Resourcsing God's Work — George Verwer

Resourcing God's Work Through Scripture

It's good to have this opportunity to share with you about resourcing the work of God. I share with you from a great sense of weakness and inadequacy, in fact each day is a battle, each day there are the disappointments as well as the victories, and that is something I'd appreciate your praying about.

I'd like you to turn now in your Bibles to 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter 11, these chapters especially talk about money. I thought I would take the old living letters. When we first started STL, this was one of our first items.

I remember when Ken Taylor took back the distribution of the living letters after a couple of years. It's about the same time that Keith Beckwith and John Watts two founder people of O .N. Britain were killed in a car crash.

The brother who was left carrying some of the responsibility here, I flew back and took that on for a while, recruiting then Jerry Davey and Peter Wales with their little history to run STL. But I remember him saying when they took the STL distribution was finished, STL is finished.

That's never a good thing to say to my type of temperament, but when we think of what the Lord has done through STL, even though this distribution was taken away from us. But I just found this very old copy of living letters and on the train as I was preparing, I didn't want to read this from my authorized version, I wanted to read it from the living Bible.

So 2nd Corinthians chapter 11, you may want to just listen. Of course Ken Taylor is another one I just dropped on the phone, has revised the living Bible a bit. This is an old one and it still says the same.

It's hard to know in the light of our time battle where to stop, where to start reading, but I think we should start at verse 1 chapter 11. I'm trying to concentrate on this because I think the most beautiful thing about what we're doing in the area of money is that we're building it on the scriptures, basing what we're doing on what we see in the scriptures.

There's some things the Bible doesn't talk about, but it's good to get things that the Bible does talk about. And it's amazing how many of God's people don't know this chapter in Corinthians which is so basic about money.

Would you God you could be patient with me as I keep on talking like a fool. Do bear with me and let me say what is on my heart. I am jealous for you with deep concern of God himself. Jealous that your love should be for Christ alone just as a pure maiden gives her love to one man only, the one who will be her husband.

But I am frightened fearing that in some way you will be led away from your pure and simple devotion to the Lord as he was deceived by Satan in the garden of Eden. You seem so gullible. You believe whatever anyone tells you even if he's preaching about another Jesus than the one we preach or a different spirit than the Holy Spirit you receive or shows you a different way to be saved.

You swallow it all. Yet I don't feel that these marvelous messengers from God as they call themselves are better than I am. If I am a poor speaker at least I know what I am talking about as I think you realize by now for we have proved it again and again.

Do I do wrong and cheapen myself and make you look down on me because I preached God's good news to you without charging you anything? Instead I, this is in quotes, robbed other churches by taking what they sent me and using it up while I was with you so that I could serve you without cost.

That's powerful and you don't see that always easily in this translation. And when that was gone and I was getting hungry I still didn't ask you for anything for Christians from Macedonia brought me another gift.

I have never yet asked you for one cent. I never will. This was this one church Corinth. I promise this with every ounce of truth I have in me and I will tell everyone in Greece about it. Communication.

Discernment About False Apostles and Spiritual Deception

Why? Because I don't love you. God knows I do. But I will do it to cut out the ground from under the feet of those who boast that they are doing God's work in just the same way we are. God never sent these men at all.

They are phonies who have fooled you into thinking they are Christ's apostles. Yet I am not surprised Satan changes himself into an angel of light. So it is no wonder his servants can do it too and seem like godly ministers.

In the end they will get every bit of punishment their wicked deeds deserve. Again I plead don't think that I have lost my wits to talk like this. But even if you do listen to me anyway a witless man a fool while I boast a little as they do.

Such bragging isn't something that God commanded me to do for I'm acting like a brainless fool. Probably revise that for the British version. Yet these other men keep telling you how wonderful they are.

So here I go. You think you are so wise yet you listen gladly to these fools. You don't mind at all when they make you their slaves and take everything you have and take advantage of you and put on airs and slap you in the face.

I am ashamed to say that I am not strong and daring like that. But whatever they can boast about I'm talking like a fool again I can boast about it too. They brag that they are Hebrews do they? Well so am I.

They say they're Israelites God chosen people so am I. They're relatives of Abraham well I am too. They say they serve Christ but I have served him far more. I have worked harder, been in jail oftener, been whipped times without number and faced death again and again.

Five times the Jews gave me their terrible 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I was in the water all night and the whole next day. I have traveled many weary miles and been often in great danger from flooded rivers and from robbers and from my own people.

The Jews as well as well as at the hands of the Gentiles. I faced grave dangers from mobs in the cities and from death in the deserts and the stormy seas and from men who claim to be brothers in Christ but are not.

I have lived with weariness and pain and sleepless nights. Often I have been hungry and thirsty and gone without food. Often I have shivered with cold without enough clothing to keep me warm. Then beside all this I have the constant worry of how the churches are getting along.

Who makes a mistake? And I do not feel his sadness. Who falls without my longing to help him? Who is spiritually hurt without my fury rising against the one who hurts him? But if I must brag I would rather brag about the things that show how weak I am.

God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is to be praised forever and ever knows I tell the truth. For instance in Damascus the governor under King Aratus kept guards at the city gates to catch me but I was let down in a basket from a hole in the city wall and so I got away.

Giving According to What God Has Provided

What popularity! Go back to chapter 8. I really should have perhaps read chapter 8 first because that whole chapter is dealing also with this whole area of finance. For example starting at verse 11. This is powerful.

Having started the ball rolling so enthusiastically you should carry it through to completion just as gladly giving whatever you can out of whatever you have. Let your enthusiastic idea at the start be equaled by your realistic action now.

If you're really eager to give then it isn't important how much you have to give. God wants you to give what you have not what you don't have or haven't. I don't mean either that those who receive your gifts should have an easy time at your expense but you should divide.

You should divide with them. Right now you have plenty and can help them. Then at some other time they can share with you when you need it and so each will have as much as he needs. Do you remember that the scripture says about this?

He that gathered much had nothing left over and he that gathered little had enough. I am thankful to God that he has given Titus the same real concern for you that I have. He's glad to follow my suggestion that he visit you again but I think he would have come anyway for he is very eager to see you.

I'm sending another well-known brother with him who is highly praised as a gospel preacher in all the churches. In fact this man was elected by the churches to travel with me to Jerusalem to help distribute the gifts.

This will glorify the Lord and show our eagerness to help each other. By traveling together we will guard each other from any suspicion for we are anxious that no one should find fault with the way we are handling this large gift.

He's talking about money. God knows we are honest but I want everyone else to know it too. If that doesn't encourage accountants and bookkeepers then I don't know what other scripture to bring in that's specific on the other general ones.

God knows we are honest but I want everyone else to know it too. This is why we have made this arrangement and I'm sending you still another brother whom we know from experience to be an earnest Christian.

He is especially interested as he looks forward to this trip because I've told him all about your eagerness to help. If anyone asks who Titus is say that he is my partner and my helper in helping you and you can say the two other men are sent by the churches and that they are splendid examples of those who belong to the Lord.

Please show your love to these men and do for them all that I have publicly boasted that you would. Absolutely brilliant. If you go into chapter nine again it'd be great if you could read all these chapters on your own.

Cheerful Giving and the Harvest of Generosity

You'll find further encouragement about giving and about finance especially picking up at verse six. But remember this that if you give little you will get little. A farmer who plants just a few seeds will get only a small crop but if he plants much he will reap much.

Everyone must make up his own mind as to how much he should give. Don't force anyone to give more than he really wants to for cheerful givers are the ones God prizes. God is able to make it up to you by giving you everything you need and more so that there will not only be enough for your own needs but plenty left over to give jointly to others.

It is as the scripture says you will be able to give much to the poor and your good deeds will honor you forever. For God who gives seed to the farmer to plant and later on good crops to harvest and eat will give you more and more seed to plant so that you can give away more and more fruit from your harvest.

Yes God will give you much so that you can give away much and when we take your gifts to those who need them they will break out into thanksgiving and praise to God for your help. So two good things happen as a result of your gifts.

Those in need are helped and many overflow with thanks to God. Those who help will be glad not only because of your generous gifts to themselves and others but they will praise God for this proof and you really do that you really do love the Lord and they will pray for you with deep fervor and feeling because of the wonderful grace of God within you.

Thank God for his son his gift too wonderful for words. It's interesting that right after that we go into chapter 10 where we have this phenomenal exhortation verse 3 through 5 about spiritual warfare about the weapons of a war about casting down imaginations and every high thing exalted itself against the knowledge of God.

Releasing Resources for the Poor and the Work of God

I don't know if you've heard any of the other material I've shared in the last few years on the subject of finance. Perhaps one of the most unusual messages that will stand up and shout at me at times is the one I gave at the field leaders about two years ago where I shared this burden that I have to see huge amounts of money released not necessarily through and for the work of God and for the poor for the suffering and I think as we look about at the giving across the world by the church humanitarian agencies and by the governments it is it really is quite phenomenal.

In fact in some places they would say surely the bigger problem is finding the right administrators and the right people rather than the huge sums of money. Recently in New York City a man who was not a Christian released hundreds of millions hundreds of millions all for the poor.

He wouldn't give anything to universities who are the biggest fundraisers in America the universities. He wanted to give it all to the poor. I think they set it up so that it's mainly the interest which is a huge amount of money going out to the poor.

It's a wonderful thing it's a tremendous motivating privilege to be involved in seeing finance released for the work of God and that's why I counted a privilege to be able to share on this subject this morning and I don't want us to just think in terms of operation mobilization some of you probably in a few years will be in other fellowships and we want to think in terms of the whole body of Christ.

I've written down a number of words I don't have many notes bookmark full and maybe you can just write some of these words so that you can have pegs to do some rethinking and some of your own thinking on this huge subject.

Biblical Fundraising Without Manipulation

I've had the joy of reading hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages going through many many cassette tapes and seminars and courses mainly by tape and of course talking to literally over the past years hundreds of people about these things and find it a very interesting subject because I am convinced that God's work done in God's way will always lack finance.

Now that may not ring to what you've heard out of ancient history but that's okay we're all learning we're all growing and without defining what that means it's not such a good statement any more than the statement I used to make God's work done in God's way never lacks God's supply.

That statement also without defining what that means can easily miscommunicate so we're here not just to give you one or two cliches from whoever but to try to see a little bit what this means in the world in which we live the society in which we live.

Everyone I think who's listening to this knows that OM has made the most unusual policy changes perhaps in the history of missions. For an organization of our size and our ethos to be going in one direction with such fervor and to shift directions you can look through the missionary books it doesn't easily happen especially when the old long in the tooth founder is still around.

You usually have to wait to this old codger goes to glory and then you can really start to pull off the changes. I have the advantage the advantage over some of my predecessors in the work of God is that I could read their biographies.

I could read not only about the good things they did but the stupid things they did the problems their mission agencies had and therefore perhaps learn though in some ways there's no way I would claim to be able to follow the example of so many great Christian leaders that have gone on ahead of me.

I can only sort of attempt that gasping for breath and wondering how the Lord is able to even use me at all. So I've written down some keyword words as we think about resourcing God's work. We sometimes use the word development and there's nothing wrong with that but it is a word that needs definition because those of us committed to the African famine and committed to relief that whole side the word development has a different meaning.

It means out there in Africa we don't want to just give them a glass of water and a crust of bread we want to show them or help them grow more food dig wells and lay a foundation develop their society so that they can press on for the years to come without the constant handouts and the rescue service.

So the word development has different meanings in different situations but certainly it is a word often used in Christian work and in the secular field as well for the whole area of getting a solid financial foundation.

Different people will add different things and use different ways of explaining development. In the age of a high degree of professionalism even within the church there is often an effort always for one person to be able to state something different than someone else otherwise they'll just say he's reinventing the wheel or we've already heard that.

And I'm sure you've noticed that in missions as well as development and especially out of the United States constant change of words and vocabulary and terminology and for the person who doesn't always have as much time to read all the latest missiological journals and all the latest material his head can be spinning wondering what people are actually talking about.

But they're generally talking about getting money whatever terms they may be using getting money not only for God's work let's be honest these people have to get money so that they can have a job. When a man goes out and fundraising in the United States often if he doesn't produce he's out of a job it's as simple as that.

Fundraising in the traditional American approach and the Americans have set the pace so British have been in it for just as long can be a very ruthless and difficult and almost cutthroat type of business.

And this is why this is one of the reasons that in OM all these years we've been so hesitant even to use these words because we're not wanting to get into that. Anything that's manipulative or cutthroat or just smacks of the world's way of going about things.

The moment we say that we realize there are many things that the world does that we can learn from and that the world running around reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People often is one up on the church on how they go about things and often they do things decently in an order and often businesses are marked by a high level of integrity and discipline.

And I just feel I learned so much from various companies all kinds of magazines I don't think anyone can imagine the magazines that I'm reading. I now also from some years have listened to what's called fast track.

Fast track is a secular tape book summary presentation. In other words someone will take a whole book the latest book on management and summarize it and interview the author over that tape. You can listen to it in your car.

And I just recently listened to a tape probably the best tape I've ever listened to a fast track sitting on my desk marked top priority. How can I get every leader in OM to listen to that tape? It's about communication.

It's about body language. It's about how easily we turn people off. I just was stunned as I listened to that message and realized the long number of people probably through my life that I have turned off that I have hurt and that I have miscommunicated to.

I can assure you I'm not just saying these things. I am committed to excellency in my life wherever it leads me. If it leads me out of OM then I'm going out of OM but I'm committed to excellency because I believe the Lord Jesus Christ teaches that in the New Testament.

Now without grace to me it's a dead end street. I'm more committed to grace than I am excellency but I don't think we should separate the two. In fact to me in the Christian life excellency is 1st Corinthians 13.

And that tape that I just listened to by one of the top women communicators in the world is 1st Corinthians 13 in the marketplace. Do you know that sometimes in OM people are behaving ways in terms of lack of love and lack of grace that they don't allow in secular companies?

Because I tell you the secular companies after all the various theories are saying many times the way ahead is love, it's grace, it's encouraging people, it's the boss getting out of his little ivory office up there and getting down with the people.

Surely some of you men come from the commercial world you've seen the shift in management concepts. Now we know every management concept that goes up someone up throws an opposite concept. You can't just read one book and of course ultimately it's sometimes difficult to decide your style so it's good to some degree to accept yourself and work with your own style.

One of the worst books I heard reviewed was called the Confessions of an S .O .B. a word we're not allowed to use as Christians. And I thought this was really going to be terrible but in fact the guy really wasn't as much of an S .O .B. as he pretended.

I think he used that as the cover to sell the book but he was a wise old owl in some ways. He was a hard line manager and it is amazing, amazing how tough people get in the world in order to get where they want to go.

But it is amazing among Christians how wimpish and how weak we are and so sometimes we never do get to where we want to go. Somewhere there must be a middle road there that there can be grace and love and balance and yet there's got to be firmness.

Talking to accountants to say that is ridiculous because you know no matter how much love how much grace and how many kind words there are when you take the books into the auditor it's to a large degree a black and white situation.

Now in certain countries you can have an envelope under the table but we're not into that and we want to make that clear for any of your new recruits that are here at this meeting. There's a new book that's just come out I don't think I'll read it's 500 pages called Den of Thieves and it's about the guys that milked Wall Street for all those hundreds of millions.

Just any of you get inspired in that direction realize that a number of them are in jail. And also in case you think that Verwer is all grace we just want you to know that it is possible to go from a Christian organization directly to court and into jail.

We're in a real world we're in a real world and in this real world Christian organizations have been called up short. People have gone to court, Christian leaders have been found guilty, accountants have been arrested, Jimmy Baker's had 40 years now reduced to 18 years.

And I'll tell you people like you committed to finance have one of the greatest responsibilities in this world. It's great to have evangelists giving out tracts in the streets of Bombay. I've given out a few millions myself literally over all the years but if we don't have the spirit-filled bean counters, forgive the expression, spirit-filled accountants, spirit-filled people handling finance the devil can have a field day.

And the same is true when we go into the whole area of resourcing the work. Owen's new position is a higher risk position than our previous position and we will be getting letters back. I just talked to an angry lady on the phone three days ago.

I have my own market research. She's been angry at one of our offices, not in this country, for months and months she had the letter written. I mean angry. She's a woman that's given huge amounts of money in the old days and she got one of these more modern update type letters and she's very angry about it.

She says I don't need these people to tell me how to give. The Holy Spirit directs my giving. That's almost an exact quote. She's also been on OM for a while. They're older people and I had the joy of listening to that.

We know with a shift of policy and with some of the experimentation we get into we have to be willing for those kind of conversations. As we got toward the end of the conversation I said I used her name because we're on first name terms.

I know that you are a mature Christian. I was saying this by faith because I believe she is. And I know that you therefore know how to let love and grace overcome this sin, this I don't think I said sin, this mistake, whatever.

And she dropped down about four decibels and put her husband on the phone. It was a very balanced laid-back calm type of character and we had a wonderful conversation. Let's pray that that woman will start giving again and let's realize of course as we shift gears into our new policy it's going to take a lot of wisdom.

At the same time I believe the vast majority of Christians who love Jesus are with us in this move. I have no question about that. And we cannot base our thinking especially on a few people, a smaller number of people who we respect, they have a different viewpoint, and who haven't been through all the discussions, all the negotiations we've been through, and prayer, several years of it, and listening to the whole body of Christ.

Remember the tape I sent out, Financial Crisis, perhaps the most historic tape in Owen's work. All the feedback from hundreds of leaders from all different societies all over the world, 95 of whom urged us to move forward in these changes.

Persuasion, Consensus, and Policy Change

But we make a great mistake if we as leaders, and most of you here are leaders, if we think the job is over. We still have to persuade some of our own people as to why we've gone in this direction. We have to persuade some of our prayer partners.

Our method is persuasion. We have to persuade them why we've gone this way, what it really means. How you explain this change to people determines often their reaction. You can explain it in a way, especially if you're against it yourself, that they will get upset.

Or you can explain it in a way where even sometimes the most hard-line person will say, you know, for Owen, in the light of your situation, surely what you've done is the right thing. We don't even have to lose these more hard-line people who may not be initially happy about these changes.

And I hope that each one of you who's here is persuaded in your heart somehow. Doesn't mean there isn't any compromise, doesn't mean there isn't any giving into consensus, but I hope that you are persuaded that we have gone the right way.

Someone protested the move at the last General Council, saying there weren't enough people there, and the wording changed last minute. And I think I need to say a word about that. Number one, I believe we had a strong representative body of the whole of Owen there.

We lacked in a couple of areas, but we had talked to those people on the phone. Joseph D'Souza, whose Indians lacked, made it very, very clear. He's leading the way in this, where India stands. India is already ahead of us, so there's no question about that.

Latin America, what was poorly represented, also is clearly in this camp. I don't know any opposition to this coming from two-thirds world countries. The opposition mainly comes from the Anglo-Saxon community, and it is relatively small.

And I think for a movement stretched out across the world, as OM is, that to get 150, 160 people together in that kind of meeting was awesome, and we had good representation because we do operate on the basis of consensus, and surely the worldwide consensus is in this direction.

Some wording did change last minute. Peter Maiden and I both feel that the small groups thing didn't work as good as would be expected because I think some went into the small group, felt they were to sort of come up with a final answer on these different policies.

That was never the goal of the small group. It was part of the consensus. It was to give a wider group of people the opportunity for input, but the final discussion had to be in the general council meeting itself and had to primarily focus on the wording that came out of the field leaders' meetings.

But somehow, and we didn't have Peter there, so I think we need to be a little bit, what's the word, flexible. Somehow we didn't, that wording got left behind, not just in this policy, but a couple of policies, and we looked at new wording.

Now on some issues, the wording was incredibly important, but on this financial issue, which we've been talking about for several years, the wording wasn't so important. We all, most everyone knew what we were voting for.

The agreement that OM accepted fundraising, believed in biblical fundraising, and we could, as God leaded, not necessarily, we could ask for money, and we will continue to fine-tune that, probably even at the next field leaders' meeting.

So I am excited. We still haven't passed the four-month mark, so I'm trying to keep my brakes on and operate under the old policy, which, by the way, is a new policy, only three or four years old. To get the real old, old policy, you've got to go back a long way.

This is why language is such a problem, isn't it? You're talking to a new recruit about these things, his head just spins. What are you talking about? What is the old policy? Is that three years ago? Is that pre-taking offerings?

Or when, what is the old policy? You've got to go six, seven years back. Let me share these words that will help me stay on course. The first word I've written down is the word time. When we think of resources, and I'm going to be very brief on this point, but it's very important, I don't think we should just think of money.

Time, Prayer, and Faith as Resources

We must think about people, about time. We could also think, of course, about all kinds of things that people give us. This is one of the most expensive cellular phones you could ever get, given to me free as a gift.

Never see a phone bill, all the phone bills paid. That's a resource, but that resource is linked with a person, a person that I become very, very linked with in heart, in a very realistic way, which is totally beyond money.

The person actually doesn't have that much money. It means that he was able to do that, and he's probably a person, he's a person who probably has huge amounts of money actually due to the bank. Because as a farmer, and it's all great to have this lovely teaching about not borrowing money, most farmers could never function if they couldn't borrow money.

And if you're involved with farmers as I am, you know for most farmers today, it's tough going, even in a place like the States. I mean, it is awesome. I was with a prayer partner who wrote out a check for 500 from a huge ranch, more land than I've ever been on.

It would be equal from here almost down to the other side of Hayward's Heath. His land, worth very little. Of course, he could sell it, and he would have enough money. He's been in the family for decades and more than a century.

The thought of selling it doesn't really fit into their situation, and they are just struggling day by day. They have no, as Americans, health insurance. I was talking to a lady about health insurance.

She's 70 years of age. They have no health insurance. She proceeded to write out a check for $500 for operation mobilization. That was a ranch rather than a farm. So when we talk about resources, we're talking about people, we're also talking about money, and we're talking about other things that money can buy or that people can give to us.

Just looking back over all these years of OM history, we certainly have a lot to thank God for. The second word is prayer. The third word is faith. I believe that by faith and prayer, we can see resources released for the work of OM and for the whole world, and this is why I don't believe the really main policy of OM, the doctrine of OM, has changed.

One of the first things I did when God began to move into high school was to talk to a businessman in a parking lot and more or less ask if he could get some money to buy Gospels of John for the high school.

How in the world was this dear close friend going to figure out that I, just converted, wanted money for a thousand Gospels of John distributed in the high school if I didn't talk to him about it? And I think we need to understand from the earliest days, even as we after that moved into a more careful policy and didn't talk about money so much, that we have always in OM been in fundraising.

We have always been in fundraising. It's a terrific relief for me now to be able to confess that because discerning people, discerning people accused me of that years ago, and I think on a couple of occasions I actually got angry.

Maybe even said if you have it on tape please get it because it could be of value. I am not a fundraiser. Something along that line. I thank God that as far back as 1971, and that's on tape and got published in a book, I began to speak.

I hope it was before that that I spoke in a more balanced way. Certainly 1971, on Lodhos in Indonesia, I took a quantum leap in regard to balance about money and terminology and rhetoric changed after that.

It may have changed before that. But the way ahead is still prayer and it's faith. And we're going to have to battle, just as you accountants and financial people have to battle to get people to give their reports, to get people to do things right.

It's an endless job, isn't it? And you get tired of it at times. Well, do you think I ever get tired of getting OM people to go to prayer meetings? I tell you, I got tired of it two decades ago. But that's leadership, encouraging people, setting the example, giving reasons.

George Miley's tremendous leaflet, why we have extended times of prayer. This is not something that the average Christian has thought that much about, even the average person when they join OM. And remember, people are joining OM now with very little orientation before they come as to actually what the whole thing is about.

The biggest orientation in OM is the Love Europe Congress. They get things before that, praise God, varies from country to country. But the Love Europe Congress, I tell you, is a cold turkey baptism of what the movement is all about.

The long days, the nights of prayer, all kinds of people. If you don't have a legitimate love and interest in people, I don't think you should get into this kind of ministry. It doesn't mean God can't use you, but I don't think you should get into this kind of ministry, which is high touch in a movement like OM, if you don't have a legitimate interest in people.