probably he had two votes for every one that I had.

It was leadership by persuasion. Needless to say, it was leadership. I'm a little concerned about the poor fellow, or bless his heart, who has to step into my shoes because it is a little easier for the founding director than it is for the next person.

And I feel it is important to understand that OM still has dynamic leadership from myself and Peter Maiden as a team, and then from our area leaders, and then from our field leaders. Now, some years ago, people grabbed on this field-led thing to talk about their own field, and of course it was partly true.

We want a high percentage. This is why some things always need definition. We want a high percentage of the leadership and the action and everything to come from within the different countries. But it doesn't mean that it's just totally field-led in an isolated way, so that in a sense that guy, when something comes internationally, can have a take-it-or-leave-it sort of attitude, which brings arrogance and confusion and disunity.

And if we're going to put one of our core values up as glorifying God, then the last thing we want is a breakdown of this unity God has given us with different fields going in different directions, backbiting and gossiping against other fields, proud that they do it so differently.

They're not going to be pushed around by anybody. I've actually heard people even say that. Praise God, not much. It's partnership. Those of us on an international level even more than those days when we were more extreme and more gung-ho than today, we just want to serve.

We even wanted to change the name of our coordinating team to International Service Team. It would sound like a petrol station. But we want to serve. And OM's ethos of leadership is servant leadership.

But that doesn't mean we're wimps. That doesn't mean we won't come down hard on somebody when we see immorality and sin or wives being mistreated or any of that kind of thing. OM in the future will need leadership as much as today.

Boards will become more active. The history of Christian organizations is that in some cases whole boards have gone astray and have come unglued because it is spiritual warfare. It's the counterbalance, the field leader, the board, the recruits, together with the area leaders and Peter and I, I believe, and who follows in our steps that can somehow find that balance.

So when we come out with our one-liners, and I know we love them, I think we should give definitions so that we don't confuse people or so that the enemy cannot get in through that. Needless to say, in all of this, it's not going to be easy.

Maintaining Relationships Amid Growth and Frustration

I personally believe in the 90s it is going to be more difficult to maintain the relationships. I've been trying to get a little time with at least 50 of the people here. I have a rather funny way of seeing people.

Maybe I should plan it more ahead. Maybe I should have people arrange appointments. One or two did that. I can tell you some of the people I've wanted to see the most here for personal sharing I have not seen.

That was one of the hardest things for me to live with, if you know my background. And I've so enjoyed personal fellowship. Even to get away from the crowd, not because of the food, because that is not my big thing at OM conferences in either direction, but in a couple cases, I went down with an individual brother to a little restaurant, a little fish place I found, just to get away from the crowd and the noise and be alone.

And that might be the only half an hour I have this year with that brother. If you think that's easy to live with, well, maybe we ought to have a chat or you can write me a letter. But I believe his grace is sufficient.

These complexities of being so large, the difficulty of getting time to maintain those relationships on a level that we want. Have you ever found that the way things are going, the size of OM, the fast lane of OM, the idealism of OM, that you're with someone and you like an hour with them and all you have is five minutes and you're trying to say in the five minutes what you need an hour for.

I must confess, I have hurt people and miscommunicated to people because that's sometimes the way my mind works. I'm trying to condense and share and I've been amazed to find out later it was a miscommunication, especially sometimes when it's on the phone.

On the phone, we really try to condense, right? Because we're watching these units. These unit machines, they should all blow up and go into the ocean. I only made one call on this unit machine. It was an urgent call, a crisis situation with the church.

It was at 150 units. I don't know what they're worth, but it didn't sound too good. It didn't look too good. This is why I believe one of the next major passages we need to go to is 1 Corinthians 13. But before we turn there, let me just read the rest of the verse.

Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Let your heart feed on that verse. Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses.

For Christ's sake, when I am weak, then I am strong. How many of us are willing to stand on that passage of Scripture? We talk about core values. Boy, I tell you, probably several of them are in that one passage.

And this is the heartthrob of O .M. The heartthrob of O .M. is an extraordinary, almost in the minds of others, fanatic commitment to Scripture. And, of course, this is going to be laughed at through the media, through religious people, more than ever.

You know, it's been very exciting for me the last three years to meet every year with one of my mentors, John Stock. We somehow have got a linking that was so different. I mean, I must amuse him beyond imagination.

He certainly doesn't need a Mr. Bean video. With me coming in on him. But this is an amazing man, also 75 years of age. And he is an Anglican, a very committed Anglican. And he sees the unbelief that comes into the Anglican system, people denying basic truths.

And he actually sits down face-to-face with some of these people. Like the Jenkins. Is it Jenkins? From the North. He's had personal time confronting this man some time ago. And I just thank God for those men and women who have been faithful to the Scriptures.

Because my faith, without them, I wouldn't have made it. I thank God that there's no necessity for intellectual suicide to be a Bible-believing, evangelical follower of Jesus Christ. We're all different.

We all have different struggles. Brothers and sisters, those of you who study theology, as I have now since I was 16, I don't say that jokingly. There are some tough issues. John Stott now would like to be known on this annihilation issue that he has been so clobbered because of that he has moved into an agnostic position.

He is not an annihilationist, so he doesn't want to be called that. He doesn't want to be known as that. But in that difficult area, this godly man at present told me that his position on that issue is one of agnosticism.

He doesn't know. It's a tough issue. I wanted to actually speak to some degree this evening on the subject of hell. I'm not going to do that. But I believe it is part of O .M.'s strong conviction and doctrinal belief that heaven is for those only saved through the blood of Jesus Christ and personally believe in Him, and that all outside of Christ will spend eternity in hell.

Billy Graham always described it as outer darkness. I don't think God has given us too many of the details. And surely it's an element of mystery. And we, as it says in the 11th chapter of Romans, are not God's advisors.

So I wouldn't recommend getting into that counseling God business. Do not confuse that with counseling people. So the next passage I want to respond with is 1 Corinthians 13. Again, we don't have time to read that whole passage, but we know it is a Mount Everest passage.

And what really irks me is that we tend to just presume on this passage. I don't hear that much preaching on it. I've heard Peter Maiden preach on it. But I don't think you can preach too much on 1 Corinthians 13.

And it's commitment to 1 Corinthians 13 that's going to keep us together as a body and a fighting force more than our own ingenuity or our own chemistry. That's the big thing today. Because often the key thing is not the situation between a person that you naturally have a chemistry with.

Peter Maiden and I have a gift from God in the unity and the chemistry of whatever words you want to use. It doesn't mean we always agree. But there is something there. We've only had a few disagreements over what?

It's about 10 years now. I thought we were going to get in a big one over Proverbs. I think my view of inspiration on Proverbs was a little weak once, and you had to jolt me up. Or maybe it was vice versa.

No, that's unlikely with you. It is a far greater challenge when you have to work with someone in which there is not the natural rapport. And in my own life, I've had many such privileges. And in God's timing, the chemistry, the ease of relationship often does come.

And I believe we've got to work extra hard on the relationships with people that we don't naturally gravitate to. We don't naturally run off and have a supper together. We don't naturally go off and see a movie together.

I was working away in my bus at this amazing Christian artists' festival. I think it was there. Maybe it was something else. Yeah, it was there. Bill Drake was there and somebody else. Jan van Outen. And they came.

Hey, let's go to a movie tonight. I wasn't in a movie mood. I like movies, but I wasn't in a movie mood. They came again. You've got to go to a movie. I'd been in the bus all week except I was going through this political course.

I don't want to go into that story, but I got into a political course at this arts festival with politicians from different parts of Europe and Eastern Europe. It was amazing. So a lot of my time when I wasn't speaking or doing that, I was in the bus and coach dictating letters.

Anyway, they persuaded me to go to this movie. We saw Cliffhanger with Sylvester and this girl dropping to her death in this new computer type of media creation. It's just really, really wild. You don't generally go to a movie with people that you don't particularly get on with.

And I would urge you to have social relationship and friendly non-OM strategy talking fellowship with people that you wouldn't normally pick for your social life. We had a fellow leave ICT some years ago.

He told me he didn't feel the social life was any good. I think what he meant was that I didn't find him a wife. But anyway, he left. He went to another team and he didn't last there very long as well.

But he is a dear brother. Oh, he is. And ICT probably is weak on social life surrounded by all these married people and all of their children. 1 Corinthians 13, I believe, is absolute priority for what we want to do in the next few years.

Love, Patience, and Reconciliation in Christian Community

I would recommend you meditate and memorize those verses. Let me just read a few because these verses have clipped my wings and humbled me to the foot of the cross a thousand times over these 38 years if it's happened once.