Letters to Peter, 4

(My friend Peter has set me a challenge for 2024: each month he is going to ask me a question for me to answer. I want my answer to come from the heart, so I will try not use books, except the Bible. And I will try keep it to around 500 words. Thanks for the challenge Peter. I hope others find it helpful too.)

                             

                                    April 2024

4. How does the impact of family breakdown in our society today negatively impact our church life and how should the church respond as the body of Christ?

There is no doubt that family breakdown has greatly affected the church in the UK, as it has in other countries, particularly in the West, where divorce is at such high levels.

Nothing I say here should be taken as a criticism of any particular person who has been through divorce: you can rarely make an informed judgment on how much someone is a victim rather than a perpetrator. And no one whose parents divorced should feel any shame for the failure of their parents' marriage. 

But, from memory, studies have shown an alarming similarity between family breakdown in the church and in wider society.

I suppose it should not surprise us: the church is a subset of that wider society. We live in the world and are subject to all the same pressures that are faced by our acquaintances outside the church. The same was true of the early church: Paul says of the Corinthians that, among them, some were sexually immoral, others idolaters, adulterers, men who have sex with men, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers (1 Cor 6:9-11). 

And divorce was a feature too. After all, our Lord himself made it clear that divorce was allowed under the Mosaic law as a concession because hearts were hard (Matt 19:1-9). It was bound to affect the NT church too. So it should not surprise us that broken families would be present in the local church. 

How does family breakdown impact the church?

1. The emotional toll it takes is bound to hamper the ability of the family members affected to benefit from involvement in church. I'm talking about benefitting from the means of grace: Bible study, preaching, close fellowship with God's people, etc. Children might become withdrawn due to the trauma that they have gone through, making it harder to engage them in spiritual conversation.

2. It will also take an economic toll: legal fees; dividing into two parts, each with a need for accommodation; the cost of getting children from one parent to the other each weekend, especially if one partner moves away. Believing divorcees will have less money to contribute to the work of the Lord in the church and elsewhere.

3. It will take a social toll: how many broken families will be able to host a church house group or offer hospitality to needy people? Even if the will is there, shifting to a smaller house may make hospitality very difficult.

4. And there is often a spiritual toll: In some cases children are absent from church week after week because they are with an unbelieving parent on weekends. So children with a believing parent are denied spiritual nurture from the church. It is a wonder if they do not drift away from the faith altogether.

And how should the church respond?

1. Teaching: Prevention is better than cure. It is vital that the church recognises the pressures that families are under and seeks to strengthen families so that they have the resources to resist the influence of the world. That means, surely, that biblical ethics are taught from the front, on Sundays, and at home groups and other small groups. (See my last letter.)

2. Warning: Church members must be warned of the pervasive influence of the world through technology, particularly social media - surely the most pressing face of the world in the church today. Pornography, I read somewhere, makes up 40% of internet traffic! It devastates marriages and devastates children - I think I read that 70% of children have seen pornography by the age of ten.

3. Prayer. We must pray for our families in the midst of such pressures. We need to pray that marriages will  be preserved in the face of conflict and the inevitable influence of the world. The devil is always prowling around seeking whom he may devour (1 Pet 5:8-9). We need to pray that husbands and wives will resist him, standing firm in the faith.

4. Community: The church is the family of God. We need to encourage our people to open their homes to others in the church, listen to their troubles, pray with them, help them out, play with their children. And we who are given responsibility as leaders must lead by example: The quality of being hospitable is a requirement of elders (1 Tim 3:2). Broken families must be welcomed into the community (and encouraged to stay in the community). It will speak volumes to the wider society if we are serious about this.

5. Confidence: As I wrote above, the Corinthian church was made up of people with very broken histories. But the wonderful thing was, God was still at work: they were washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God (1 Cor 6:11). That's the beauty of the gospel. We have all these resources to build up the body of Christ to be the bride that she is meant to be.

Letters to Peter, 3

(My friend Peter has set me a challenge for 2024: each month he is going to ask me a question for me to answer. I want my answer to come from the heart, so I will try not use books, except the Bible. And I will try keep it to 500 words. Thanks for the challenge Peter. I hope others find it helpful too.)

3. At the moment our church membership does not reflect the age profile of the surrounding area. It means we are failing to reach the needs of the younger people, from young families, thru teenagers and children. I am sure this is a common problem but as well as praying how do we tackle this and see a 'sea change' (we run activities like a food bank, parent toddler group, lunch club etc) in people of all ages coming to faith?

 

March 2024

Dear Peter,

I am going to be a bit controversial this month. 

I believe that a significant reason for many churches losing the younger generation is that too much emphasis has been given to children and young people.

I say that as someone who runs a youth Bible study. That may sound paradoxical but I don’t think it is.

This is the way I think it works: a city church attracts a few families, hire a youth worker or children’s worker to cater to the perceived need that their families have, and create more programmes for children and young people. More families are attracted to the church by the high value the church seems to give to children and young people. That is really appreciated by working parents (both have demanding fulltime jobs) who are struggling to bring their children up in the faith.

But this begets two intermediate consequences (admittedly this is anecdotal – I don’t have any research at hand to check):

1.        Other churches in the area see the success that the growing church seems to be having and seek to emulate that success by adopting the same tactics. The problem is that there are only so many families with children who want to go to church. So these other churches struggle and wonder what they are doing wrong.

2.        If you move churches in order to take advantage of the hopping church on the other side of town with its dynamic youth work, what is to stop you upping your ecclesial sticks and moving on when an even hoppier church starts up?

The ultimate consequence is church as mall: you come for the experience, and leave if it doesn’t match up to your expectations. Far from solving the problem of the intergenerational transmission of the faith, it creates a consumerist church culture. (I know that I am generalizing; thankfully there are some exceptions.)

Church in the New Testament, however, was something altogether different. It was a community of Christ followers; people who were committed to each other in their commitment to the Lord Jesus. The idea that you could shop around and find the church that suited you was surely far from their minds.

I think a lot of churches in the West took a wrong turn in the 80s and 90s when they began to take a more pragmatic view. And we are living with the consequences of that today.

Furthermore, it is my observation, corroborated by others, that child-centred churches do no better than those that are not in retaining their youth. I have seen churches lose all their young people when they got too old (or too cool) for their youth programmes. 

So what is the answer? I think the most significant thing you could do would be to think through everything you do through the lens of men, i.e., adult males.

So often churches have programmes for children, young people, and women but nothing explicitly for men. 

But I am not just saying you should start a men’s programme. Rather, everything you do should have men in mind. What hymns and songs do you sing? Do you have men up at the front leading? Do men pray in prayer meetings? Do they even come to prayer meetings? If not, why not?

Men need to be discipled so that they know what they believe and are confident enough to lead the household. And if they are doing it well, the women and children are far more likely to follow in their footsteps. 

In his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders, Paul said this:

You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. (Acts 20:20)

Qualified men in the church need to take up the challenge of teaching not only in Sunday services, but also ‘from house to house’. In a household gathering (not just with a nuclear family but with others who are attached to them) people can have a more focussed instruction. They can ask questions and discuss issues in the light of Scripture. Children and young people see the adults interacting with interest and do not feel they grow out of church when they become teenagers.

Letters to Peter, 2

(My friend Peter has set me a challenge for 2024: each month he is going to ask me a question for me to answer. I want my answer to come from the heart, so I will try not use books, except the Bible. And I will try keep it to 500 words. Thanks for the challenge Peter. I hope others find it helpful too.)

2. How do you go about seeking leaders for your local church, (within a team leadership model) and what characteristics should they have?

February 2024

Dear Peter,

I thank the Lord for putting me in local churches that have had godly leaders. They weren't perfect, and still aren't - I am one of them now! But when a leader has a close relationship with the Lord, that sweetens even their mistakes.

There is, I think, a lot of bad leadership about. Recent scandals to hit church and agency alike have been very saddening to read. Marcus Honeysett's Powerful Leaders, is compulsory reading for Brits involved in church leadership. Likewise, Not So With You, edited by Mark Sterling and Mark Meynell, looks very helpful too.

When I was a student I was immensely helped by J. Oswald Sanders' little book, Spiritual Leadership, which I picked up from an OM book table in Belgium and devoured while hitch-hiking round Europe after the month of ministry. It is probably out of print now but had lots of helpful biblical wisdom and encouragement.

But your question focusses on leadership in the local church, and that is more specific. You have already narrowed the question further by telling me that your church operates with a 'team leadership model'. 

Leadership in your church will largely be circumscribed by the church's ecclesiological commitments. It seems to me the local church's structure must allow for both respect for authority (1 Tim 5:17) and accountability. 

That having been said, the NT tells us, in my understanding, of two offices that the Lord has given to lead the local church: elder and deacon. I like the way Matt Smethurst distinguishes between the two roles: he says that an elder serves by leading and a deacon leads by serving. When elders and deacons work together, with their respective gifting recognised by the congregation, a church is truly blessed. 

Also with Smethurst, I believe the biblical pattern is for a plurality of elders, rather than a single minister giving pastoral oversight (1 Tim 3; Titus 1).

More generally, though, a local church needs leaders for all kinds of works, and they don’t all have to be elders or deacons, although you could say that anyone who serves is a kind of deacon.

Many volumes have been written on this. I hope you will want to read further. But, in answer to your question, I hope the following tips would be helpful:

1. Only people who have a credible profession of saving faith in Christ should be leaders in the local church. You can ensure this (not perfectly but as best you can with the help of the Spirit) by keeping church membership only to those who have such a profession. If among your church membership there are those who have clearly never experienced the grace of God then you need to do something about that. You will need to keep a very careful oversight over the church membership so that decisions that are made by the congregation in regard to leadership are spiritual decisions. 

2. Make sure that you are looking for the right people for the right roles. The qualifications for elder and deacon are clear from the passages above.

3. Take note of who comes to the prayer meetings. If they don’t show up to the prayer meeting they really should not be in leadership. What is the point of appointing a leader for a work in the church if they don’t demonstrate their need of the help of the Lord by coming together with the Lord’s people to pray?

4. Look for who is already serving. The people you want to serve the church in leadership are those who are already looking for ways to serve. Do they serve the teas and coffees or help out on the media desk? Do they have a track record of faithfulness in serving? Do they arrive on time when they are on a rota? This is the sort of thing Paul was getting at when he said that “They must first be tested” (1 Tim 3:10).

5. You are not looking for perfection, but are they quick to accept when they have done something wrong? Are they teachable or stubborn? I would rather have someone who is only barely competent but willing to learn than a whizz-kid who is full of themselves.

6. Likewise, are they quick to forgive when someone wrongs them? I don’t think the Bible requires us to forgive the unrepentant but the lack of forgiveness toward one who has acknowledged their sin is deadly. A church member who harbours bitterness should not be in leadership of any kind.

 

Letters to Peter, 1

My friend Peter has set me a challenge for 2024: each month he is going to ask me a question for me to answer. I want my answer to come from the heart, so I won't use books, except the Bible. And I will try keep it to 500 words. 

Thanks for the challenge Peter. I hope others find it helpful too.

1.      How do you encourage and build the prayer life of your local church fellowship?

Background is that we have been plugging prayer over the last year or more and have a number of prayer meetings and opportunities to pray yet the leadership generally feel that prayer is still a weak area of the church at the moment.

January 2024

Dear Peter,

Thanks for prompting me to think about prayer in the local church. What an vital question! There can be few things about the life of the local church that are more important.

And there can be few things about the life of the local church with which we can feel more of a sense of failure.

The great exhortations of Scripture – “Be…faithful in prayer” (Rom 12:12); “…always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people” (Eph 6:18); “…in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil 4:6); “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful” (Col 4:2); “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances” (1 Thess 5:17), etc., – these great exhortations are a huge challenge.

And they might be crushing, were it not for the great promises and encouragements that go along with them: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt 11:28-30); “I can do all this through him who gives me strength” (Phil 4:13).

And that same Lord Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to help us and be with us for ever (John 14:16). And he is the Spirit of truth (17), the one who has inspired the Scriptures to teach us, rebuke us, correct us, and train us in righteousness, so that we may “be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17; John 16:13). And that includes the work of prayer.

We are exhorted to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (Eph 6:18). Prayer is something the Spirit both empowers us for and guides us in: “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Rom 8:26). 

And what wonderful examples of prayer we have in the Scriptures: the prayer the Lord Jesus taught his disciples (Matt 6:9-13); the prayer of the disciples in those early days after Pentecost (Acts 4:23-31); and Paul’s great prayers in his letters (e.g., Eph 1:15-23 and 3:14-21).

But the greatest motivation to prayer is surely the gospel itself, isn’t it? We can organise prayer meetings, download apps, and sign up for prayer letters from all over the world. We can instruct, exhort, and challenge till we are red in the face. But none of these will fire up a church to pray like the gospel will.

So more than anything else, my prayer for you and your church, Peter, is that you would once again be captivated by the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ. That you would be thrilled as you listen again, in the preaching and teaching of the Word of God, to the wonderful reality that, “God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19).

Favourite Books of 2023

Theology and Culture

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture, by Christopher Watkin.

Watkin is a Yorkshireman who teaches French Literature in Australia. In this chunky book Watkin uses Augustine's City of God as a model of how to use the Bible in cultural engagement. I have found it bristling with insights and hope to go over it again to try to retain some of the stuff I have learned from it.

Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds, by Chris Brauns. 

This is the one book (apart from the Bible) that I took into hospital with me in November. Chris is an American Presbyterian pastor with a lot of experience of helping people work through the pastoral issues related to forgiveness. He lands squarely on the need for repentance to precede forgiveness. Some people are horrified by such a stance, and many would be puzzled, but Brauns makes a solid case that, to me at least, is convincing. I am still working through issues in this area myself and this book has been a helpful guide.

Into His Presence: Praying with the Puritans, by Tim Chester.

Tim is an old friend of mine, and I have benefitted from so many of his books - he is a prolific writer. I am not normal big on written prayers, but having enjoyed The Valley of Vision a couple of years ago, thought I would give this a try. I was not disappointed. Gave copies to the family for Christmas.

What Makes Us Humans? And Other Questions about God, Jesus and Human Identity, by Mark Meynell.

Mark calls this a "short book about a big subject". There can be few subjects that are so important in our cultural moment. It is so vital we get a proper view of what it means to be human when all around us people are questioning reality and coming to grief. If you haven't read anything on this, please give this one a read. It is one of a series on hot topics by The Good Book Company called 'Questions Christians Ask'. They are bite size, biblical, and brilliant.

Reality and Other Stories: Exploring the Life We Long for through the Tales We Tell, by Matt Lillicrap and Peter Dray.

Stories are fundamental to what it means to be human (see above). Matt and Peter reflect on seven kinds of stories that we tell each other. This book started as a series of talks by Peter at Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union and then reworked with Matt, using the framework provided by Christopher Booker in his The Seven Basic Plots. It's brilliant.

Missiology

Motus Dei: The Movement of God to Disciple the Nations, edited by Warrick Farrah.

News from far-flung places suggests that great numbers of people around the world are turning to Christ. And we are told that a leading factor in this movement is a relatively new method of church planting or disciple making. Motus Dei (Latin for the 'Movement of God') is a multi-author work that reflects on this phenomenon in a number of contexts around the world. It's a mixed bag. I offered to review this book for the International Journal of Frontier Mission but the project snowballed and now a whole issue is to be given over to it with my review article being followed by responses by other writers. Spoiler alert: I am sympathetic but have serious misgivings.

Bibliography

A Camaraderie of Confidence: The Fruit of Unfailing Faith in the lives of Charles Spurgeon, George Müller and Hudson Taylor, by John Piper.

This is the fourth book that I have read in this series of potted biographies by Piper. They spring from papers that he has given at his annual pastors' conference at Bethlehem Baptist Church. They are always super-encouraging and challenging. Piper doesn't focus on critique or analysis, though he could, but he does think freshly on his subject. His concern is to bring the faith of these three great men into focus so that we would emulate that faith in our day. I gave copies to a bunch of pastors in my area, with whom I hope we too form a camaraderie of confidence in the Lord.

Fiction

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie.

I am not an aficionado of crime fiction as some of my friends are, but this has got to be one of the best. An excellent plot with a stunning plot twist. 

Francis Schaeffer at Lausanne

This weekend, Lord willing, I will join 134 others in Budapest for the Lausanne Europe Gathering. This is preparatory to the next large congress that is scheduled for next September in Seoul. There are four of us going from Great Britain, representing a spread of age, gender, ministry situation, and ethnicity. 

Often when we consider the first Lausanne Congress in 1974, we think of the important contributions of John Stott, Samuel Escobar, Rene Padilla, and Ralph Winter.

But one of the less well-known contributors to that first congress was Francis Schaeffer. Francis and Edith Schaeffer were American missionaries who had developed a very significant ministry, inviting disillusioned young people to their home in Switzerland, and sharing the gospel with them.

I had come across Schaeffer as a teenager, and read everything I could that the Schaeffers had written.

Schaeffer’s talk at Lausanne was published as “Two Contents; Two Realities”.

As I reread that talk the other day, I was struck by two things:

1.     How this message had been so influential on my ministry throughout my life; and

2.     How relevant it is half a century later.

This is what he said:

There are four things which I think are absolutely necessary if we as Christians are going to meet the need of our age and the overwhelming pressure we are increasingly facing. They are two contents and two realities:

 The First Content: Sound Doctrine

 The Second Content: Honest Answers to Honest Questions

 The First Reality: True Spirituality

 The Second Reality: The Beauty of Human Relationship

I want to read to you one short quote from each point to give you a flavour of his presentation:

The First Content: Sound Doctrine

Schaeffer focusses firstly on the importance of believing and practicing truth:

…nowhere is practicing the truth more important than in the area of religious cooperation. If I say that Christianity is really eternal truth, and the liberal theologian is wrong—so wrong that he is teaching that which is contrary to the Word of God—and then on any basis (including for the sake of evangelism) I am willing publicly to act as though that man’s religious position is the same as my own, I have destroyed the practice of truth which my generation can expect from me and which it will demand of me if I am to have any credibility. (411)

The Second Content: Honest Answers to Honest Questions

His second point is on the importance of what we would now call cultural engagement:

Christianity demands that we have enough compassion to learn the questions of our generation. The trouble with too many of us is that we want to be able to answer these questions instantly, as though we could take a funnel, put in in one ear and pour in the facts, and then go out and regurgitate them and win all the discussions. It cannot be. (414)

The First Reality: True Spirituality

Here Schaeffer tells of a spiritual crisis he had gone through twenty years before, as he reflected on his life, and how he recognised that his spiritual life had not kept in line with his stated beliefs. He took time out to rethink his whole belief system, and then he says this:

I found something I had not been taught, a simple thing but profound. I discovered the meaning of the work of Christ, the meaning of the blood of Christ, moment by moment in our lives after we are Christians—the moment-by-moment work of the whole Trinity in our lives because as Christians we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. That is true spirituality. (416-17)

True spirituality, he is arguing, is essential if we are to have any kind of lasting fruit in our lives. And that spirituality must be real, not fake.

The Second Reality: The Beauty of Human Relationships

Here he is talking about the importance of love in the community of God’s people:

Now if we are called upon to love our neighbour as ourselves when he is not a Christian, how much more…should there be beauty in the relationships between true Bible-believing Christians, something so beautiful that the world would be brought up short!...if we do not show beauty in the way we treat each other, then in the eyes of the world and in the eyes of our children, we are destroying the truth we proclaim. (419)

It is my conviction that these things are as true now as they were when Schaeffer first spoke them, and that is why they continue to have a profound influence on my life. My prayer is that these convictions would also shape the way we interact in Budapest.

(All refs are to the Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer, Vol. 3)

George Verwer (1938-2023)

One of my heroes, George Verwer, died on Friday, 14^th April.

I first came across George as a teenager, when I read a copy of Come, Live, Die! My brother Dave had picked it up on a book table somewhere or other. I was attracted to the radical call to discipleship and felt, probably judgmentally in retrospect, that I had not really come across people who lived like this.

I had felt God’s leading in my life to serve the Lord among the least reached since even before I truly trusted Christ (I would have travelled over land and sea to make a single proselyte, just like the Pharisees). But my perception of the missionaries I had come across was that they did not live as radically as I thought they should.

Reading Verwer was adding fuel to the fire. But I was reading others too. Francis Shaeffer (who had also had a positive influence on George and his friends in the early years) was also radical but in a way that, I felt, acknowledged our creatureliness more coherently. Imagine my confusion, then, when I heard George say that he had bought a pizza at a take away. Reading his books and listening to his messages on tape, had led me to believe that eating out would be overindulgent! Clearly my perception of the man and his radical discipleship needed some rethinking.

George Verwer grew up in New Jersey, not far from where my wife Becky also grew up. He came to Christ at a Billy Graham rally, after reading a John’s Gospel, sent to him by a local woman, Dorothea Clapp, who had been praying for the children at her son’s school. That story, and a few others, attained the status of origin myths for Operation Mobilisation, shaping the philosophy and identity of the movement, especially in its first few decades.

In honour of George, here are six words, in no coherent order, that come to my mind as I reflect on his life and especially his impact on me:

Encouragement

I first met George when I went on my first OM ‘summer campaign’ in 1982. Every now and then, I got the opportunity to meet up with him at conferences or when he visited Nepal. In the midst of his very busy schedule, he always had time for people, even young men of little importance like me. And that went on - my last email from him, in response to one from me, was a couple of weeks ago - just one word: 'praying'.

Discernment

George sometimes seemed to have an unusual spiritual insight. In 1989 he visited Nepal just after I had been arrested and ordered to leave the country. He must have sensed a note of pride in my telling of the story, as his response went something like this: “I guess the Lord didn’t think you were ready for a longer stay in jail.” Ouch. I think it was just what I needed. 

Communication

George was never an expository preacher, but he was a gifted gut preacher: He walked with the Lord, so when he preached he unburdened what was on his heart from his meditation on Scripture and his interactions with people around the world. It was never deeply theological or closely argued, but it was always fresh, always earnest, always challenging. I appreciated that.

Passion 

George had a lifelong passion to get the gospel to every individual on the planet. And there can be few who have had more impact especially in getting literature to those who have not previously heard or read about Jesus; it wouldn’t surprise me if over a billion pieces of gospel literature have gone out through George’s influence as well as many thousands of gospel workers.

Generosity

One thing I always appreciated about George is that he never clung onto anything. He was giving things away all the time. He discerned his co-workers’ gifts and made space for younger men and women to take over an aspect of the work. And when one of those younger or older men left OM to begin a new organisation, he encouraged them to flourish, rather than resent them or see them as a threat. There are literally hundreds of organisations, especially in India, that are led by former OMers and which have been helped to flourish through gifts of literature from George’s Special Projects ministry.

Sensitivity

George was not always easy to work with. One gets the impression that in the early days he expected too much from the young people who worked with him. But George was always ready to repent of his arrogance or insensitivity. The story told by Peter Conlan of their altercation on the Silk Road between Istanbul and Ankara is very moving:

It was 1968, we were both young men, and I was driving a VW van packed with the Verwer family and team. Everyone was tired, thirsty and hungry. George was impatient to keep pressing on. I eventually slammed the brakes on and shouted to George to get out. To the stunned amazement of the team George and I faced each other with clenched fists. I said to George, ‘go on, Christian leader, hit me!’ For a moment we glared at each other and I waited for impact. Then George began to shake, tears started to flow and his arms were wrapped around my shoulders. Brokenness at the foot of the cross is not only his message, it is his life. (“Incurable Fanatic, Unshakeable Friend” in Global Passion: Marking George Verwer’s Contribution to World Mission, ed. David Greenlee; Secunderabad, India: OM Books, 2003, 194).  (“Incurable Fanatic, Unshakeable Friend” in Global Passion: Marking George Verwer’s Contribution to World Mission, ed. David Greenlee; Secunderabad, India: OM Books, 2003, 194). 

How differently it could have turned out. And how much spiritual fruitfulness might have been lost if they had borne a grudge against one another.

I thank the Lord for the life of George Verwer. He has finished the race and is now enjoying the glorious face-to-face intimacy with his Saviour who bought him at such a price. And I pray that a small part of his mantle might rest on me and on all true disciples.