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As the founding father of the missions group OM International, George Verwer (July 3, 1938-April 14, 2023) was simply some of the influential Christian leaders of the final century. He served OM with distinction, and he impressed numerous different Christian leaders everywhere in the world.
His management was marked by what I solely know how one can name: a Spirit-led intestine intuition. Whatever complicated or world subject that confronted him, he all the time dared to behave, and his actions had been nearly all the time proper.
George additionally all the time paid consideration to the place the winds of the Spirit had been blowing, and as a maturing church emerged within the Global South, he put his efforts into serving to the church develop into sustainable. George was one of many first white missions leaders to totally empower nationals to guide the efforts he initiated within the majority world. George was not solely incapable of racism however he by no means handled anybody lower than him.
Along the best way, he educated, impressed, and knew — from the north, south, east and west — the vast majority of probably the most influential Christian leaders reaching the world with the Gospel throughout the explosion of Christians within the Global South. In many circumstances, their lifelong ministries had been initiated on the private invitation of George to affix him on a brief journey to succeed in some a part of the world with the Good News. He personally touched the lives of greater than 100,000 mission leaders, impacting numerous tens of thousands and thousands of lives.
OM’s work in India would finally develop into OM’s most vital work globally, each in personnel and scope. The work George initiated in India was extra intensive than all the remainder of OM’s appreciable work in the remainder of the world mixed. From the very starting, George’s Spirit-led intestine instincts led him to assemble the Indian work differently than what was executed within the West.
From the very inception, the management was handed over to the Indians, and from the start, he gave full freedom to develop the methods and missiology on the native stage.
When the work in India developed right into a full-fledged church motion constructed round a Kingdom of God paradigm, he supported it with out reservation. George instructed me many occasions that the entire autonomy of the Indian work didn’t occur the best way we might have imagined it. Still, it was solely correct for the Indians to forge their future in a posh nation in partnership with OM and non-OM teams.
His humility additionally displayed his energy. He by no means hid his flaws. George was fallible, and he made positive everybody knew it. This is why his sermons, books and beneficiant conversations over tea had been all the time seasoned with knowledge and blessed with information.
George was younger when he based his work.
In his 20s, within the late Fifties and Sixties, he responded to cultural upheaval in North America and Europe by providing a radical religion in Jesus Christ to these younger individuals looking out desperately for that means of their lives. His Christian message was stuffed with grace and filled with radical discipleship.
This is why his message resonated with an entire technology of younger Christians who adopted him in reaching the world for Christ, regardless of the danger and no matter the price. Those disciples additionally realized to beat their fears, flaws and failures.
As a lot as any Christian in historical past, George Verwer led his technology, and the generations round it, to “attain the world in their very own technology.”
When the Western Church’s enthusiasm for sending out Western missionaries was declining, George pioneered a big, world short-term missions motion. The older missions organizations had been skeptical of George’s method however couldn’t cease the wave of short-term missionaries who answered the Lord’s name by means of his imaginative and prescient. Those short-termers grew to become their recruits.
George additionally remained the chief patron of the Good Shepherd Church Movement, which as we speak has a world presence. All that mattered to George was that the church was targeted on Jesus and that the local people was liable for it.
Almost as shortly as he realized any lesson, George additionally wrote a guide about it after which despatched his books to leaders worldwide. One of these books, written as a younger man, was entitled A Revolution of Love and Balance. In it, he crafted early concepts which might show seminal within the historical past of the worldwide church throughout the twentieth and twenty first centuries. Before OM totally embraced the necessity for a holistic method to mission, George wrote that if we didn’t apply love in motion for the poor, we couldn’t declare we liked the world as God liked the world. He taught passionately that our Christian life and testimony would ring hole with out love for each other within the Church.
Those phrases had been prophetic for the context of a bitterly divided Christian world as we speak! The proven fact that Jesus mentioned the world would know we had been His disciples after we liked one another is misplaced amongst simply too many Christians on this age of hate-filled social media posts.
George supported particular person church buildings creating their explicit emphasis on thought and apply. He opposed Christians changing into adamant and dogmatic about their interpretation or practices when it led to divisions and restricted the church buildings’ capability to work with different Christians to the touch the world.
According to George, most of the world’s vital points couldn’t be addressed by one group or church. Our world wanted the worldwide Church all the time holding reality in steadiness to work collectively.
Issues similar to social care, starvation, injustice, discrimination, poverty and sharing the Good News of the Kingdom of God wanted the loving and united effort of the worldwide Church in all its variety. George’s capability to narrate to leaders throughout the denominational spectrum was as phenomenal because it was groundbreaking.
In his later years, an older and wiser George Verwer started to talk at each alternative about how God works in and thru a Church stuffed with human errors and sin.
Out of his huge expertise with imperfect and damaged leaders and their church buildings, got here two books: Messiology and Confessions of a Toxic Perfectionist.
The message of those books can also be his legacy in a world the place youthful and older Christians are confronted by the autumn of distinguished Christian leaders and the mess it leaves throughout. George all the time noticed God’s grace and second possibilities, particularly in our greatest messes. He was fast to repent and by no means with no private phrase about his inadequacy.
Losing George is shedding my life’s mentor and my closest private buddy within the ministry. It can also be an inspiration of a life lived properly and a legacy now made full with the phrases all of us lengthy to listen to, “Well executed, good and trustworthy servant.”
I can not wait to see him once more. In the meantime, with God’s assist, let’s decide to residing our lives extra like he lived his personal.
Archbishop Joseph D’Souza is an internationally famend human and civil rights activist. He is the founding father of Dignity Freedom Network, a corporation that advocates for and delivers humanitarian help to the marginalized and outcastes of South Asia. He is archbishop of the Anglican Good Shepherd Church of India and serves because the president of the All India Christian Council.
First revealed in The Christian Post.
