Om Goals — George Verwer

The title for this session is what are our goals? What is our strategy? Now, most of you should have already received in the summer one of these leadership manuals. It may not have had this nice gold cover, but it would have been printed, which is different from duplicated editions of this manual that went out last year.

We hope that you haven't already lost the manual. Every one of these costs quite a little money to make or to put together, print. We always seem to be running out of copies. But if you don't have one, you can take one after this session up here.

If you already have one, but you forgot it, you can borrow one. But I really ask you to be faithful in returning it and then getting your other manual, the one that you forgot. And in a sense, we consider this required reading for this conference if you haven't already read it.

If you've already read it, well, it wouldn't harm you to reread especially some of the key chapters. In some ways, our lecture this morning is supplementary to the very last chapter in this manual called Ultimate Aims and Goals.

The Conference’s Purpose and Its Three Audiences

The purpose of this conference, by the way, in some ways is threefold or at least the three types of persons here. There are people who have been in leadership in OM, some of them for quite some time.

In fact, even country coordinators and leaders in general are expected to be at this conference unless they just can't possibly make it. This is really supplementary conference to our coordinators conference, which is only a three-day event.

In fact, as coordinators, we will be meeting for lunch and already today digging in to some of the important issues that we have to decide and think about as a movement. So these people are with us. Then there are those of you who are very new to leadership in OM but you're in OM.

You may or may not have a position of leadership this year. And then there are those of you who are guests. And we're very, very happy that you've come. We especially want to welcome those of you who are not necessarily in OM or joining OM this year, but you've come as a guest because you've got a leadership responsibility and you're just hungry to learn.

We're flattered or complimented that you think you can learn something from the likes of us and we hope you, in fact, do. In talking about goals, one of our most important and practical goals is leadership training.

Leadership Training as a Central Goal

And I never dreamed in the very earliest years of the work how much God wanted to use us in this area of leadership training. I just received a letter from one of the leading, really leading Christian leaders from the whole of Norway.

He wrote a very humble letter, very clear letter, the things that he learned just in a one day leaders conference on the ship. He put it right down in black and white. And the other benefits he got. One benefit, he listed, there were three things actually, I can remember the letter.

The first was the privilege of meeting Christians from other groups. In his own country, he had never been in a leadership conference with such a wide cross-section of different Christian leaders. Secondly, he was thankful for what he learned in the conference, especially in a session in which we talked about the mistakes that leaders make.

And he's determined in his life, God's grace not to make some of those mistakes. Thirdly, he said he was greatly benefited by the books he was able to get. We will be putting up a display of books, which I selected from the Bromley bookshop just before coming here.

And I know there's probably no one here that has seen every one of these books. We want to introduce you to new books. You're not going to be able to just take these, by the way. You'll have to write down the title and then get one somehow or order it.

We can maybe bring more over. But there'll be a massive literature display, of course, with many, many, many books. These are just a few new ones that I just gathered to introduce you to. So God has just given us such a privilege to be involved in training leaders.

There are now about 600, 500 or 600 XOMers in almost every major mission of any size in the world today that has any roots in the countries we work in. I can't speak for indigenous missions in the middle of the Congo, though there are very, very few countries where there are not XOMers.

The thrill has been to see these people moving into key positions of leadership. 10 years ago, they were sitting here. 10 years ago, they were getting their first taste. Many of these people had their first taste of leadership in XOM, a movement crazy enough to throw the likes of some into leadership because we are not looking just for well-seasoned leaders.

We're not sure they exist anymore. We're looking for those we can train in this task. We know that the lecture method that we're having right now is one of the weakest. And the living with people method, and the living together, and working together, and suffering together, and evangelizing together, and solving problems together is the best method.

So we don't spend so many weeks a year in this method. But we do believe it's important also to see, or to take extra time, because we're looking at the Word of God all year. We're learning all year. But it's good to take extra time to really look into these things and see what the Bible says, and to share with you, especially those of you who are new, what we really believe, and to remind ourselves, those of us who have been around a longer time, what we believe.

Long-Term and Short-Term Goals

Where are we going? Are we still going there? Have we been sidetracked? And this is why I believe even a session like this morning in which we can talk about our goals and our strategy is worthwhile. This is a vast subject.

This last chapter in your manual, we call it ultimate aims and goals, because we have many goals on a short-term basis, don't we? One of my goals right now is this conference. That's not my ultimate goal.

This conference is a means to the ultimate goal. So we always, in a sense, have two sets of goals. So we have our longer-term goals, and then we have the goals of a week. I have some goals for this week.

We have goals for today. I have a goal for the next half an hour. And personally, that goal for the next half an hour is quite important, isn't it? Because that's what I'm in right now. And I may have other little ideas, but I've got something I must do right now.

So we want to try to narrow this subject down and talk about some of our more ultimate goals. Let me insert this very important statement, and I hope you will take notes and I hope you will study. It's interesting that the best set of notes that came to me last year was from the person who I thought really needed to take notes least.

He already had two doctor's degrees, is more intelligent than the average person drifting in OM, and yet produced the most clear set of notes, and eventually I got a copy of them. So I hope you don't feel that you're too intellectual or too beyond to take some notes, because also sometimes you want to teach these things to others or you want to discuss them and you can't remember what has been said.

But we must understand, and let me just insert this other little problem. I realize some of you are not in OM. Some of these things will not be as relevant. Some of the sessions in this conference will be more relevant to you, but we have got to handle some things that are very, very basic to us as a movement, and it seems to me these things are so basic that some of them at least can be incorporated into your work, your Christian union, your local church situation, or wherever else it may be.

National Leadership and Contextual Strategy

What I was about to say is that these goals are worked out in different ways in different fields. Because of this, very few people, even within OM, seem to understand OM. I never cease to be amazed about this.

If I ask people, what is OM doing in Turkey? Many would not be able to give an intelligent answer, because you will not learn about OM in Turkey through taking part in OM France, because there are two completely different operations.

There is an enormous diversity within OM. In the early days, I had great trouble with two brothers in one area. Both of them are with Jesus now. John and Keith, killed together, taken to be with the Lord together in the motor accident in Poland in 65 or 66.

But I spent a lot of time with each one of these brothers, pointing out that what the other brother was doing was part of the vision. Brother Keith couldn't really see where this literature thing, which was called STL, was really part of the real OM, in-gut thrust.

He didn't use those terms, of course, they're mine. On the other hand, John, who came from an organizational background, he was in organization with the Phillips Corporation, he couldn't quite figure out the other aspect of OM.

Sometimes he had a little difficulty understanding certain parts of it. Well, from the very earliest days, both of these important aspects of OM were there, which you're going to get to in a minute. So, don't try to just understand OM as a whole.

This is OM. Get some of the basic goals, which we're going to talk about, and then as you have time, try to get to understand the different aspects of OM. You see, it has been our belief from the beginning that the strategy for a particular country should be basically determined by the national leaders in that country.

That concept was in OM before this manual was written. And that these nationals, who should be setting the pace, they must determine how the basic goals will work out in their country, in the midst of the particular problems that they are facing.

The problems we face in India are completely distinct from the problems we face in Great Britain, or Sweden, or other countries. So, I think that's very, very important. Let's get down to some of the basic goals.

What OM Must Not Become

We've listed here in this chapter some of the things that we don't want the movement to be. We don't want to be another mission board or denomination. One of the reasons is because there already are many of those.

Some people do not understand the difference between a mission board and a movement like OM. There are many differences. If I get into that, I'll never get through. This is my greatest problem speaking.

I get sidetracked all over the place. But there is a great difference between the way OM operates and a standard mission board. You should be able to understand that. Just in terms of how candidates are accepted.

A mission board is a board of men who sit down and decide who is going to go and who doesn't go. And it doesn't quite happen that way. We don't even know who's here. But we can't go into that too much.

We don't want to be a mere opportunity for Christian service, point two. We don't want to be just a literature distribution agency. Though, of course, we distribute literature. We'll be seeing some of that lately.

Some of you are already in that seminar, workshop. We don't want to be another institution. And we don't want to be a band of Pharisees. When you reject the first four, you'll easily go into point five if you're not careful.

It's so easy somehow for religious people to feel that they are one up on others. Maybe because they have special light or special feelings or they see God work through them in special ways. Well, maybe if they took more time, they'd see God working through others as well.

Because he is. Then we've listed some of the aims, the things that we want to be. Number one, a fellowship of like-minded believers. OM, I believe, is a movement with the emphasis on relationships. This is absolutely the core of what has been happening in this work from the beginning.

Relationships Over Institutional Loyalty

God has been building relationships between people. Ultimately, I don't feel you can really be loyal to an organization. I believe eventually that collapses. Ultimately, I don't even believe you can be loyal to a set of doctrines.

A lot of Christian work has been built on those two things. Building up loyalty to an organization. Our organization. Our church. Or to doctrine. Our doctrine. We've got the truth. This is our doctrinal statement.

Many groups make you sign a doctrinal statement. And people who have never seen each other have a loyalty because they've signed a doctrinal statement together. And they say, boy, isn't this wonderful?

We all believe the same here. We all believe the same thing about the premillennial theory. And there are groups that you cannot join without signing a statement that you believe in a premillennial theory or a pre-tribulation theory.

Now, I'm not saying God can never work through a movement that builds on this kind of loyalty. But it is my own view that eventually this collapses. I believe that, of course, should be part of real Christian unity.

Doctrine must be part of our loyalty. Absolutely. There needs to be a certain degree of loyalty to our local church. Absolutely. But the deeper loyalty is to one another as believers. And so extra effort must be given to building up relationships.

Now, this is slower. In many Christian situations, people join a Christian organization just like employment. You go to the employment section. You see the personnel director. He interviews you. You go through certain things.

You decide on a salary and you join. Again, I'm not saying God doesn't use that. But we've seen right around the world that one year later, someone comes along with a better salary. And so you leave that group hardly without batting an eye and you go join the other group for a better salary.

This is happening all the time. It is our conviction that one of our greatest aims in this movement is to build relationships. Now, there are two kinds of relationships that I see, practically speaking.

One, we build relationships that are linked with the work we are doing. We've got to face facts that we have a job to do. It's great to be theoretical. Talk way up here. We have a job to do, don't we?

God has called us to a work to do. We're going to talk more about that in a minute. So some of our relationships are organizational centered in the sense that we are working in the same organization. And those relationships have to hold.

Absolutely essential for the ongoing power and reality in that movement. But just as important are relationships that are outside the movement. They have nothing to do with OM. And I believe they will be, for some of us, are more important relationships or just as important.

It will be harder to maintain those. Those of us who work together in OM, we have, to some degree, we're forced to stay right with one another. Boy, I tell you, if we don't stay right with one another as leaders, we're going to have trouble.

But there's no compulsion on me to keep a strong relationship with someone outside of OM other than the love of Jesus Christ. That should be enough. And so a person who's in OM is building relationships within the work, getting linked in heart and mind and soul to move together in evangelism, church planting, literature.

We're going to talk about that. But also he's building up relationships outside the work. Not because he expects that person is going to catch fire and join OM. Some of my very good relationships are with people that I don't think they should join OM.

I think they ought to continue doing what they're doing. And I think this is very, very important. A mark of sectarianism is when all our deep relationships are with people who are only within our little clan or clique or spiritual movement, whatever little label you want to put on it.

I think this is very important. So we've talked about OM being a fellowship of like-minded believers. I might just say that people who are outside of OM, at least the structure of it, of course are the people that are really carrying this movement forward.

In a sense, they're not outside. We could argue all day, are the prayer partners outside or inside? To me, the prayer partners are the foundation. People come on OM and they leave us in the end of the summer.

We never hear from them again. Prayer partners have stood with us for 18 years. And our relationship with these prayer partners should be as meaningful as some of the people who are right with us. But I think we must realize that we must have good relationships with people who may not even want to be prayer partners.

I think that also is included in what I was referring to before. A fellowship of like-minded believers. Of course, I've gone on to say more here, who for the sake of training, spiritual growth, fellowship, prayer, spiritual warfare, unite at certain times for special all-out efforts with the goal of reaching the entire world with the gospel.

For this reason, most young people are encouraged to unite with us for a summer or a year-long campaign before continuing on with the main line of ministry to which God has called them. And right there we can underline the words.

If you have your manual, you can do it. Efforts with the goal of reaching the entire world with the gospel. There is one of the cardinal, main, foundational, use whatever word you want, goals of the movement.

The Great Commission and OM’s Place in the Church

It's quite simple, isn't it? In direct obedience to the Great Commission, going into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. The Lord gave the command. His command becomes our goal. And our goal as a movement is to fulfill that commission.

It's to reach the entire world with the gospel under point one in this ultimate aim and goal. Of course, that's very general. But you've got to have your general, basic, long-term goal before you can have the smaller goals to reach that.

I think it's very important. Now, the moment I say that, I include in reaching this goal all believers. I think it's wrong to say our goal in O .M. is to reach the whole world with the gospel. We in O .M. are not going to do that.

That is the goal of the whole church. The goal of the whole church. And so we in O .M. must find our place within the church. I have people come to me and say, Boy, when are we going to go into this country?

O .M. is not in this country yet. It is not our goal to go in every country. Because we are part of the body of Christ. We believe it is the goal of the whole church to go in every country. So we get our goal, which is very basic and very ultimate, and then we've got to find our place.

I think the second is harder than the first. I think it's pretty basic. Though I think some people lose the basics myself. That we reach the whole world. But what is our place? And this leads us to one of our very specific basic goals, which is right here in the same paragraph, to be a fellowship of like-minded believers who, for the sake of training spiritual growth, we are unquestionably a training program.

Now, when you say that, immediately some people think, Well, that's all we do. We train people. So some people, the only thing they think O .M. does is take people very young, very untrained on a summer crusade or a year program, and they train them, and then they send them on.

And then they can't understand what we're doing in Turkey. They can't understand a man who's been laboring ten years with STL in London. They can't figure out what Captain Padgett is doing on a ship at 64 years of age.

It's hardly the time to begin training, though, you know, never too late to learn. So, because our emphasis is training, and this is certainly one of our main methods of reaching that final goal, that doesn't mean that's all we do.

It doesn't even mean that, for some of us, that is our main thing, because different leaders in O .M. have different burdens. And different leaders have a greater burden as to how people can be trained.

So training people and enabling them, helping them in every way possible to grow spiritually, and I love to think of O .M. as a movement, aimed at spiritual growth on every level. Individuals, local church, university groups, we want to see Christians grow.

I like to think of O .M. as a movement of spiritual renewal. We want to see renewal in the Church of Jesus Christ. We want to see it in individuals. I think that's very, very important. The moment we talk about training, we have all kinds of ideas.

Local Churches as the Foundation of Training

Many people have a very stereotyped view of training. They believe training would basically only take place in a Bible school. You go to Bible school to be trained. I praise God for the Bible school movement.

I don't see how anyone cannot praise God for the Bible school movement and how the Lord has used it. But I am convinced that the local church should be the foundation method in God's program for training believers.

That believers should be trained in their local assembly and church and it should start when they're about four years of age. Or five. I wouldn't put a date on it. And you and I know that this is the area where many, many churches find a great amount of difficulty.

And this is why it is often churches that ask OM to come in and help them with a training program, with a leadership program. I find many people very naive about the state of the church. We seem to go from extremes, people who reject the church and the church is all dead, to people who become church neurotics.

They can't see anything outside the little local church structure and if you nail them down, it's usually their church. And it seems to me there's a happy balance. We see in the book of Acts the importance and the significance of the local church.

Therefore any true goal within OM must include the local church. This is why in some of our fields the main goal in the context of the training program is to see local churches planted. It fits together.

They want to train people. They want to plant churches. They want to evangelize the world. It fits together. As we train people, work with people, they can be used of God to either help local churches or even plant new local churches.

And together they will reach out to evangelize the world and the multiplication method will be functioning. Therefore I do not see a confliction between training and evangelism and church planting. They are one.

But what is important is that every country and situation we go into is different. And in some countries OM is not involved directly in planting the churches. We're more involved indirectly. In India we have not been involved very much in direct church planting.

But we have been involved in training men who are going in to church planting. And this is important in a movement that is international and interdenominational because it is not our burden to transplant Western churches into the East.

We believe these people have to, in a sense, plant and begin their own churches. It's absolutely exciting to see where ex-OMers are working in these days. The most exciting part of OM are the ex-OMers.

Never forget it. It is not this little band of people that manage to hang together by the sheer mercy of God and keep it all going year after year. It's the ex-OMers. And they may not get into all the weekly reports and they may not be in all the big conferences but they're on doing the job all over the world.

And some of them may not even agree with some of the things that we, or often at least they think we feel or believe. There are now 20-some-plus-thousand ex-OMers. We know some of them have more vision than others.

That same is true of people in the work. Some are more disciplined than others. It's also true of us. Some have got on tangents. Nobody in OM on a tangent? And so I believe, even though it's never as fast as we want and there are many discouraging factors, I believe we are seeing these basic goals fulfilled.

Of seeing the world evangelize, of being involved in training people to do this, which also means church planting, working with the church, sometimes bringing renewal to already existing churches, sometimes planting a church where no church has ever existed.

Sometimes in regard to that, all we do is the very beginnings. We drop the acorns. Somebody else comes along and does the rest. There is no pretense in OM that we can do the whole job. The church, all believers together, are the only ones that can do the whole job.

Cooperation Among Christian Movements

This includes tremendous movements like the Whitcliffe Bible Translators. This includes great student movements like Campus Crusade and InterVarsity. This includes Child Evangelism Fellowship, Gospel Recordings, tremendous literature agencies like Moody Literature Mission and Life Messengers.

It includes these great radio ministries around the world. We are all together in the same thrust forward. We all have the same goal of evangelizing the world. And then we have the job of finding out where we fit in.

Training, Motivation, and Spiritual Growth

And I think the most unique part where OM should be fitting into this whole total picture, which we're all a part of as believers, sometimes whether we like it or not, is training. Training young people.

Motivating them. With some, we'll have the privilege of training them three or four years. If we really want to give a man a training program, we need him for several years. But God has many ways to work.

God has many training programs. And so, for some, they'll only be with us a month. But I have seen people pick up the OM vision in one month and blaze on a trail more than another brother who stayed with us for three years.

Because, let's face it, different people have different potential. And different people absorb things at a quicker rate. I remember a young man. He's never been on OM. The only conference he ever came to in the history of the work was one of these leaders conferences.

And in the last meeting, he recommitted his life to Jesus Christ and he has never been the same again. He is a burning evangelist for God and the leader of another spiritual movement that is moving forward reaching tens of thousands of people for Jesus Christ.

That dear brother absorbed more of what's on my heart in three days than some people I've been with for five years. Because perhaps he had a greater gift to absorb and to put into practice than someone else.

God is working in different people in different ways and I think that's very important when we think of our total goals. So training is key. Planting churches and seeing renewal within the church of Jesus Christ is key which very much involves us in leadership training because the church is not going to go any further than her leadership.

Very, very important. And yet in the process of doing this, two things come to mind. One is that spiritually, I believe our highest goal is none of these things and we'll probably have a whole message on this.

Knowing God and Becoming Like Christ

I believe our highest goal is to know God and I believe our highest goal is to become more and more like Jesus Christ. And if people put me on the spot and say, what do you think is more important, evangelism or spiritual development?

I will say spiritual development. Because to me, you can be in evangelism without spiritual development. I have seen it. People get caught up. Evangelism is their thing. But you can't have spiritual development without evangelism.

I wonder if you got that. You can have evangelism without spiritual development, spiritual growth, whatever term you want to use. But you can't have spiritual growth and development without evangelism.

So to me, if someone wants to pin me down, I will say our greatest burden is to see young people or anyone growing in Jesus Christ. And to me, when a man is growing in Christ, he's becoming more like Christ.

In one sense, I don't care if he joins a ship or OM or goes back and starts a bonfire in his local church or joins InterVarsity or some other group. And praise God for so many key brothers who are with us for several years who are now pastors of churches or leaders of missions out on the field.

And this is exciting. And I think we should constantly be reminded of that. So our basic goal is to evangelize the world, though more important than that, it's to know God, it's to walk with God, it's to grow and become more like Jesus Christ.

And I believe evangelizing the world and outreach should be the spontaneous outflow of a life that's planted in God. In one sense, I'm an enemy of that which I actually organize. I organize crusades and special campaigns, summer campaigns and all the rest.

Evangelism Beyond Special Campaigns

So do you. And yet in other ways, I'm an arch enemy of this. I fully understand, or at least I think I understand at times, people who think this kind of thing is all wet. I always like to ask them what they're doing about the situation.

You get some interesting answers. You say, boy, you really are confusing me. Let me try to explain. If OM becomes project-oriented, summer crusade-oriented, campaign-oriented, we make a great mistake.

Because we get to think that evangelism is when we have special campaigns. The disciplined life and evangelizing others is when I join OM for the summer. It's not when I get back to my office or back home.

It doesn't really work back there. We don't say that, but we prove it. And I believe that this is a plague. I don't know how to stop it. Billy Graham comes to London and all of London starts moving in evangelism.

Counseling sessions, prayer meetings. It's a fantastic thing. Billy Graham goes one year later. Now, praise God, some are still going on one year later. And that makes it all worthwhile. And one of the values of his campaigns, I think one of the biggest, is all the people he trains as counselors.

I think that counselor training, which I had the opportunity of getting in on a little bit years ago, when I was about two years old in Christ, is one of the most valuable things they do. Because Billy goes, but he leads maybe 500 people who have at least learned on a beginning level how to lead someone to Jesus Christ.

And sometimes you'll go to places where they're very critical of Billy Graham, and they've got all kinds of high-sounding ideas, and you ask him, how many people in your church, brother, know how to lead anyone to Jesus Christ?

And their mouth drops about six inches, because they know they don't have any soul winners in the whole church. Even the pastor has doubts if he knows how to lead anybody to Christ anymore. And it grieves my heart when I hear the criticism against Campus Crusade for Christ.

Anybody can criticize any human movement. You don't need any brains. And we'll put you up on the pedestal and we'll tear you apart as well. We're all weak. But there's no movement in our generation that has led more people to Jesus Christ that I know of than Campus Crusade for Christ.

And I can sit down with you and list what I feel are some of their weak points, some things that even make me jump out of my shoes. I can do that also a little bit about Owen. But our God is very big and very great.

And if he could not use movements, despite their weaknesses and errors and tangents and even inconsistencies and even sin, then I don't think he'd have much left to work with. I don't think there'd be any local churches left.

And I don't think there'd be many movements. And as we think of these tremendous goals, and as we develop strong convictions within ourselves how we're going to reach the goal, let's not judge others who are going about it in a different way.

Let's not judge others who have their inconsistencies. What happens in the Christian church that's tearing us apart so much? We see their inconsistencies and they see ours. One man sees the holes in your sanctification theories and you see the holes in his sanctification theories and you both proceed forward in an unsanctified way to criticize and judge one another.

Isn't that lovely? And it's hard at times to face reality, but I think we've got to do it. And I believe one of our greatest goals, and this is what I'm building up to, is to be a blessing to the church of Jesus Christ.

Serving the Global Church with Humility

And to every group and to every movement, you say, that's too much! Well, look, there's quite a few of us. We're involved in 50 nations, about 25 long-term basis, about another 25 and more of the ship going all over.

I believe God wants to use this feeble word to just bless people all over the world. Teaching, training, encouragement, counseling, wherever we can fit in. This is why I believe that to launch out into the mission field today with little stereotyped ideas of exactly how we're going to do it.

You know, we arrive as foreigners in your country. We've got a little package plan. I got this in my conference in Belgium. Let's see, it's in my pocket here. And we take out our little plan. This is actually the washcloth from the airline.

I save these. And we've got a little strategy for your country. Well, that's about as useful as this. Not much. We've got to go to these countries. We've got to humble ourselves. In most cases, we've got to learn the language.

Before we do that, we mainly have to work as servants, as trainees. We mainly should think of ourselves on an encounter or exposure program. We can help. We can be a blessing. But we can't really lead.

We can't really do the kind of work that must be done more than anything else in that country. But together with the local people, the national people who know the language, so much can be done. But this demands a high degree of humility that I do not think is yet being produced among missionaries and even OM the way it should be.

And this means, of course, that we're going to have to be flexible and that the work in India is going to be different from the work in Belgium. Think of our work in Bangladesh. Some OMers don't even think we're in Bangladesh.

That shows how good our publicity is. OM technically is not in Bangladesh. But in fact, Bangladesh is one of our main fields in Asia. We have 20 full-time men. We even have another established mission organization that sponsors people to work, foreigners to work in Bangladesh.