GO TO WORK!--OR GO HOME!
11/83
--The Secrets of Success!--And Failure!
DFO1677
1. I WAS LED TO SORT OF TAKE A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF OUR WHOLE OPERATION & what are its strengths & its weaknesses, where is it okay & where does it need help? As I did so I felt it wise to make a list of the major points, to analyse our entire Family & its foundation, its Message, its personnel, methods, organisation, communication, stats, security & support, these nine principal necessities of success.
2. FIRST OF ALL, OUR MINISTRY MUST BE BASED ON THE RIGHT FOUNDATION, THE MAN CHRIST JESUS! (1Co.3:11) He is the Foundation of our entire building made of living stones. (1Pt.2:4,5) He & His Father's Love are the reason & purpose for all things & "of whom all things do consist." (Col.1:17) So we know we have the right foundation for our whole Family structure, Christ Jesus.
3. AND WE NOT ONLY HAVE THE MAN, WE HAVE THE MESSAGE & THAT IS OUR MESSAGE!--THE MAN IS OUR MESSAGE! We preach Jesus! We preach His Word, we preach His Love, we preach His Gospel, the Good News of Salvation, we preach faith in Him, we preach Him as the answer to all of our needs--physical, spiritual, mental & with hope for the future & Heaven at last! This message answers all our questions, meets all our needs & is the solution to all the problems of the whole World if they would just listen & receive it & obey it.
4. SO WE KNOW WE HAVE THE RIGHT MAN WITH THE RIGHT MESSAGE, THANK THE LORD, BUT WE MUST HAVE THE RIGHT MEN TO PREACH IT, MEN & WOMEN, BOYS & GIRLS! And in order to have this, we must recruit soldiers for His great Army of Witnesses! We must not only win souls, but we must make disciples of those souls, or we are going to become a fruitless, dying Church like so many.
5. AND TO MAKE THESE DISCIPLES FRUITFUL & PRODUCTIVE WE MUST TEACH & TRAIN THEM & SHOW THEM HOW TO WITNESS & WIN SOULS & TEACH & TRAIN THEM. We must, as in 2nd Timothy 2:2, teach others to teach others to teach others in the endless chain reaction of the explosion of constant witnessing, soul-winning & discipling!
6. WHAT ARE THE RIGHT METHODS? Primary & always, is personal witnessing, personal evangelism, personal soul-winning in whatever way you may do it. We don't believe that the mass meetings & media are the best & safest means of spreading the message. They're too impersonal, too massive to handle with the personal touch & too dangerous because you can't be quite as choosy about whom you're talking to. So we believe we're using the right methods in this personal witnessing--literature, meetings, tapes, videos, FFing & any others.
7. SO NOW THAT WE HAVE THE MAN & THE MESSAGE, THE MEN & THE METHODS, EVERY ARMY NEEDS SOME TYPE OF ORGANISATION, PLANNING & ATTACK so that we will spread out & recognise the needs on various fronts & shift personnel according to the need.
8. FROM THE BOTTOM ON UP & THE TOP ON DOWN WE MUST HAVE GOOD, TIGHT ORGANISATION to keep things in their proper places, that "everything might be done in decency & in order" (1Co.14:40) & kept under proper control, supervision & leadership.
9. AND IN ORDER TO HAVE SUCH GOOD ORGANISATION WE MUST HAVE GOOD COMMUNICATION, first of all with our Commander-in-Chief, Jesus Christ, the Head of our Army. We must have this communication personally, each one individually, directly with Him to know that we are aware of His Word & pleasing & obeying Him & following His directions & His orders.
10. THEREFORE WE MUST HAVE THE WORD IN EVERY FORM POSSIBLE. The Bible was what we began with. And we need to have His present Word, direct answers to prayer, direct revelations, messages, prophecy, tongues, interpretation, information straight from Heaven to know exactly what He wants us to do now!
11. ANOTHER THING WHICH WE CANNOT DO WITHOUT IN ORDER TO SURVIVE IS A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF RECORD-KEEPING, REPORTS, STATS, TRFS, WORLD STATS, BOOKS! We must keep books on what we're doing to know where we're at. We need thorough records. You need to keep records, your personal records, your personal witnessing records, diaries. Stats, you may say, are really a part of our communication, but I wish to emphasise them in particular as being absolutely essential & necessary for our well-being. They are our pulse-taking & temperature-taking of the body politic to know exactly the health of the body & its physical functions.
12. AND CLOSELY RELATED TO THIS, THE BODY CANNOT PHYSICALLY FUNCTION WELL UNLESS IT IS NOT ONLY HEALTHY BUT SECURE, so security is one of the essentials of success for our Family operations. This includes the personal security of each individual member & the security of each local Home in general, which must be governed by the situation in which they live & operate.
13. BUT FINALLY, WITHOUT GOOD SUPPORT, NONE OF THESE CAN POSSIBLY SUCCEED & they are doomed to failure! As Napoleon once said, every army travels on its stomach! We must have logistics, we must have food & clothing & some shelter. We must have these personal necessities of life. We must have our needs met in order to be able to perform our tasks & to fight our battles. We must have good material support.
14. WE HAVE HAD MANY GOOD, LOYAL, FAITHFUL, DILIGENT, HARD-WORKING, INSPIRED MISSIONARIES IN THE FIELD WHO HAVE FAILED, not for their lack of desire to serve the Lord or their lack of love for others, not even for their lack of the right Message or soul-winning or discipling ability or the right methods. They're in a good organisation with good communication & tabulation, security, everything, but they failed to have sufficient support, & therefore they failed.
15. SO I WOULD SAY TODAY THAT THIS IS PROBABLY OUR WEAKEST POINT & the cause of the greatest number of our Family failures & missionary flops, this failure to get sufficient support! Jesus Himself said, "I am the Vine, ye are the branches, & ye cannot bear fruit of yourselves except ye abide in the Vine. If a branch abide not in the Vine, it's going to wither & die. Without Me ye can do nothing." (Jn.15:4-6)
16. SO FIRST OF ALL, IF YOU WANT GOOD MATERIAL & FINANCIAL SUPPORT, YOU MUST BE IN CLOSE COMMUNICATION WITH THE LORD. You must be firmly implanted in the Vine. And if you are staying close to the Lord in close fellowship & obedience to His Word, God will support you & see that you survive & take care of you & "supply all your need according to His riches in glory" if He has to drop it directly out of Heaven! (Ph.4:19)
17. THEREFORE YOU MUST FIRST & MOST OF ALL PRAY & ASK GOD TO HELP YOU & TO KEEP IN CLOSE COMMUNICATION WITH THE LORD, abiding in the Vine as one of His branches so that He Himself can make sure that you're getting the right juices & sap & circulation to supply your physical needs. And probably the first thing He'll tell you to do, of course, is to raise your own support as much as possible. Don't expect Him to drop it all from the sky. He can do that & he has done it sometimes, but usually He likes to use people. He likes to use men as His means in order that they too might be blessed & have a share in your ministry & its fruits & receive part of the rewards.
18. BUT TO DO THIS YOU MUST BE WILLING TO ASK FOR SUPPORT! You must be humble & not too proud to ask. He says, "Ask & ye shall receive, seek & ye shall find, knock & it shall be opened unto you." (Mt.7:7)
19. ONE OF THE FIRST WAYS YOU GET YOUR SUPPORT IS AT HOME, from your own disciples, followers, supporters, offerings, provisionings, forsake-alls, FFing, even working. So, much of your support should be raised before you ever leave your home land, not only present support & present supply, but promise of future support when you get to the field. (See "Get Home Support--Or Stay Home!" No.922.)
20. THEN ONCE IN THE FIELD YOU MUST KEEP UP A CONSTANT, LIVELY LINE OF COMMUNICATION & news & thank-you's & requests for prayer by means of prayer letters from the field to your home supporters & friends. Prayer letters are your lifeline of continued support from home. Home support is virtually essential for almost every field in the World! So you must keep up a good mailing list & mail ministry.
21. NEXT COMES ACTUAL FIELD SUPPORT WHERE YOU ARE WORKING, & OF COURSE THIS CAN COME IN VARIOUS WAYS. Provisioning is of course one of your best means of field support, as well as offerings by means of busking, meetings, music or whatever.
22. THE POOR DON'T HAVE VERY MUCH, BUT THEY GIVE MORE sacrificially than the rich, & it is the poor who support the Lord's Work! So you will find that the natives will be one of the greatest means of your support & one of the most faithful & immediate, because you are there & they are there & see your need & are touched to give to help supply it. So don't be afraid to ask for it if they have it.
23. SO PROVISIONING & OFFERINGS ARE TWO OF THE MAIN MEANS OF FIELD SUPPORT, AS WELL AS FORSAKE-ALLS FROM YOUR DISCIPLES, those who join your ranks & enter your Home & decide to join your Family, bringing with them everything they've got. Of course literature & street distribution of literature has also been one of our major means of support, as "They that preach the Gospel shall live of the Gospel", in other words should be supported by it, if possible. (1Co.9:14)
24. THEREFORE YOUR OBJECTS OF WITNESSING & LITNESSING, DISCIPLING ETC. SHOULD BECOME A GREATER & GREATER MEANS OF SUBSTANTIAL SUPPORT IN THE FIELD, INCLUDING OF COURSE FFING which has become one of the most lucrative of all means of support. Last, perhaps the least ministrative means of support is actual labour or a System job where you have to put in most of your time labouring for the System, working for Mammon to try to help support the work of God or even yourself.
25. BUT I'LL TELL YOU RIGHT NOW, WHATEVER KIND OF WORK YOU DO, "THEY THAT SHALL NOT WORK, SHALL NOT EAT!" (2Th.3:10) And if you don't work & work hard at some of these means of support, or every one of them, or at least some of them, you are not going to be supported & you are not going to survive on the field. You're going to go home in shame & disgrace & almost contempt from your Home, with Family & relatives & System associates saying, "Ha ha, told you so! You couldn't make it, they didn't help you, you're a failure, it was no good & you shouldn't have done it in the first place!"
26. BUT WE REALLY TRULY BELIEVE THAT TO THOSE WHO ARE FAITHFUL, DILIGENT, HARD-WORKING & OBEDIENT IN THE LORD'S FULLTIME SERVICE, HE WILL KEEP HIS PROMISES! If you'll "seek first the Kingdom of God & His righteousness, all these other things shall be added unto you!" (Mt.6:33) So I am insisting that you do more to raise your support!
27. SO THERE'S NO EXCUSE FOR IT, BELOVED! There is no excuse for your failure to raise Home support before you leave! There is no excuse for your failure to keep up that home support after you leave. And if as a last resort you found home support impossible, there is no excuse whatsoever for your not being able to raise field support by all of these various means--provisioning, FFing, offerings, forsake-alls, soul-winning, cultivating friends & influencing important people.
28. THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR YOUR HAVING INSUFFICIENT SUPPORT IF YOU WILL WORK AT IT! Only those that shall not work shall not eat! I promise you, that if you will work hard in some way, God will see to it that you are supported in some way. I believe God is willing to have mercy on you & forgive you if you will get to work now & pray as though everything depended on prayer & the Lord Himself, which it does. In fact, if you delight yourself in the Lord, He'll even give you the desires of your heart, anything you want! (Ps.37:4)--Not only whatever you need, but your wants & luxuries as well! It's the promises of God & you have no excuse for not claiming those promises & having sufficient support!
29. SO THERE'S ONLY ONE REASON IN THIS WORLD FOR YOUR LACK OF SUPPORT, & THAT'S YOU & YOUR FAILURE TO WORK AT IT! Don't give me any other excuse! No failing missionary has any other excuse but themselves, no one else to blame but themselves, no other reason whatsoever except that they were lazy loafers & refused to work like they should work in order to support themselves, if they couldn't persuade other people at home to support them. You & you alone are to blame for not working, & that is the simple answer to the whole problem & the single solution, & that is for you to get to work!--Now!--Or never! Stop being a burden on others!--Either go to work--or go home! God help you!--In Jesus' name, amen.
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family