Mission Conference Closing, Q and A Panel

By reminding you that song came over at Kmart. God always uses the ordinary to teach us the extraordinary. You may be seated. We want to move right along. Oh, bless the Lord. I want to thank all the, don't you want to thank all the music ministry people for coming out faithfully tonight and leading us? Amen. They're just as tired and worried. In fact, they were here yesterday to rehearse and I'll tell you what though, God's really blessed us with wonderful people. Well, we want to move along and want to do something now that I hope will give us an opportunity to maybe process a little bit, some things we're learning. And here's what I'm going to ask. If David and Betsy Hunter would come up along with Mark Simpson and Andy Kennedy, they're going to bring your chairs. Okay. There's four chairs right here. Alan, you want to get these and Steve, do you have enough strength? Okay. And let's put the chairs right up here in the stage. And you people are on the fringes. If you feel awkward, like you're going to be young. There's some nice chairs here with this dark cloud is hovering right over the middle. We told you that, you know, things were serious financially. The lights are going now. Okay. All right. Okay. Now I've invited these four to informally sit here and with a straight face, answer your questions. But all four of these folks have had a considerable experience overseas with the gospel. And they also have considerable experience in the local church, which is where we're at. So whether you have a question about what's it like over there, or maybe it's in relation, not necessarily to their seminars, but you want to ask them some personal things, or you may want to ask them, Hey, for those of us who know that God's not calling us to go, what would you want us to do here? How can we be most effective? Something like that. They can tell you from this side of the shores, what it's all about. Okay. So direct your question to the particular person. It's not stump the stars. It's Lord help us. Okay. This is only last a few minutes and I'm going to just stand nearby here just to be sure that it doesn't get too far. All right. I'm going to moderate this. Okay. Who would like to ask a question? Anything you wanted to ask? Okay. Chuck. Mark. How would I further get involved? In other words, maybe you're saying what's the next step from where you are here. Okay. Now there's only one little small thing I ought to mention about Chuck here. He met Jesus a week ago today. And as brother Gene Rink said this morning, as many people responded to the invitation to present themselves to the Lord, when you have a man in a wheelchair and a blind woman come forward to say, Lord, I'm available. You know, the spirit of God is moving. We bless Lord. And we're glad you're here. Chuck. Now who can answer his question? I guess he had directed it to Mark. What would you suggest brother his next steps should be? William Carey is a good example of where you find yourself right now. William Carey is known around the world as the father of the modern missionary movement and his work in India is world famous. What people don't know about William Carey is that William Carey had a sister who was paraplegic and she took upon herself for 40 years, an intercessory prayer burden for William Carey. She was so weak. She had to be carried to and from bed, to and from her meals. And she wrote her letters to him with a pencil in between her teeth. Now we can talk about William Carey all we want. But the fact of the matter is William Carey would not have done what he did without his sister, the paraplegic intercessor. These are hidden people. These are people that you do not hear about in the newspaper or from the platform. Well, now you're hearing about it from the platform and it's about time to get heard about from the platform. Because if it wasn't for these people, Father Nash is another example. Father Nash followed Charles Finney or he went before Charles Finney. Two weeks before Charles Finney ever went to a city to evangelize, Father Nash would be in that city renting a hotel room and quite often the hotel keeper would get very nervous about him because he'd be walking down the halls of the hotel and he'd hear groaning and weeping come out of this one room. He'd open the door to find this man on the floor writhing. He appeared to be deathly ill. They'd haul him to the hospital and find out that it was a prayer burden of the Holy Ghost that was upon him. And so he spent three days at a time in his room just interceding and travailing for Charles Finney's ministry. A lot of people didn't know about Father Nash, but God does. So wheelchair or not, that again, like I said this morning in the message, limitations are not permanent. Limitations are not final. Limitations can, on the other hand, be a stepping stone instead of a stumbling block that can move you out into an area of ministry. And one more example, my aunt, my Aunt Helen lives in Florida, retired, and one day she asked the Lord, what can I do sitting here at home for Jesus? The Lord told her to get on the telephone and call the numbers in the phone book and ask which homes had children. And so she'd pick up the telephone book, obey the Holy Spirit, and she'd begin calling with the A's. She'd call, do you have children? No. Hang up. Do you have children? No. Hang up. Do you have children? Yes, I do. They're not here right now. Hang up. Do you have children? And the fourth or fifth call, someone said, yes, I have children. Well, can I talk to them? Sure, I never ever had a phone call from my kid. You know, here, talk to them. And she'd share Jesus. She has one over 500 children to the Lord with her telephone. She never left her home and turned her telephone into a missionary ministry, and now she sends out correspondence courses all the time by the mail to these kids that get saved because she gets her address when they pray to receive the Lord and helps them to grow in the Word by Bible correspondence courses. So if you have a telephone, you can be a minister. Amen. All right. Learn to pray. Place to begin. Paula? David and Betsy, would you say something about going to the mission field as a single person and going to the mission field as a married person, a couple, and the differences there? We'll first hear about going to the mission field as a single woman. I think that, well, going to the mission field as a single person means that you're going to have greater dependence on the Lord. You don't have another person just right there to depend on. I think that means, though, that you have a greater opportunity to see God supply your needs. And actually, I think that there are a very large percentage, maybe Mark knows what percentage of the missionary force is single women. Yeah. I think that when I did go overseas as a single woman and married, to be honest, there were some rough times there because I was lonely a lot of the time. And when I was over there, I prayed that the Lord, when I knew I was coming home, I prayed that the Lord would bring me back and that he would bring me back as a part of a team. And that's something that I think is something that a single person should consider, praying for a partner, a teammate. And that's something that David and I have talked about. We're excited about North Way getting a vision for sending out teams, not just individuals. So I think as a single person, you have a lot more opportunities to do things that maybe a married person, a married woman who's tied down to the home wouldn't be able to do, things that would involve travel. But you also need to be aware of the need of support. And that's where a team is really helpful. I would say as a single man, when I first went out into missions, thinking those lines, that if you're single and you feel the Lord leading you to the mission field, go. Before you have, don't wait to get married. If you feel ready, you don't feel the need to get married. If you're single and you're free as a single person and you want to go in missions, go now and get that experience, either as a single woman or as a single man. And as Betsy mentioned and Mark mentioned this morning, all mission groups pray for more men. The women are God's greatest men in missions today. And we praise the Lord for that, but we constantly pray for more men. At the same time, not everyone has the gift to be out there for a long, long time and stay single. I know women and I know men who are involved in missions who have remained single and God has blessed and used them in a mighty way. I'm not one of those. Betsy's not one of those. Both of us experienced the need, a greater sense of the need for marriage while we were on the mission field. And we're also thankful that we both individually had experienced the missions before we got married. It can happen in any way, but if you're single and you want to go, go and pray for God to meet your need. It may happen while you're out in the field. You may come home and meet someone like I did. But you will discover while you're out there whether you're the one to remain single or whether you need to be married and God will provide your need. Trust Him. Are you single? Be very careful if you go to the mission field as a single person because many times people on the mission field will approach you and develop a romantic interest in you. It will appear to be a romantic interest, but American citizenship is one of the most valuable properties in the entire world. People all over the world would almost sell their blood to become American citizens. And they see marrying an American as their passport to American citizenship. And many times you will be approached by what appear to be very interested suitors that in reality just want to become American citizenship, have American citizenship by marrying you. I realize this may sound like something you wouldn't expect to hear at a meeting like this, but it is reality. It is reality. Right now, American immigration authorities are going through major, major problems because people are really fleecing and mistreating and very aggressively approaching single Americans out in foreign countries. And a lot of them don't know what to do about it. They feel honored. They feel privileged. They feel like maybe God's open door. A lot of them are lonely and they would like to get married in the worst way. And sometimes they do get married in the worst way. Jay? That's true of women. Most of these cases that the government's dealing with are women who've been there and brought men from other countries here. You can go as a single person and God can lead us in that way. That's a real possibility. But don't go onto the mission field without being under authority. Amen. That means both in your home church and out there on the mission field. Amen. Because people say, well, I'm under authority, meaning their home church way back on the other side of the world. But they certainly don't act like it when they get over there. Now, there are these people. But if you go out there as a single person, man or woman, it's very important that you know the authority you're under and it's on both sides, both over there and at home. That's vital. Okay. Another question? Karen? Could you restate it that I understood correctly? Yeah. Karen's question was, what is the greatest need that you feel that we who will remain called as intercessors to be praying for on your behalf, right? Revival and the breaking down of the power of the strong man over nations and cities where missionaries labor. Missionaries come home. There was one period of time, I think it was 53 to 68 in that 15 year period, 65 to 70% of the missionaries being sent to India came home as a failure. And the percentage was slightly greater in Europe. They were going over there, not being trained in intercessory prayer, not being trained what, how the spirits control the minds and cultures of people and what power they had in to overcome those barriers. I've seen missionaries sent out with pop guns trying to face bazookas, and it's no wonder many of them have come home emotionally, mentally broken down. There's nothing more important that you can do than to bind the strong man over the city and over the nation where your missionaries are laboring that revival will happen because in revival, you can win the number of souls in one month that it might take you five years to win under normal conditions. Revival in the life of the missionary and in the city, the area where he's laboring, that simply binds the forces of wickedness that hold the people in blindness, that there will be a free move of the Spirit of God. The church will be planted quickly, successfully, rapidly, and that it will spread. I can't think of a more important, more critical intercessory need for world missions today than that area right there. I would agree, and I was just saying today to David that it occurred to me that last time when I was overseas, I had a lot of people praying for me who were friends, and they were praying for me personally, but they weren't... I don't know, but my impression was that they didn't have a burden to pray for those strongholds, to pray for the work, to pray that God was going to do something in that place. And of course, we need prayer for... You need to pray for the missionaries personally, for their own personal relationships, but I couldn't agree with Mark more strongly. I would mention two things. One is the work of prayer isn't just something you do. It's not just something we do over there. It's a work where there are two parties, and God is working among all of us and through all of us. What I want to emphasize are lines of communication. Many people back at home want to pray, but they don't have information. They want to know what's going on, but it's hard to have an understanding and a feel for the place they're praying. It's very important that once someone leaves our church and goes out, that lines of communication are established so that the needs that are happening over there are communicated back here, and people can feel they're in touch with you. They're getting those needs. They're not just guessing at what they're praying, but those lines of communication are possible today because of what we have, the modern telecommunications. We can get information back. The church can be informed and be up-to-date on what they're praying for. So knowing missionaries, getting to know them before they go, establishing lines of communication, being able to pray for them personally by knowing them as individuals is very important. The Lord Jesus said, pray ye the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers into his harvest. I'm thinking of that verse. Say too that we've experienced here in our continuing prayer ministry, the greatest release comes as we are learning to address these principalities and powers, the strongholds, a whole area where most of us walked in a lot of darkness, didn't we, beloved? Until we began to move into things of the Spirit of God, we just prayed in a very general way, but now we're realizing, in fact, we've been praying for seven or eight specific strongholds in our morning meetings lately, and we are seeing, literally seeing these things happen. We've been praying against the spirit of religion and breaking that stronghold, and people we are finding, people who have been locked in a religious form are suddenly breaking free. And I wish I had time to talk about breaking the spirit of abortion and what happened down there at that Summit Medical Center. We're not talking, by the way, someone said, oh, you mean they were just closed yesterday? No, they're closed down. I mean, it's over. They're gone, out of business. And these things happen because intelligent praying is taking place, you know? Not just the babble. Sure. The second thing I wanted to say, and I forgot what I wanted to say, one thing that Richard Sharp emphasized that is so important to me, as I've thought and prayed about this a long time being over on the mission field, I covered especially the prayers of the assembly of the believers. Individual prayer is very important, but there's something about a church, when you get together as a body of hundreds and pray for the bondages over Turkey, there's something about God's government authority that goes out from the assembly of the believers that we covered over there. That when we come to nights of prayer, times together, beloved, I just say right now, the prayer meeting time is always under attack. It is never easy. How many of you really just delight in getting up at 630? Chuck put his hand up. God bless him. We're going to get you over here then. All right. We need that time. Is there a way that the church could set up, say, just special prayer meetings, like say, everyone can't get up at 630, but to get up where it will just be for the missionaries? Yes, yes. We need to develop that some. And one of the things we are specific, well, there's a lot of things, but the Lord is leading us to be much more, forgive the term because it's anathema, to be organized about our prayer. So we know really what's happening and we're going to grow on it. Okay. A couple more questions before we prepare to break up here. Lucy? Can you hear me? Okay. We have a month and a half left in Pittsburgh. We should be leaving around December 18th or 20th. We'll be spending four months at WEC, the headquarters of WEC International in Philadelphia, going through a training program. And we hope to be back in Turkey by the end of June this year, next year, June 86, about eight months. And we're excited about what God's going to do in Turkey. We're going to a new city, a city named Bursa. There's no church. There are only a few known believers in the city. So we're going into a church planting situation where there is only one couple there now who's doing any evangelistic work. So we're asking people at North Way, please to pray for Bursa, the city of Bursa, to pave the way for the church that God will plant in that city. Sounds like an epistle, doesn't it? All right. Anyone else have a question for our illustrious panel here? Ron? Okay, let me just say, Mark is right now really pouring his energies into equipping people for such experiences. And so why don't you answer that one? Well, first of all, we need to define some fundamental differences between short-term and long-term missions. And we address our training program at Faith Community, not only for those that have a real burden to go out into a long-term situation, but we also prepare our people for summer teams. Last year, in fact, in the last 12 months, 34 of our members have gone on short-term missionary teams out of our church. And that's a lot of plain fare money. That's an awful lot of training. It's been a lot of time. Some of the teams I took out myself, the team to Guatemala, the team to England and Scotland, team to China, Hong Kong, basically to explain to you what you can expect, to explain to you why you're out there in the first place for one month or two months. The main reason for a short-term missionary journey, the main reason is education. You are getting an experience that is worth six months of me trying to tell you about it. I would like everybody in the local church to spend two weeks on the mission field if they never, ever go out ever again. I take teams out knowing that maybe only one out of the 15 will wind up in full-time missions, and I don't pressure or push anybody to full-time missions while they're out on that team. But in two weeks on the field, you learn so much about what it is to be a missionary. And I stand up on the platform and try to tell my congregation things, and they just stare at me blankly. I take them to the mission field, and they come back, and they grab me, and they say, Mark, I know what you're talking about now, you know. And I say, well, that's why I took you out. So you need to know, first of all, what is the purpose of a short-term team? You may not accomplish, you may not win a whole lot of souls in a month or two months, but what God will do for you out there is an investment that you're making in yourself, even if you do pay the plane fare and pay for your expenses, and that could be pretty high. That investment that you're making in your own spiritual growth is worth a whole lot if you never, ever won a soul. We had the blessing, though, of having every team. We had 300 to 400 conversions happen this summer as a result of our teams, and that was an added benefit that we never really knew what was going to happen. That was an added benefit of those teams. So yes, I do believe that anybody in this church that wants to get involved in a short-term team, in the next year, we have teams going to China, Russia, Poland, Spain, Guatemala, Costa Rica, New York City, and possibly a few others. New York City is one of the most needy mission fields in the whole world. New York City is a zoo. New York City is a jungle. New York City is as bad as any pagan mission field. They have taken mental hospitals in New York City and have taken the mental patients, because of tax problems, and have taken the patients and dumped them on the streets with a raincoat and maybe a pair of pants on and let them dig in the garbage. There are tens of thousands of beggars digging in the garbage. Most of the suburbs of New York City are one step away from hell, and the church in America, by and large, has left the urban areas to go to hell. And I say that bluntly, but that's exactly what a lot of suburban congregations have done. New York City is an inexpensive mission field, because of the travel cost, and New York City is an extremely needy mission field, with very few laborers staying in those areas of Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, to win people to the Lord. We have all these teams going out in the next year, and we are going to personally train those that want to go on these teams. You may have a country to go to that isn't on the list that I just gave. If you've got a burden for another country, I can find a team going out to that country. If I'm not sending out a team myself, or going myself, I can find good brethren for you to work with. The opportunities are there, but there is a fundamental difference, and we would train our people accordingly to show them why they are going out, so they can understand why they're going on a short-term team. Let me just say clearly, if you have even a potential in your heart about, I want to do that, that's what we need this information for, because we are working to put together the structure whereby you can do this in an orderly fashion, and not just, you know, start running wildly from place to place. And Mark Geppert from Dayspring has also talked to us, and of course, Mark Simpson and Mark Geppert are close friends, and brethren, co-workers, and it's things that we feel God's just putting us in the right places to have these contacts, and along with the people that we know at Youth with a Mission and OM, I'm sure that we can help. So, we need this information. You forgot your hand gears out? Okay, if you didn't get one of these, they're either in your missions booklet, they're here on the table. We need to get these into your hands. Okay, just a second, Paul. I saw another question over here. Is it Ike? Yeah. Andy, you want to give that one a try? Go ahead, Andy. I'm going to have to think on that a moment. The single most important factor. Gee, Ike, I can only relate to my personal experience. I had in my lifetime opportunities like you've had here with conferences where I, on several occasions, had lots of information and lots of things to think about, and potential opportunities always before me. And this is going to sound like too much of a spiritual answer, but if that's the way it is, maybe it's the only thing I know. In my walk with the Lord, after considering all those factors, it finally boiled down for me into a peace, not maybe necessarily about a particular place to go to, but just a peace in my life that God wanted to develop me in a new way by using that opportunity. And that's why I really agree with Mark. I can't agree more about this point of, even if you're just thinking about the possibility of what God might be doing in your life, to use a short-term opportunity to clear up some of those thoughts and misconceptions about the mission field. And so single most important thing to me would just be that I have a sense of peace that this is a direction to move in for right now. And that's how I operated, because I could have said yes to a whole bunch of things, but I just finally had to say yes to something. And it may be at one time, as I shared Friday night, it was saying yes to the decision to say no. So you got to have the peace, I guess, is the main thing I was sensitive, tried to be sensitive to. We don't really give a lot of preparation to our people for a short-term team. We just don't. Some Pentecostal put it this way, better felt than telt. We have relegated a lot of our experiences to a feeling, I agree, and that's an imbalance we find in some Pentecostal circles. But a short-term team, I took out a lot of people last year, only been saved for a year. And I told them some things, but I knew that there was a lot of things that I could not tell them. They had to experience them for themselves. So I said, Lord, have mercy on them, God protect us, keep us together. And we did take out a lot of people, only been saved for a year. And God used them mightily out there. The preparation for a short-term team is a lot different from the preparation for a long-term team, in the same way that you race for a 50-yard dash and for a marathon in two different ways, and you train in different ways. I would reinforce what Andy said. When I was leaving to go to Turkey after having gone to conferences and been challenged and exposed myself to ideas about missions and having talked to people, I couldn't explain to anyone why I was going to Turkey. If you sat down and said, why are you going to Turkey? I wouldn't have convinced you. Ultimately, I had to say, I really don't know. I have the peace of the Lord in my heart. I just feel Turkey's the place. Now, it wasn't some mystic something that drifted out of the sky. I had met people. Little instances happened that were clearly the work of the Lord. But when it came down to it, I was going in faith. And there was a peace in my heart that said, this is the Lord's voice speaking to me. I had that confidence. So that when I got to Turkey and things started to happen that were either encouraging or discouraging, I still knew it was the Lord's will, because that peace sustained me. That peace will get you there. That peace will keep you there. That peace will make you successful. If you lose it, you'll be thrown into doubt. So peace is the key thing that comes to my mind. In missions, there comes a time where you can compromise what you're saying. And there's a time when you can't. And one of these areas where I have a very hard time compromising is on the power of the Holy Spirit. I have seen missionaries go out that were not baptized in the Holy Spirit, were not praying in the Spirit on a daily basis. Now, some people don't like this doctrine. They don't like the whole idea of it. I can't apologize for that, because I believe it's in the Word. But there is a necessity in the life of the missionary and in his ministry that he ministers in the power of the Holy Spirit. You have people that are out in countries where Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and there's a Roman Catholicism in Latin America. It defies description if you've never been in Latin America. It's a mindset in the people. Jay already described it tonight. He talked about that spirit of religion. If you do not, in the power of the Spirit, address that thing and bind that force coming against you and your converts, your converts are going to become merely rice, sit like a bump on a log believers. I have seen the Word of God go forth in the people. They received it mentally. They sat in the congregation. They bore no fruit. They won no souls. And a lot of times it was because that the power of the Spirit of God was really not there bringing them in. The Apostle Paul said, My words were not with human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and in power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of man, but on the power of God. For the kingdom of God is not in word only, but it is in power. And the gifts of an apostle were manifest among you, the signs and wonders that confirmed that the message of the gospel had greater power than witchcraft, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, worshiping the river God, and anything else. And the success of a missionary on the foreign field and his converts remaining faithful to God, to me hinges very, very much on the power of the Spirit imparted to those converts as they receive the power of God for themselves. And they will continue by the power of God. Having begun by the Spirit, are you going to become perfect through the flesh? Paul says, of course not. You become saved by the Spirit. You become endued with power by the Spirit. You preach the gospel and testify, witness by the Spirit, and you're going to finish only by the power of the Spirit of God. Andy, are you ready? Regarding the percentage of people who stick to the decision they make on the field, I can only speak for really the Turkish area, and by that represent the Muslim area. It is true that in the Middle East, among Muslims, it's harder to make a Christian commitment of any sort than it is to make a similar commitment of some sort in the States. It's just more costly. The way I describe it, I say to become a believer in the Middle East in a Muslim culture, you have to pay everything down 100% first day. You can't buy it on the installment plan. Sorry to use the analogy, but I think in the States, it's an installment plan on this side. Over there, there's no such thing. You pay everything when you make that decision. People know that in their own culture, so that the percentage of people coming to faith in Christ in the Muslim world is higher than it ever was before, even though that percentage is lower than figures we quote here. But more Muslims than ever before are coming to faith in Christ. At the same time, that percentage is small for the overall population until now. I think we're going to see amazing things happen in the Middle East, but the people who decide to believe in Christ stick more, because it costs them so much in the first place. And that's the truth in the Muslim world. Once they've made that first decision, it's too costly to go back. It's true in a lot of Muslim cultures that water baptism is very significant. Everyone understands that. It's understood in their culture, so that if you publicly are water baptized, then everyone around you accepts it complete, that you're a believer. So when someone makes that step to be water baptized, it's a little different from here. It's a I-can't-go-back decision. You're burning your bridges behind you. Now, Andy, might be able to tell us about tribal areas and some other areas. What I wanted to say was my experience, I think, is different from Mark and Dave's, because in the last eight years, a lot of my experience has been short-term, but that has provided me a very interesting insight. I have gone to a whole bunch of places, and I want to substantiate the thing that Mark said. In all the places that I've been in, where the ministry was functioning under the power of the Spirit, the converts were active and the converts remained. I can also not give you any statistical information, but I know the difference. And then there were areas where that wasn't true, and you saw a lot of conditions very similar to what we see right here in the United States. So I substantiate that point from my experience. Also, the thing that David was saying, I've had some experience behind the Iron Curtain. I'd like to tell you just one little short story to confirm the same kind of thing he's experienced in the Muslim world. A young person that I met in East Berlin came to Christ and forfeited her right to a college education. Afterwards, she began to have some second thoughts about her walk with the Lord and what this was costing her. She went to the particular government agency where all the papers on your religious status and all the informati