Re-Entry – The process of transitioning from short-term or long-term missions to life at home.

Part of the last week of the YWAM Discipleship Training School is usually spent talking about re-entry. It can be quite a shock for people coming home to their friends, family, church, job and / or school. Even after only spending 6-months away on the YWAM DTS so much can happen, and so many things experienced, that coming back to where you left from can be a big challenge.

Because we were never actually leaving YWAM we did not prepare ourselves for “re-entry”.

I guess that we should have known better if we had really looked at our situation. We were leaving a close knit YWAM community that we had grown with for the last 11-years. Everyday I was in the office working with missions minded people, passionate to do everything they could to further the spread of God’s Word and Truth. A few times a week we were at the YWAM Centre for a meal or event, and half of our friends were also part of YWAM in Townsville.

Coming here we were in a way coming “home” for me, even though I had been gone for the last eleven years. I didn’t really think of it as “coming home”, it felt more like “leaving home”, but Calgary is where a lot of my old friends are, my family is all here and my home church is here in Calgary as well. I think that the best way to describe it would be that I was coming back to where I grew up, rather than coming “home”.

Experiencing Re-Entry

We have found ourselves experiencing our own sort of re-entry as we have come here to Calgary.

Here are some points that I have taken from this article about re-entry:

Stages of Re-Entry:

1. Initial Euphoria
2. Irritability and Hostility
3. Gradual Adjustment
4. Adaptation

This article also has some really good points about re-entry:

1. You have changed – I’ve been gone for 11 years. When I left I was 21, very new in my Christian faith, single with no responsibilities and no clear direction for my life. Now I’m 32, been involved in full-time ministry for over a decade, married with two kids and I feel that I have a relatively clear calling and direction on my life.
2. Your friends and family have changed – Friends have moved, married, had kids, gotten jobs, made new friends and changed, a lot. Family has been through similar changes, even though at the moment both of my sisters are living at home with my parent’s, which still the same as when I left.
3. Your church has changed – Most of the people of my age that were at our home church here in Calgary have moved to other churches in the years that we have been gone. There are new people, and a few old friends, but the face of the church has changed dramatically in the past eleven years. The church also went through a change in the senior pastor and youth pastor who originally sent me out to YWAM, which would obviously bring about quite a few changes.
4. Your culture has changed – I am amazed at how much Calgary has changed since I left. The population since I left in 1998 has increased by about 20% to over 1 million people. The roads are busier, people a lot more rushed and a lot less polite. Even Tamara has noticed how much more rude people have gotten here since her first visit after we were married in 2001. Calgary has a much more cosmopolitan feel to it (cosmopolitan being defined as being made up of diverse peoples, showing cultural diversity and being more international in scope).

Because we were changing YWAM locations we didn’t expect to experience everything associated with re-entry (as well as culture shock, but I will write about that in another article). Part of why we feel we are experiencing it is because of the substantial difference between the YWAM community that we left in Australia and the YWAM community here in Calgary.

Another thing is that most of our friends in Australia were also involved in missions, but here in Calgary most of our friends are involved in main stream jobs. This brings with it a different way of looking at things, and it’s taking a lot for Tamara and I get to used to it. Just the other day I was sitting around a table with some guys as they were talking about finances and their jobs where they were earning two to three times what I do. I found it a bit of a challenge to know how to engage in that conversation. (Nothing wrong with a main stream job at all if that’s where God’s got you. He has a different plan for everyone of us, we just need to figure out what it is.)

I guess that it would have been nice to have been somehow equipped better for what we were walking into, but who knew eh?

Right now we are just struggling through it, hoping that the light we see in this tunnel is the end of the tunnel, and not the oncoming train …

Somehow I reckon that quite often the person that we portray on-line, whether it be on a blog, forum or social network, is not a completely true representation of who we really are. This “alternate personality” could be hugely misleading (Brad Paisley’s song “Online” personifies this), partly misleading (but still deliberately so) or simply missing pieces.

I’ll be the first to admit that who you see on-line is not a complete picture of who I am. I don’t think that it’s because I’m being deliberately misleading about who I am, it’s just that there is only so much you can say about yourself on-line. I am also generally pretty reserved with how open I am about some of the things that I’m going through in my personal life. Some things are better left to in person conversations I reckon.

Knowing how I represent myself on-line reminds me not to be quick to judge people by what I read on-line. It’s impossible to get a complete picture of someone simply by what I read on-line, even if they’ve written it themselves.

So that begs the following question:

1. Can I get a full picture of who you are on-line?
2. Do you judge others by what you read about them on-line?

Let us know below in the comments…

I’ll save my testimony for another post, and just focus on what happened after I decided that God had better plans for me than I could even have for myself.

Shortly after deciding to follow after God’s plan for my life in November 1997 I caught up with a friend named Tyler Rousell, who had just completed a YWAM Discipleship Training School in Mexico. He spent about 2-hours telling me the "short version" of his YWAM DTS and some of the things that God had done in his life over the six-month school.

For me, being a fresh Christian, a YWAM DTS sounded like a great way to "figure out who God is". Prior to that I had always wanted to go travel to Australia with another mate, so I started to look at how I could do a YWAM DTS in Australia.

After finding a YWAM DTS at Reef to Outback in Australia to go to I booked a one-year open ended ticket because I figured I might want to travel for a bit after I completed my Discipleship Training School. My plan (notice I didn’t say "God’s plan") was to be in Australia for 6 – 12 months, then head back to Canada with a clear vision of what I was to do with my life.

I got to my YWAM DTS after also completing a YWAM Niko with YWAM Calgary. It was a very intense time of realizing just a tiny bit of what it meant to live in accordance with God’s will. Somehow during that time I had also agreed to come back to Reef to Outback to join staff for the next Discipleship Training School in January 1999.

The first YWAM DTS that I staffed was another very intense time (I don’t think I have ever heard of a YWAM DTS that isn’t intense to be honest) of learning more and more about God, biblical servant leadership and what it means to make Jesus Lord of my life. Again during this school I promised a mate, Dave Giltinan, that I would come back to staff the next Discipleship Training School at Reef to Outback.

To be honest, if I had not made that promise to Dave I would not have come back to Australia to staff the July 1999 YWAM DTS in Australia. I went back to Canada in June 1999 after that first school that I staffed and wasn’t too keen on heading back to Australia.

Prior to leaving Australia to head back to Canada we had been involved in outreach with the YWAM base in Darwin, Australia. On the back of the toilet door there was a picture of a frog with the following verse on it:

• James 5:12b says "let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation" (bolding mine)

As I was considering not coming back to Australia God kept reminding me of that verse and the picture of the frog and of the promise that I had made to Dave. I came back to Australia for nine – months to staff another Discipleship Training School and help establish a media ministry at Reef to Outback, at least that was my plan.

Three months into the July 1999 Discipleship Training School I was leading an outreach in Ingham, Australia. While leading the outreach I was asked if I would leave the outreach and go to YWAM Lausanne in Switzerland to do a GENESIS School and bring video conferencing back to YWAM Australia. I was given 48-hours to make the decision and it meant a two-year commitment to continue working with YWAM in Australia.

After a lot of prayer, and not too much sleep, I made the decision to go to do the GENESIS School in Switzerland. After that I pretty much stopped trying to figure out my own plan and realized that I was here until God said otherwise, which was the opposite of how I had been doing it before.

Since then I married a beautiful Australian woman (who was actually a student on the July 1999 DTS that I almost didn’t staff), bought a house, had two amazing kids and completed 10-years of ministry with YWAM in Australia.

Now we are on a new journey as we look at moving to Canada to work with with YWAM Calgary and with the YWAM International Chairman’s Team. We don’t have an exit plan to stop our work as Christian Missionaries, we are here until God says otherwise…

This is one post that I was thinking about today that I wanted to move to this new web-site.

I wrote this original article in July 2005. About a year after I wrote it Tamara’s Pop had a stroke, which has left him in a weakened physical state, and with dementia. He has since been admitted to a nursing home and just isn’t the man that he was when I first wrote this article …

I just got back from having lunch with Tamara’s Pop, her Mum’s father. I asked him a lot of questions, and got a lot of amazing answers.  I can’t help but think about how much our generation owes to their generation.

His Dad was a WWI veteran who instilled some amazing values into Tamara’s Pop.  During the Great Depression in the 30s he left school after grade 7 to go to work and help support the family.  He started out there as a messenger boy in a hose fitting company.  When he retired in the late 70′s he was the manager at the Adelaide Postal Exchange, with over 700 employees that he was responsible.  I already respected him a lot, but that respect grew as I sat and just listened to some of his stories.

Pop joined up with what would now probably be the Australian Reserve Forces in 1938 as soon as he could, at 16. He said that in ’38 they thought that there was a possibility of an upcoming conflict. As soon as he turned 19 he joined the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) and was put into the Signals Corp as he had taught himself mores code by the time he was 10.

How do you think our generation respond during a time like that? Would we sign up, or would we run? Does our generation still have the same sense of values and responsibility that his generation did?

He taught me a lot today as we spoke and I could probably write for pages. I wish that I had some more time with him but they are heading back to Adelaide tomorrow, but I am very grateful for the hour that we had today.We owe so much to the generation before us, but we don’t acknowledge it enough. We don’t show them the respect that they deserve. We don’t know the hardships that they went through so that we could have it as easy as we do now.

The VP60 (Victory in the Pacific – 60 years) Celebrations are coming up here in Townsville this month.  There aren’t many of the veterans left and we can’t forget what they and the generations before them have done for us…

In Canada we will be working primarily with the Youth With A Mission International Chairman’s Team (YWAM ICT). The work with the YWAM ICT will involve:

• Communicating what God is doing in YWAM around the world and assisting locations that do not have the means to communicate themselves.
• Developing ways to help YWAM to communicate and coordinate better between the over 1200 locations around the world.
• Evaluating cutting edge technology through a biblical filter and applying it within YWAM.

We will be also tying in with the local YWAM base in Calgary a bit in addition to the work we will be doing for the YWAM ICT.

Before I did my YWAM Discipleship Training School in 1998 I did a YWAM Niko through YWAM Calgary, which was a great personal development opportunity for myself, and a good introduction to YWAM. Ironically when I went back to Calgary in June 1999 after my YWAM DTS I spoke to the leaders of YWAM Calgary about joining staff there in 2000, but that never eventuated. Now it looks like I will be working them after all, only 9-years later than I originally thought …

You can read more about the YWAM ICT here and YWAM Calgary here.

The main frustration that I was having with the old site was the random insertion of advertisements by the host. They detracted a lot from the design, which had some of my own carefully integrated ads.

WordPress offers a lot of customisation options and flexibility. I will continue to change the site as I get used to this new theme and what can be done with it.

If you are currently subscribed to the site via Feedburner RSS or e-mail updates you will continue to receive updates. If you are not already subscribed you can do so on the right hand side of this page.

Thanks for reading the site. Let me know in the comments here what you think of the new design.

I think that I can to this decision when at 1:00am on Thursday last week I realised that I had just finished watching Stargate SG1 (good show, bad time slot). Rather than watching television that hour could have been put to much better use by doing pretty much anything, especially sleeping.

So I have done three things in the last week to help me make better use out of my time, and to help me get more sleep:

1. No more TV unless I am watching it with Tamara or the kids.
2. No more late night snacks or drinks,except on a painting night.
3. I have set a “Go to bed” reminded on my computer for 11:30 so I don’t loose track of time.

Well, the alert just came up, so I am off to bed, after gluing the wheel back onto Caleb’s remote control car (Jessica threw it across the room!).

Although the video is produced for an Internet Marketing audience, it certainly fits in with asking the questions, “What does God want me to do?“.

If I were to write down the three things I’m most passionate about would be:

1. Family
2. Getting others involved in Christian Missions
3. Communicating what God is doing in the Nations

What am I doing about pursuing those passions?

1. Not enough, but trying to find the balance between quality family time and getting things done
2. With the marketing that I do at Reef to Outback I feel this is the best way to help others find out about opportunities available in missions
3. Web site development for Reef to Outback and YWAM as a whole to assist to communicate what God is doing

How about you, what are your top three passions and what are you doing to pursue them?

If you want to share then let us know in the comments…

Source: Ask.JoelComm.com: Are you doing what you were made to do?

After passing my Australian Citizenship test last month it only took about a month for my citizenship application to be approved.

My Australian Citizenship won’t be final until I have completed my citizenship oath. That probably won’t happen until after the local council election later this month as the citizenship ceremonies are organised by the local council.

Technorati Tags: australian citizenship

It was a good book that I managed to read in under a week, which with the busyness of our life right now is pretty quick.

On one of my other web-sites, Blog About Books, you can read the full review of Golden Buddha – The Oregon Files by Clive Cussler and Craig Dirgo.

Technorati Tags: book review, clive cussler, The Oregon Files, Craig Dirgo