"NATIONALIZATION!"--Indigenuity at Last!--MO 1/78 DO NO.659
© Copyrighted January 1978 by the Children of God
1. LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING: IF JESUS HAD STAYED WITH THEM, HOW FAR WOULD THE DISCIPLES HAVE GONE and how much would they have accomplished? Those poor ignorant stupid dumb blundering befuddled fishermen and nobodies--who could have ever 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 and they would have never gotten any further, right? But when the Pioneer had to go off and 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 and His Holy Spirit.
3. THEY EVANGELIZED ALL THE KNOWN CIVILIZED WORLD OF THEIR DAY within 100 years, because He physically left them. They trusted God and His Spirit, that He was able to at least help them to carry on from the Spirit World.
4. I TOOK A REAL STEP OF FAITH WHEN I LEFT TSC and went off to Europe leaving behind only 2 colonies. A year later we had 40, but the Lord had to keep clobbering us to make us scatter and keep us moving.
5. THE NEW REVOLUTION BROKE UP THE BLOBS AND SCATTERED US into many countries and has more than doubled our population and tripled our Colonies and resulted in phenomenal salvations and lit stats! The kids have done what we asked them to do in the New Revolution and they've done well. It knocked us into a tailspin for a few months, but as soon as they got going, they were booming away!
6. BUT WE'VE SLOWED DOWN and settled down comfortably again. It's time for something to happen to shake us up, to upset the fruit basket!
7. 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 and go into all the world, so our N. American leadership is going to have to step down and out of the picture and push forward the nationals in order to integrate and nationalize the many countries we're in.
8. 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, and I don't think we ever will unless we're forced to.
9. THE BEST WAY TO START NATIONALIZING IS WITH THE NATIONALS. I'd like to know that the Spanish are running Spain, the Italians are running Italy, the French are running France, etc.
10. IF THE WORK HAS ALWAYS GOT TO BE HELD UP BY THE U.S. AMERICANS and the Americans have always got to run it, then there is no such thing as indigenuity and it doesn't work. If we can't get enough converts and good enough material to run their own colonies and their own country, then I will certainly be highly disappointed, because then we are not missionaries, we haven't established anything native and we're just a foreign colonial empire!
11. WE HAVE JUST MOVED LIKE A BUNCH OF GYPSIES and we're just living different places and in other countries and we're not getting the job done that we came to do, and that was to evangelize 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 and their own Colonies.
12. IF WE HAVEN'T DONE THIS THEN WE HAVE FAILED and it's a shame and disgrace and reproach to us. Well, so far we're doing pretty good in other areas, "but this ye ought to have done and not to have left the other undone!" (Mt. 23:23.)
13. IF WE DON'T KEEP MOVING FORWARD, EVEN LITERALLY MOVING, THEN WHAT WE'RE DOING WILL NEVER BE INDIGENOUS. It will never be nationalized, and therefore it'll never be strong and never last. 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.
14. BUT A LOT OF OUR OWN PEOPLE HAVE THE IDEA THAT NOBODY'S BETTER THAN THE AMERICANS, nobody is smarter than Americans and nobody can do it but U.S. Americans. But I don't believe it! I've seen people in Europe doing a lot of things just as well if not better than the Americans are doing, at least a lot smarter!
15. I DIDN'T SEE ANY SPANIARDS IN SPAIN BEING AS STUPID AS THE N. AMERICANS and still building Cadillacs, or like the British still building the Rolls Royce. They're smart, they build a nice little Seat that doesn't cost much and is economical and is going to still be running after the Rolls Royce and the Cadillacs have run out of steam--or gas and oil!
16. THEY KNOW THEIR OWN PEOPLE AND THE SITUATION better than Rolls Royce or Cadillac, and they know how to do it. The Americans may have taught them how to do it in the first place, but they did it, and look what they're doing now.
17. SO THERE ARE PLENTY OF SMART NATIVES--we must have some in the Family. A lot of our Family were not all that smart either when they first started.
18. BUT 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.
19. I CAN REMEMBER TESTIMONIES OF MISSIONARIES, even in the Alliance Church with which I was associated for many years, who came back to the States saying what wonderful leaders some of the native people had developed into when they finally got some responsibility and they were really given a chance and really Spirit-led, filled & inspired!
20. THEY JUST WENT OUT AND SET THE COUNTRY ON FIRE! But as long as they were kept down, "Oh well, they can't do that, they don't know how. They don't know enough."--It's no wonder they didn't accomplish anything! But how are they ever going to know how if you don't teach them?
21. I'VE HEARD SOME HORROR STORIES ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED to mission fields where they had not nationalized nor prepared the nationals to take over.
22. 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.
23. THE NATIONALS HAD NEVER BEEN GIVEN ANY ORGANIZATIONAL TRAINING OR POSITION OF RESPONSIBILITY. So the work just practically fell apart, except if in some unusual cases, by a miracle of God, the Lord raised up some untrained leaders to carry on just by His grace, mercy and inspiration.
24. USUALLY THE WORK JUST VIRTUALLY COLLAPSED, and about all they would hear from a few converts now and then was that they were still loving and serving the Lord. But anything of any real substance of organizational co-operation had pretty well vanished.
25. WHEREAS ON THE FIELDS WHERE THEY HAD THOROUGHLY TRAINED LOCAL NATIVE LEADERSHIP, pushed them to the front and nationalized the work and the N. Americans had stayed in the background behind the scenes, when the N. Americans were thrown out or moved out, a good strong native church was left behind--operational, still plugging on and still functioning.
26. I'VE NEVER BEEN ANYPLACE YET THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE TO LEAVE. Just remember, it's always coming. It's already happened to us in several countries. I wonder what we've got left behind in Argentina?--Reporting Colonies?
27. I WONDER WHAT'S GOING ON IN QUITE A FEW COUNTRIES WE HAVE BEEN KICKED OUT OF. Unless the leadership took some nationals into their confidence, their home, their arms and the bank account, the telephone, the rental contract, box number, mail and everything else and showed them how it's done, the work probably just fell apart.
28. 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!
29. PAUL HARDLY EVER STAYED IN A PLACE MORE THAN ABOUT TWO YEARS. So what happened after he left? The local people must have taken over. After they chopped Paul's head off and crucified Peter and got rid of the other Jewish foreigners, somebody must have been carrying on.
30. ANALYZING OUR OWN PIONEER WORK IN TENERIFE, FOR EXAMPLE, AT LEAST HALF OF THE LEADERSHIP THERE ARE MALE NATIVE SPANISH! Those men in the house are being really trained and geared to lead. They could throw all of the foreigners out and keep them out, but there's nothing they could do about the natives, at least not much.
31. THEY LIVE-IN, THEY'RE MARRIED TO OUR GIRLS, AND WE'VE GOT GOOD STRONG UP-AND-COMING LEADERSHIP THERE. They're still babes now, won by FFing, but they're growing. At least they're taking the burden of the material and physical leadership already.
32. AND I'LL TELL YOU, WE'VE ALSO GOT PLENTY OF SPANISH GIRLS THAT WE TRAINED and exalted and integrated. We made them know that they were really important, and they are, they're learning.
33. THEY LIVED RIGHT IN OUR OWN HOUSE. Some of them were in my own bed in my own arms--it's all part of the training. Well, now they love me and they're faithful and they're loyal.
34. I WONDER HOW MANY OF OUR LEADERS IN THE WORLD HAVE TRUSTED THE NATIVES THAT MUCH? Or how many Colony Servants have added a few native wives to their harem to nationalize the work?
35. THE YANKEES ARE EITHER GOING TO HAVE TO INTEGRATE OR MOVE ALONG. It's either going to push them in deeper or push them out, one or the other.
36. I AM DETERMINED, LIVE OR DIE, SINK OR SWIM, THAT WE ARE GOING TO NATIONALIZE OUR WORK around the world! Nationalization's going to come sooner or later, one way or the other, especially if there's any kind of a world emergency.
37. IT WAS DURING WORLD WAR II THAT MOST OF THE MISSIONARIES GOT THROWN OUT of a whole lot of countries just because they were U.S. Americans.
38. SO YOU SAY WE'VE GOT TOO MANY YANKEES, we're top-heavy with Yankee leadership? I want to tell you something, the New Revolution Letters took what U.S. leadership we had and scattered them all over the world!
39. I WANT TO TELL YOU SOMETHING NOW THAT MIGHT SHOCK YOU, AND THAT IS THAT WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF YANKEES! We are still winning a few souls in the U.S. but nothing like the harvest we had had, and our U.S.A. manpower pool is just about exhausted. No army ever conquers any more territory unless it keeps on the move, and we've spread out our North Americans just as far as we can.
40. IF WE ARE GOING TO MOVE ON ANY FURTHER AND GET ANYTHING ELSE DONE and go anywhere else, we have got to leave the fields we're in in the hands of nationals, even if it's a couple of girls or catacombers, and go into other fields, pioneer other parts of the world. There are hundreds of places we haven't been to yet, thousands! We are out to conquer the whole world!
41. ONE THING OUR NORTH AMERICANS HAVE PROVEN IS THAT THEY ARE GOOD PIONEERS. With all their pushiness, aggressiveness, boldness, nerve and faith, they've got tremendous leadership ability and potential. They've done a great job, God bless them! But lately they have a tendency to get settled down.
42. SO OUR NATIONALIZATION WILL KEEP THE OLD BOTTLES MOVING along, and that'll help refresh them. It'll keep them moving, exploring, pioneering, establishing new territory, training new leadership, and that's the biggest toughest job in the whole Family, in the whole world! So don't worry, there will always be some places for the N. Americans to go.
43. 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!
44. THIS IS GOING TO RULE OUT AN AWFUL LOT OF YANKEES FROM PLACES WHERE THEY DIDN'T NATIONALIZE. They can go back home or to Australia or to one of the oodles of countries in the world where they speak English, or they're going to have to learn the language!
45. WE ARE HEREBY GOING TO REQUIRE THAT IN COLONIES ESTABLISHED FOR ONE YEAR OR MORE, ONE MEMBER OF THE PRESENT LEADERSHIP COUPLE MUST SPEAK THE LANGUAGE, as well as one of the Servants being a national. In those colonies established for two years or more, all Colony Servants must be nationals or integrated with a national and speak the language. Pioneer Colonies will be an exception--they will have one year to learn the language and find a native Co-Servant.
46. MARIA AND I WERE THE LEADERS IN TENERIFE, BUT WE LEARNED THE LANGUAGE. At least I can carry on some semblance of a child-like conversation, witnessing by the hour in Spanish, slowly, with simple words and present tense but with real inspiration! I was surprised how the Lord inspired me sometimes and gave me words I never even thought of!
47. I MAY NOT ALWAYS BE ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THEM PERFECTLY, the way they rattle it off. But I'll tell you one thing, they understand me!--I speak so simply!
48. I JUST PICKED IT UP BY SITTING TALKING WITH THE PEOPLE ALL DAY. It's childish Spanish, but at least the people give me credit for trying.
49. IF YOU LOVE THE PEOPLE YOU'LL WANT TO LEARN THEIR LANGUAGE in order to be able to love and communicate with them. Leaders who have been in countries for years and 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!
50. SO IF YOU'RE AN AMERICAN COUPLE, FOR EXAMPLE, HEADING UP A COLONY IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY, if you know the language well enough to speak, understand and read it a bit, you may stay, provided you are re-elected by your Colony.--If you also add a native Co-Servant! Maybe this will solve some of the problems of these poor girls that can't get married because nobody will marry them!--Now you'll have to!
51. MAYBE NOW THE DEAR COLONY SERVANT IS GOING TO TAKE HIMSELF ON AN EXTRA WIFE in order to make his local Home legit and have one national in the leadership.--Or maybe his wife'll have to take on an extra husband! Ha!
52. THAT'S WHAT DEAR SALLY AND DAVE DID IN TENERIFE!: After being together with us in the Lord's service for a couple of years, by the Lord's Love, Sally took on a Spanish husband whom she FFed, and Dave took on a Spanish wife! Well, I've got quite a few Spanish "wives," so Dave's not the only one! Bless'm!
53. WE'VE ALREADY PROVEN WE'VE GOT SOME OUTSTANDING TALENT IN NATIVE LEADERSHIP throughout the world, and if they haven't got it they can go out and FF it or win it somehow. If the need is there the answer must be there too, so just look around and pray it in.
54. WHEN WE SAY YOU MUST 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!
55. WE MEAN THAT HE OR SHE MUST BE INCLUDED IN ALL COLONY COUNCIL VOTES which must be unanimous. We mean they must be incorporated into the leadership with definite responsibility, financial as well as otherwise.
56. WE MEAN THAT YOU HAVE GOT TO HAVE AT LEAST ONE NATIONAL'S NAME AS SIGNATOR on the bank account, on the box number, on the rental contract, telephone, mailing address, on legal papers.--One national who's had at least a little training in a leadership capacity when the N. Americans have to leave--whose name is on everything to show that he really is in a position of responsibility and authority and he can do business and handle money and property in the name of the Home, the work organized and registered in his or her name, their name added to the title of purchased or owned property, etc.
57. IF YOU HAVEN'T GOT THE NATIVE TALENT, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND AND 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 and getting the mail with you, signing contracts etc.!
58. MAYBE THIS IS GOING TO CAUSE A SUDDEN BUNCH OF MARRIAGES of all these singles that haven't been able to get a mate. You would be surprised, in spite of the rule we've had for years and years that no shepherd should be unmarried, we've still got dozens of unmarried shepherds!
59. WELL, MY LORD, YOU DON'T NEED TO GET MARRIED LEGALLY! But the only way you're going to be able to get started learning the language is probably to start living with a national--why not?
60. SO A CAPABLE AMERICAN WOMAN CAN MARRY A NATIVE HUSBAND AND TRAIN HIM, or a capable American husband can marry a native wife and train her. My God, if a married man's got to take on another wife and have one American and one native, that's the way it'll have to be! A woman who is an American and has an American husband, well, maybe she can interest her fish in being another husband, so at least one of the team will be native.
61. 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 and elect at least one new native Co-Servant to serve with them, so that the heads of the Home will now be a triumvirate and will have at least one native servant to train.
62. OR, IF THEY WANT TO ELECT A COUPLE OF NATIVES, THEN THEY CAN HAVE FOUR COLONY SERVANTS! And then we can give them a one year time limit for the American leadership to totally fade out of the scene and go someplace else, leaving natives in charge.
63. THE REST OF THE LEADERS WHO DON'T KNOW THE LANGUAGE, or who, although they can speak the language, don't want to take on a native as their Co-Servant, can go litnessing until they learn or until they want to take on an extra member or pioneer!
64. THEY CAN GO OUT AND PIONEER, AND WE'LL GIVE THEM A ONE-YEAR TIME LIMIT as pioneers to develop some native leadership, or find it from some other part of the language area, to come in and take over and at least be the titular heads of the Colonies, even if the original American Servants have to be the servants of Servants, with the native Servants as the heads!--Training!
65. OR THEY COULD POSSIBLY STICK AROUND IN SOME OF THEIR OLD COLONIES a month or two while making and training one of the native couples to be the Colony Servants, while the N. Americans merely counsel and advise and work together with them as only their assistants. But all legal and financial business would be done in the name of the native Colony Servants.
66. SPEAKING OF REGISTRATION, IN ALL AREAS WHERE WE'RE NOT ALREADY OFFICIALLY OR LEGALLY REGISTERED in the name of the Children of God, whenever any new registration or any new legal matters take place they should be handled in the name of the Family of Love, if you have to have an organization name at all, and begin to get away from the Children of God and its image.
67. NOW, SOME PLACES IT MAY BE ADVANTAGEOUS TO RETAIN THE CHILDREN OF GOD NAME where we've got good relations and good legal status and good PR. But if the Children of God are dead ducks and their name is mud in that area, then they ought to forget all about that and call themselves the Family of Love.
68. LORD, WE'VE BEEN GETTING MORE DESPERATE ABOUT THIS ALL THE TIME. We've had plenty of time for it, Lord. We've exhorted it and we've talked about it and written about it, Lord, and we can't see that it's really being done as it should be or as much as it should be. Now we're going to push it and insist on it and lay down deadlines and guidelines.
69. IT'S LIKE YOU HAVE TO TAKE A CHILD AND SOMETIMES GET TOUGH with him and lay down the law and say this is the way it's got to be or else. We just ask You to help us. Give us wisdom and love but firmness, like a good parent, to insist on the children doing what they should do.
70. WE BELIEVE THEY'LL DO IT AND WE BELIEVE IT'S GOING TO HELP STRENGTHEN THE NATIONAL WORKS. While the N. Americans can move on, Lord, and continue to pioneer the rest of the world.
71. THERE ARE STILL LOTS OF PLACES THAT NEED US where we haven't been yet, and a lot of places where we need to go back.
72. YOU'VE USED THE AMERICANS, LORD--we're not disparaging their leadership nor belittling it. We're just saying that they need to push along and keep moving, because they're too needed around the world to settle down too long.
73. BLESS AND USE AND GIVE US SAFEKEEPING AND LOTS OF WISDOM, Lord, for this re-organisational task, and lots of love and patience with each other and others.
74. THY WILL BE DONE, that's what we ask. You know what's best and what will work and what will make us work, Lord.
75. WE BELIEVE THIS IS OF THEE. You laid it on our hearts, a heavy burden about the leadership, Lord, and what we must do. We believe this is going to help, so help it to work, Lord, and help them to work, in Jesus' name.
76. AS WE STILL PRAY THE PRAYER, LORD, THAT COULDN'T BE ANY BETTER, the very one that You taught us to pray: (Pray Lord's Prayer together.) Hallelujah! As we were praying, something kind of struck me funny about that phrase "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
77. WHO DO YOU THINK IS IN LEADERSHIP IN HEAVEN, positions of responsibility and leadership? There are all kinds of levels of leadership in the spirit world. Do you think they are strangers and non-nationals who were not born into the Kingdom?
78. THEY'RE ALL NATIONALS! He's got 100% national leadership and membership, all native-born into the Kingdom of God!
79. GOD'S GOVERNMENT IS TOTALLY NATIONAL, nobody but His citizens and nationals, thank the Lord! Born into the Kingdom, amen? Not only leaders but members! So, you thought you'd heard it all!
80. THE LORD ALWAYS HAS SOMETHING NEW UP HIS SLEEVE! He usually beats me to the punch! That's where I get all of these crazy ideas, but somehow they seem to work! Amen? PTL ! GBY ! NATIONALIZE NOW! TOMORROW MAY BE TOO LATE!
81. P.S. --IF YOU'RE HAVING DIFFICULTY NATIONALIZING your Home, try looking elsewhere in other Homes for nationals. Beg, borrow or "steal" some!--At least maybe you can exchange some of your Yankees for nationals with some Home where they have a surplus of nationals.--Or just send the U.S. Americans on their way pioneering!
82. HAPPY HUNTING! If you look hard enough, I'm sure you'll find some nationals somewhere--and someplace to send your N. Americans pioneering! PTL! GBY!
83. WE LOVE YOU ALL! "There's no Jew nor Gentile, no Greek nor Roman in Christ Jesus" and His Kingdom!--But it makes a big difference to this world's kingdoms!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family