Major Misunderstanding the Girls Have - I — George Verwer

Women's Vital Role in the Work of the Gospel

The title of the message, major misunderstandings that the girls have, especially about the work here in India. And of course, I don't blame him, I can see good reason for misunderstanding. The first misunderstanding I'd like to speak about is something I often hear from the girls is that the leaders don't believe in the girls' work.

I don't know if you've ever heard that. Maybe that's from years gone by. But I can understand how at times you'd wonder if you were in the girls' side of OIM India whether the so-called leaders really believed in what we were doing.

Perhaps I can give you the very beginning of how girls got into OIM in the first place. The first team in Mexico, you can be sure it was an all-male team. By that time I'd become a 19-year-old confirmed bachelor.

Everything entered my mind that there would be a girl coming on any team. The second team was an old man's team. In fact, one of the hindrances to that team was a girl. Because one of the men on the team fell in love with a Mexican girl, which I didn't believe in.

He didn't like me. Nicknamed me Hitler. During that time I transferred from college, normal college, to Moody Bible Institute. Moody Bible Institute had a fair share of zealous women. And I remember we were planning to go to Mexico again.

In fact, we were planning to go there for Christmas. This was a new idea, formulated in the summer, so we decided to go there for Christmas. And a group of girls heard about this. And they had a secret meeting.

How to approach George Rohwer about girls going to Mexico. So the first of the women's work cannot be blamed on me. These girls came to me and one of them was a very strong-minded woman. And they were almost ready to tell me that I was out of the will of God if I didn't take girls with him.

And I don't even remember if I prayed about it. I must confess I don't pray about everything. But as far as these girls were concerned, women mattered much anyway if I prayed about it. And so the first girls united with us to go to Mexico.

One of those girls is still with us today. She's married now. Her name is Jean Davis. She was Jean Hall. She was also one of the first ones to go to Spain, only a few months after my wife and I went there.

The most aggressive of those girls is with the Lord Jesus today. She died three years later as a nurse in the snow of northern Minnesota. She died in Minnesota, not Mexico. And ever since then, girls have been going on these crusades.

And there's not time to give a history of that. But from the very beginning of this work, without question, girls have played a vital role. And OM would not be where it is today, if anywhere, if it wasn't for the ministry of women in this work.

From the very first trip to Mexico, it was seen that girls could do joyful work as good as men. Sometimes better because men tended to be away at home, whereas the women tended to be there in the house.

It was not until quite some time later that OM developed and we began to see also the role of girls in the offices and that kind of thing. When we first started our big campaigns in Europe, one of the first teams that I ever led, was a team of almost all girls.

That in Italy. And I saw how girls could be used to reach the masses of women where the Word of God. And I'll never forget that team. They were more disciplined and more zealous than many, many teams I've ever had.

And I'll never forget that team. They were more disciplined and more zealous than many, many teams I've ever had. From the very beginning of this work, we had a great burden to reach children. That has waned at times, I think, over the years.

But when I was first in evangelism, I was very much involved in children's evangelism. And we saw how the women, the girls, could be so used of God in reaching children and young people with the Word of God.

Sending Women to Serve in India

Now when we came to think about sending girls to India, we again had a great wave of doubt. A few of the leading missionaries in this country were very opposed to having women in India. There was one girl, way back in the very first team, who almost insisted on going out here.

We let her go. The other girl was supposed to be with her. Somehow she was dropped out and it ended up a very bad situation because this girl ended up on her own. She was a high society girl from the British Isles.

And I would say that she got away from the Lord, was really a casualty of our work and is away from the Lord to this day. That could have easily discouraged us from having any more girls in India. At that point, a very major decision had to be made.

Somehow the Lord led us to try again with a proper team, or at least a proper number of girls. You know, whenever we evaluate a situation, such as the girls who work here in India, we must evaluate the situation in the light of the problem and the obstacle.

That's why it's ridiculous comparing reaching Muslims in Indonesia to reaching Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Such comparisons are almost irrelevant. And to some degree, comparing women's work in India with women's work in England is almost also irrelevant.

I just finished reading last night Donald MacGavern's paper that he's going to give at the World Congress on Evangelism. He explains the tremendous complexity of trying to evangelize certain societies.

Especially the complexity of reaching people in totally foreign countries. And of course, the moment an Indian Christian girl moves across the cultural border, she is in foreign territory almost as much as a foreigner.

The average Christian girl, whether Indian or foreigner, understands very little of the mentality of the Muslim women of India. I wonder how many of you understand much about the mentality of Muslim women in India.

That is only one example, but it could be dozens. So the work is complex. I think of Eugenia Price's latest book, No Past Answer, and if you can get a hold of copies, it's worth six of a lot of the other books I see girls reading.

No Past Answer means no simplified easy answers to the difficult questions of life. We do believe in this girl's work. Some of us have fought pretty hard, myself, for about 17 years to maintain it. We acknowledge our failures.

They are many. And when a leader is overwhelmed with a dozen problems, often the girl's problem is the last one he gets to. Another factor is that most men leaders are not as easy as they should be, even in speaking with girls, much less trying to solve all their problems.

Doesn't always help the leader when he's told, quite often, that all the girls are afraid of him anyway. But they can't seem to understand, however, that he's also taking care of them, and would prefer to avoid them.

There are many other complexities. Our time is limited, and we must go to another point. Let it be understood that we really believe in what you're doing, and it's one of the reasons for this conference.

And if we didn't believe in it, then what question or what answer would you give to India's 300 million women who need desperately the gospel of Jesus Christ? And all the mountains may be greater. Our God is greater, and we must press on.

Discipleship Does Not Destroy Femininity

The second point is this idea that discipleship destroys femininity. You've probably already discussed this, but I can just throw in a few points. I believe that is by far the biggest mistake in the first order.

I don't know how much you've read about women. I read quite a bit about women. It's easier to read about them than it is to deal with them. So my wife and I have also had many, many tremendous conversations with girls from all over the world.

Now there's two major problems here. And we need all efforts to cover this. First idea of what discipleship is. Second, false ideas of what femininity is. First of all, I recommend you study Revolution of Balance.

I feel that is especially important for girls. There's a wide, wide range of types of girls that God has managed to create. And put on you. There are fat girls. There are thin girls. There are tall girls.

There are short girls. There are girls with black hair, girls with brown hair, girls with... No hair! Don't laugh for your information. Every baby girl born into this world has no hair. So there's a wide range of girls.

Doctors and psychologists also tell us that girls have a wide range of degrees of masculinity and femininity in their makeup. Now I had a sister who was called a tomboy. That means a girl who, you know, she's more like a boy, she's rough, tough, sports, you know, that kind of thing.

I learned a lot from her. And I learned a lot from her because she was very progressive. And she was four years older than me. And she was always tall. And we used to fight. And we used to fight. And she was good in every single sport.

So our whole life as a young girl really was a boy's world in many ways. And she wasn't very interested in boys. She just wanted to play football with them. And then she went off to college. And during that period, she became better than most women.

And she's now married with how many children? Four out of five children. I lose count. Of all children after three, I lose count. She's married? She's now married, yes. And today... No, no, she's now married and she has four children.

And, you know, her problem is not lack of femininity. She still plays sports. But she's very domestic. Most O .M .ers that have gone to the O .M. have always been very impressed with that family. And there's many, many other examples I could give.

Of mean girls in O .M. Who were team leaders. And they were out sleeping in the fields of Italy and down, sleeping in the tanks of Spain. And they really threw themselves into this cycle. But it didn't destroy their femininity.

Of course, when they were married. They had to make it back. That will be true of anybody getting married. You see, there's a danger that we think these O .M .s and the adaptations we have to make are because we are disciples.

As if if we were not disciples, we'd have less adaptations to make when we get married. One of the great things about women is their ability to adapt to many different situations. And this has been proven by women whose first husband died.

They married another man who was completely different. And yet they adapted to him and made him happy. We sometimes get the wrong end of discipleship. And we think of discipleship as discipline and substitution and moving out down the road and all the same.

But this is only a small part of discipleship. A perfect example of this is the image most people, basically girls, project onto the Apostle Paul. But if you look at it as a Thessalonian, you will get a good balance picture of the Apostle Paul.

And you will see something that is very very important in verse 7, chapter 2. Here is Paul and his band of red hot disciplined disciples. But we were gentle among you. Even as a nurse, and in the Greek it's a nursery mother, cherishes her children.

That sounds feminine, even though it's the description of the Apostle Paul. It sounds feminine to me. Notice verse 8. Soul being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not only the gospel, only but our own soul, because you were dear unto us.

The key is found in Paul's words. Which refer to women as well. Offering to all men to win sons. The disciple is gentle. And the women should easily be ahead of the men in that area. The disciple is compassionate, loving, tender, affectionate.

All these principles that are needed in discipleship are the same thing you need when you get married, when you run a home. One of the most important things in discipleship is the tender loving care of the new babe in Jesus Christ.

To do this now, as a disciple on an OM team, should be a great preparation for that day when God will give you your own baby who you will have to love with tender, affectionate care and nursing. It is very wrong to judge a girl as not being feminine simply because she has certain things that she does that men also do.

You don't consider eating as being masculine, yet men all eat. And you do as well. I believe there is a wide range of things in the Christian life that both men and women can legitimately engage in without either one becoming masculine or feminine.

One of the most dynamic women who has ever lived was the Mara Shah, the daughter of General William Booth. She could out-preach perhaps every man who lived in her decade apart from maybe three. She drew some of the largest crowds in Europe to her evangelistic meetings even greater than her own father who threw her out of the Salvation Army.

But in the process she re-invigorated children. Re-invigorated maybe more because my cousins had us as priests. I know one of her daughters. And she doesn't seem to have suffered much through it. She is also a beautiful follower of the Lord Jesus.

I don't think she dominates her husband either because he is one of the largest men I have ever met, actually the closest thing to a giant that I have ever met. Because I saw all his hands and I thought...

I think it's wrong to judge a girl who is aggressive and outgoing and has got ideas and imaginations as being not feminine. Or to judge a woman who likes to talk things out with her husband and get a two-fifths in once in a while as being not submissive.

This is a wrong idea. Even though they may say differently, most men don't want to marry dumb robots. Because after everything, it's actually when they're told, boom, boom, boom, boom, like a machine.

Praise God that women have the freedom to give their husband a piece of their mind if they think the guy has gone off the rail. Many men have been saved by that I'm sure. I don't know how many times my wife has been a help to me by just reminding me that what I had just said was really rather stupid.

How many times my wife has been a help to me by just reminding me that what I had just said was really rather stupid. Speaking to your husband once in a while in this way is not to be equated with nagging.

That is something else. The key word is adaptation. Not underestimating the problem. In many parts of the world today, that's about 75 percent. The women's law has to work. It has to work hard. Many of them in the field because we still live in an agricultural world.

And I think it's pretty well proven that farm girls make very good wives. They're fat, feminine. My wife was weird on a farm. My wife was weird on a farm. The third point is there's not much the girls can do in India.

Women's Initiative and Imagination in India

This is the real problem. Not much we can do here. There's so many obstacles. We don't speak the language. She can't evangelize the boys. And the women don't know how to read. So many problems. And I think there's two words that need to be injected into the women's work here in India.

Initiative and imagination. Initiative and imagination. There is a danger in OM with the men dominating things a bit that the men are all going to kick off the brains. So we're always looking for some boy leader to send us instructions and tell us what to do and tell us this and that.

And of course some of these guys have even less imagination than the women. I was a girl's leader in this country. My leader would be getting a weekly letter and it would only be little bits and pieces about what we're doing.

Just in a minute I listed a few things that women can do. She's an enormous joke to me. So the question really is how can we possibly do all these things. First of all there are women everywhere. There are women everywhere.

And he's a gospel. God has told us to take from the gospel. So if that's God's will then he will give us ways to do it and we pray as we use our minds. There is children's work on women's opportunities.

Many of them leave including the girls. And there's just so much that can be done. Little initiatives and a little bit of visual aid material you can make it yourself have that with you to use with these children.

Even the slowest thinking most uneducated dull girl can reach children effectively with a little visual aid and a tiny bit of initiative and imagination. Then there's Sunday school work. Girls working in the offices the offices don't function on Sunday mornings.

They're involved in Sunday school work. And a good Sunday school teacher visits her children sometimes. She writes to the children. She plays them into the kingdom. And she's still corresponding with them ten years later when they're teenagers.

And of course there's the nurses' work. There are hundreds of thousands of nurses in India. We haven't even finished evangelizing the nurses much less the rest of the population. There's an enormous increase of professional women in this country.

Even in the larger towns teachers secretaries these are intelligent people some of whom know English who you, the girls in this room could be winning to Jesus Christ if you really wanted to. It's good to have strategy.

It's good to have organization. It's good to have a plan. It's good to have good leadership. But none of it is a substitute for spiritual reality and compassion in your life. If we get everything better organized and a much better strategy and there's no compassion and reality in our hearts where will it get us?

There's also unlimited scope for women's needs. Everywhere I go in India they want me to take women's needs. And the scope for this we haven't even begun to cover. Now I'm going to say something that you think is hysterical.

But I believe the problem is that many of us are not filled with the Lord's love. Because we're not filled with the Spirit. We find speaking the most frightening thing in everything. Now I'm not saying every spiritual woman has to become a preacher.

I'm not saying that. But certainly as we're filled with the Spirit there'll be a lot more women who will be given the spiritual gifts to minister the word of God especially to women and sometimes to men.

Only eternity will show how such a high degree of outstanding missionary work that has ever been done has been done by a lonely spiritual woman. And some of those were single. And there's a real place for women to be called into the single life.

Many of them were also married. I think of the ministry that Roy Hesham's wife did. They used to minister every day. And many many other examples Roy tried to give us. And of course there is a door to door work.

I know it's hard especially when you don't know the language. But don't despise the small things. You'll see when you get a teaching you'll be doing it at home. It's a valuable thing. There is a whole movement in India every home crusade that has just basically that one thing they take a track and put it in all.

And I don't think they have women. Do they have girls? I don't think they have any girls really. Girls could be doing that and we need hundreds of men to be out preaching in the open air where the men are because the women hold to the men in the streets.

I think there's a lot we can do when there's a language barrier. There's no reason girls can't memorize their testimonies in the language of the women in the area where they're working. There's no reason to take the women to bits and a little bit.

We haven't scratched the surface of what we can do with gospel recording for illiterate people but again it takes a little initiative. It takes a little bit of extra work. And it takes a heavier shoulder bag with smoke through it and a lighter bag.

Administrative and Support Roles in World Evangelism

There are many other areas where women can play such a vital role but again without initiative without imagination it won't work. And then no one can underestimate the role of women behind the scenes in the office and all that.

Anyone who thinks that working in the office is sort of second best they aren't twisted. Someone wants to get them by the neck and twist them back into the right direction. We're living in a complex world.

That demands communication. Demands organization. Demands proper use of finance and handling of finance. In many of these things women are better than men. And the role of women in this area of world evangelism is a phenomenal thing.

And of course it's a great help when you get married as well. The art of it is like women who don't have time to keep a record of the money. I praise God that I have a wife who is a secretary and even as a married couple it gives us the privilege of working together to some degree.

And I have this belief that married couples want to work as a team. If it wasn't for airfares and children and the children is a bigger factor I would take my wife everywhere I go. Then the fourth point.

The Effectiveness of O.M. Girls' Work

The O .M. girl's work is not effective. Of course all this kind of statements have to be defined. We are not nearly as effective as we should be. But it's foolish to say that we are not effective. There are so many proofs of what God has done in this area over the past year.

A very high percentage of all girls who have worked with O .M. India are going off for Jesus Christ somewhere today. And O .M. and their time in India played a very important part in that. The very fact that O .M. India is loaded loaded with all kinds of thorny unpredictable ridiculous problems is a beautiful training and preparation for getting married someday to a unpredictable man.

You think your O .M. leader is inconsistent? Wait till you get a husband. Then you're really going to go on a rollercoaster. Someone took a survey some time ago and I think it came out that 80 of all women didn't marry what they expected.

When a man first falls in love with a girl, boy he really he really expects He puts on the act. Of course women don't do that. And we're all actors and actresses. Even subconsciously we start acting without even having subconsciously doing it.

Marriage is filled with disappointment and problems and if you're in O .M. India and a girl's team with disappointments and problems that's good preparation for marriage. You are going to face a lot greater problems in marriage than you ever faced.

And these two are my close friends. Both with spina bifida babies born with serious birth defects. If they were born in a village in India they'd be safe. But in the West they keep them alive. And those couples go through suffering that we can never match no matter what we arrange for your team in O .M. India.

And I'm reminded of Billy Graham's words. That life at its best is filled with sadness. And how important it is to remember that. So the fact that when you go out on these teams and I'm not excusing any of our blunders that's another matter.

Nor am I excusing my own self. And I know that God is great. And I know He can take that worst situation. With all the frustrations. With everything going wrong. With the most ridiculous leader you could ever get.

With the weakest team members you could ever work with. I know that my God is so great He can take that situation and use it to make you more like Jesus Christ and to prepare you for the big battle that's right ahead.

Training, Balance, and Avoiding Generalizations

God gave us an ultimate strategy. It involved moving fast. It involved training quickly a lot of people quickly and over. Most Christian organizations don't want to touch people at the stage they are in when we take them.

But we have many organizations all over India asking us to do this. When we work with young ladies in Christ. In this complex situation there are going to be problems. Avoid generalization. Avoid pendulum thinking.

For example we see we are making a mistake going too far in this direction. Maybe spending too much time going door to door. And we are not seeing so much maybe fruit. So we swing the pendulum we don't go door to door anymore at all.

Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle. Not on either extreme. Beware as I said of making sweeping statements and generalization 2 plus 2 equals 10. I hear a lot of people think about the terrible weak study program in OIM India.

I have never met people who have read so many Christian books as these OIMers in India. It is true we are weak on systematic study and we need a lot more. But there are many aspects to the picture. I myself have been much more helped in my Christian life by reading outstanding Christian books than I did through sitting in Bible school for two years memorizing the genealogy and the king and getting over systematic theology.

I have chosen between Jeannie Price and A .W. Tozer. Those two and Bible School. You know what my choice would be. But everybody is different and I never chose Jeannie Price at that point. And if you don't like Jeannie Price and A .W. Tozer you can still stay in the work.

Sensitivity, Suffering, and the Complexity of People

You know as we go into the days to come as men or women I believe we must prepare for that. The role of women in this I can tell you If you bring a child into the world there's only one way you're going to suffer.

But there are many other forms of suffering. A very important thing is that women generally are more sensitive than men. They feel things in a generally in a deeper way. There are plenty of exceptions.

And remember girls most men are all much much more sensitive than they ever could have been. Such false ideas you get. You've all been big Joe's brother preaching away giving a word of God. Thick skin challenging everybody.

You don't see me sitting in my room weeping. We're all more sensitive. We all are many sides. And we as Christians those men and women so easily make false judgments about one another. I guess that I have a real sincere deep interest in birds.

We birds. We birds. Innocent that's nothing. And I give very little thought. To me God's creation and creation of these winged birds 400 species in southern India alone is a beautiful thing. It's a fantastic thing.

And people think of God on that and think it's feminine or I don't know the same it may sound. Though I feel it's a hard-moving question evangelist one of my greatest joys in life is to just read non-Christian books listening to Berlioz or Lalo or Mozart or Beethoven or some other music of that type.

And I love to spend hours in total silence with no disturbance reading encyclopedias. I have two or three hours a day just alone reading encyclopedias. We are all very complex. Don't make generalizations about people.

Learn to understand people and their temperaments and when they become born again they get even more complicated. This is why a woman's work will never be easy. There are so many different kinds of women and they are sensitive and they are easily hurt but don't think there aren't in some of the same battles because you can be sure they are.

God's Mercy Amid Missionary Failure

I believe a girl's work in India has been effective despite many failures because God has mercy. And you know that's my hope for all the Christian world because there are so many messes everywhere even in the most ordinary groups it's not to depress anything.

God is working in you and even when things go wrong God doesn't go away. God doesn't leave you. Even when you go down the wrong road with the wrong military in the wrong vehicle in the wrong direction speaking the wrong language God doesn't go away.

He still works that's no excuse for serious stupidity but God is doing things. And in closing I thought I would just give some of the real hindrances the real enemies to the work we are doing as we go forward.

Satan, Personal History, and the Sufficiency of Christ

First of course the real enemy is Satan. Soldiers stand that we all live in a critical emergency nothing is right and nothing will be right except for prophecy saying of course he does many things with girls and to a great degree with men as well trying to use our background some of us have been left behind and we have been left behind have been have been we didn't have a good relationship with our father that will create many problems we didn't have a good relationship with our mother that will create even more problems and of course the devil is subtle he tries to use his background to deceive us and depress us and deceive us and destroy us and this is where we have got to learn the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

We do not believe in the deterministic philosophy of Sigmund Freud which is very similar to the satanistic philosophy of religion.