Someone who I follow on my Twitter account posted this update after going home from a YWAM Discipleship Training School (YWAM DTS):

I think I talk to my friends in Australia more than I talk to people in my own home church. Weird.

It’s a sad but very prevalent truth in our world today that it can be easier to connect with friends from the past, than to connect with local friends IRL (In Real Life). Not only is it easier, but it usually involves a lot less emotional involvement and can involve less openness as well. I find it a lot easier to pretend online than I do to pretend while with someone in person.

The crazy thing is that I am sure that technology like social networking and email is probably limiting missionary work! Sure, it’s great for raising awareness and support, but it is so much easier and more comfortable to engage in conversion and relationships on-line rather than in person. This can seriously limit the effectiveness of one on one / friendship evangelism and relationships as missionaries in the field don’t spend as much time and energy on the new relationships in the area / community they are called to.

How are you using social networking and email on the missions field? Do you find that you are spending more time on there than with the people God has called you to minister to?

Now I’m not talking about isolating you from the world, rather I’m talking about it isolating you from the IMMEDIATE world and people around you.

Next time you are waiting in line at the grocery store, doctor’s office or bank have a look at the other people in line with you. Chances are pretty good that you will see them listening to their mp3 player, talking on their phone or texting. They are probably not actually very aware of what’s happening around them with the people only a few metres away.

Not so long ago if you were waiting in line at the bank, grocery store or doctor’s office you might actually strike up a conversation with a person near you. This was a prime opportunity to meet new people, make new friends, find out what’s happening in the community and possibly engage in evangelism.

I know that personally I need to make sure that I don’t burry my head into Facebook, e-mail or Twitter when I am with the family. With many in the corporate world the BlackBerry can be a constant curse (it’s called a “CrackBerry” because it’s addictive nature). My parent’s were just on a holiday and I think that one of the highlights for them was that there was no mobile / cellular service for my Dad’s BlackBerry. He was actually forced to put the thing down and relax, and there was nothing that he could do about it.

Near the end of summer in August I’m thinking about going on a social media fast. I’ll leave the computer off, shut off any e-mail alerts and not check any social media sites(Twitter, Facebook, etc.). To be honest I don’t expect to miss much. I figure that if anything it should help me to connect better with the people and world immediately around me and if there is anything really important, I’m sure I’ll find out about it in other ways …

There are three ways to look at your time in Christian missions, and they will determine how you look at your retirement from missions.

1. You are in Missions short term 
2. Being a “Career” Missionary
3. You are a life time missionary

Short Term Missionary

Most people who join missions in Youth With A Mission fall into the first category and do so for a short amount of time. By short amount of time I’m talking about under 10-years. 10-years may seem like a long time, but when the average person joins YWAM in thier late teens or early 20s there is still plenty of time to save and plan for retirement after their time in missions is complete.

Normally we don’t separate the last two, “career” vs “life time” missionary, but when we are talking about retirement then the two need to be separated.

Career Missionary

The career missionary treats their time in missions like any other career when it come to planning for retirement. The retired missionary may receive some pension or other payments from the government’s of their “home” country, but it is hard to rely on that to provide enough income to live from.  They will need to be saving money and have their own retirement savings plan (read more here). In the case of missionaries like YWAMers who are responsible for raising their own support and sponsorship they will need to be raising money over and above their every day living expenses to save for retirement.

Most missionaries returning to their “home” country will also not have a house or residence to return to. They will need to look at where they will live and how they will pay for where they live. This could mean when they return purchasing a house, building a house, renting or leasing a house or entering a retirement community. Some missions agencies or churches have communities for retired missionaries or ministers that could be an option, but many including YWAM do not. (There’s an idea for a ministry in YWAM as we are celebrating our 50-year anniversary as a mission and many of our founders and members are aging …)

Life Time Missionary

The “Life Time Missionary” differs from the “career” missionary  in that they have no plan to retire, but rather they plan to continue in missions until they die. This is the model that the disciples and apostles followed.

As the lifer approaches retirement they have a few options to consider:

1. Remain the the country they have worked in
   1. Stay in the same role
   2. Start a new role
2. Move to a new country and begin a new role
3. Move back to the country they were sent from to start in a new role

Any one of these options requires the missionary to continue with their support raising efforts. All but one of them could also mean more training. Some of the new roles that are often undertaken by missionaries who want to continue in ministry but change roles are:

1. Teacher
2. Preacher
3. Pastor
4. Administration
5. Promotions / Support Raising
6. Mission Building
7. Writing
8. etc.

The possibilities really are endless for how the missionary chooses to spend their “retirement” years.

The Wasted Retirement Years

Here’s a short video (3:00) by John Piper about what he sees as the “waste” of spending our retirement years just “taking it easy”.

I’m still a good 30+ years away from reaching that retirement age, but the question is there, how will I choose spend my retirement years …

Cable television here in Calgary costs from $36.00 – $121.00 + tax per month. One way that we cut costs on our monthly budget is by not having cable. We never had it in Australia, and so far we are surviving pretty well not having it here.

What I think a lot of people who do pay for cable don’t realize is that a lot of the programming that you can get through cable is freely available on-line if you have a high speed Internet connection. I’m not talking about stealing content through illegal video downloads or watching it on YouTube. I’m not even talking about purchasing videos through iTunes or a service like Netflix. I’m talking about watching TV Shows for free on-line.

Below is a list of 18 stations that make a portion of their shows available for free viewing on-line:

Free On-Line Canadian Television (TV) Stations

• http://www.ctv.ca
• http://www.cbc.ca
• http://www.citytv.com
• http://www.globaltv.com/
• http://www.foodnetwork.ca/
• http://www.spacecast.com/
• http://www.discoverychannel.ca/
• http://www.hgtv.ca
• http://www.ctstv.com
• http://www.atv.ca/
• http://www.scn.ca/
• http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa
• http://www.bravo.ca/
• http://www.family.ca/
• http://www.muchmusic.com/
• http://www.ytv.com/
• http://www.history.ca/
• http://www.mtv.ca/

Considering all the options available, plus free movies from the library, and new release DVD rentals for only $1.88 I don’t really see any need for us to have cable in our house. It’s actually a pretty easy way for us to save $36 – $121 per month.

The idea behind the podcast is to cover some of the news that is happening in Youth With a Mission around the world. So far we have put together four different episodes, releasing them on Monday night (which usually turns into early Tuesday morning). The last podcasts have been about 15 to 20 minutes long.

The types of topics that we plan to cover on the new podcast are:

• Outreach News
• Training Opportunities
• Information about YWAM Conferences
• Prayer Requests from various ministries
• Opportunities to partner / donate to various YWAM ministries

This YWAM News Podcast is the first of a few that we want to launch this year. Some of the other concepts that we are looking at are:

• Teaching / Devotional Podcast
• YWAM Roundtable / Talk Show
• Messages from YWAM Leaders
• Staff and Student Testimonies and Interviews
• YWAM IT / Communications Podcast

We’re still in the conceptual stage for those other podcasts, but hope to get a few of them up and running later in the year.

One of the things that will limit what we are able to do is my laptop. The laptop that I currently own and use is 4.5 years old. The computer is too slow to record interviews or more than one host. It is also having hardware problems, shutting down at random times and some of the keys and buttons have stopped working. We are needing to raise the money for a new laptop, and are looking at one with enough power for audio and video podcasting, as well as developing more content and web-sites for our work with the YWAM International Chairman’s Team.

You can donate directly using the ChipIn widget on my site, or you can also check out the donate page on our families web-site to find out other ways to give.

Update: If you are wanting to listen some of the YWAM Foundational Teaching you can find them at ywampodcast.org. They have collected almost 350 teachings from around YWAM and we hope that these new podcasts will help complement the work that they have already done.

CIM brought over 800 missionaries into China, began 125 schools, established more than 300 mission stations in China and involved more than 500 locals in the work. His work in China was directly responsible for around 18,000 Christian conversions in China.

Unlike many missionaries of the time Hudson Taylor was very sensitive to the Chinese culture, while remaining zealous in his desire to bring the message of Christ to the people. He adapted wearing Chinese clothing to better affirm and relate to the people he was ministering and evangelising to.

CIM was non-denominational and accepted members from all Protestant groups. The only requirement for the recruits was that there was soundness in their faith in what they called the “fundamental truths”.

China Inland Mission was very unique in that it accepted individuals from many different vocations, which very much challenged the normal practice at the time. CIM accepted people from the working class, single women and many multinationals into the mission, which was almost unheard of at the time.

Reading about China Inland Mission reminds me a lot of Youth With A Mission (YWAM), the Christian missions group that I have been working in for the last 12 years. Hudson Taylor’s work with CIM has been talked about and featured a lot in Youth With A Mission (YWAM), but until now I have not taken the opportunity to read more about the man, or his work with CIM.

Like CIM Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is a multi-national and multi-denominational organisation that includes missionaries from nearly every country in the world. YWAM accepts people from every vocation and educational background, as long as their faith is built on the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Also like CIM the missionaries working with YWAM are called to live by faith, relying on God and His provision through His people to do the work that they are called to.

As a father of modern missions there is a lot to learn from reading what was written by Hudson Taylor.

I hope that you enjoy his book, “A Retrospect”.

You can download the book A RETROSPECT by J. Hudson Taylor here.

God has created everyone with a plan and a purpose. None of us was an accident in God’s eyes, even though some of us may have been “unexpected” to our parents.

One of the greatest challenges I have found in my life was to discover what God’s plan and purpose is for my life. The beauty of it is that the discovery is an ongoing discovery, so if we stuff up a few times we can usually still get back on track. One step on my journey to find God’s plan for my life was a Discipleship Training School with Youth With a Mission. It was on my YWAM DTS that I feel God started to reveal to me more of His plan for my life.

Although we can all be missionaries, God does not want us we all to be missionaries.

I had a great e-mail conversation a few months back with a good friend in Australia.  He is not a missionary and knows that being a missionary is not what God has called him to. If he were to choose to become a missionary, without God’s go ahead, then he would be walking outside of God’s will for his life, even if his plan was to do good and serve God in that way.

I remember a few years ago having another discussion with a different friend. He was saying that he felt God didn’t have a call on his life because he didn’t feel a call to ministry or missions. It’s a very damaging thing to think that because God doesn’t call you to missions that He doesn’t have a plan for your life. God will use you and call you to be  a witness for Him everywhere He leads you, but you need to be obedient to that call, and seek Him about it.

The best way that we can honour God is to be obedient to His call on our lives, even if that call does not appear to be very “spiritual” or if we have no involvement in missions or ministry. God doesn’t want us to “do good things”, He wants us to be obedient to Him.

But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. (1 Sam. 15:22 NIV)

So regardless of what we do, or how “spiritual” what we do appears, we need to be doing it in obedience to God’s will and call for our lives. That is how we will bring honour and glory to God, and that is how we will have the greatest impact of the world around us for God’s glory.

* For the purpose of this article I am referring to the Levitical call of a full time missionary, being reliant on donations and support to meet our day to day needs. Setting ourselves aside to work full-time in service of God and the Church. Read a bit more about what I mean by this here.

My kids have a Bible Bingo game that defines a missionary as:

A missionary is someone who often goes to another country to share the good news about Jesus with people who do not know about Him.

I’ve heard a lot of people using that term a lot more loosely than that. According to some people being a missionary is being Christ like where ever you are, be it at school, work, or in ministry.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but being Christ like at school or work isn’t being a missionary, it’s called being a “Christian”!

Living out our Christian Faith means being a witness for Christ in all situations. We are all called to be  witness for Christ, regardless of if we are teachers, electricians, or missionaries. You don’t need to be a missionary to show Christ to other people around you.

Another disturbing trend with this is that Christians are forgetting that Christians don’t need a special “call” to be a witness to the people around them. There is no need for a “special” call to be a witness, if you are born again in Christ, and have accepted Him as your Lord and Saviour, than you are to be a witness to the ends of the earth …

Competition for Workers in YWAM

When I was working specifically on a local base I found that we were quite often competing against other YWAM Centres. If we ran an advertisement on Google we were competing for words like “YWAM DTS”, “YWAM Discipleship Training School”, “YWAM”, etc. These terms are quite specific to YWAM and we were bidding against other Youth With A Mission centres.

I struggled with competing against other YWAM Centres for students and staff. Being a YWAM Centre in a developed nation we had a financial advantage over locations from developing nations. We could outspend most of those location simply because of where we were located. Even if they were offering a superior Discipleship Training School (YWAM DTS), people searching would find us near the top of the paid search results.

So big bases keep getting bigger and smaller bases struggle to compete.

Now that I have the privilege of working with Youth With A Mission in a more international role I have found that the struggle is still there, but in a different way …

Competing Missions Agencies

As I look at a communications and marketing strategy for Youth With A Mission I find that I am no longer competing between YWAM centres, but rather with other missions agencies. Many of these organizations, like Operation Mobilization, SIM (Serving in Mission), Africa Inland Mission, Samaritan’s Purse, etc. offer amazing programs and opportunities for people to become engaged in missions and in finding what God has for them.

In addition I feel that organizations like YWAM can also find themselves competing with more traditional bibles schools / colleges as students seek out God’s plan for their lives (this was my own personal experience).

Why am I competing against organizations that are following after God’s call and are working towards advancing the gospel and the Kingdom of God?

Who Should We Be Competing Against?

I think that competing with other missions agencies is really limiting God, splitting resources of the Church and like going for the low hanging fruit. These are people who are there already know that God has something for them and are actively seeking out God’s plan. We forget that they represent a very, very small proportion of people who God has a plan for.

We read in God’s Word that …

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.  (Eph 6:12)

Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what He requires of you, and He will provide you with all these other things.  (Mat 6:33 GNB)

Ultimately we are competing against that lie of the enemy that says that God doesn’t have a plan for people’s lives. God has a plan for everyone’s life, if only we would take the time to ask Him what it is, and be willing to follow it. I took many different paths in my own life before I discovered the truth that God has a plan for my life, I only have to lay down what I am holding onto and be willing to follow it.

How Do We Compete Against The Lie?

The best place start to compete against the lie that God doesn’t have a plan for peoples lives is in the Church. These are people who already know God but haven’t yet figured out that He has a plan for their lives. It is estimated that there are about 2.1 billion “Christians” in the world today. That’s a lot of people …

As we look at the Church we can ask ourselves if people are living out their lives in line with God’s plan for it or are they pursuing their own plans. In Mathew chapter 6 we are told that if we line up our will and plans with His and concern ourselves with the Kingdom of God He will provide everything that we need. Many of us, myself included, try to work things out for ourselves, while neglecting what God is saying and requiring of us. We do this to our own detriment, and the detriment of the Gospel.

I am not saying that we should be judging others or questioning their motives. What we should be doing is encouraging people into a place where they can trust God in taking the leap into what His plan is for them. A friend of mine in an email that he sent me last year said:

God calls us all to walk a different journey in our lives.

Missions is not God plan for everyone. I have unfortunately seen missions and full-time ministry be put on a pedestal as being true callings from God, while the rest is called “secular” or non-spiritual. This is another lie that has stolen the very call on people’s lives out from under them.

The same God who has called me to full-time missions also calls people to be the best business manager, electrician, teacher, mother, etc. that they can be. That call is just as spiritual and just as valid as being called into full-time ministry. There is no difference as long as it lines up with God’s plan for your life. The thing that matters most isn’t what you do, it’s whether what you do is what God wants you to do.

All that to say that as people line up their will with God’s, and start to follow God’s plan for their lives, there will be enough workers and enough provision to do God’s work.

From there of course we have the other 4 billion or so people in the world who God also created with a plan and purpose for their life. Many have never heard the truth of the Gospel or Jesus Christ. As they come to learn the truth, and submit their lives to God, then they too will be released into God’s plan for their lives.

Great, But How Do We Do That?

Yeah, well, that’s the million dollar questions then isn’t it?

Honestly, I don’t think that the ways we have been promoting missions will reach most of the people who God wants to be involved. We may reach a few in the Church who are already thinking about missions, but we will miss those who are not actively seeking God about what to do with their lives.

Ultimately I think it comes down to working towards the great commission given by Jesus in Matthew 28: 19-20:

Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age." (Mat 28:19-20 GNB)

As the Church focuses on making disciples, and not just converts, God will lead the right workers into missions.

Your Thoughts?

So what do you reckon? How should we best be encouraging people to find and follow God’s plan for their lives? Where do we find the right “workers for the harvest”?

A day of remembrance for the men and women who have served, and continue to serve our country during times of war, conflict and peace.

Currently I have an uncle in the Canadian Air Force, one of my Grandfathers was in the Canadian Air Force during and after World War Two, and Tamara’s Grandfather was in the Australian Army Corp during World War Two (and his father during World War One).

We’ll never have a future if we don’t remember the past.

Today was a day for us to not only remember the sacrifices of these men and women, but also I think to remember that they fought so that we wouldn’t have to. The First World War was described as “The War To End All Wars” because it was so horrific. Obviously history has  taught us that was not the case, and that we continue to fight was around the globe. As Canadians and Australian’s however we do not usually fight wars as the aggressor, but in the defence of others.

Today I took the kids down to the Calgary War Museum where they were having the Remembrance Day Ceremony. I wish that Caleb was still up so that I could quote him exactly, but here’s a try at a seven year olds description of what Remembrance Day is:

A day when we remember the soldiers who died so that we can be free and live in a free country.

I reckon that kid nailed it on the head …