The Apostolic and Gen Z

Andreas Nordli Challenges European Leaders to Create Opportunities for Gen Z

YWAM Norway’s Andreas Nordli gave a great message at the recent European Leaders’ Gathering in Harpenden England. He spoke on YWAM’s apostolic anointing and how we can create opportunities for Gen Z leaders. This dovetails perfectly with Mission Adventures. My favourite part is the bit about the widow and her jars. Let’s gather jars and not a few! Enjoy this message, get inspiration, but most of all get an impartation of God’s Spirit from this godly man.

Squid Game & Gen Z — Elmore's Take

At our theme event last month, we spent time waiting on the Lord and seeking insight into the generation we serve. Dr. Tim Elmore does the same thing. His Growing Leaders blog explores all sorts of amazing stuff relating to helping young people become who they are meant to be. Recently, Elmore posted on the Netflix phenomenon, Squid Game. He draws out some key insights into the generation. Here’s a quick excerpt:

Photo by Jonas Augustin on Unsplash

“Gen Z’s top value is equality, and this show depicts this battle.

When we pause and reflect on the issues we’ve seen young adults today take a stand for, they are almost all about equality and justice: ethnic (BLM), gender (#MeToo), LGBTQ (#Rainbow). Director and writer Hwang Dong-hyuk summarizes the characters in the show:

There is a population of society’s elite.
There is a population of society’s blue-collar workers.
There is a population of undocumented immigrant workers.
There is a population of elderly people who are victims of poverty.
In many ways, this is a hyperbolic illustration of what Generation Z sees in society. They are naturally attracted to a series that represents these marginalized groups.”

— Dr. Tim Elmore

There’s lots more in his full post including some imporant questions for us to ponder like,

“What are we doing that engages students like this but is emotionally healthy?”

It’s well worth your while to check out the full post on Elmore’s Growing Leaders blog. Heck, you could even subscribe and get his posts in your inbox!

A Devotion for the iMAC

The International Mission Adventures Circle of elders is having a virtual retreat this week. We’ll be meeting Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to share, pray, and be in the presence of God. What follows is a devotion for our time together today.

Hmmmm… What to Say?

All weekend I’ve been asking the Lord for a plan for our time together today. I didn’t really feel like I had much. I mentally went through what I’ve been reading and thinking about lately, but that didn’t seem to resonate. 

On Saturday, I realized that I at least ought to send out an email with a Zoom link and a bit of an agenda. In typing that up, I thought of the two questions we just went through… Yet when it came time for my to type up what devotion I was going to give, I still had nothing. Thus the title, “A Devotion from Craig”. 

Early this morning, I was deleting spam and looking at the news when I saw Stephe Mayers leadership letter. If you don’t already subscribe to this, I highly encourage you to do so. Here is a link to his blog.

Sacred Moments

This month’s letter is about Sacred Moments. While reading it, I felt like I should do a quick rehearsal of some of the Sacred Moments in MA History. Here are a few that came to mind: 

• 1st Passion Play

• Invention of the Commitment Service

• 1st MA Gear Kit (Victory in Christ)

• January ‘97 in Tijuana

• Running as waves of young people across the meeting hall at the hotel in Anaheim circa 2000

• Frank Naea’s Message, “Who Are Your 12?”

• Pile of Wallets in Chico

• Carrying Houser on our shoulders during DJ Servo’s Worship Rave in Chico

Can you think of any others?

Wet Cucumbers or Pickles?

All of these are experiences. All of these had a strong sense of the presence of God. All of these were transformational for many of those who were there. There is a difference between a wet cucumber and a pickle. A cucumber may experience some sort of change when it is wet, but the change is incomplete, and not necessarily lasting. Take the cucumber out of the water, and it is still a cucumber. But a pickle is transformed. It’s another thing entirely. There is no going back to being a cucumber. The experience of being in the brine, in the vinegar, in the spices makes for a permanent change. 

In the same way, right thinking does not always lead to right actions. I think we think that thinking is enough. But it can’t be. We know this because seminary trained pastors and intelligent leaders fail. We know this from AA. Addicts go back to the bottle even after being sober for a long time. We know this from the Bible. Paul writes: 

“… For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…”

— Romans 7:15b (NIV)

A Belief Isn’t a Belief Unless…

Instead it is belief that changes our behavior. And belief is only partly intellectual. Here’s the difference: thinking does not have to result in action. But a belief isn’t a belief unless actions back it up. Now belief can spring up from faith — Jesus was looking for this in the gospels. And there’s a relationship between belief and experience. We can believe if we’ve had experience. The centurion knew that people tend to follow the orders of an authority. And that allowed him to believe that Jesus could heal from afar with a word. 

And this is why Mission Adventures is important. It is experience for youth groups. It’s the birthplace of belief. The experiences we give our participants are opportunities for belief that can bring lasting change. We can make pickles, and not just wet cucumbers. 

Digging Up Our Addictions & Encountering God

All of us need transformation from our sin. We are all addicts. If nothing else, we are addicted to our own selfishness. And many of us are addicts to more difficult things. Our egos and our flesh demand comfort from the realities of existence. 

So God gives us the challenging task of digging up our addictions, of exposing them, of understanding them. It is like digging up a toxic boulder that’s entangled in the roots of the tree of our life. And when we’ve fully exposed it, done all we can to face it, to own it, and be real about it, there is the terrible revelation that we are powerless to remove it. 

Here we must rely on God. Our only hope is an encounter with the all-powerful living God, who at a word, can free us from our entanglements. 

Not Just Information, Even Past Information, All the Way to Impartation

Now, I’ve been speaking of addiction and selfishness and sin. What does this have to do with Mission Adventures, and with our iMAC? I say this — it is our job to create experiences, to find opportunities for sacred moments for our partners so that:

1. They can believe that God can build a ministry through them

2. They themselves can be transformed into greater Christlikeness

I think these two things are linked. I think God is at least as concerned with who they are becoming as he is about the ministry they are creating with him. I think as they do one, they are also doing the other. Somehow the goal of becoming more like Jesus and creating ministry with him is the same goal. And our role in this is to light the fuse. Our job is to create space for those sacred moments when God shows up and goes beyond information, past inspiration, all the way to an impartation of Spirit.

We do this primarily in two ways. 

1. Our events and gatherings for our partners. Even our online seminars, workshops, and meetings can have space for impartation.

2. Our mentoring

Let’s make sure that we create room for experiencing God in our events. Let’s make sure that when we gather, that it’s more than fellowship. Let’s make sure it’s more than information or even inspiration. Let’s create space for that impartation that makes all the difference. When there is teaching, make space for application. Knowledge might make change, but it knowing alone can’t make pickles. 

Questions Youth Pastors Should Ask You About Your Outreaches

Marty Meyer came across a great article and wanted to share it with us. Marty writes:

Hey Mission Adventure Leaders,

I came across an article today that I believe can speak to us: "5 Key Questions to Consider Before Your Next Mission Trip”. It is written to youth leaders to encourage them to think a little deeper as to the “why” they want to take their students on a summer outreach. I found myself doing a mental check list as I read the article, …is my Mission Adventures program addressing these 5 questions? By answering each of these questions, we are actually building a platform to communicate with youth leaders about WHY they should attend our Mission Adventures programs.

One of the questions that David Boerema asks in this article is: “How will this experience train [my students] to be a gospel influence in their spheres of influence?” Frankly, I’m excited to hear people in church leadership asking this question and even more excited to provide the answer. By knowing the questions that they are asking, we can provide the answer in advance as we seek to recruit teams and make a lasting impact. I encourage you to take some time to find your own answers to these five key questions.

I encourage you to click the link and read the article. Answer the questions, and ask yourself, “How can I make my ministry more effective? Thanks to Marty for sharing this with us!

Recruiting Teams Workshop with Marty Meyer

We just finished a dynamic three-part series with the legendary Marty Meyer on how to inspire more teams to come to your Mission Adventures ministry.

Marty walks us through Marketing, Messaging, and Mastering to help us communicate our core values with confidence. We’re making the recordings of these sessions available to you here. Check them out!

Session 01 Marketing

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Session 02 Messaging

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Session 03 Mastering

The Accidental Leadership Factory

Summer 1993 Staff in Los Angeles — The Great Adventure!

How Volunteer Staff Helped Mission Adventures Succeed, and How that Led Us to Create a Leadership Factory

Training • Leadership • Volunteers • Staff Training

When we got started in Los Angeles, we just wanted to do a great job. Excellence was something we were shooting for. We wanted to do something at a level and a scale that the average youth pastor couldn’t replicate. This meant we had a worship band, and not just someone with a guitar. This meant we had skits that weren’t just ad lib ad hoc affairs. We had costumes, we had lighting, and we even had a measure of stagecraft. Shooting for excellence meant we had a theme for the summer. And we created a set to reflect the theme. It meant we did a surprise video at the end of each week— and this was when camcorders were new and editing was something we did in the camera because no one had a computer. 

Reaching for all of that excellence meant that we had to have a team with us. Kay Charlotte and I couldn’t do all these things by ourselves. We’re just not that good at so many things. So we gathered as many YWAMers from the base who were willing to serve hard during the summer. We had a dedicated core of leaders who ran the kitchen, led worship, and administrated the base. We even had a drama department that created resources for evangelism. 

But that still wasn’t enough. At our peak, we were hosting 50ish youth groups and a 1000-ish students. The summer of 1992 less than a dozen YWAMers did it all. They cooked, they cleaned, they trained clown skills and puppetry. They led worship and put on passion plays. And they did it ten weeks in a row for around a hundred students each week. This handful of YWAM staff was quickly overwhelmed. 

So for the next year, we recruited volunteers. We reached out to college students. We talked to the High School seniors about coming back next summer to serve with us. We made an application. We charged a fee. We set a high standard. And it worked. Two people applied for every position we could offer. The summers of ‘93 - 96, we had between 20 and 30 non-YWAM volunteers from all over the continent (and even further!) serving alongside our core YWAM leaders. The veteran YWAMers modeled the actions and attitudes of what success looked like. And as far as our campers could tell, the volunteers were missionaries too.

There was a kind of pressure that came on us when it dawned on us that a bunch of non-YWAM people were going to come serve with us for the summer. We realized we needed to train them. So we set up a two week training camp for these volunteers. And we asked our YWAM staff to attend it too. The first week was some philosophy of youth ministry stuff. And we went over their roles and tasks and job descriptions. The second week was a dry-run of all the events. We practiced skits, plays, games, and we built the set. We planned, we prepared, and we prayed. 

And then, as the first week’s worth of teams arrived, we let them loose. We gave them responsibility and authority. Those first weeks were always a little bit raw, a little bit risky, and full of energy. We weren’t sure if our plans were going to work. We weren’t sure if the people we put in their roles were going to perform. And in many cases, things and people didn’t work exactly. And so we had to tighten things up, and adjust things as we went along. But we did it and it was marvelous. We saw our people rise to the occasion. We saw them create a ministry that affected a lot of students. We saw our staff grow up and we saw them express all sorts of wonderful gifts. And we had no idea that we had built a leadership factory. 

Looking back on it now, I see three things that made this factory work. 

1. First, a core of us leaders had a big dream— and it was something that was bigger than what we could do ourselves. That big idea forced us to build a factory. Our big dream was to create a deep ministry, for a short time, and do it with excellence. We wanted to make something beautiful and powerful; and this required a team. 

2. Second we gave training, responsibility, and authority to some hungry people who saw the dream like we did. Now, I don’t think our training was new or revolutionary— there was no secret sauce that auto-magically created success. However, the training greatly accelerated our staff members’ abilities to do the ministry. It gave them confidence on day 01 that they could make an impact on the lives of our guests. If there was a secret sauce, it was that we actually let them do what we trained them to do. We gave responsibility and authority. The worship team picked the songs and practiced them. (Okay, so we did give some advice on what worship could and would be like in our ecumenical way). We planned the menu, but we asked our volunteers to prepare and serve the meals. And yes, we chose kid-friendly foods that were easy to make, but the kitchen crew put in the extra effort to make presentation and efficiency happen. 

3. Third, we held people accountable. There were mistakes and missteps. I’m sure you can imagine that problems will crop up when a group of amateurs attempt a multi-faceted ministry. Sometimes we leaders had to pull people aside and ask them to do better. If the meals weren’t on time, we had to talk to the kitchen leader. If all 150 of us weren’t served in 15 minutes or less, we had to figure out why and ask the kitchen crew to figure out how to get it done. (Our innovation? We rearranged our serving tables so we could have four lines going at the same time. This meant more serving dishes, and a watchful kitchen staff who replenished food as needed). 

And this accountability went the other way too. Every week we made a point to publicly call out staff and volunteers who excelled at their jobs. We did our best to make sure that those who’s work was less visible was made visible, so that the whole team could share in our success. 

The crazy thing is, it worked! Our summer staff and volunteers grew in confidence as the weeks went on. People found new skills they didn’t know they had. They led worship. They spoke in public. They taught teenagers evangelism skills. They grew in leadership. Many returned several summers in a row because they wanted to do it again. Many wanted to rise to a new challenge, another level of leadership. Even though it’s been more than 25 years, I’ve kept in contact with several of these folks. Many have gone on to meaningful ministry and leadership roles in their lives. Many look back at their time with us as the season that God released their gifts, talents, and confidence. 

So as you look at gathering a team around you to attempt Mission Adventures, recognize that what you’ll be doing is building a leadership factory. Imagine that big dream; gather a team that you can train and give authority to; then hold them accountable to it, and you’ll find yourself churning out leaders!

It's Okay to Freak Out

Jennifer Davies of YWAM Vancouver Shared an Amazing Message with Us

Unglued by Dominik Jirovsky via Unsplash

Last Sunday I freaked out. I blew a gasket, came unglued, hit the ceiling, wigged out, I lost it. 

The day started fine with my usual cup of tea. I had a good prayer time, brief, as I planned to watch church online, and then started to tidy up the house, getting ready to show a potential room-mate who was thinking of moving in. 
I came back upstairs with just enough time to make my coffee for watching church and my dear husband, wanting to help out, had spread all over the dining table another pile of papers, coupons, pens, and random stuff that needed my attention. 
This was a normal thing, but it totally triggered me, and I flipped out emotionally. I thought I had being doing so well during this lockdown. I had being having regular times with Jesus, getting fresh vision for future ministry, praising him and being thankful and a good attitude every day. I was using my extra time to clean out drawers and closets, (Our house is looking so good!) and yet here was another big pile of crap.

I Came Before the Lord

I came before the Lord. (Psalm 40:1 I waited for the Lord to help me and He turned to me and heard my cry) I asked Him why this had triggered me so much. Pride, came to mind right away. Here I had been patting myself on the back as I thought I had being doing so well, I had it all together. Yet, It took so little for me to unravel. I am lacking, I need Jesus. 
I also realized I still was angry at all the loss, of the ministry, of income, being with people and staying at home so much (I am very extroverted and thrive with groups of people). My daughter not being able to leave for her DTS in March, needing to homeschool my other daughter to name a few. 
I took time to cry and grieve and what did I sense from Jesus? He loved me, it’s ok, He comforted me, I just sat in His arms. Yes, we have enough food, and He has provided for us financially, so who am I to complain? But I sensed he said He saw me, my heart, my sadness to not do the things we were planning, the hopes we had for financial breakthrough, and that it was ok to just take a day to grieve, to be sad.

Time to Pivot…

Then I asked forgiveness for my pride. I laid it at the foot of the cross, I thanked God for his mercy and grace. I pivoted. I wiped my tears, and went for a walk, enjoyed spending time with my family. 
Today I woke up with a freshness, a renewed heart and hope for the future. The pruning is not fun, but it feels so great afterwards! Today is a new day, that the Lord has made. Now, the key is to pivot, to not stay freaked out.
So, go back to your secret place with the Father. He loves you so much, He is waiting there, and wants to speak to you, share His heart with you. Ask him again for what you want for Mission Adventures. Ask Him what he wants to share with you. He may want to give you new vision. Or maybe recieve His reassurance that you were on the right track... keep going, Stay true to that original call you received when you joined YWAM, why you started working with MA in the first place. Why you are passionate about youth and seeing them getting exciited about Jesus, and wanting to go into missions?
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.”
Jeremiah 29:11, 13 NLT
So, if something triggers you, take it to the Father, ask him to show you why that was a big deal to you. Let him shake you, prune you, and surrender to God what is in your heart. Ask forgiveness and then pivot...
“This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Please, Lord, please save us. Please, Lord, please give us success.” ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭118:24-25‬ ‭NLT‬‬
So, may the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you and give you peace. 
I’m not done yet, still clearing out the closets of my heart, but opening those doors with Jesus by my side.

Love, Jennifer
Find me on Facebook: Jennifer Atwood Davies. I’d love to pray for you!