NATIONALISATION!         DO 659            1/78
--Indigenuity at Last!

         1. Let me ask you something: If Jesus had stayed WITH them, how far would the disciples have gone & how much would they have accomplished? Those poor ignorant stupid dumb blundering befuddled fishermen & nobodies--who would have even seen any leadership in THEM anyway?
         2. If Jesus had stuck with them they'd have been dependent on Him till the day they died & they would have never gotten any further, right? But when the Pioneer had to go off & leave them behind, it was live or die, sink or swim. They didn't have His physical presence to lean on anymore. They had to depend on His WORDS & His Holy SPIRIT.
         3. They evangelised all the known civilised World of their day within 100 YEARS, because He physically LEFT them. They trusted God & His SPIRIT, that He was able to at least help them to carry on from the Spirit World.
         4. Just as Jesus had to leave His disciples so they could go on to even GREATER works, just as I had to leave TSC so that we could spread out & go into ALL the World, SO OUR NORTH AMERICAN LEADERSHIP IS GOING TO HAVE TO STEP DOWN & out of the picture & push forward the nationals in order to integrate & nationalise the many countries we're in.
         5. I wrote a whole series of Letters in 1974 on "Indigenuity", about our need to become home-grown, native-grown. Yet in many places we still have not trained the national leadership, & I don't think we ever will unless we're FORCED to.
         6. If the Work has always got to be held up by the Americans & the Americans have always got to run it, then there is no such thing as indigenuity & it doesn't work. If we can't get enough converts & good enough material to run their own Homes & their own country, then I will certainly be highly disappointed, because then we are NOT missionaries, we haven't established ANYTHING NATIVE & we're just a FOREIGN COLONIAL EMPIRE!
         7. We have just moved like a bunch of Gypsies & we're just living different places & in other countries & we're not getting the job done that we came to do, & that was to EVANGELISE the PEOPLE, get them saved, filled with the Spirit, on-fire for the Lord, train THEM to preach the Gospel, train THEM to run themselves!
         8. After being in some of these countries for so many years, if we're really doing a GOOD job, we ought to have all kinds of good NATIONALS in places of responsibility.
         9. But a lot of our own people have the idea that nobody's better than the Americans, nobody is smarter than Americans & nobody can do it but U.S. Americans. But I don't believe it!
         10. If we don't FORCE them to use native leadership in their ranks, they will NEVER do it, because they just think, "Oh well, there's no one we can trust!" Well, they're going to have to find somebody real quick because we're going to start REQUIRING natives to now be in positions of authority.
         11. I've heard some horror stories about what happened to mission fields where they had not nationalised nor prepared the nationals to take over. When the U.S. leadership were finally all kicked out, the Work just collapsed, because there wasn't any national trained in leadership to carry it on.
         12. The nationals had never been given any organisational training or position of responsibility. So the Work just practically fell apart, except in some unusual cases. Usually the Work just virtually collapsed, & about all they would hear from a few converts now & then was that they were still loving & serving the Lord. But anything of any real substance of organisational cooperation had pretty well vanished.
         13. Whereas on the fields where they had thoroughly trained local NATIVE leadership, pushed them to the front & the North Americans had stayed in the background behind the scenes, when the North Americans were thrown out or moved out, a good strong native church was left behind--operational, still plugging on & still functioning.
         14. I've never been any place yet that we didn't have to leave! Just remember, it's always coming. It's already happened to us in several countries.
         15. But if you've got NATIVE LEADERSHIP thoroughly entrenched, they can't very well throw their own people out. They might throw them IN, but they can't throw them OUT!
         16. I am determined, live or die, sink or swim, that we are going to NATIONALISE our Work around the World! Nationalisation's going to come sooner or later, one way or the other, especially if there's any kind of a World emergency.
         17. One thing our NORTH AMERICANS have proven is that they are GOOD PIONEERS. With all their pushiness, aggressiveness, boldness, nerve & faith, they've got tremendous leadership ability & potential. They've done a great job, God bless them! But lately they have a tendency to get settled down.
         18. So our NATIONALISATION will keep the old bottles moving along, & that'll help refresh them. It'll keep them moving, exploring, PIONEERING, establishing new territory, training new leadership, & that's the BIGGEST toughest job in the whole Family, in the whole World! So don't worry, there will always be SOME place for the North Americans to go.
         19. After several years in a country I don't think leaders are worth two hoots if they haven't learned the native language enough to carry on a simple conversation! Now they've GOT to!
         20. If you LOVE the people you'll WANT to learn their language in order to be able to love & communicate with them. Leaders who have been in countries for years & haven't picked up enough of the language to carry on a normal simple conversation, how much do they really love the people?--They can't COMMUNICATE!
         21. We've already proven we've got some outstanding talent in native leadership throughout the World, & if they haven't GOT it they can go out & WIN it somehow. If the NEED is there, the ANSWER must be there too, so just look around & pray it in.
         22. When we say you should have ONE NATIONAL as a CO-SERVANT, we do NOT mean just as FIGUREHEADS! "Well, now you're one of the Servants, you're a Co-Servant with us, blah, blah!"--when the Americans are still running the show!
         23. We mean that he or she MUST be included in all council votes. We mean they must be incorporated into the LEADERSHIP with definite responsibility, financial as well as otherwise.
         24. If you HAVEN'T got the native talent, you're going to have to FIND & TRAIN it, that's all, even if you have to pick them up off the streets!--Because from now on you're going to have them sitting in the same office with you, going to the same bank with you & getting the mail with you, signing contracts etc.!
         25. A capable American woman can marry a native husband & train him, or a capable American husband can marry a native wife & train her. My God, if a married man's got to take on another wife & have one American & one native, that's the way it'll have to be!
         26. Couples who are Americans with one of them speaking the LANGUAGE fairly well, enough to be able to decipher the newspaper or carry on a normal conversation with the local people or officials or whatever, can qualify as Home Servants, IF they ask the Home to get together & elect at least ONE new native CO-SERVANT to serve WITH them, so that the heads of the Home will now be a triumvirate & will have at least ONE native Servant to train.--Or, if they want to elect a COUPLE of natives, then they can have FOUR Home servants!
         27. Happy hunting! If you LOOK hard enough, I'm sure you'll find some NATIONALS SOMEWHERE!--And someplace to send your NORTH AMERICANS PIONEERING! PTL! GBY!
         28. We love you ALL! "There's no JEW nor GENTILE, no GREEK nor ROMAN in CHRIST JESUS" & HIS Kingdom!--Gal.3:28. But it makes a BIG difference to THIS World's kingdoms!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family