Into the World

To other people's welcome to the ship and especially to this meeting when we have the privilege of sharing that which is really perhaps on our hearts the most, the challenge of taking the gospel to the unreached people of the world. Of course, I feel a little bit bringing that message on the ship to Vancouver like the guy that tried to export oranges down into Florida because Vancouver is actually my model city. As I speak all over the world, I'm always talking about Vancouver.

I really should get some kind of donations for that from the city council. But I often share about the Great Missions Fest event in Vancouver and how many churches cooperate. You may not be aware that in a number of places they have tried that and it doesn't work.

Getting churches to cooperate is pretty, it's a pretty Mount Everest kind of an adventure and especially south of the border, they especially find it difficult. For missions, for music, they will do that. You can see OM is trying to go with the flow.

I'm actually speaking at that meeting. You can make any announcement about me and I speak free. You don't have to buy a ticket.

You hear me? Maybe you bought a ticket here. I don't know. Did you pay tickets for this? Thank you, Jesus.

But I'm not totally against selling tickets. That to me isn't worth arguing over. But I do praise God for Vancouver and what he's done here through Missions Fest and equally through local churches that have a vision for missions.

I was in such a church this morning and I've been in other churches in Vancouver that are models of what I call Acts 13 churches, sending out workers into the harvest fields. I've actually just come in from Manila, so I'm not quite with it. I just want to say that things have radically changed in the last 10 years in regard to missions.

And we need to be aware of that. Some of it is positive, some of it is negative. But the greatest change is that we have another 30 or 40 new missionary sending countries.

No longer just Canada and the States and Great Britain and New Zealand. Of course, Germany and Sweden. There's always been more sending countries than most people know.

And when I was in the States a long time ago, though I visit there, people would always talk about Europe as a mission field and just gave the idea that Germany and Sweden, Norway, these places were desperate. We needed American missionaries to go out to these countries. But when I got over there to live, and I've been living in Europe now off and on for 37 years.

When I'm not there, usually in Asia, or sometimes over here, I discovered very strong sending churches in Germany and Sweden. Norway had the highest per capita missionary sending in the world, higher than the United States. So it's so easy, isn't it, to get distortion because we get only limited amount of information and we get bits of information.

And that often produces a distortion. But today we have a lot of changes and we not only have those countries, the ones that were known and the ones that weren't known, but now we've got places like the Philippines. Philippines has 31,000 evangelical churches, according to the people I'm just talking to, who are leaders of the church there.

And they want to send missionaries. Now they already have some and they have an army of tentmakers. We have two kinds of tentmakers, maybe three.

Some of them are out there just to get a job, economic pressure, other factors. They love Jesus, but they are not really in any way sharing their faith very much. Then there are the tentmakers who are out there and specifically feel God's calling upon them to share their faith, even though they may be working as a maid for some big shot in Saudi Arabia.

Key open door, by the way. So the Filipinos are on the move and we just had an overwhelming response. In fact, I spoke at a business person's meeting.

One man was a major television producer. He got so excited about this message about missions and sending because we emphasize sending and that business people who do the sending are just as important as those who go. I don't think I'd ever heard that before.

He got very excited and he came the next day with his camera crew, did a 22 minute video of this presentation. I had to condense it and he's going to show that over primetime television to the whole nation of the Philippines. And that is a little bit scary because we could get almost a stampede of missionaries from the Philippines.

If we don't also get a stampede of people giving, then it will lead to a lot of frustration, which we already have in the Philippines and many other countries, including Canada, the United States, increasing numbers of people that want to go. Somebody challenged him at their Bible college or in their church, got them to put their hand up, sign a card, 9000 signed these cards at Urbana this year. But when they start figuring out how you do this, they discover it's 10 times harder than they ever dreamed.

The way it's going, it'll be much harder to be a career missionary from North America than it will be a brain surgeon. And that's not to put down brain surgeons, praise God for brain surgeons. But it's getting more difficult to be a career missionary.

Meanwhile, so many new countries are wanting to send Argentina down here on my sleeve. I get my globe. This is mine.

This doesn't belong to the ship. They don't have this big a vision yet. But but Argentina is wanting to send out missionaries.

Brazil, all kinds of statements have been made from Brazil. We're going to send 10,000. We're going to send 15,000.

We're hoping they might send 10,000. That would be great. But again, they're getting it all together, the financing, the sending.

It's a lot slower than the Brazilians hoped. Korea is considered number one of the new missionary sending countries. It doesn't mean that they pulled ahead of places like the States, but there's just so much happening.

And also among Korean-Americans and Korean-Canadians. And of course, if you're a Korean-Canadian or American, you have a tremendous advantage. You probably know English.

We call the 1.5 generation the most proactive group in all of Los Angeles when our ship came in. No other national group was even near them. There was no competition.

The Koreans, they wanted the ship for the whole time. I think we gave it to them for a week and it was exciting. And I had some great meetings among the Koreans there a number of times.

So we live in a very, very different world when it comes to world missions, the challenge of missions. There's also many new approaches. We have the Willow Creek Association spreading their vision around the world.

You say, what? What's that? Has Willow Creek, their vision come to Vancouver? How many know what we're talking about? Willow Creek. Quite a few. Well, you're so proactive here.

You don't need to know about Willow Creek, but Willow Creek is a church outside Chicago where they tried a lot of new things. They're the people that pioneered the term seeker sensitive. And they did a lot of market research before they started the church and very much geared toward the non-Christian to the whole thrust is for the non-Christian.

And if you belong to Willow Creek, you've got to be involved with non-Christians. Everybody has a ministry. Everybody gets involved with non-Christians.

And just a few guys and maybe 20 years ago now, and the church is now 15,000 strong. It is probably one of the strongest, most widely known churches in the world. They're not super strong on sending out their own missionaries yet.

We're flirting with them about that. But they have a vision for missions and they send finance and the Willow Creek Association now separate from the church has huge seminars in Britain and Europe teaching churches how to stay on the cutting edge in the nineties. And as we move toward a new millennium, you'd say, well, why are you as a mainly a missionary speaker and a missionary leader so concerned about that? Number one, my first burden isn't missions.

My first burden is Jesus, just to know him and walk with him. And my second burden is God's people, wherever they are, somehow they can experience Jesus. Somehow they can live in reality, integrity in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And if we don't have strong churches here in Canada, cutting edge churches that can reach the next generation, cutting edge churches that'll get delivered from the legalisms of the last century before we go into another century. God's people sometimes are a little slow. They're carrying baggage from the 19th century.

As we move toward the 21st century, it's not good. And I guarantee you, I'm not the prophet or the son of the prophet. But if there are not radical changes in our churches, we will lose the youth generation.

Call them X generation, call them whatever you like, except don't put them down. That's not good. Urbana showed and many people have proven that this generation has just as much potential as any other generation to do God's will.

They have probably a little more baggage. They live in a more promiscuous society. So the environment that this generation is in is tougher than the environment you and I were reared in.

Therefore, they shouldn't be put down. They should be understood. We should be a little more flexible.

We should try to listen to them. And meanwhile, make sure we stay proactive and encouraged in the midst of the dark days in which we live. And the paganism and the postmodernism that is sort of taking over our culture and our governments and many, many other things.

And it's all over the world. There's a new, I noticed in Canada and my recent trips, an increased tendency for Canadian Christians to criticize Canada, put down Canada, put down. Brits are, of course, way ahead of you at that.

And they get university training in cynicism. So I don't think you're going to catch up to the Brits. I don't think you should try.

And I believe somehow with all the darkness and all the problems and all the new laws that do upset us sometimes, we must stay proactive. We must stay optimistic. We are God's people.

We're kings and priests. There's a sense where we don't care what happens here. We're headed there.

The other sense, of course, we're very concerned about what happens here. So let's do something about it rather than just mumble or groan or complain. Let's get some more of God's people into politics in Canada.

That can be fun. Let's get more people into the arts. Let's get more people into the business world.

Let's understand there is and must be no separation between the secular and the sacred. So often I know, especially in Bible colleges, we lift up full-time ministry. We lift up being a pastor.

We lift up being a missionary. Why don't we lift up people who work in banks? Why don't we lift up people who work as farmers? I'm a great admirer of farmers. Why don't we lift up airplane pilots? Boy, they're my heroes, especially when I'm in their plane.

Why don't we lift up doctors? There's no second-class citizenship in the work of the kingdom. We're all going first-class. Therefore, we need to love one another more.

We need more patience with each other. We need to be bigger-hearted. We need to see that God's work is in the midst, and God's unity is in the midst of variety.

Pastors often have certain areas where they easily get in trouble and sin. Business people have areas where they can easily get in trouble and sin. And it's so easy to see the other person's failures, sins, and weaknesses rather than our own.

And I just long, I long with all my heart to see greater love among believers, greater unity. And that is the testimony of this ship. We are not perfect.

This ship ministry has been going on 27 years. I had leaders tell me it would never last more than a year. I had people tell me I was crazy when I first launched this.

To get people from different denominations and nationalities living together on a ship, and going out into high-pressure, complex parts of the world, attempting to communicate cross-culturally, attempting to work with all different churches, Pentecostals, and Brethren, Baptists, and Anglicans all at the same time. Charismatics, automatics, asthmatics, all kinds of people working together. They said, you're crazy.

This will not work. But brothers and sisters, we are celebrating our 40th anniversary in this Feeble Missionary Fellowship, and we want to say with all of our hearts, it has worked. It has worked.

Not, as one great Scottish theologian said, not in the absence of struggles, and failures, and tears, and all that humanness, and all that messiness that sometimes comes in, especially when we sin. But in the midst of all that, the grace of God, the forgiveness of God, the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, the bonding together of people of like mind, even though initially they repelled each other. You ever play that game with magnets? You turn it one way, it repels.

Push, and push, and push. You can't get the magnet to stick to another magnet. You just make a little change, boom, it sticks together.

And many times that's the way we are as God's chosen people. Sometimes God's frozen. We need a little defrost.

We need a little adjustment. And when we've seen people come to the ship, and we've seen them learn how to adjust, flexibility is a big word in modern missions. It's also a big word in marriage.

What about it, husbands? How many of you honestly say, I really feel that in my marriage I'm being flexible. I've told my wife, my children, things I don't like, change, problems, I'm flexible. Mr. Flexible.

Hey, I'd love to get your autograph after the meeting. Just admire these kind of men. And yet we know that in marriage, if there's not that flexibility, there's not what I call that grace awakening.

Have you seen that new secular book on marriage? Oh my, what a book. Just the title's enough to cause you to rededicate your life. The title is, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

This so amazed my wife and I, because shortly after our marriage, when we discovered we were so completely different, we actually thought we came in from different planets. But somehow, we just had our 37th wedding anniversary, and have seen God's faithfulness to weak, struggling, keep listening, people. We were a Bible college marriage.

We were so dedicated to Jesus, we were so gung-ho about missions. We got our love for Jesus, and our commitment to missions, and our commitment to one another, it got all pulled up. And so, we got married without really knowing each other.

At Moody Bible Institute, where I was studying, you couldn't marry until you graduated. So, I got my three-year course done in two years. And I was in love with this gal that I had met.

And she had gone to Mexico, and there's a big story, but there's not time to tell that. But she really admired me. She not only loved me, she admired me.

She thought I was a man of God. Oh, you know, this is the kind of ethos we get at Bible college, especially if we win people to Jesus. And she believed that I was the teacher, and I had her mainly into Ephesians 5, not even the whole chapter, just a few of those key verses.

Submit, submit. And she believed this, and she accepted. She sold her possessions, gave the money to world missions, other things that I asked her to do.

We launched out to Mexico, and our marriage, I tell you, it was terrific. It was terrific for several weeks. Then she started to read those other verses.

Husbands loving their wives as Christ loved the church. And we discovered the hard way, I guess, that we were just so very, very different. But we learned from books like Calvary Road about brokenness.

We learned from some great books on marriage about the fact that problems are so normal in marriage. And we got to learn to wrestle through these differences and be big-hearted. And we discovered, as Charles Swindoll in his brilliant book, my favorite book these days, Grace Awakening, I think the ship's probably sold out.

But I know O.M. Canada has some extra copies left over from Mission Fest Toronto. But Charles Swindoll has that chapter in there. If you just read only that chapter, it's worth it.

And the chapter is learning how to agree, to disagree, and press on. I believe that is the way ahead for the church. Not that we're going to depart from the basic doctrines.

But I don't think we'll ever have the same kind of straight doctrinal lining up that we used to have. And churches that are growing, generally they're not serving many straight drinks. They're more big into cocktails in the churches that are growing.

Now some of you look a little puzzled at this point. I'm not talking about alcoholic beverages, though I would love to give you my message on that, as a teetotaler who just totally respects people who may have an occasional glass of wine, or my German friends who have a glass of beer. But I won't take you down that road.

We are a dry ship. So you can all relax. Some of you are getting more tense.

But this beautiful chapter, learning how to agree, to disagree, is so important. And when I talk about a straight drink, I mean everybody in the church basically believes the same doctrines. 60 point doctrinal statement.

One mission group just cut off supporting OM. And before they did it, they sent me, I think it was about a 60 point doctrinal statement. And I had to sign.

And in integrity, I couldn't do it. Well, that was the end of that. Financial income.

Again, I think those extra long doctrinal statements come more from south of the border. We certainly don't have many of those in Europe. And as we look at what God is doing across the world, as we look at many live growing churches, we see unity is in the midst of diversity.

Even as we think of missionary strategy, we see the unity is in the midst of diversity. We have teams on the field working together in partnership, where different people on the team feel led to really evangelize and share in different ways. We learn not to condemn.

Other people's message methods or message, of course, by cocktails, I simply mean. You might get someone who's a Calvinist with an Armenian streak. You might get someone who's a fundamentalist who in speaks in tongues in the closet.

You might get you just get a lot of mixture. And we surely must on the ship, we must represent the ultimate in mixture. And because we have the ultimate in mixture on our ship, I'm just being real honest with you.

We do at the end of the year have a few mixed up people. I'm hoping that somehow it's not gone too far in my own life. There are some of us really are not so sure exactly how it's all going to happen at the end as they taught us at Moody's.

Somehow we've read some other books and we've got confused about some of these end time things, but we're still learning. So we don't break fellowship over the rapture issue. What is your reaction to that? Some of you.

We don't break fellowship on the Bible translation issue. Well, now I don't know. At least we're not in Alberta here.

British Columbia, if you talk to people from Alberta and ask him what they think of British Columbia or at least of Vancouver, you definitely will get a cocktail answer. Anyway, that's not really the main burden that's on my heart tonight. I wanted to show you my flag and anybody who can guess what country this is, excluding people who have been in full-time ministry in the mission field for more than a few years, you are excluded from this contest.

But anybody who can tell me what country this is will get a free book, a free George Furler book. They don't sell very well anyway. Okay, what country? Raise your hand.

Italy. You're way out. Palestine.

No, no, no, no. Saudi Arabia. You're getting humbled.

Vancouver is going down. Yes. Well, over here, what? Huh? No.

Back there? No. No. No.

It's a sad day in British Columbia. No. This is the flag of Tajikistan.

What are you laughing about? I know when you talk about Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, I know some dear ignorant folk think you're talking about new pizzas. But they are nations. They are nations largely dominated by Muslims, but they were under the Iron Curtain.

And so you have a very unique ethos in these countries, where basically in most of them there is at present a great open door. And I would encourage you to pray for these new nations that were once just under the grip of the Soviet Union, and pray that the Lord of the Harvest will send out laborers into the harvest field. Before you go this evening, I hope you will look at the book exhibition here in the back and the book fair.

And we got to watch the clock, especially me. So maybe I'll mention these books before it's too late. Love Will Find A Way, an amazing book about this man Charles Marsh.

He was one of many of OM's mentors. In OM, we are so grateful to so many men and women of God. One of them from Vancouver in his latter years named Lionel Gurney.

He actually spent much of his final time before he died on our ship, Dulles, with all those young people. What a privilege to have people like that living in our midst. And this is another man that was just greatly used.

He's now with the Lord. Charles Marsh, not so well known in Canada. There's a chance to get a very brief biography of that amazing apostle to the Muslim world.

There's Serving As Senders, one of our priority books that shows the seriousness of sending. There's You Can Change The World. They now have part two.

This is part one. One of the best children's books ever, enabling us to talk to children about missions, about unreached people like the Kurds. There are the Kurds.

There are 20 million Kurds. 20 million. What's the present population of Canada? 27 million.

Some may say 30. 29, counting you and your mother and sister. Good.

Here's 20 million Kurds. All the believers among the Kurds could sit in these chairs in the whole world. There basically is no church in Kurdistan.

There's some groups, infant churches, look like they're about to be born. They somehow sometimes get snuffed out. We don't have time tonight to talk to you more about some of these individual unreached people's groups.

But if you look at the needs in a balanced, objective way, then you know missionaries, including Canadians, are needed as much as ever before. It's not happening fast enough in Brazil and Argentina and Korea and South Africa. We need all of them as well.

But there is no scope for any nation to be left out in a world of 6 billion people. We say in Britain where I now live, 6,000 million. In a world where there are 2,000 unreached people's groups, where the church is almost non-existent, in some places missionaries are almost non-existent.

One of the goals of the 82,000 movement, just a very loose network that has the goal of the gospel for every person, the church for every people, we long to see at least a church planting group among every one of these people's groups before the year 2000. That is looking more impossible. Yesterday it was announced on Canadian radio, which I'm fascinated with, 1,000 days to go before the year 2000.

That was yesterday. So it's 999 days to go. Let's get with it.

Let's get proactive. Let's have some extra prayer time with our family. Let's have a little extra prayer meeting in our church.

Let's ask God what we can do during the final 999 days of this millennium. We're not finishing a decade. That gets exciting, finishing a decade.

I've done that. Not finishing a century. That must be bizarre.

I've not had that experience. Finish a century. We're going to have that.

We have a double header in case any of you are not informed. We finish the century and the millennium on the same day. Isn't that amazing? Have you thought about that? We're not caught up with the date 2000 in some spiritual way.

Evangelism, everything probably will just have to continue, we hope, with greater commitment the very next day and the next year until the Lord comes. But I think it's good to have goals. We need to be flexible.

We need to realize as human beings everything we try, there's usually some error gets in there. But we shouldn't go to the other extreme. We have no goals.

We have no zip. We're sort of out of gas. We're drifting.

We're one more even jellyfish just going with the tide. No! Get some goals. Get some aims in your family, in your church.

Be proactive. If necessary, bring in a consultant. They're always good to get you nervous and help you develop some goals.

In Operation Mobilization, we brought in a godly consultant who would take a look at us from the outside and he took some surveys and he did some research and we learned something through two and a half years of strategic thinking. That led us into strategic planning. That led us into some big giant steps forward which has kept us on the cutting edge of growth and has launched a new program called Global Action which we believe is going to greatly benefit the church, increase the number of people in all of our fields.

We're in about 80 nations right now. We can learn so much. We can learn so much from children's books and I'd encourage you to get that book for your child.

There's one of my books, No Turning Back. That's sort of the basic message I'm always speaking. No matter where I start, I end up in the same place.

Keep on keeping on. There's the story of the first ship my wife and I lived on. That's so many years ago.

I want you to turn with me in your Bible in these closing moments to Acts chapter 13. By the way, I had a parcel of books arrive in from our warehouse in Great Britain, air freight. I seldom ever do that and in that parcel of books and my friend Nate, where has Nate gone to? Needs to make sure that book is on this display table.

It was in the suitcase after my meeting this morning. John Saturday had a book exhibit. Can you find that book? It's the book about the history of WEF, the mandate.

Nate is on it. John Saturday's on it. We'll have a few of those books there because this huge event, the World Evangelical Fellowship General Assembly.

Well, I went to the last one. It was in Manila. It shows one of the biggest, most proactive cities in the world.

This time they have chosen Abbotsford and Vancouver. And the churches around here, some of them, especially in Abbotsford, are very proactive. 600 leaders are coming from around the world.

And this is the second week of May. This is coming. And I find some people don't even know what WEF is.

But WEF is the umbrella agency that holds evangelical Christians together around the world. More people know the local agency in Canada. What would it be called? Jeff, what's it called here in Canada? Yeah, I read that this afternoon and still couldn't remember it.

So pray for my memory. In the United States, it's called the National Fellowship of Evangelicals. Canada is called the Evangelical Alliance.

Different countries have different names. And it's not a heavy-handed kind of thing. It's a fellowship.

And we at OM have been related to it for years. And they will be having their General Assembly here. This book by Harold Fuller, a great Canadian missionary, has just come off the press.

We published it. And we sent--probably somebody else already has copies here, but we had to air freight ours in because sometimes I'm a little slow. And let us pray for this great event.

Many of the speakers will be ministering in churches. And if you'd like more information, you can see Jeff. He's sort of on the inside track of that thing.

Can you stand up? Jeff Tinnicliffe, you moved from Toronto to Vancouver. You doing okay? Is that why you lost your hair? Did you lose that in the mood? So that book, I hope, will be there on the book table. And I'm looking forward to coming back.

I have to go back to England, where I live, and then return here for those important days. It's preceded by, actually, a missions commission. And Jeff is the leader of that commission.

And Canadians, leaders, will be coming to be involved in that, even some that may not stay for the whole assembly. Acts 13. Among the prophets and teachers at the church in Antioch were Barnabas, Simeon, also called the black man, Lucius from Cyrene, the foster brother of King Herod, and Paul.

One day, as these men were worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Dedicate Barnabas and Saul for a special job that I have for them. So after more fasting and prayer, the men laid their hands on them and sent them on their way. Directed by the Holy Spirit, they went to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

There in the town of Selemus, they went to the Jewish synagogue and preached, and John Mark went with them as their assistant. Now, we don't have the time to expand that great passage, but I want to commend each one of you, especially, who comes from an Antioch-style church. Say, well, what do you mean by that? I mean a church that is serious about missions, and that is sending missionaries.

In this young new church, the Holy Spirit spoke and sent two of the very best, Paul and Barnabas, joined by Mark as a helper, as an assistant, and he caused a bit of tension. Later, Paul and Barnabas split up on the basis of this character, Mark. I love that story.

I'm so glad that story is in the book of Acts, because I believe one of the things that hinders us in our churches, and in our lives, and in our marriages, in our missionary teams, is unrealistic expectation. And maybe your church has been through a split. Big deal.

People have been hurt. I'm sorry about that. If you don't want to get hurt, you're on the wrong planet.

Check out these vacation programs to outer space. But here, whether you're in a church or whether you're at a church, you're going to probably get hurt. And one of the things we're trying to teach young people, as much as ever, is how to deal with hurt, how to forgive people, how to let love cover, how to bounce back after a church split, how to bounce back after a big split in your family.

There's many a brother that doesn't get on with his other brother. There's many a child that doesn't easily relate to his parents. There's many a parent that has difficulty relating to his child.

Big deal. I believe unrealistic expectation is probably more subtle and more easily used by the devil to bring confusion than some of the raw sin that gets big publicity. And I am very much a person committed to holiness and victory and standing against sin.

We need to understand that Paul and Barnabas, spirit-filled people, were human. They had problems and they had to go their separate ways. I've had a few broken relationships in my life, mainly in ministry.

Most cases I've seen them repaired, which was very encouraging. Some cases took several years. But I believe with all my heart that some of these things that happen, they are part of life.

We don't like it. We don't like it. But it's part of life.

I remember a Canadian farmer gave me a tour of his farm. I don't really know what I was getting into. It was a gigantic, huge pig farm.

And all the pigs were stuffed into these buildings. And when you went into those buildings, I will tell you that was not a perfume factory. But somehow I managed.

It's just a basic fact. Certain things do smell. Now, I don't want to get in trouble with some pro-pig organization and get in a law, a legal case.

In the States, I'd probably be in court within the next few months for me making a derogatory statement about a pig. And let's market the perfume. Don't misunderstand me.

But there are certain things in life, as we go as missionaries, as we battle in our families, in our churches, there are certain things that do smell. It's a fact of life. We got to live with it.

It's not going to be all perfume coming out of your church. It's not going to be all perfume coming out of the pulpit. And if you go into moral missions or you join this ship, and we'd love for some of you to join the ship, it's not going to be all perfume.

When I was selling books door to door as a young Christian, I met a tremendous woman, influenced my life. In one hour, she influenced my life permanently. Women have a way of doing that.

But all she did was buy a pile of books. She bought a pile of books, and then she sat me down and she said, young man, do you study the book of Proverbs? I said, well, I don't think I do very much. She said, I believe, I guess she could see in my eyes, I was strong on zeal and weak on wisdom.

And one of the marks of a true mission society, when it's being born, we hope now we don't get heavy on wisdom and lose our zeal. We want both. But she said, look here, and she pointed to the book of Proverbs, 31 Proverbs, one for every day of the month.

Read one every day, she said, and I have done that almost every day for 40 years. Now I started to write my own. Really, I'm proverbed out, so I'm writing my own.

They're not inspired, don't get any wrong ideas, but they come from a lot of other things I've seen and read. My most famous proverb, I give it to you, is where two or three of the Lord's people are gathered together, sooner or later there will be a mess. But you got to stick with me to the but.

There's a lot of very key buts in the Bible. Remember Acts chapter 12, Peter was in prison, but the church without ceasing prayed. Hey, that's a good lesson, isn't it? But our God specializes in invading our messes and doing wonderful things and turning situations around and using.

Yes, using weak, struggling. My new word, get ready for it. Every year I have several new words.

This is it, 1996 and already we're in 1997. I'm not sure what to do with it, but my big word in was ragamuffin. I got it from the cover of a book, Ragamuffin Gospel by Brendan Menning.

How many of you read that book? One of the greatest books on grace you could ever read. Absolutely brilliant. I haven't actually read the whole book.

I got so challenged from the cover, the ragamuffin gospel, because it's all about God's grace. God's grace, that's what it's all about. Many young people that we're counseling today, especially from strict homes, we discover their religion is basically performance-oriented or shame-based.

In other words, if they perform, they feel good. If they don't perform, they don't feel so good. And we're trying to teach people who come on OM the grace awakening.

Now some people get nervous because they know whenever there's grace, there's the abuse of grace. We have it on the ship. Grace is risky.

My favorite author next to Tozer is Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, his brilliant book, Spiritual Depression, It's Causing Cure. And in that book, and Swindoll refers to it in his book, he says, grace is risky, but I want to take that risk. We're very strong in OM on discipline, but we believe it must be disciplined by grace.

We believe that self-discipline is the greatest form of discipline led and controlled by the Holy Spirit of God. And we believe, therefore, grace without discipline, here's another original, equals disgrace. At Urbana, they had buttons on grace without discipline equals disgrace.

I thought that was pretty good. I'm not sure if it was mine originally. Probably someone gave it to me.

Now I'm going to be in trouble for, what's that word? Plagiary. I almost said purgatory. I mean, it's easy to get mixed up with words, especially when you're jet-lagged.

And this kid that heard the missionary message, and he went back over lunch, and the pastor was visiting. And the pastor said, what was the message about? And he said, the little child said, go in the world and preach the gospel to every preacher. Just a slight difference in the wording.

Let's try to summarize. Let's try to summarize and go to the book fair. Number one, God is doing tremendous things in the world today.

Number two, it's a whole new day. All kinds of new nations and new people get involved in missions. Number three, if we don't reach our own people in our own country and have cutting-edge evangelism so that our church can keep growing, and we keep seeing young people come to Jesus, then we are going to be in deep, deep trouble very, very quickly.

And then we need to understand God uses all kinds of people in all kinds of ministries. And we shouldn't be intimidated by the fact that this seems to be more the age of cocktails, and I'm speaking of truth cocktails, rather than the age of straight drinks. And we should beware of unrealistic expectation.

And we should understand that wherever there are people, even spirit-filled people, sooner or later they'll probably be a bit of a mess. Therefore, we need a grace awakening. We need to learn how to be more forgiving.

We need to learn how to be more flexible. We need to be a little slower to make categorical dogmatic statements when really we haven't done our homework. Isn't it true that we evangelicals are an impatient lot, and we generally don't do our homework very well? And so when we open our mouths and we write some of our articles, especially the strong ones, generally they're not so accurate.

Don't you long for a little more accuracy among evangelical people and charismatic people and whatever other label you may have? And somehow, if there's 50 people in the meeting, we'll speak about 50, not 75 or 100. And if five people profess faith in Christ, we'll talk about five people who profess faith, not five dynamic, life-changing conversions that will impact the entire world within the next few weeks. And that somehow we might become a little more cautious about the word miracle, which is getting overused.

And we may not announce a healing until maybe at least some weeks have passed, and we see that the thing is lasting and that it's real, and that it wasn't just some psychological surge of juices that brought something temporary. I long for greater integrity. And I know I have to start always with myself.

I long for greater reality in the whole work of world missions. And I believe as we do that, we can also see more workers thrust out into the harvest field. So some of us are praying big.

Some of us are dreamers. Some of us get, we get drunk on new wine, and we begin to think crazy things. And so a group of us around the world banded together, and we're asking God for 200,000 new missionaries.

There may be about 200,000 out there now. There's always a punch on furlough. And when I thought of this number, and I was responsible to bring the number from one million down to 200,000, so I'm really mainly a doubting Thomas.

But I thought this 200,000 still seemed so ridiculous, until a year and a few months ago, I was sitting on an airplane in Argentina, and God was dealing with me about my doubting, about my unbelief, and about my many struggles. And he sort of said, let me show you what I can do. And I began to write down things that I sensed God was putting on my heart about nations, and how many nations could send so many missionaries? How many churches? I thought more in terms of churches.

How many churches could get him? In conclusion, it would only take about 100,000 churches to get 200,000 new missionaries, and that's in a world of a couple million churches. So it's doable. And for the first time, the lights came on that this was doable.

That doesn't mean it will happen. It doesn't mean it was a prophecy, God's going to do this, because God's given this job to us. It may not happen.

In fact, I'm convinced, unless we see a grassroots movement, as you have seen in your city more than most, though you know in your heart you have a long way to go here, because a majority of Christians in Vancouver have not got into the ownership of Mission Fest, and the challenge of world missions, if you take the total numbers in this surrounding area. So I believe 200,000 is not too many. That includes tent makers.

That includes people going cross-culturally in their own country, which you can do right here in Vancouver, never even get on a plane or a boat. It includes people behind the scenes in missionary administrative work. It's not really that many people.

You think you could pray for 200,000? That's the whole church, evangelical biblical church, to the whole world. Or maybe you don't like big numbers. Okay, I'll let you off the hook.

Go back to your church, read this scripture, and just send one, one career missionary in the next year, and write me a letter. And when you do, I'll send you the biggest box of books that ever came to your church as just an expression of appreciation that you're sending out missionaries, just as Jesus told us to do. Let's pray.

Lord, I thank you for this opportunity just to open my heart a little bit and share with your people here. I just thank you for this city. I thank you for so many visionary people here, so many great organizations.

I thank you that in your mercy, you cause them to invite us to come with a ship, that we've seen 30,000 plus people come onto this ship and receive powerful ministry and books and tours. And we thank you for those that even in this very auditorium have made recommitments of their lives, even in this very weekend, especially many young people. And we believe, Lord, there has been a multiplication effect that has been taking here over these past three weeks.

And we just praise you, and we just thank you. And Lord, help us to take these materials and books, not just for ourselves, but to share with other people that we too may be proactive mission mobilizers for your kingdom. We pray for this great assembly that's going to come here with hundreds from all over the globe, and that there may come great synergy from this meeting that will even further impact our churches, and impact even those outside of the church, that we may see more and more and more people coming to you and your great salvation right here in Vancouver.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.