After the shootings at YWAM in Colorado there was a lot of healing that needed to occur. The YWAM base rallied together to seek God and find what He wanted to see happen next …
A new documentary, “Jeasusfreaks”, has been produced based on the YWAM DTS (Discipleship Training School) that happened at YWAM Colorado shortly after the shooting. The school had 45 students, all snowboarders between the ages of 17 – 25. The school leader, John Murphy, documented the school and all that happened on it.
All sorts of issues and topics are tackled during the school by the staff and students. You can check out the free trailer for the documentary here.
Don and Deyon Stephens, the founders of Mercy Ships, which was birthed out of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), were honoured with a humanitarian of the year award given by The Variety Club in London.
Mercy Ships was launched as a ministry of Youth With A Mission in 1978 and has since come away from YWAM to form their own separate organisation. In the last 30-years Mercy Ships has completed over 560 port visits in 53 developing and 17 developed nations, treating over a quarter of a million people in that time.
Since Mercy Ships launched out of YWAM a new ministry within YWAM called Marine Reach has taken up the banner as the ship ministry for Youth With A Mission. Marine Reach has a focus on smaller, more versatile ships that can stop at ports and communities that larger ships are unable to serve.
You can read more about the humanitarian away given to Mercy Ships here.
The Tamar Center in Pattaya Thailand, a ministry birthed out of Youth With a Mission (YWAM), is providing women caught up in the Thailand Prostitution a way out.
Many women in Thailand enter into prostitution not by choice, but by being sold into it, forced into it or because they can’t see another way to survive. The Tamara Center provides these women with another way to survive through a three-month program that focuses on:
Christian Teachings
Learning English
Learning new skills (baking, hairdressing, etc)
About 80% of the women who go through the program offered by the centre manage to avoid returning to prostitution.
You can read more about one woman’s journey from a prostitute to running the training at the Tamara Center here.
I debated long and hard about adding a video to this site, but I really liked this video that was put together by the YWAM Creative Discipleship Training School from Aalesund in Norway. It was made as a creative application of 2 weeks of teaching on their YWAM DTS.
I wonder which two weeks of teaching this was after.
You can read more about the Creative YWAM DTS in Aalesund Norway here.
YWAM is becoming a common destination among Christians wanting to embark on a Gap Year. Whether it is the year between high school and college, or college / university and a career, short term missions work is a fantastic option that I reckon any Christian should look at doing.
Although the effectiveness of short term missions work has been debated, and will continue to be debated, probably until Christ’s return, I believe that it is an important part of God’s plan for the Church. Short Term Missions not only reach out to people in the outreach locations, it also opens the eyes and hearts of the people taking part in the short term outreach.
Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and make disciples of nations. The more people that get doing this, long term or short term, the closer we are getting to doing what God has called us to do.
You can read about one man’s plan for his Gap Year after university here.
