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YWAM Network for Strategic Initiatives

What do our lives feel like without focus?

Scattered: there never seems to be enough time to follow through on anything properly, or there’s too much time and we never seem to get around to it.  We never debrief what we have just done and so never learn the important lessons.

Dabbling: we start wearing too many hats – a bit of this, a bit of that, a role here, a role there.  We can show our busy schedules but we are not really producing anything.

Fast Lane: We are here one week and in another country the next.  We go from meeting to meeting and there is no time for relationship.  Life is a blur.

Distracted: We get caught up with things that take our interest and the day goes by and we haven’t done anything we set out to do.  Life becomes a set of tangents.  We never seem to get to the real priorities.  It would help if we knew what they were.

It’s time to focus. Peter and the disciples had been following Jesus for nearly 3 years.  Their lives had been changed. Then one day everything was turned upside down when Jesus was crucified.   Even though Jesus said he would rise from the dead, they hadn’t take it in.  Then just when they were about to give up he appears to them but only for a short time.  They are confused and head back to Galilee from Jerusalem.

In John 21, Jesus was up early cooking breakfast on the beach for the disciples.  He wanted to help Peter to focus once more.  He asked Peter, “Do you love me?”    Peter answered that he did.  Three times Jesus asked.  Peter began to focus on the priority.   He focused on waiting on God for the promise.  Just a short time later he preached and 3000 came to the Lord.  He had focus – building the church, travelling and drawing others into the new revelation and message of the Kingdom.

Life is all about priorities. We have many choices and the choices we make affect our destiny.  Things we focus on today will affect our tomorrows.  So what one thing are we focusing on today?

God gives us a great commandment and a great commission.  What do we focus on?  Often we see it as a choice, one or the other.  Or we see it as a gifting issue – some are to focus more on relationships, some more on the mission.  Actually we are to fulfil them both.  But what comes first?

Worship leads to service.  Our love for God and others overflows in action and ministry. The great commandment leads us into the great commission.   So what is the “one thing” I am to focus on in order to obey the great commandment?

In Mk 10:21 Jesus says to the rich young ruler, “one thing is needed – sell all your goods and give them to the poor and come with me.”  Is the “one thing“ for you, to make a fresh personal commitment to God?  We are called to life of faith and so we need to trust him for everything.  What step of faith do I need to take in order to focus on what God has for me?

God put his finger on an issue in the lives of the Corinthians.  “One thing I am not pleased about – when you come together it’s not for better but worse.”  1 Corinthians 11:17. When was the last time God confronted you on an issue?  Is there one thing you need to stop doing?

When Jesus came to the house of Mary and Martha, he said, “One thing is needed – Mary has taken that good part” Luke 10:42  Perhaps the one thing you need to do is sit and listen and receive, rather than do, do , do.   What one thing do you need to do in order to develop your devotional life?

Paul shares, “One thing I do, letting go what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal.”  Having abandoned everything for Jesus, then you can discover what it is Jesus has for you in the future.

God is looking for people who are ready to live holy lives and committed to Jesus with their whole hearts.  When we make our “one thing” to focus on Jesus, he shows us the “one thing” to please him.  The thing he has taken a hold of us to fulfil.

St Aidan was an example of a man who was focused in ministry.  He was born in Ireland and appointed bishop early in his life but he resigned to become a monk at the monastery Columba founded on the island of Iona.   The monastery had an invitation from Oswald in 633 to send monks down to Northumbria for a mission to evangelise the area.  The first Monk met with little success because he saw the people as “ungovernable and of an obstinate and barbarous temperament!”  However Aidan on hearing the report encouraged a gentler approach and everyone was convinced that he was the one to go.  So Aidan arrived with 12 monks and chose to settle on the island of Lindisfarne.  Over the following years he became an apostle of Northumbria and through his disciples an apostle to England.

The statute of Aidan in Lindisfarne, shows Aidan with his face looking out to the future, to the un-evangelised region of England with faith filled vision.  He was focused on the goal ahead.  He has a staff in his hand, symbolising his care for people, with which he travelled and shared the salvation message and related with everyone from a heart of love.  Through his journeys he established missionary centres throughout the region.  The statue also has him holding a torch in his hand.  He was focused on training up other younger monks in order to continue his efforts after he would die.  He knew there needed to be an English leadership for the English church.  The missionaries trained in his school went out and worked for the conversion of much of Anglo-Saxon England, Cuthbert being one of them.

Through his focus of vision he was able to see the Kingdom of God come to England.  God desires us to have a clear focus too.  In Western Europe we have had a project called “Double vision.”   The vision simply encourages us to focus on what we are doing and double it.  It’s not a big goal, but one that is easily obtainable.  Whatever team you are working on, plant another team over the next few years somewhere else.  Whatever we start, include the DNA of multiplication.

Focus!  Focus!  Focus!  Focus on how are you growing personally and focus on what you are growing in ministry.  One thing is needed!

Stephe Mayers

After some research, this is what I discovered:

Pink salmon is found in freshwater, not far from where it was spawned and is often farmed. It eats a diet of plants and has less flavour than red salmon. It is used in recipes that require a mild-tasting fish. Sadly, some salmon farmers add colour enhancers to the diet of these fish to fool consumers into thinking that they grew in the wild.

On the other hand, red salmon lives in the wild, swims great distances in salt water and returns to freshwater to spawn. It has a varied diet of plankton and crustaceans, and has more protein content and more omega3 fats in it. In other words, it is healthier and has more flavour.

So, if we were salmon, what kind would we be?

The flavoursome kind who have left their comfort zone and tasted some of the cultures of the world? A people who have faced up to challenges because they are going against the flow, taken risks and grown mature because of it?

Or would we be the kind who stays in the security of our comfort zone, sticking to a familiar diet, and not straining ahead to greater things?

Paul describes himself a “red salmon” in Philippians3 v 12-14

“I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: by no means do I count myself an expert in all this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward – to Jesus. I’m off and running and I’m not turning back.

So let’s keep focussed on the goal, those of us who want everything God has for us.” (The Message)

Salmon are at their most flavoursome at spawning time, just before they die. We too, are called to die – not physically, but to our own longings and desires in order to live for God and to be life-givers to others.

This Easter I encourage you to take a little time to reflect on salmon eggs and not just on chocolate ones!

May you have a blessed Easter time!  Shirley

A Western European Leadership Consultation (WELC) was held between March 8-12 in Dublin city centre. A gathering of strategy, worship, prayer, and networking between leaders and emerging leaders in YWAM Western Europe. About 190 YWAM participants were hosted in a Youth Hostel in the heart of the city which was under or beside (depending on the floor which one’s bedroom was on) a busy suburban railway. Our meetings were held just across the road from the hostel in “The Exchange” which is a part of the Trinity Church network.

The week together was memorable on several counts. God’s presence was very real and He met with everyone in tangible ways. The times of worship were exceptional and were led by a group of musicians who’d never played together before but who were nevertheless extremely anointed. There was a sense of God wanting to reawaken the spiritual heritage of Ireland during much of the WELC.

“FOCUS” was the theme of the WELC and we were encouraged by YWAM Western Europe Leader Stephe Mayers to focus on the future that God desires for YWAM in this region. In addition to plenary sessions each morning and evening, working groups on subjects like “working with the urban poor”, “living single for the Lord”, “developing new teams”, “4K”, and “networking in cities” took place each afternoon. A couple of highlights from the evening sessions were an open celebration of 50 years of YWAM as well as an evening dedicated to hearing stories from YWAMers who are working in urban teams in cities across the region.

For pictures of each day at the WELC please click here

This activity took me quite a long while as I like to dig deep in order to get more understanding.  I asked myself “What are the  fruits within a person” and was reminded of Matthew 7 v 20 which tells us that just as we can identify a tree by its’ fruit, so we can identify a person by their actions.  OUCH!  I asked myself “What kind of actions am I identified by and what kind of attitudes do I want to be known for?”

Galatians 5 v 22 & 23 tell us that if we live by Gods’ spirit we are to hate evil and be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful and gentle.  So I wrote on my fruit that I desire to be joyful and good, willing to serve others and hospitable.

There’s a list of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 which resembles the fruit which we bear in our lives – I chose “faith” and “producing faith” in others as a gift that I aspire to.  In addition I wrote “prophecy” which is the ability to strengthen, encourage and comfort others.  (Revelation 22 v 2 states that the Tree of Life, which is in Heaven, is very fruitful as it bears a fresh crop every month).

Naturally, all of my written words on the symbolic fruit won’t count for much if they don’t produce activity in my life.  I therefore added some ambitious phrases about all I want to do for Him in the future.  It felt like Christmas as together we decorated the tree with our fruit!  We ended the first evening in a festive mood.

However, the following morning reality hit home as we heard that people – just like trees -need certain conditions in order to bear good fruit.  John 15 v 4 reminds us that our personal fruitfulness is a result of remaining, enduring, abiding, persevering faith in Christ.  A temporary or fleeting relationship with Him will cause us to be unproductive.  We all watched in horror as Tom Bloomer took his shears, pruned the branches and our fruit fell tumbling to the ground.

Tom had wanted to show us what happens to fruitful trees.  God is committed to developing fruitfulness in each of us.  Tom reassured us that pruning is good for us, and if it’s done properly it makes us more fruitful.

John 15 v 1 says that Father God is the “husbandman” – the one who does the pruning.  I drifted off into  memories of past pruning’s which didn’t go so well – I accept that God prunes perfectly in order to let the maximum light reach the branches but I wondered about the shears which are sometimes used….

These shears are like the people which God allows to bring discipline into our lives.  When pruning shears are sharpened it only takes one attempt to cut off a branch; if they’re blunt then it can take several goes to hack it off.  I asked myself if this is similar to us as Christians?  If someone has been sharpened through their faith in God and knowledge of His word we could expect their pruning of others to be quick, to cause little pain and to bear much fruit.  We all know how it feels to be pruned by someone who is “blunt”!

Our desire in YWAM Associates is to encourage those who’ve served YWAM to bloom in the places where God has planted them now.  That category of former YWAMers possibly includes you!  Why not consider coming back to join YWAM again for a week at in inTouch Camp in this our Golden Jubilee Year as a Mission?  We’re offering camps in six locations in Europe between the end of May and the end of August: Hurlach, Bavaria in Germany; Borgen in The Norwegian Land of the Midnight Sun; Falun, Sweden; Skjærgårdsheimen in Southern Norway; Le Gault la Forêt in Champagne, France and the Jura Mountains of Switzerland.

May each of us stay spiritually sharp, bearing good fruit daily and being willing to be pruned as we remain in Him,

Yours, Shirley.

The building work has finally begun. After numerous delays the workmen arrived and set about their various tasks. I was amazed at how much seemed to be accomplished in such a short space of time. Within a few days the pulpit had been removed, a hole knocked through from the church into the large vestry, the floor of the vestry had been removed and another hole had been knocked through from the vestry to the hall. This whirlwind of activity produced clouds of dust, the likes of which I had never seen before. It seemed to have got everywhere. It was in the air and I could feel it drying out my throat.  Somehow the dust had even seeped through closed doors, and the toys in the Chatterbox cupboard all needed wiping down.  Still, I can’t complain.  At least it wasn’t as bad as what happened in Egypt: Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land.”

They say “No pain, no gain” and this is certainly true when it comes to building projects.  It is noisy and disruptive but there is no way to get round that. If we want to improve the facilities then we have to pay the price. The same principle holds in our spiritual lives. God is “re-building‟ us. He accepts us as we are but then begins to work on us. He strips away the things that need to change and replaces them with much better things. Now, that can be painful.  I’m sure when the floor of the vestry was ripped out it took a lot of force but I never heard the building complain!  I didn’t hear the church say, “No!  don’t remove my pulpit. I’m very attached to it.” Buildings don’t have feelings.

God’s work of rebuilding is much trickier.  He is working with people who struggle and resist change.  That’s why Jeremiah had such opposition.  He was called to be a prophet while still a child.  He was appointed by God “over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”   The people resisted him.   No one likes to be told what to do by someone younger than them.  They even imprisoned him down a well to try and silence him!

The Bible says that there is a battle going on inside us.  The version of Bible which we use in church says this, “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.”  But I love the way the King James puts it, “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other.”  We don’t passively accept the changes that God brings into our lives.  Often we oppose them very fiercely. But you know, God doesn’t give up on us.  He is so committed to making us holy that he will come back time and time again and challenge us with the same issues until finally we say, “OK Lord, I give in. You win.”

The building project is going to be messy and inconvenient.  There’s no way to get round that but I am sure that in three or four months time we will look at it and see that it was worth it.  At least I hope we will!  I am certain of this though:  The work which God is doing with our lives is definitely worth the pain.  Paul could say that we are “being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”  He says of the church, “In him (Christ) the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.” If you ask a child whether Bob the Builder can fix it, they will answer with resounding confidence, “Yes he can!” Can God the Builder “fix‟ us and the church?  “Yes He can!” but don’t resist what He is doing in your life. Co-operate fully and the work will be finished much more quickly.

Hi YWAM/UMU Restenäs people. Make sure to mark September 25th in your 2010 calendar. It’s time to celebrate 30 years of God’s faithfulness to Restenäs. Make sure to invite your fellow classmates and staff from “back then” (or last quarter or last year). Time for a reunion fika!!

PS “YWAM Restenäs” now has a personal profile on Facebook. We will be doing most of our communicating through that profile, and use this one for YWAM alumni. Will you search us and invite us to be your friend? Tack

The English Reformed Church was formerly the chapel for  a sisterhood of the Beguines, a 14th-century order of deaconnesses residing in an enclosed courtyard called The Begijnhof. The courtyard is entered through an inconspicuous archway making it a restful haven in the centre of the city. After the city sided with the Reformation, the church was presented to English-speaking Protestant dissidents living in the city, among them the Pilgrim Fathers. Since then, services in English have continued to the present day.

The occasion was the transfer of the leadership of YWAM in Europe, an opportunity to reflect both on past and future. A symposium in the afternoon was followed by an evening reception, when we prayed for the team of regional leaders now carrying the European oversight together, under the chairmanship of Stephe Mayers.

Values

Dutch philosopher Evert-Jan Ouweneel began the symposium by reflecting on the nature of four values essential for Europe’s future: equality, solidarity, freedom and peace. These were the ‘Christian values’ in which Europe had to be deeply rooted, according to the father of the European Union, Robert Schuman.

Evert-Jan demonstrated how that, in each case, our autonomous human efforts to build a society on such values had failed. This presented us, he said, with the opportunity to demonstrate that true equality came from recognising we were all created in the image of God; that true solidarity sprang from the notion of brotherhood, being sisters and brothers in God’s family; that real freedom was found in the context of love and accountability, not in individualistic self-seeking license; and that true peace involved discovering God’s shalom, well-being in every aspect of human existence. For the sake of the future, he concluded, we needed to go back to our biblical roots.

Prabhu Guptara, originally from India, and heading up a UBS think tank in Zurich. asked where globalisation was leading us. Until a few months ago, he said, that was easy to answer. One view of the future was, until recently, clearly winning; the view that said that greed was good. While Reformational values had shaped so much of the west, a great change took place around the 1908’s. Ayn Rand’s philosophy, that greed was good, was endorsed by conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic. The exponential growth in recent decades stemmed from this view. A new practical godlessness created the boom of recent years, claimed Prabhu, until the last few months.

While World War 2 had produced a balance of power between the USSR and the USA, communism’s collapse twenty years ago had left one superpower. But then 9/11 had introduced a multipolar world, accentuated by the latest crisis.

Feudalism?

What then lay ahead? Greater peace or increased regional conflicts? A new world war even? Competitive devaluation and increasing protectionism would lead to the second option, he believed. These were factors to watch closely.

Global society was being confronted with limited choices. A new feudalism could return, in which a few super-rich would keep the rest of population under control. Alternatively, biblical values could produce a world genuinely humane, just and environmentally responsible. We had for the first time the possibility and means of clothing and feeding everybody. Yet global society was facing a global civil war, between two sets of ideas: one stemming from the Reformation and even much earlier, going back to Israel; and the other rooted in human rationality, capacity and greed.

The future would lead to a more explicit clash between these two values, predicted Prabhu, as he stepped from the podium.

Hope for the future

Hope, Gerard Kelly told his listeners at the symposium was the answer to the question “What did it mean to be human?”   How did we then, as Christians, so lose our vision of what it meant to be human, he asked, that humanist intellectuals rejected Christianity as being too stifling? We had lost our vision of what it mean to reflect God’s image on earth, he lamented, to be salt and light to the world.

The French artist Paul Gaugin had posed the basic life questions on what he had thought would be his last canvas before attempting suicide, explained Gerard. He then  projected the painting with the long title, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, on the screen up front in the English Reformed Church. The answers to these questions would describe what it mean to be human, he added.

Our challenge–and opportunity–as we faced the coming twenty years, suggested Gerard, was to flesh out an answer to this question: what did it mean to be human?

God was humanic! declared the preacher-poet. That meant he was mad about humanity, and valued every human: Muslim, Christian, whatever belief. Our calling as the church was to reflect God’s heart for humanity.

Gerard began his address on ‘speaking hope into the human future’ with the statement, Hope was the bridge between the past and the future. Yet post-modernity had a problem with a history usually written by the rich and powerful: it was not reliable. So we didn’t know who we were because we didn’t really know our past, and didn’t know where we were going.

Diversity

The Christian story was all about what it meant to be human. God had chosen humanity to help shape the future with him. We needed to return to this calling to show what humans were for.

Hope was the unity that rendered our diversity beautiful. Diversity was not an option for today’s generation, said Gerard. They had grown up with it. If our faith was captive to a particular colour and culture, our children would reject it as being too narrow.

Why was the world diverse? asked Gerard. God made it that way! So why did our children’s discovery of his diversity so threaten us? The gospel was a universal story. Our faith was meta-national. How could our faith be trapped in one culture when our God was free of culture?

Could we show this universality, this diversity, in our churches? Might we actually be the one group in Europe who could demonstrate this diversity, Gerard challenged his audience.

Stefan, my son, delivered a lively and entertaining presentation on how the internet will continue to pervade our lives in the coming years. ‘Scared yet?’ he asked at one stage. Don’t be, he continued. People were once scared of travelling at above 40 kph. What we needed, he concluded, was wisdom and understanding, an intergenerational task.

gap

Michael Schluter, who had spent most of the day fog-bound in London, arrived just in time to share his vision of a biblical alternative to capitalism. Something was seriously wrong with our European societies, he began. We had a financial crisis, a family crisis and a culture crisis, among others. Dealing with symptoms was not enough, he warned. We needed to see the world through a relational lens. Capitalism’s moral flaws were rooted in their neglect of the Relationship factor–the heart of being human.

gap

All speakers at the symposium can be viewed here, with the exception of Christine Schirrmacher. For security reasons, her talk on Europe and Islam was not recorded. Dr Schirrmacher, one of Europe’s leading Islamologists, brought a much-needed balance to the debate on Islam’s role in Europe.

We Christians had missed many chances to make friends and help Muslims integrate in Europe, where many of them have been living now for 40 years. If we had more Muslim friends we would not be so vulnerable to the stereotypes depicted in panic literature. The integration debate only made sense if we could define what values Europe stood for, she said. Here was a further challenge and opportunity facing us in the coming twenty years.