I’m an implementer, personally. I hear a good idea and I start thinking, “How can we make that happen..?” So how I respond to a meeting like the International Prayer and Strategy conference in Kona last month presents a challenge for me. One thing YWAM is not short of is vision. As YWAM Field Director for the Americas, Jim Stier, commented wryly, “I think we’ve narrowed down YWAM’s vision to the planet Earth and every human need.”

I hear about growth and the revival of old vision and the development of new vision and the voices in my head start considering implications and resource limitations and any number of practical and reasonable excuses not to start anything new. After almost 20 years in YWAM, I’m learning to ignore the voices in my head.

Faced with a gaggle of YWAMers in the throes of birthing new vision, criticism is an inevitable temptation. Undoubtedly, there is much to criticize. But the critic in me is confronted with the reality that my fellow YWAMers are sincerely seeking God, trusting His word, and desperate to do His will – just like I am. Flawed, like me, yet each one represents a different part of God’s heart for His world.

As I read the stories below which demonstrate the vastly different means by which we are pursuing the vision God has given to YWAM, I realize that my arms alone are not big enough to embrace all the things He loves. But together - what a miracle He has wrought among us!

By Tamara Neely

At the end of August, nearly 50 senior YWAM leaders met at the University of the Nations campus in Kona, Hawaii for their annual Global Leadership Team meeting. The GLT merged after only two days with the International Prayer and Strategy Conference (IPS), an event with over 200 participants from the six continents who represented a broad variety of YWAM ministries. They came to reflect on the direction our mission is going in response to recent prophetic words, and make sure we are on the right track.

Prior to the GLT, a newly-formed “Operations and Obligations” group had met to deal with some of the business of the mission. “This group of GLT members processes our legal issues, policies and business decisions such as leadership roles, communications and financial matters and makes clear recommendations to the rest of the GLT,” explained YWAM Chairman, Lynn Green. “This frees up time for the wider group of global leaders to focus on prayer and listening to God.” This focus was carried into the strategy conference, a new type of gathering where global and local leaders joined together to hear from God about the future of Youth With A Mission.

As stories of miraculous breakthroughs in healing, direction and provision were shared from around the world, the group was repeatedly led to prayer for some of the most challenging situations ever faced by our YWAM teams. YWAM founder, Loren Cunningham, unapologetically called it “audacious asking” for participants to cry out to God to calm the hurricanes in the southern part of the USA and Caribbean islands, to bring peace to the unrest in Zimbabwe and to halt the persecution of Christians in India.

As the group reflected on words God has spoken to YWAM in the past, an unexpected development was a return to the vision for a large maritime ministry which would enable YWAM teams to approach port cities and remote coastal peoples with the love of Christ. Participants affirmed this word with an offering towards one of YWAM’s new training ships, the Next Wave, which is launched out of England. (For more information on the Next Wave please visit www.marinereach.info)

International Director of Frontier Missions, Gina Fadely, gave an inspirational reminder of the heart of our calling – that of taking the news of redemption through Jesus to all people. Frontier missions regional director, Shephen Mbewe, echoed this with a moving story about the extreme challenges his teams face in southern Africa just in reaching their destinations at remote tribal villages. In one particular story, a team struggled for days to get to a hidden tribe only to find the people waiting for them, with songs of welcome, saying, “We have been waiting for you – you are the only people who come to see us!” Says Shephen, “We are committed to reach the unreached, because they are there waiting for us.”

Chairman Lynn Green challenged each representative to consider how this calling applied to them. Carl Tinnion, a leader of a small centre in York, England was excited to apply this challenge to a word his team received a few months ago about committing their efforts to love a remote tribal group in East Asia. He says, “We are sending a team to their nation this fall, but we want to work out how we can intentionally pray, resource and continually send teams out there. It would be really cool to empower a group from England to actually go there and stay…”

On the final day of the strategy conference, a physical reminder of our call to the unreached was given in a 50’ X 70’ map of the world provided by 4K - a YWAM tool for mobilising the Church to all peoples. Participants scattered over the map seeking the Lord for clarity on His word that they would indeed reach the ends of the earth. Many leaders committed to send teams from their centres to pray and gather information about the people located outside of the reach of the gospel. (For more information on 4K please visit: www.4kworldmap.com)

Audacious asking…new vision…the ends of the earth! The recurrent theme of the 2008 Prayer and Strategy conference was new revelation, and even more vision! As YWAM approaches its 50th year, it remains an organisation which is going to cling firmly to its belief that God speaks to all of us. The evidence at this meeting suggests that those who hear and obey Him will see great things happen!

For more information on the GLT meetings, see the daily reports from the GLT/IPS meetings available at

www.ywam.org/articles/article.asp?aid=549

Full details on the outcomes of the GLT meetings are available for staff from your YWAM Regional office.

By Tamara Neely

How do you respond to an enormous vision like YWAM’s commitment to reach all peoples? If you are part of YWAM’s team working in Delhi, India, you respond with passion, determination and patience. In the wake of the 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim world, when believers around the globe sought God for His blessing and revelation to Muslims, (see www.30-days.net) the vision to share the message of hope found in Christ with the Muslims of North India is particularly pertinent. Boasting a larger Muslim population than Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen combined, India
is a great place to go if you love Muslim people!

“Our dream is to remove Muslim unreached people groups from the list of people groups yet unreached.” declares the team leader, a national who has worked in this city for 9 years. He and his four team members are not discouraged at the task before them. “My personal understanding is that God promised us that we have an inheritance among the Muslim world as an organisation and everyone is included in that great call of God…God’s dreams and promises are God-sized, so it is very clear to me that it is possible to pursue that dream.” The team’s plan includes specialised training, including a DTS for people who share their passion and recruitment throughout the body of Christ. The team has found many local Christian leaders who share their vision.

The vision to demonstrate God’s love through Christ to those who have never heard it is original, and ever-new. The challenges in this region are manifest. “We have over 60 Muslim unreached people groups in North India and reaching North Indian Muslims will probably be the touchstone of our success or failure in completing world evangelism in our generation.” says the team leader. “However, our inward peace, ever increasing hope and the support of our leaders confirm that this initiative is from God and we are on the right track.”

For more information contact : www.delhiteam.org

by Rebekah Hoover

In light of the recent Prayer and Strategy meetings and the surge of Call to All and 4K, it is obvious that God is stirring us afresh to engage in the nations. The jet engine plane transformed the way the Church engaged in missions and YWAM has pioneered much as a forerunner in global missions. What is the jet engine of the 21st century? Could it be the internet?

Currently, 1.4 billion people are using the internet. That’s more than one-fifth of the world population. Since 2000, internet usage has grown by over 1,000% in the least reached regions of the world including Africa and the Middle East. What keys and strategies can we implement to further our discipleship, mercy ministry and evangelism endeavours?

Today’s young people want a place to belong. With over 50% of the world’s population under the age of 25, that’s a huge demographic and a huge opportunity. Relationship has always been YWAM’s strength, so how could a social network serve our mission?

We have YWAM groups on Facebook and MySpace; but in a world where over 1,000 new social networks are being created every day, perhaps it is part of YWAM’s future to have its own social network.

Some of us with ministry websites find that a website doesn’t offer young people anything to come back for. A social network could help. Instead of having a place where an 18 year old who is interested in mission can just find the dates and cost of a Discipleship Training School, we could invite them to an online community where they are immediately introduced to other YWAMers. It could become a dynamic place where we are literally evangelising, discipling and calling people to mission on comment walls, discussion groups and message boards.

Consider the implications for outreaches and events. As we bring in a team of evangelists and see people respond to Christ, we can link them to an online discipleship community. We have never seen these opportunities! Our websites could literally become a hive for people hungry for community, hungry to be believed in and hungry to engage their faith!

YWAM has a history of pioneering the use of new technologies to further the cause of missions – we only need to think of how GENESIS has allowed the classroom to go global. Is God preparing us for something greater within the area of electronic communications and social networking? As we consider our future there are many areas to look at but the reality remains - millions of young people online want to know where they belong and THAT is an opportunity we don’t want to miss!

Do you share the vision for a virtual YWAM? Talk about social networking and mission here

Thanks to everyone who sent feedback from our first issue of the IY ezine! Here’s a selection of your comments…

“We’re a small outreach team and we don’t have much of a budget so we don’t often make it to bigger conferences…it’s nice to get things like the IY to sense our part in a greater whole… I am so encouraged when I read about the creative people who innovate new kinds of ways to reach out.” - Chris (USA)

“I am thankful that YWAM is trying to establish more ways for YWAMers to connect.  I have been YWAM staff for 5 years and recently had to take a break from it…seeing email in my box from YWAM and getting to read the news, really helps me to feel not so alone.” - Dawn (USA)

“I like to read more when it’s in paper, but I understand that by email is quicker and cheaper. Thanks for sending me this gift of information. Let us know how we can help you from here.” - Marcos (Chile)

“Thank you for this first version and for thinking about those of us who have difficulties to connect via email. What I would like to see in the ezine is reports from the GLT to the mission. For example, the words and happenings that took place in Kona during the prayer and strategy conference.” - Annette (Togo)

What do you think of this issue? Are you excited about the new vision that just keeps on coming in YWAM or are you finding it hard to know how to respond when you already have so much going on? What new vision is God giving you and can we write an article about it? Send us your comments at : iy@ywam.org .