Celebreation & Ministry 24.1.94 — George Verwer

Team Leadership and Shared Responsibility

But I sense that God wants Peter, Megan, and I to continue at least a few more years as a team. It's interesting, I had a top article on management I was just reading recently, and it pointed out, oh, there it is, should the CEO be one person?

You know, that's a big buzzword for the last 10 years, CEO, chief executive officer. This article, by a lot of top people who put input into it, are saying more and more in the corporations of the world, of course we knew this before they did, you've got to have a team, usually at least a team of two.

There's just too much in any fast-moving corporation for any one man to be the CEO. Whatever other name you call him, president, chairman of the board, there's usually at least two guys that are working hand in glove to try to just keep the whole thing on course.

And there's usually others tied right into that. Isn't that a confirmation of the enormous decision we made a decade ago to sort of divide this responsibility I have, and give Peter Maiden three-fourths, and let me have one-fourth, and expand it.

But an interesting article, of course. Believe it or not, I think Brother Divakram actually sent me this article. Divakram is really a lot more up on all this than you may think. Here he is, I'm dressed in a T-shirt, he's got a suit and tie on.

This is globalization at its best. We're all learning. You expected me to say something about books, but I'm actually talking at this point about motivation. If anybody takes a set of notes and photocopies me those notes, with at least 15 sentences, I will give you a 250-pound credit of books.

Just a little incentive, any of you that are interested in notes. For 30 years I've been trying all the spiritual incentives, and I tell you, some of them don't work. Extra treasure in heaven, they just look at you, big deal.

Most of these OM field leaders, they want it, cash in the hand. More than treasure in heaven, I hope they do get both. But really, I would like you to try to write some of these things down, because though this is a potpourri type of sharing, there are some nuggets here that I hope you can share with others.

Pastoral Care, Motivation, and the AD2000 Vision

You know, a lot of the young people in calling out for pastoral care, if you listen carefully, are not necessarily calling out for some close surveillance from some gifted pastoral leader. Not everybody wants that.

Many of them are just trying out for communication. They just like to know what, in fact, is going on on this team. Who is going to lead the team next year? Pastoral care, which I believe God wants us to increase, is something that has many different facets, many different colors in the rainbow.

Why am I a little more motivated in the last few months? By the way, even when I say this, I have a fear of losing my motivation. I have a fear of depression. If you don't have any fears in your life, great.

You're so beyond me that you'd be lucky if we could have a conversation. But we can try. But I have a lot of fears, and one of my fears is fear of depression, fear of losing my zip, life losing its meaning.

My wife, of course, has been praying that I would lose some of my zip, and we'll get into that later when I push one of my other books. But I have been... Don't ask me for a lot of definitions. The British people are the greatest people of double meanings in the world.

And by the way, I have brought with me one Mr. Bean video for... a late night showing. But let me answer the question. Why am I a little more motivated? And it's because I made this awesome decision to become part of AD2000 and beyond.

Yes? I've been praying for one of these for several years. I think I'll present this to my wife. We need a hundred of those. Really, I'll tell you that. I've been wanting to get one of those, and I know we can market those, especially in certain countries like Texas where the people are so big.

But somehow, influenced by David Hicks, influenced by John Kyle, influenced by a lot of different people, quite reluctant, though I was always more or less moderately in favor of AD2000, been pushing the leaflet for a year or two, I never felt that it's something that I should become a part of.

I did, as I usually do, have some criticisms and reservations, especially about what I felt was an overemphasis on demons and territorial spirits and other things along that line. And as I shared that, when they asked me to join one section of it, I shared my reservation and turned down that invitation.

That was the second thing I'd been invited to become involved in. And they encouraged me to share my reservations with the chairman, Paul Cedars, which I had the opportunity of doing in Minneapolis when I was ministering there at Northwestern, and then to Louise Bush on the phone.

And I found nothing but very listening ears to my struggles with this movement. And that, of course, encouraged me. And there was the sense that AD2000 wanted or needed the kind of balance that sometimes I represent.

And so I went to Colorado Springs, not my normal thing, one of the first times in my life, I guess since WEF in Manila was another one, and Lausanne in Lausanne was another one. But I haven't always just flown somewhere just to go to meetings.

Even in Manila, I was having meetings out there and fit that in. But I went all the way to Colorado Springs just for these meetings. There's not time to go into detail, but my heart was greatly challenged as I met so many people, Ralph Winter, John Kyle, Peter Wagner himself.

In fact, I had the joy of openly confronting him in front of the whole group about some of his teaching and just trying to represent what other people shared with me. And that was a difficult experience.

The night before, I had actually had a fever, and I woke up in the night wrestling with Peter Wagner in my sleep. Would I have the courage to face him with things that I had said to other people about his teaching?

I felt an instant rapport with this man as a person. He sort of got some similarities to me. A lot of extreme people do have similarities, positive and negative ones. But I found him willing to listen, and we had a little exchange.

And I probably have moved a few degrees in his direction, especially through reading this, what I feel is a more balanced book on this subject by Steve Hawthorne and Graham Kendrick, Prayer Walking. I've been prayer walking almost all my Christian life, never even thought of giving it a name.

And I think if it wasn't for the ethos of OM, if it wasn't for the influence of people like yourself, books like Grace Awakening, and the message of Roy Heshin, of dealing with pride, that I could react in pride to a book like this and think, wow.

But somehow, by the grace of God, I just found this book ministering to me. My prayer walking has greatly improved since reading this. New ideas, new ways to do things. I had fantastic phone conversations with Steve Hawthorne, and I believe this is one of the books of the 90s.

Now it's controversial. Very straight-laced evangelical people will find it difficult. Charismatic people will not find it a problem at all. And this is why I believe the church needs both the charismatic and the evangelical side, and those who blend the two together, as many in OM.

In fact, the one thing you'll never understand AD2000, is a very up-to-date movement, with all the messiness that that will mean, is that it is a more representative movement of the amalgamation of the charismatics and the non-charismatics.

Lausanne was the bridge. WEF, of course, was old-line evangelicals. Changed a lot since the last few years. Lausanne was a bridge. The final Lausanne Congress had mainline charismatic speaking, like Jack Hayford.

And in a sense, now AD2000 has taken the leap, and if at times it appears like the charismatics may be dominating, well, numerically, they dominate the number of believers in the world today. So maybe they deserve 60 to evangelical 40%.

To me, it doesn't matter. But I'm excited about this amalgamation. I do believe that the church and all Christian activity in the next six years will be extremely messy. I think those of you who want everything nice and ordered and tidy and well-defined, you will probably have a nervous breakdown by the year 2000.

But those of you who understand that often the Holy Spirit works in power in very untidy, messy situations, doesn't mean, and don't go misquoting me, that I am now dedicated to untidiness. My wife already thinks that, and it will not help you.

Help me to add, and I'm not talking about cleaning up your room. I'm talking about just the way things happen in the body of Christ and the way we sometimes can get bogged down if we try to get things too nice and too tidy and everybody nice, feeling nice about each other and agreeing on every jot and tittle.

That is not going to happen anymore in the body of Christ. There are 22 ,000 different denominations. If you think they're all going to somehow come together and shake hands and get a nice, warm, oozy feeling about each other, you are in unreality, and I pray you'll come out of it.

That doesn't mean we don't want to work for unity. So I'm excited about this job. I've now accepted this chairmanship. That's not the CEO job. I better keep this partnership leaflet away from Perry Rickards.

Mobilizing Missionaries Through AD2000

But Perry Rickards is the coordinator. He's been in it much longer than me. I'm the third chairman to attempt to take on this track. You can understand how I got in it. You keep going further down as you look for something difficult.

The track has actually changed its name and its ethos to some degree. But I think we've landed on center now, and we're staying there. It's for the mobilization of new missionaries. When I first started to flirt with my friend Perry Rickards, who I've known for years, but in connection with this, his goal was a million new missionaries.

And I said, you know, if that's it, I'm out. It's ridiculous. It's over the top. The total missionaries now may be somewhere around 200 ,000. Depends how you count them. And so I got the compromise. My first major compromise, which most of you know is my middle name, was to go down to 200 ,000.

What a drop, you know, from a million to 200 ,000. I'm sure some of you, if you really think 200 ,000 new missionaries by the year 2000 and beyond, Perry tends to think a few years past the year 2000.

You're talking about the greatest increase of missionaries since Pentecost. You're talking about something that's never happened before in history. I know all the wonderful stories because Perry gives them to me.

But we're really aiming high. We're really aiming high. But it's a result of intensive compromise. We can't go into more detail about what that means. That's not my purpose tonight. Some of you have received letters from Perry Rickards.

Some of you are already going to be going to Jiko-A. Jiko-A is the big working conference in Korea in May of 1995. Not a giant celebration, not a challenge conference, though I hope they'll be challenged, but a working conference.

A lot of the meetings will be in the track groups. That's scary if Perry and I have got 500 people in our track that we've got several hours every day. Many of you have received letters from Perry Rickard asking you to become a mobilizer, a recruiter.

I'm working on a message that I hope to put on cassette. Ten ways or twelve ways to be a missions mobilizer. I found as I joined this track that really we're way behind. Any help you can give us in prayer, correspondence with Perry, distributing the materials we eventually turn out, would be an enormous thing.

One of the buzz words that's gripped my heart that comes from these younger men and these more optimistic people is the word doable. That's a new word. It's doable. These people that are in this movement, it varies from person to person.

They're not a bunch of clones, but many of them really believe we can reach the whole world by the year 2000. Less perhaps believe we can see a church planted in every people's group by the year 2000.

Quite a few are saying we've already missed the window of opportunity for missions mobilization and information. Heavy article about that in Evangelical Missions Quarterly this month. I could, I'm sure, outdo most of you two to one on negative things about AD2000 and about almost anything else, including OM, which we've seen from all the information gathering we've done in the last year.

But I'd encourage you as you read about this, as you go through the AD2000 handbook, there are some of those out there on the literature table that you attempt to be positive, that you attempt to exercise faith.

If you want to read something devastating on unbelief, read David Wilkerson's latest article on unbelief. I don't have a chance. I mean, this guy, unbelief. That is the 16-eyed triple-legged dragon greater than lust, unbelief.

And here I am oftentimes paddling unbelief and doubt. And I guess I need to have a phone conversation with David Wilkerson. The last time I met with him was a rather high-octane meeting in which he asked me what I felt was his greatest need.

I said, it's really just like me. You need a lot of balance. From that moment, he became more extreme. He detests the word balance, David Wilkerson, but I think he might have a different definition than me.

He has, by the way, a phenomenal, fast-growing, amazing church right in the heart of New York City. So I'd appreciate your prayers, appreciate your feedback, appreciate your reading the materials. Now, if my distributors could pass these out.

If you didn't get one of these through your post in an envelope together with the first leader's letter of the year, if you didn't get those, could you raise your hand if you are an official delegate at this conference?

And we will give these out. Let me show you what they are. World Evangelization. Wonderful correction by David Hicks. Thank you. Is it possible? I had World Evangelism. World Evangelization. I may even be changing my main signature.

Yours were for World Evangelism. Last week, I changed it. Yours were World Evangelization. Both are nice, but one is better. World Evangelization. Is it possible? That is the hottest, wildest thing that I have written in a long time.

Can you imagine? I am calling for the distribution of 100 million pieces of, not gospel tracts, not Grace Awakening. They are not included in this. That is a separate project. One hundred million pieces of missions mobilization material from Bill Drake's newest Red Hot Missions cassette or Fortunato's missions cassette to books, to tracks, to laser beam communications by satellite.

I believe it is doable. In fact, I feel so strongly about this. This is, by the way, my AD2000 hat. It is not the OM hat. OM will only do part of this, so I am sure OM already is probably one of the greatest pace setters.

If you count STL in missions mobilization material, just think of Operation World that you can ever imagine. Please read this. All of you are involved in this in one way or the other. Most of you are already committed to this.

I am preaching to the converted, so I am not going to say more. No, I am sure you have questions. They are answered on this sheet. This, by the way, has hit the evangelical press in England this week.

That is how I got it done. They were pressing me for an article, and I put the two struggles together and came out with this. It may come out in a number of other mission articles and mission papers. I hope it will be followed by your questions answered about Operation 100 million.

In the first paper, I did not even mention money. I thought that would bring too many reactions. Anybody with a brain could figure out it would need a lot of money. I make it very clear we are not expecting that money to go into one organization.

It does not even have to go to groups that are related to AD2000. The thing I like about AD2000 is you can buy into part of the vision without joining anything. Maybe you do not like this. It is to have that goal together.

Of course, the more you network with something like AD2000, I think the more can be accomplished. Anyway, in the question and answer sheet, I do ask that we could release through prayer 100 million dollars.

Now, that seems so much, but God has blessed our little movement that started from nothing in 1957. This year with 20, I do not know, I heard some 23 million figure. That is now excluding STL because it is a donation figure.

It includes, of course, some book sales. World Vision has an annual budget of 200 to 300 million. Look at the budget of Campus Crusade for Christ. Look at the budget of the Billy Graham Organization. God can bring in tens of millions.

We are not asking this to come into OM. I do not want any more than we can handle. I surely believe we can handle a lot more than we are getting right now. Peter, may you say amen to that? Thank you. Even our accountants might say amen if they are in a good mood.

Anyway, we do not have time to go further in that, but I hope you will read it. People say, is this going to detract a lot from Verwer's job in OM? This just so dovetails with what I am already doing.

I am already corresponding with thousands of people. Some of them only once a year. Some of them once every other year. Now, in some cases, instead of enclosing this particular book, I am enclosing some of these materials.

That is actually lighter than sending Operation World, which I have been sending out free to hundreds and hundreds of people. I cannot say there will not be more work because there will be. We are wrestling through that.

I believe the Holy Spirit somehow is working through this great network. I count it a privilege to be part of it. I hope that you will link in as much as you feel that you are able. Let me just mention a few other books that fit into this whole mission's mobilization thrust.

Books for Missions Mobilization and Leadership

Some of them, I am just going to mention the titles because the books are there. You can get them. We have already explained you can give a post-dated check up to the year 2000. We are not joking on that.

We already have such checks. You can sign as a field leader and pay through the banking system. You can give any currency in the world. We are now releasing the bargain. Is Mayway here? Take notes on this.

Where is May? We are releasing the bargain. Every book you buy, we give you an equivalent value book free. Every book you buy, you get an equivalent value book free. We are going to look and see who bought these books.

I want to tell you, those who buy books here, their field is going to be blessed. When the tide comes in, the first million, your field will feel the impact. And we have already through special projects been providing tens of thousands of dollars and pounds of books all over, not just within OM.

You cannot imagine how grateful some of these missions are who want Operation World and have no budget to buy any. George Miley, phenomenal phone conversation. I said George could use 100 copies of Operation World.

He was thrilled. They are on the way. Steve Hawthorne, the writer of this book, a shaker and a mover in missions. Do you have any copies of Operation World? No, I don't. I'd love to get some. Ralph Winner went through his 100 ,000 pretty quick.

I said look, we'll send you 100. Keep the money for your own mission agency. Perry Rickards. Oh boy, I shouldn't have made him this offer. This guy. He came back within a few days. I like 500 for Anastasis.

That was 2 ,000 even buying them from Bellboom. So $2 ,000 which I owe. But Anastasis got the 500 Operation World. Perry Rickards got the money. That's financing the AD2000 track and mobilizing new missionaries because one of the marks of AD2000 is everybody's broke.

Everybody's broke. It's amazing. I'm sure that's a little exaggeration. Here I am standing in this meeting. I'm a newcomer in the club. And Peter Wagner is giving all these phenomenal stories. Demons being knocked out all over the place.

Revival here. Boom, boom, boom. And then he gets up in front of this whole group and he says, but you know, I am not able to raise money. This is something I'm not able to do. Can you imagine that? I jumped out of my seat and I said, how can it be, Peter, that you can see all these things happen and you can't raise money?

What about the demons that are hovering over all these banks? You ought to go for them. And we had a few laughs at AD2000. You can be sure of that. So if some of you are into prayer walking and territorial conquests, I would really ask you to put banks on a much higher priority.

You can include in that savings and loan, the stock market, and any evangelical fish who's got a bulge in his wallet. Let me mention some of the other books. Look at that one. Can you imagine that suddenly showing up?

Mentoring for Missions. This is hot, hot, hot, old, new, middle, 60s club, 70s club, 94 club. This is the book of the decade as far as discipleship and missions marriage. And it's a young fellow. It's Kevin Pippert that discovered this.

I saw it. I said, Kevin, read this. Is any good? Kevin read a lot of books last year. He was excited about this book. And OM needs to put its hands on this book. We need to see this go into many languages.

This is a serious book. This isn't the first book to give to somebody you're trying to mobilize for missions. This is for the guy that's serious. Might be a little heavy in a few places. But Mentoring for Missions, a handbook on leadership principles, exemplified by Jesus Christ, by Gunther Kralman.

He, by the way, is moving into that same Harpington office with Perry Rickards and all the YWAM guys. An exciting book. I think actually STL OM Publishing is praying about perhaps producing this. We only have a few copies out there.

Friend Raising We've Already Pushed is going very fast in OM. How to Raise Support. She's moving into Harpington. All these people we've just had phenomenal links with lately. Don't pick these kind of books up for yourself, but pick them up for other people.

Isn't it exciting what God has done in a year and a half with this book? An unknown book is now sweeping the world. I was just pushing the German edition in my meeting yesterday morning. Brilliant cover on a German edition.

They're so good often in these covers. It'll be in Spanish. And David Eichelbarger, who's here, is praying about doing 20 ,000 so that we can make it a shotgun blast rather than a trickle. And to do that, you've got to give copies away.

You've got to prime the pump. But this book is going into many languages and is part of the arsenal for the mobilization and training of missionaries. Why Should I Hold Up Operation World? Everybody in OM is excited about this book.

Everybody in OM is praying through this book. Everybody in OM believes in this book. It's not true. Many people in OM are not praying through this book. There are people in OM who don't even have a copy.

People in OM can't even afford a copy. I've had OM leaders write in the last few weeks. I don't have a copy. I could surely use one. You mean you'll even send me some free? It takes work to push books, and this thing is big.

And I would encourage you to study this book. In my notes this morning, I wrote something else down. Do not be afraid of the word missiology and understand that many of you, I won't say all, many of you are missiologists.

Whether you want to be called a missiologist or not, you are a missiologist. You've studied missions for years. You've been in missions for years. When you go back to churches, they consider you to some degree a missiologist.

And with this book, have you read the section in here on definitions? I mean there's so much material in this book. I've been twice through the old edition and hardly missed something. I read a lot of missions material on almost every page of this book.

So I'd encourage you to make a greater commitment. We would like to help finance some of your fields that are struggling through supplying free copies of Op World. We can't do that right now. We've done some of it.

Now we've got to pay our bill and then we'll do more because we feel one of the ways to help subsidize the third world mission thrust where money is such a major factor, it's not only true there, is to supply them with books.

And when they sell the books, they can keep the money to buy more books or to keep going. But it's a way of injecting money into the work where it's very hard for people to misuse. Finance compared to the big straightforward, you know, big kind of handouts.

Some say this one is selling even faster than Operation World. Again, if you can't sell that book, you need to go back to kindergarten and whoever taught you anything about communication. You don't need to be a salesman to sell these kind of books.

You just have to open your mouth, you have to smile, you have to hold a book in front of them. And of course, hopefully there's children within range. This is the level of the average adult in the average church, folks.

Not this one. This is a graduate course for PhDs. Though I encourage people, don't try to understand it all, especially read parts of it and go for the prayer requests. The prayer requests in here are fairly simple.

It's all the technology, you know, World A, World B, World C, which I know of course all of you know about, but it was complicated to the layman. You can change the world. There's so many other great missionary books and especially if we're going to have a thrust among Muslims, we've got to increase our thrust of books about Islam.

Here's an exoemer's book, Bill Musk, Passionate Believing, The Fundamentalist Face of Islam. Some of you are very heavy into the Islam thing. You probably read these books and you always can see something in it that you don't agree with.

But you know, the average person isn't where you are. The average person hasn't read any books about Muslims. And we've got to get down, if we're going to have missions mobilization, we've got to get down to the grassroots.

And maybe the ultimate simple book on Islam has not yet been written. Maybe somebody here should write it. I wanted to mention a word about this book. It doesn't fit in with missions, but I know most of you are wrestling with pressure.

And I always feel a little bad that probably when I speak I increase the pressure. And I don't want to do that, so I'm bringing this book along here with a hoping that if the pressure increases tonight, that you can read this book by our good friend Peter Meadows, Pressure Points.

Hope for those with the world and the church on their backs. I don't think it's necessarily written particularly for people like us, but the point is very, very clear. The only free book out there is The Sign.

That's free. The author gave me a bunch of these. It's just to get your creative juices about the second coming and how much you're going to suffer before you get there. So you can take one of those. Now, this book is not available on the book table.

This book is only available in plain wrapper from my new helper, Chris. This is a very controversial book, and it would only be somebody really a bit wild that would distribute copies of it. It's called Restoring the Pleasure, and it's a complete step-by-step program to help couples overcome the most common sexual barriers.

Sexuality, Marriage, and Pastoral Honesty

Now, to have the courage to distribute a book like this, you really have to have some deep conviction, so let me share my deep conviction. It is my conviction that Christians often in this area have more hang-ups than unconverted people, and some of the most tragic things in OM have never been told because you can't talk about this.

It's sexual mess-ups in the marriage that they refuse to even go to a counselor about. They'd rather just go on and on until it hits the divorce courts, and they do hit the divorce courts. It's Christians who have this idea that when you're married, sex is not really a spiritual thing.

It's all right. I hope we're not still in the age where we think it's bad, though there are some probably so brainwashed with false things and things that our culture throw at us that they can't help subconsciously feeling that.

It's an enormous problem in many people's lives. But I really feel it's a great mistake to put the whole area of sex, sex within marriage, and single people. I know this book offends some single people.

Other single people think it's great. I'm not outpushing it among single people because I've got so many controversies I don't want to get in another one. But for married people, this book is brilliant.

It's a Christian book. It's written by godly people who have years of counseling. You don't have to read the whole book. But I believe the big assaults of Satan on OM in the next few years will be on the marriages.

This is the day of marital breakup. This is a day when we're seeing the wives of top pastors just walk out and say, Hey, I'm finished. It's a day of unpredictable immorality. That's why I've been pushing for several years now this book, The Snare.

I just think it's so brilliant. I just had a long phone conversation with Lois Mowdy. She's willing to be with us at our September conference if we've got any room there for her to speak. But NAVs are republishing her book.

We got this special edition done just for us somehow. But the official NAV edition will come off. And this is one of the few books. If I had to choose between this one and this one, I would push this one.

But I think they work together. Let's just pray and then leave these things behind for closure. And I can get into the heart of what I want to share. Lord, you know my heart. I'm just so full of these things I want to share.

I believe they're significant. I believe that a lot of the things in our movement hinge on whether we're willing to really deal with these issues. We don't have time to deal with these issues together.

Therefore, it's got to be books. It's got to be tapes. It's got to be our own churches. It's got to be other methods to get these things into our lives, into our teams, into our families, into our churches.

And Lord, if some of us still have some kind of hang-ups in some of these areas where we can't even talk about these things, help us to be set free because your word is so clear. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of beautiful verses about sex and many aspects of sex.

And we need to be preaching this from the housetops in our culture, on television, on radio, through books, through video, that somehow we could present the biblical answer to the promiscuity, the immorality, and the debauchery of our day.

We thank you for men like Josh McDowell. We thank you for the authors of this powerful book. And we know that there will be controversy, but Lord, we'd rather take the risk and be a little more open than somehow continue to live with so many things under the carpet that eventually blow up and destroy whole churches.

Oh God, help us to be realistic and guide us as we look into your word together. In Jesus' name, amen. Turn with me to the book of Acts. Just give me a minute here. I've got the wrong marker. Let's look at this marker.

Acts 14 and the Example of Strengthening Disciples

Acts 14. The book of Acts, chapter 14. We find something very beautiful. I, of course, have great struggles with so many different discussion meetings that I have to attend and wonder why we often have to have so many of these different kinds of meetings.

We've been having them since the earliest days in the work. And again and again, when I've been wrestling with certain things, the Lord's taken me to this passage where it talks about the council at Jerusalem.

That's really more in chapter 15. And it talks also about Paul after he's stoned at Lystra. They're rocks, not drugs. He goes back to Antioch. Let's just look at the 14th chapter and the 22nd verse. Just bear with me a minute.

I've got that in my authorized version, but I want to read it from this new international. 14 and verse 22. They preach the good news in the city and one large number of disciples. What verse is that?

Strengthening the disciples. We talk about strengthening churches, I think, in one of our statements. Here's a good one. Strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.

Would you underline that? Don't expect a message from me on that. But you're not going to get it tonight. But there it is. Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church, and with prayer and fasting committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust.

Beautiful example of delegation. Beautiful example of trusting young Christians. So much to learn from that. After going through Pisidia, they called into Pamphylia, and when they had preached the word in Persia, they went down to Attalia.

And from Attalia they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God. Remember that back in chapter 13? For the work they had now completed. Interesting. Completion. Closure.

On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. And they stayed there a long time with the disciples.

Now I hope you don't feel that sort of my introductory exhortations and remarks were too long. But I believe there's a biblical basis for coming together like this and sharing what God has been doing.

It's not boasting. It's not secondary communication. It's not mainly me who will be doing that this week. It will be many different people, as we had in our prayer time this afternoon. And today, in the high-tech world, with so much happening, with so many different groups, so many different people, so many things that OM is touching, we do need extra time to sometimes update ourselves on where we are.