History Book: Missionary pioneer sailed Christian books around the world

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, April 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Typically, we’d be introducing the WORLD History Book around this time, but today we have something a little different.

This weekend the missionary organization Operation Mobilization announced that its founder George Verwer died Friday night. WORLD’s Paul Butler first heard Verwer speak at a missions conference when he was a college student in the 1980’s. Here he is now with this remembrance of the missionary pioneer.

GEORGE VERWER: Seven reasons why you should go. And the first reason—write it down—the need is so overwhelming.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: For more than 50 years, when George Verwer spoke, people paid attention. And if he said to write something down, well, that’s exactly what you did.

VERWER: We could just go on and on giving you the names of people groups where the church does not yet exist. If that doesn’t move your missionary heart, you need to just repent!

George Verwer often wore a jacket emblazoned with the map of the world to remind people to pray for—and to go to—the ends of the earth. Sometimes he also brought along a huge inflatable globe, like when he spoke at Lansdowne Church in 2013:

VERWER: We live in amazing days. For 150 years, and especially the last 50 or 60, the greatest harvest of people to Jesus than the world has ever known. More have come to Jesus statistically in the last 150 than in the previous 1850.

George Verwer came to Christ at a Jack Wyrtzen evangelistic meeting in 1953.

BILLY GRAHAM: One of the most amazing things in all the universe is that God loves us.

The 16-year old Verwer listened intently as Billy Graham gave the gospel at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Verwer returned to his high school and began handing out copies of the Gospel of John. Within a year nearly 200 of his fellow students professed faith in Christ.

From then on Verwer was always handing out literature and talking to people about their need for Christ.

After graduating from Moody Bible Institute in 1960, Verwer and his wife moved to Spain. They were there to learn Russian with hopes of reaching the USSR with the gospel. On one Bible smuggling trip to Moscow, Verwer was arrested as a spy and kicked out of the country: making it impossible to return. Verwer retold the story many times jokingly calling himself “God’s Bungler” instead of “God's Smuggler.”

But out of that ministry failure Verwer discovered his life work: “to mobilize the church” in reaching the world for Christ. He was an early pioneer in short-term missions: committed to equipping everyday Christians for worldwide evangelism and discipleship. He founded Operation Mobilization in 1961.

PETER MEAD: He's always kind of pushing. What can we try that could work? 

Peter Mead is a second generation OM missionary. His father spent a summer in Europe with Verwer in 1962. Peter followed in his footsteps 1996 at 20 years old.

MEAD: And so he's got a whole legacy of kind of embarrassing moments and funny stories but actually in the midst of that kind of chaos, the impact that he's had has been absolutely vast I think in the Christian world.

Mead is just one of hundreds of short-term missionaries who went on to start his own ministry after rubbing shoulders with George Verwer.

MEAD: A lot of the legacy that he has is the mobilizing of people into ministry and into missions then to go on to do other things. There have been so many organizations started out of OM. 

But Verwer never let his influence and notoriety go to his head. According to Mead, one of the most significant things about Verwer’s ministry was his transparency…he wrote a book titled: Messiology where he spoke openly about his struggles with lust, a quick temper, and difficulties with kindness and grace.

MEAD: He knew who he was. He knew he nothing special in himself, but he wanted to help others think about God's grace and think about the goodness of the gospel, and recognize that we don't have to be perfect for God to use us and bless us in the midst of that. That level of reality is going to be missed.

Verwer’s driving passion was for people to get to know Jesus—for once folks had a dynamic relationship with Christ, Verwer believed missions would logically follow.

Verwer stepped down from leading OM in 2003, but even into his 80s he barely slowed down. Until earlier this year when he spent 10 days in the hospital and his health never fully recovered.

On April 8th, he posted what he knew was to be his last video blog to Facebook:

VERWER: I pray when people think of me, they'll remember the passion to see everyone in the world have the opportunity to hear or read the gospel. But there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people that have not yet been reached. Be steadfast, unmovable. Always abounding in the work of the Lord. 

Six days later, on April 14th, missionary pioneer George Verwer died at age 84.

During a 1987 training session with OM short-term missionaries, Verwer gave a talk on seven reasons why people should go…it’s an appeal he gave thousands of times over his life and one that continues even after his death:

VERWER: That day along the sea of Galilee and said to those ordinary men: ‘follow me and I'll make you fishers of men.’ And immediately they left their nets and they followed him. What about you? As you hear his voice, what about you?

I’m Paul Butler.

Editor’s note: WORLD has edited this transcript and audio since its first airing to correct the date of when George Verwer stepped down from leadership. 

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.