Going for More Than Gold
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YWAM has been involved in outreach at the Olympic Games since Munich in 1972. Each of these outreaches has provided stories of God’s amazing provision, of miraculous encounters, of dramatic transformations. Now, YWAM is gearing up for a new set of stories from next year’s London Olympic Games. But the 2012 Olympic outreach itself will have a different flavour to what’s gone before.
Yan Nicholls is leader of Forever, the team coordinating YWAM’s outreach efforts at the London Games. “I have been involved in evangelism in YWAM for over 20 years, I’ve done over 100 outreaches, and I can tell you that this outreach is different!” says Yan. “We will do all the classic outreach things – performing arts, soup kitchens, litter-picking, as well as many of the things that we’ve done at past Olympic outreaches – visitor hospitality, stewarding, translating. These are exciting, and God will use them. But there are different things in this Olympic outreach too, and they are the result of what God has spoken to us. In that sense, we’re no different to any YWAM outreach: we ask God to show us what to do, where to go, and He does.”
So what are these “different things”?
Season of outreach
First of all, this is not just an outreach focused on the period of the Olympic Games: this a season of Olympic outreach. This means that teams can come to participate in outreach events via Forever any time in 2011 and 2012, and be part of the Olympic outreach.
This is reflected in Forever’s focus on outreach in the Olympic host cities. This may be the London Olympic Games, but there are six other locations hosting events – Cardiff, Coventry, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, and Weymouth & Portland. Forever has been building networks and relationships in each. This has included gathering Discipleship Training Schools (DTSs) from across the UK and Western Europe in the cities to partner with local churches for a week of evangelism. This networking means that teams can be plugged into any Olympic host city to get involved in events that play to their team’s strengths and callings and to the hosting churches’ needs.
To the nations and the nation
“Often, our Olympic Games outreaches have been about reaching out to the nations as they descend on one place for this amazing sporting and cultural event,” continues Yan. “This is a crucial element of any Olympic outreach, and applies to the 2012 Games outreach too. After all, communities in London speak over 300 languages, and we will be sending outreach teams into these communities. We will touch the nations through the 2012 Olympic outreach!”
“But a key aspect of the 2012 Games outreach is that we don’t want to touch just the hearts of the million visitors to the Olympics. We also want to impact the host nation, the United Kingdom. We will be involved in outreach the length and breadth of the nation, aiming for both a short-term and a long-term impact.”
The key is in the Forever name. “In Forever, we are not just about seeing people’s lives changed for eternity through short-term outreaches,” comments Yan, “but also about establishing long-term YWAM teams in each Olympic hosting city, so that there is ongoing, long-lasting impact for Jesus in the communities we work among.” Having such long-term goals written into the team vision is a bold innovation for a YWAM Olympic outreach.
Focal points
One further pioneering aspect of Forever is facilitating this radical team-planting strategy. For the 2012 Olympic outreach, Forever has created six focus areas – Arts, General Missions and Service, Prayer, Social Justice, Sports, and Youth and Children. These are areas that outreach teams can get involved in, but they also form the basis of the teams being planted.
Such a clear focus is already bearing fruit: two Forever teams are being planted in London, one of them isjust a javelin throw from the Olympic Park. One is an Arts team, the other a Social Justice team. These two teams will combine the short- and the long-term. They will coordinate outreach teams during the Olympic outreach, especially as they will have built up strong links with local churches. But their team members are also looking to continue to impact their communities long after the Games have finished.
“It’s great that people can come from across the world to do outreach during the Games in a place like Stratford,” says Lucie Barnsdale, Forever’s Social Justice coordinator. “But I believe it’s even more exciting that they go home knowing that their work is part of a bigger, longer-term outreach effort that will continue to bring Christ’s love to communities.”
Getting involved
So the 2012 Olympic outreach is up and running. The Forever team is already taking bookings and hosting teams in this season of outreach. Forever Newcastle’s representative, Andrew, is coordinating six teams over this summer of 2011. That’s around 60 people involved in outreach in one city, which is a great start.
But what’s needed now is for YWAMers worldwide to catch the vision and bring outreach teams (YWAM teams or local-church teams) to the London Games, particularly during the Games themselves.
“It’s going to be quite a few weeks!” jokes Yan. “We’ve deliberately kept the costs low – a ten-day outreach for just £125 – to facilitate as many people as possible from all over the world to come. We have four venues for orientation conferences that can host up to several thousand each. From there the teams will be sent out to their outreach destinations. We’ve already been told of up to 1,000 young people coming from Norway, 200 from Sweden, 250 from Kona … I believe that this Olympic outreach could be used by God to start a fresh and powerful move of the Spirit across this land, and across the nations. What an opportunity not to miss!”
All that is needed now is for YWAMers (this includes YWAM Associates naturally) to come!
Visit www.forever2012.com for more information and online application forms. Together let’s transform this nation and the nations!
