Leadership in Acts — George Verwer

The Book of Acts and the Character of Christian Leaders

In a series of messages by George Verwer on leadership from the Book of Acts, given at the All India Leaders Conference in Nepal, the 4th of March, 1977. The Book of Acts, Chapter 3. Now here we begin to get a picture of two of the specific leaders that we find throughout the Book of Acts.

Peter and John. They were going up to pray and they met this man asking for alms, asking for money. Peter gave this great testimony. Verse 6. Leaping up, stood and walked, entered with them into the temple walking, leaping and praising God.

All the people saw him walking and praising God. I guess most of us wouldn't mind having more power in our ministry of this kind and it is exciting to see that God still does heal in our day. But I never found very much emphasis on people being willing to have this testimony that I believe was part of Peter's total reality.

Silver and gold have I none. And when I think of some of the people who go around healing, especially in North America and Europe, they certainly don't have this testimony, silver and gold have I none.

Because usually the bigger part of the meeting is the offering. And the love offering. And these men, especially in certain countries of the world, the whole ministry of healing has been so marred and so scarred by crooks that you wonder just who to believe and what to believe.

In fact, in the United States, there was a man who from childhood learned to preach at about four. And he grew up and became a childhood preacher and then became a healer. And after he had tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands convinced, he announced publicly that he was a fraud.

He had planned it as a fraud from his childhood. And he made a film called Marjoy. This film has even been shown in Britain. And I think David Wilkerson in some of his writings has referred to this because it's just so sinister in lumping everybody together.

It's because there's one man who's a phony and a fraud. And therefore everybody who does that, this is the way the world wants to think. Everybody who does that is a fraud, which of course is not true.

And of course they lump Billy Graham in with it. The world is so clever. I was in the States just for a very brief visit. And I just, I hardly ever even look at television. I was looking at a news broadcast.

And they had a news broadcast of an extremist group in Minneapolis. People were jumping into the air and screaming, yelling, running all over the place. And of course, you know, everybody watching that is just mocking.

This is religion. This is Christian religion. I mean, it was really extreme, believe me. And then at the end, as the two commentators were chatting, they mentioned that Billy Graham was also in Minneapolis.

I believe it was Minneapolis. And well, more or less it's the same thing. More or less it's the same thing. Sophisticated perhaps. And so the fact that there have been some frauds and the fact that the love of money, I was just reading in Timothy this morning and meditating on it, the love of money, the root of all evil, has deceived some.

It makes this whole thing far more problematic than it was in these first early days. And I yearn to have both of these testimonies, silver and gold have I none, and also greater authority, not only healing people physically, but in healing people spiritually.

Apostolic Authority and the Power of God

I think something that is sometimes forgotten in the ministry of healing, another very controversial problem for some people, is to notice what we had just read back in chapter 2 in verse 43. And fear came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.

By the apostles. It was not all the new converts, and you can study this right through Acts, all the new converts, all the junior recruits who were running out and performing these great miracles. God is a little more careful with his power.

And again and again you'll see these things were done by the hands of the apostles. This is what of course brought some of the controversy. Some people think, say, well these things really went out with the apostolic age.

That leads to another controversy. Do we have apostles today? That is a major thing going on right now. Are there apostles today? As we go through these lectures and studies, I am mentioning some of these controversies because whether we like it or not, all these controversies are going on in the church.

Maybe some of you have been sheltered from these. You've been bouncing along in the back of the truck, off in the regions beyond, and you didn't realize how many problems there were. But leaders who know about these things ahead of time are not thrown off guard when these problems do come, especially in your inter-church relationships.

But certainly we can sum up from this that there are two attributes we need to see in a leader. One, he needs to know the power of God. He needs to have authority. Not every leader, as far as I can understand, is going to have the same degree of power and authority.

But he also needs to know what it is to be poor for the sake of Jesus. Not poverty, not that which is a bad testimony, because God says he will supply all of our needs. But he needs to be able to say, to some degree, I believe, as Peter Silver and Gold have I none.

There's a story about a great saint, I don't know which one it was, talking to the Pope years ago, and the Pope was referring to this verse and said, Well, we certainly can't say, as Peter and John Silver and Gold have we none, as he pointed out, the riches of the Vatican.

Millions and millions and millions of pounds in the Vatican. This saint of God turns to the Pope and said, Neither can ye say to the poor, Rise up and walk. Something I've never forgotten. As we continue on in the book of Acts, going on to chapter 4, we have something that perhaps isn't directly related to leadership, but I feel burdened to mention it at this time.

Salvation in Christ Alone

It's summed up in verse 12. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. This triggers off one of the truly important doctrines that O .M. very much stands for.

Someone brought a very good point up to me yesterday in a discussion, that if we emphasize balance and we emphasize avoiding certain controversial things, won't we end up in a situation where truth is relative?

But I think it's important to understand that O .M. has a very firm, unmovable stand, I'd say at least on 25 major doctrines, and far more firmer stand than most groups that I deal with, and I'm in contact with an awful lot of groups.

And one of them is on this very important issue, that we stand very firmly that the heathen are lost. You see, we're not in any way hedging on that, even though it's a little controversial in some circles, because to us it's so clear, it's so basic, and it is not controversial among most men and women who really are out and out for the Lord Jesus Christ.

The controversies that we find a problem are controversies that remain controversies between men who are in both sides out and out for the Lord. But in most cases, we find liberalism undermining this whole concept of men being lost, we find neo-orthodoxy creeping in, and every kind of existential theology that we can think of.

When we speak of existential theology and the whole problem of existentialism, which may be a new word for some of you, to be very simple, it's a theology that emphasizes experience rather than truth.

This is why Dr. Schaefer calls it truth-truth, because today everything is changing, all the words are becoming relative, and a lot of people will talk about having an experience with Jesus. And it can be something very similar to a drug trip.

We're not interested in just giving people an experience with Jesus. You see, Gandhi said that it doesn't matter whether Krishna ever lived in history or not. We still must make him our idol and our ideal, and he went on to say that it doesn't matter whether Jesus Christ ever existed in history or not.

The whole essence of it, the experience that you can have through believing in Christ, is that which is important. That he existed in history is not so important. This, of course, is in a sense part of the existential theology of our day.

When you get out of the area of theology, you get into the area of philosophy. Of course, you get to a point where people talk about the leap, and people talk about having the experience. That's why so many people went into drugs.

It's amazing how closely Hinduism is related to the existential theology and philosophy that is so present in the West in these days. Well, that's a little bit on the sidetrack, but I want to emphasize that I don't believe a person should be in leadership in OM if they don't believe that men are lost.

All men outside of Christ are lost. Neither is there salvation in any other. Jesus also said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by me. There are many other verses.

There are books, one by Hillis written on this subject, What is the State of the Heathen? Another one by Oswald Sanders on this subject. Dale Roton wrote his thesis at college when he discovered quite a few Christian teachers at the college really didn't believe that the heathen were lost.

I think he ended up writing a paper on the subject since the teachers would have to read it as part of correcting him and giving him his degree. This is a very, very important issue, one of the most crucial issues.

We find two extremes. We find people have a lot of doubt about this. But then we have another extreme where people take it very, very lightly. Oh, well, sure, I learned that at Bible school. No problem with that doctrine.

No thinking man can't have some problem with that doctrine. You can't just lightly throw off most of China and most of India into eternal separation from God with sort of a big grin across your face. Oh, yeah, I learned that first year of Bible school.

I'm an Orthodox Christian, therefore I believe that. One of the most ugly things to God are Orthodox people who believe all these doctrines and have never counted the cost of what it involves to really believe it.

Evangelistic Urgency and the Reality of Judgment

As you've probably often heard me say in some of my meetings, if we believed this roof was going to fall in right now, I really doubt if we'd sit here and teach one another choruses about falling roofs or the theological implications of a roof.

Falling in on your head. We get out the door. And if we believe that men are lost across India today, we are going to commit ourselves to this task and we are going to be willing to sweat and die and pray and fast.

Otherwise, let's admit that it's not the truth. Let's admit that the heathen are not lost and join the liberals. At least they're honest. And I don't find that honesty among Orthodox evangelicals. I find people who can one minute sing choruses about everybody being lost and the other minute spend most of their time dwindling away on secondary things, hardly concerned that all around them 150 ,000 or 200 ,000 souls a day go into a Christless eternity.

And soon we'll have another Congress on Evangelism to discuss it all and decide that we're all Orthodox and we'll draw up a big long sheet about that long and we'll all sign the end of it declaring that we're evangelical, we're Orthodox.

God measures your Orthodoxy by your reality, not by what kind of a signature you can put on a document, though I'm not opposed to that if it's backed by life and by reality. And we are finding it harder in Europe and even in the United States to stand firm on this because the masses are not, even sometimes among evangelical people.

And the biggest problem with our seminaries is most of them are not standing firm on this issue. Many of the teachers hedge on this issue and talk about second chance. You know what destroyed Methodism almost completely?

Universalism. Concept that eventually everyone will somehow be converted. I think this doctrine may have even infiltrated the head of dear Sadhu Sundar Singh. Just because he's your little idol and we show his film doesn't mean that he also could not err from the word of God.

And some of his books personally I will not distribute because they're so wishy-washy on this issue. Of course we're all weak and I just would yearn personally that I had more of the reality of Sadhu Sundar Singh even if I can't perhaps agree with him on this point.

The Bible is filled with teaching on the subject of hell. You know the one who taught it the most? Jesus. Boy, that's hard. I tried to run away from this hell doctrine. It doesn't appeal to my sentimentality or anything else.

But it's Jesus who teaches about hell. And this is something that ultimately we have to leave with God. You can't figure this out. You can't sit down in O .M. or anywhere else and figure out the temperatures of hell or how long is hell.

These mysteries belong to God. How long is eternity? How long is eternity? And this is where our mind eventually stops and we have to save God from here on. It's you. To me I think the definition of hell by the great men of God is helpful.

That hell is first of all basically separation from God. Separation from God. The degree of consciousness in hell for all of eternity. People are discussing this. Endless theories. I personally don't like to get involved in them.

I like to be a little more simple and take God and his word and get on in utter obedience to do what he has commanded me to do. Rescue the perishing. Care for the dying. Snatch them from pity. From sin and the grave.

And not get too caught up on how conscious people will be in hell and whether there is a reduction of the consciousness. And all these other interesting things that try to make it seem not quite as bad.

So that our little puny little minds can somehow tuck it into our theological pocket and feel more comfortable. I think once you start moving along this road there are so many crazy things. There are so many miraculous and impossible to understand things in the Bible.

You're finished. That's why when the liberals pulled the miraculous out of the Bible all they had was confetti to use at the wedding. There's nothing left. It's a miraculous book and we've got to accept it and press on from there.

Well perhaps at this conference someone will have a whole message on this subject. And I think as leaders we must take our stand and we must be very very firm. Chapter four is filled with lessons for leadership.

Boldness Through Repeated Filling of the Holy Spirit

The greatest perhaps is the lesson that the leader is a man who is bold. He's filled with a spirit. We talked about that the other day and that will lead to boldness. Verse 31. When they had prayed the place was shaken where they were assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God with boldness.

Whatever initial experience they had with the Holy Spirit, it seems here they were filled again. Whatever your background and whatever you have received from the Holy Spirit there's always that great need to be filled again.

And when they were filled they spoke the word of God with boldness. And I tell you when people come and talk to me about the Holy Spirit working in their church or assembly and I don't say boldness of witness, you forgive me if I'm a skeptic, it's just part of my nature.

Because in the book of Acts the Holy Ghost brought a Holy Ghost. And when people just have a Holy Ghost who brings a holy huddle something has gone wrong and I wonder if it is the Holy Ghost at all. I wonder if it may be their own imagination.

I wonder if they may be experiencing what Buddhists can experience, Hindus can experience, false cults can experience, religious emotion, nice feelings. All religions have that. The Holy Ghost of God as spoken about in the book of Acts brings a holy boldness.

It doesn't mean everyone will be the same. It doesn't mean that everybody is going to be an open air preacher. But it does mean that everyone will witness and everyone will be and have a certain amount of fearlessness and witness how easy it is to water down the verses that are hard.

And I just can't believe how many excuses people give for not being a witness. And you get this little story, we believe that witnessing is with our life. You know the way our society is, you could live in an area for a long time with only witnessing with your life.

And I can assure you, no one would ever get converted to Christ. Because there are unsaved people who have lives that are quite amazing. There are moral people outwardly. They may be motivated by pride.

They may have an ego the size of the Titanic. But how can you see that outwardly? Can't you say that some of the unsaved people you've met in life seem to be better behaved than some of the saved ones?

Everyone in LM knows that story. Especially when you have to live so close to the saved ones that you can look at the unsaved ones from a distance. So I believe that witness is not just with the life.

I'm sure you agree with that. But it's with our mouth as we bear witness, as we share. It's both. Don't play one against the other. So they were filled with the Holy Spirit.

They went forth speaking the word of God with boldness.

Notice chapter 13 .52, just to give a little further emphasis on that. 13 .52. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. These are the disciples. They'd already been at Pentecost.

They'd already been at Acts 4 .31. Here they are again, being filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. Notice a few other important points about the early church. The multitude of those that believed were of one heart and one soul.

Neither said any of them that any of the things which he possessed was his own. They had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection. And great grace was upon them.

The Resurrection, Shared Possessions, and Compassionate Living

This is not a minor point. We do not just preach a crucified Christ, but we preach a resurrected Christ. And in the book of Acts, the resurrection was a very important part of their preaching. I hope you're including the resurrection in your preaching.

In the open air, wherever it is. These men preached the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the resurrection. You know, there's so many major doctrines that people hardly talk about.

They're not controversial enough. They're not controversial enough. And we get people that think O .N. does not teach doctrine. I touched on this yesterday. Because the only doctrines they think about are the controversial ones.

How many people get excited about the doctrine of the resurrection? When is the last time you heard a real straightforward sermon on the resurrection of Jesus Christ? One of the most mentioned subjects.

And there's just so many other major doctrines like that. That we're united on. And that we should be excited about. And when we get united and we're excited about these major doctrines, then we won't be so preoccupied with some of the controversial things that are somewhat hard to understand.

God, nor I, for sure. Opposed to people getting their personal opinions. So the apostles and the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. And they went forth speaking the word of God with boldness.

This also was backed up by compassionate giving. Compassionate living. And the preaching of the resurrection. And of course, we even have people like Barnabas selling their land and giving it to the apostles' feet.

I wonder how many cases you've witnessed in India, and India is a place where everybody likes to get eventually their little plot of land. And Indians, like many people in the world, would much rather have a little plot of land than put money in one of these banks that basically down under he doesn't trust.

What an amazing thing if the Spirit of God moved across the church and people even started to sell some of their land for the sake of the gospel. You know the tendency among Christian workers? I'll tell you what it is.

It's to stash away a little secret money and buy a little chunk of land that nobody knows. Just for a rainy day. Would you show me the rainy day theory in the word of God? It's not there. And it has been a plague, not just in India, all over the world, that Christian workers, instead of really trusting God, feel they must spend part of their time storing up for the rainy day.

And of course, sometimes they do it through illegitimate methods. If not, at least they operate in the dark. God doesn't operate in the dark. And the trouble that has come, the gossip that gets going, people eventually find out.

And you may live in Bombay or Delhi or Kathmandu, but if you're stashing away a little money to buy your coconut grove in Kerala, you'll be sure the guy living next to your grove knows how to talk. By the time the story gets back up to Kathmandu, the grove will be 500 acres larger than the one you purchased.

In fact, you may have only purchased one tree. The Bible says that we should avoid all appearance of evil. And as leaders, I believe one of the things that will help us avoid appearance of evil is to be open in all of our dealings.

Open in all of our dealings. And we've had brothers that were afraid to be open. One particular brother, he had a definite need for a little bit of finance. Instead of being open, he was afraid to go to the leader, he decided just to pop a little bit of a book sale.

It's easy to justify, isn't it? I worked, I sold the books, I'm desirous of my commission. Well, why don't you tell your leader you're desirous of your commission? You're operating in the dark. And this gets very interesting because we're going into Chapter 5.

Integrity and the Warning of Ananias and Sapphira

In Chapter 5, we enter a story, one of the most frightening stories in the whole of the New Testament. Ananias and Sapphira. I like the whole story because you've all read it many times. But this morning, I was meditating on Psalm 25.

And I'd like you to turn there, keeping Ananias and Sapphira in your mind, I'd like you to look at Psalm 25, verse 21. Because this word is especially on my heart. It's one of the most beautiful words in the English language.

Let integrity and uprightness preserve me for I wait on thee. 26, verse 1. Judge me, O Lord, for I have walked in mine integrity. I have trusted also in the Lord, therefore I shall not fly. Verse 11. That as for me, I will walk in mine integrity.

Redeem me and be merciful unto me. The word integrity is one of the strongest words in the English language. I believe it's one of the most important virtues or realities that a man can ever have. And if there's any single word that would describe the kind of man we need in our work in India, it's the word integrity.

More important than zeal, more important than almost anything I can think of. Integrity. Why? Because integrity includes a lot. I feel that one of our emphasis at this conference should be truthfulness.

We learn on all occasions to speak the truth. So often the truth hurts. So often when we're pinned in a corner, even by someone on our team, this is where leaders get in some of their biggest tangles.

They're pinned in the corner by a team member, instead of speaking the straightforward truth, they just hedge on the truth a little bit. Let me give you an example of this. Maybe you did something for a particular reason.

You took a van down into the center of town for a particular reason. Someone questions you, why did you do that? Instead of giving them that particular reason, you immediately think of some other reasons.

Even if those reasons were true, they were not the reasons you took the truck downtown. So you cannot be a man of integrity and use those reasons that you thought of later on in your case to present your case name.

You think that through. You think in the future days, sometimes when you get in some kind of difficulty. I have personally done this. Someone pinned me on something and said, why did you do that? Well, I had more time to think about it.

Once they were asking me, my mind, which goes a little bit fast, I mustered a whole load of reasons. But I didn't have any of those reasons when I did it. I just did it because I did it. Now, to make me honest, all I would have to do is say, well, since I sent the truck, I thought of these other things as well.

You see, that would make it truthful. Sometimes one word, one sentence, changes something from untruth to truth. And it's amazing how Satan can try to catch us as leaders and then eventually when the team does see it, our testimony with them, our effectiveness with them, the respect we need from them will go down.

And it's an enormous hindrance to the work of God. We have this picture of Ananias and Sapphira. Not as an emphasis as some might think to urge us all to sell our possessions. That wasn't their sin. Sin wasn't that she didn't sell and they didn't sell all their possessions.

The sin was that they were not being honest about what they did. They were not being honest about what they did. They gave a false impression. As leaders, we are going to be tempted to give false impressions.

It's so easy. I find myself walking along the road. I'm tired. I don't feel like jogging. I see an O .M. around the corner of my eye and I start jogging. It gives an impression. Wow, there's George Burry.

Is that jogging? Most people don't think that. It's a head. Needless to say, it's a false impression. And the heart, the Bible says, is deceitful and desperately wicked. And if we think that we left this heart totally back somewhere behind our conversion, we're going to be in for a lot of surprises.

I believe that truly as we identify with Christ, as we appropriate the reality of the cross, as Christians we are dead. I believe that. That is a reality by faith. It is a reality by faith. And it must be appropriated on.

It doesn't rob us of the privilege of obedience, dying to self, being honest, all the other aspects of the Christian life. It puts us in a position to be more honest. This will be an ever-ending battle and the last thing I want to do is drop you into the cauldron of introspection.

Some of you spend too much time in there as it is. But I believe, as Billy Graham said, the greatest obstacle, oftentimes to our sanctification, is our unwillingness to see ourselves as we really are.

And this is very, very important. So Anas, Nairs, and Sapphire ended up two corpses. My own conviction is that God doesn't work this way generally. God, in a sense, brought this judgment on them as a warning for us that God can do this.

Legitimately, He can do this any time He wants. But God is merciful. God is long-suffering. And we are living in the age of grace. We get some brothers on OM that like to see how much they can get away with before God hits them on the head.

Then they repent. But that's not God's way. And this, to me, is a great lesson for leaders. There's a lesson here for leaders as well in that we see that Peter was willing to confront. And the hardest job you have as a leader is to confront people about sin.

Confronting Sin With Facts, Wisdom, and Care

I don't know. I find it harder as the years go on. I know how everything can get so incredibly tangled up. And sometimes when I know I should confront someone about something, I say, well, Lord, you know, you handle that one.

Peter was not afraid to confront. And you, as a leader, must not be afraid to confront. Esteeming the other better than yourself. Making sure of your facts. As we talked about, some of us just the other day, you better make sure you get the total picture before you make your declaration.

And until you have the total picture, be as a wise lawyer and ask questions. Don't make statements. Some of you as team leaders, you know how many mistakes you've made because sometimes you open your mouth before you plug your brain in.

And it's an amazing thing what some of our team members have to live through. Let me tell you. Many of the team members deserve badges for survival under a low level of leadership. Leaders who manage with tremendous insight to keep their team confused most of the time.

So we have to confront. But before we confront, we need to get the facts. And the best way to confront is to sit down with a man and say, look, you know, I'm probably wrong. But as I see it, in my feeble position, it seems to me that you've done something that perhaps someone could misunderstand.

Have your further statements as carefully worded as possible. The whole world misplaces words. You notice if some government leader anywhere in the world just misplaces a few words, the press leaps like a group of 16-headed octopuses to devour him.

And it's a real testimony to me, these people, how they keep going. I would probably just quit or end up choking someone from the press. I've never had a great infatuation with the press myself. Learn to be very careful with our words.

Because oftentimes we do have at least one brother on the team who's in the flesh. Just one brother on that team who's in the flesh, who's gunning for you. Boy, I tell you, he can give you an ulcer in six months.

And personally, in my early years of leading teams, I've had situations where I came to a brother and said, but I just don't have the wisdom and the grace to handle you and I want to write to my superior and recommend that you go to another team.

You know, it's amazing the victories I've seen through that little presentation. I tell you, when that little team member thinks that he's going to be going back to Ranchi to look Ron Penny straight in the eye, he's going to be.

In fact, he may be even frightened enough of Gopal Hembrin or some other more... I think it's important as a leader to confront and to be fearless and love to confront just as Peter said under verse 9, how is it that you've agreed together behold, the feet of them who have buried thy husband are at thy door and shall carry thee out.

Some of you think your team leader's been a little bit strong. Can you imagine that? Well, this is a lesson. May we learn it. The second persecution comes and we find again the disciples in prison. There are many incidents in the book of Acts.

I think there are four of them and maybe more. I think the four are right off hand. Lay their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. Here's another lesson for leaders. Now, as leaders, we've got to be ready for suffering.

Suffering, Obedience, and Trusting God for Present Grace

We've got to pray that the Lord gives us and just the thought of suffering, you know, I find very difficult. Enduring little hardness is that, that's no problem. Suffering, pain. Do you know the Lord doesn't expect us to meditate on that and get all caught up and worried about what's going to happen in the future.

He commands us not to do that. And I think what we've got to do is realize that God is only going to give us grace for that suffering and that experience when the actual experience comes. He's not going to give you grace for it now.

I can't even imagine what it will be when my own father dies. I've tried to imagine that. I'm very close to my father and I can't imagine what it will be when my own father dies. Well, God's not going to give me grace now.

My father's alive. He will make that grace available because I have to reach out and take it and force it down my throat. Don't try to get grace now for the experiences of next years. Some of the girls try to get grace for when they're going to have their first baby.

You need grace for, not when you're going to have your first baby, you need grace for right here. How are you going to get through this conference? And the fear, the fear of childbirth is a good thing for some people.

A lot of people never talk about it. I had a fear of operation. I had to go for an operation just last time I left you. When I left Vizag, I went to Singapore, I went to a doctor, he looked down my throat and he said, hey, you've got something growing down there.

It could be cancer. That's not the most pleasant thing you've heard. And within a few months I was back in Britain and the fear, this guy going down my throat, he was going to do it by a microscope. Going down there, carving around, no one's ever done that before.

Even the worst of the leaders have never tried that. I actually found, and I say this quite truthfully, I found that a very rich experience. I found not only did God give grace, he gave a double portion of grace and I was enjoying the whole thing.

Everybody who's had an operation has to tell you about the operation. It's just part of humanity. So I'll quickly tell you about this. The main thing I remember is the nurse. She came in and she sent me this little pill because I was dictating letters the whole time.