Spiritual revolution

1957 saw three unknown young students take a step of faith that would have consequences beyond their wildest dreams.

50 years have passed since George Verwer, Dale Rhoton and Walter Borchard, then still in their teens, drove down Route 66 from Chicago towards Mexico City in a beat-up 1949 Dodge truck filled with Spanish gospels and tracts. This was the beginning of what was to become Operation Mobilisation (OM). An unlikely spiritual revolution had started.

George had learned that ‘south of the border, in Mexico, over 70% of the people had not one portion of the Scriptures’. On reading this, he felt ‘that God wanted me to dedicate my summers to distributing gospels there instead of the United States’. Always a team-builder, he immediately presented the challenge to Dale and, as he put it, ‘We bowed in prayer to commit the entire matter to the Lord’.

‘I got it!’

Dale Rhoton’s version has more colour. He wrote: ‘After one of George’s typically fiery passionate loud prayers I began a rather phlegmatic prayer. I was stunned when in the middle of my prayer he suddenly stood up and shouted, “I got it!” ’ Not surprisingly, Dale asked what he had got.

His [George’s] answer: ‘We should go to Mexico in the summer.’ He wanted an immediate positive response. I said I would have to pray about it. We were quickly back on our knees and a few minutes later he again put the question to me, ‘Well, are you ready to go?’ ‘George, it takes longer than that.’ I’ll never forget the pained look on his face as he lamented, ‘Why does it take people so long to see it?’

George Verwer had an amazing assurance, even in his late teens, that he was in touch with God’s will and that others should follow his lead. He questioned himself frequently, but there were also many very significant moments when he simply felt that he had grasped what had to be done and expected others to ‘see it’. Dale Rhoton’s experience was often to be repeated. He wrote: ‘I did “see it” and I did go’.

Filled with anticipation, George, Walter and Dale set off for Mexico in 1957 in what was to become their legendary 1949 Dodge Truck with 20,000 tracts and 10,000 gospels.

Reckless realism

After a successful trip George Verwer immediately began to make plans to return to Mexico, in the summer of 1958. ‘At that stage’, he said 50 years later, ‘I didn’t have a global dream; I was moving one step at a time, thinking especially of those parts of the world where people had never received a gospel.’ Although there was a spirit of ‘reckless abandonment’, there was also realism. The ‘step at a time’ approach has been characteristic of OM. Although the dream George had in 1957 was not a clear one, as he himself explained, it was a dream that the Scriptures, the word of God for all people, should be made as widely available as possible.

Since she could speak some Spanish, Jean Hall (later Davey) expressed interest in the next Mexican mission, but initially girls were not invited. However, it was decided a car-load of girls could become part of the Christmas 1958 mission. Jean was not included at first, but one girl dropped out and Jean asked George what she would need in order to go. The reply was: ‘Believe God for $90.’ This was a considerable sum, but two days later a cheque for precisely this amount arrived. The principle adopted in OM was that each person joining the movement should find their own finances, ‘believing God’ for provision and not telling others about their needs.

Believe God

The language of ‘believe God’ was to become common, sometimes in the form of a question: ‘What are you believing God for?’ At one OM summer conference George said: ‘This work is so geared that even one day of unbelief can set us back weeks.’

The use of unlikely and unpromising vehicles, such as the Dodge truck, was to be a continuing — indeed central — theme in Operation Mobilisation. Jean Hall wrote in her diary (December 20 1958) in typical terms about her transport to Mexico — in an ‘old dusty car’. This stress on the basic nature of the transport was in line with the overall vision of simple living and, in addition, the unlikely vehicles in some ways mirrored the idea of using inexperienced people who would not have found a place in other missions. Jean also noted the place of the women on the team she joined. ‘The five of us girls’, she wrote, ‘are packed neatly into the car under coats, blankets and sandwiches’. Much longer journeys would characterise OM teams in the future, and sleeping in vans and trucks would became a common feature.

The emphasis on prayer has to be taken fully into account in order to understand the spirituality of OM. Prayer was the heart-beat. George Verwer suggested people get into little groups to pray, which was a new style of praying. Maps were used to direct intercession for countries. There was also confession. George Verwer was always ready to acknowledge his mistakes, and this had a powerful impact on the group. All-night prayer meetings were held.

Being a disciple meant acting on what Jesus said. If his instructions were to give away your coat to someone in need (Matthew 5.40), then there was no alternative to giving away the coat. Dale Rhoton offered an example of how George Verwer implemented this teaching.

‘While preaching in a small church in greater Mexico City, (George Verwer) was overwhelmed by the generosity of a collection that was taken. It was not so much money but he knew the people had given sacrificially. The pastor accompanied George to his van to say goodbye. George asked the pastor if he had a suit. “No”, he replied. George responded, “I have plenty of clothes.” It was night and the pastor could not see what was going on. George took his suit off, handed it to him and drove off. It was quite a sight to see a young, skinny George Verwer in his underwear around midnight knocking on the door of the Christian bookshop where the team was staying.’

Mission and equipping

From the very beginning, the movement that became OM was characterised not only by mission work but also by equipping leaders. Often new Christians — usually young people — were given demanding responsibility very quickly. Relatively few of those who gathered around George Verwer became ordained ministers, but several became pioneers in world mission.

After their marriage in January 1960, George and Drena Verwer spent a few months living in Mexico City before moving to Spain. Moody Memo reported on events in this period that became legendary: ‘George Verwer, a January graduate, and Drena Knecht, former Film Department secretary, were married in January and immediately set off in an old International truck (which mechanics said would never get out of Chicago) to continue the mission in Mexico.’ Having no money and running low in petrol, they stopped at a filling station. George explained to the proprietor about their wedding and their mission and asked if they could exchange the wedding cake (in fact this was one of their two wedding cakes) for petrol. The proprietor said: ‘I’m a Christian. I’ll fill your tank and you keep the cake.’ The same thing happened a second time. The report concluded: ‘But the third time the proprietor was not a Christian so he took the wedding cake’.

George Verwer had set his sights on work in Europe and in the Middle East. There was an awareness of the massive challenges for Christianity posed by Islam and Communism. By 1961 both Dale Rhoton and Roger Malstead were in Turkey, and they are rightly regarded as helping to pioneer a new stage in the growth of the evangelical presence in that country.

From small beginnings

There is no doubt that something new and dynamic developed in the 1950s. From small beginnings, George Verwer and others pioneered the idea of short-term mission projects utilising large numbers of young people, many of them students. Some of the ideas were drawn from elsewhere and in the late 1950s there were no fully worked-out plans. Nor was it the case that ‘short-term’ was seen as an end in itself. An important goal was that from among the short-termers there would be those who would make mission their life’s work. In terms of practicalities, the availability of faster modes of transport was a crucial factor in enabling short-term mission to take place, and transport was to figure largely in OM’s story. But woven through all of this was a fresh spiritual energy, and the energy generated among the young people who came together around George Verwer was to contribute to a spiritual revolution in world mission.

Abridged extract taken from Spiritual Revolution by Ian Randall, ISBN 978-1-85078-766-2, price £8.99, published by Authentic Media.

Spiritual revolution

An abridged extract from the official history of the first 50 years of Operation Mobilisation

‘I got it!’

Reckless realism

Believe God

Mission and equipping

From small beginnings

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