Recently I have been really challenged with what my actual role and job is in YWAM. Two article that I have read recently have challenged me a lot about what I do:
Up until reading the YWAM Radio article, which is a review of the YWAM Podcast, I had thought of myself as a purveyor of information and news. I used the podcast and my seldom updated YWAM News site tell others about what is happening around YWAM. What I have realized though is that telling people what is happening is only a subset of what I should actually be doing.
I need to mobilise people
The thing that God wants me to be doing here isn’t just to tell people about what’s happening, but it’s to mobilise people into action and into making a difference. Sharing testimonies about what God is doing around the mission is important, but that is only a part of what God wants me to do with the tools that He’s provided. He wants to use these stories and testimonies to encourage others into action.
Like Ernset Goodman says in his article, “People don’t connect with news, they connect with people.”. As I look at what that means it will be a change in how the news is presented and what news is selected for the YWAM Podcast. It will also mean more work as I will try to connect more with the people in the field to present their story, much like I did with the interview with Phil Cunningham about Steps of Justice on episode 34 of the YWAM Podcast.
What is mobilising?
For people who are “mobilisers” Justin Long’s blog The Long View is a great read. There are some terrific articles on his site and many of them challenge my own thoughts on what it means to be a mobiliser.
His article about How we Choose looks at how we can get out among the people to help them make the right decision about where God wants them to serve. Rather than trying to fit someone into our mould, like a round peg in a square hole, we would help them find the place that God has for them.
As broad as Youth With A Mission’s ministries are, it is not for everyone (despite what some in the mission would probably say). At the same time we as ministry leaders should stop looking at how we can shove people into places that we want filled. Instead we should be looking at how we can release our staff and students into what God has designed them to do. If we continue to shove people into our own mould it might fill in a temporary need, but in the long run it will hurt them and us.
Now what?
Now that I’ve had my view of my role in YWAM challenged a bit I need to refocus on where and how I spend my time and energy. It’s something I need to continue to pray into and see where and how God leads …
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Mobilization is undoubtedly an important part of missions. However, I think with modern communication tools, mobilization can happen just as easily, and perhaps more effectively, from the ministry location abroad (or ministry location locally). The more centralized traditional mobilization strategy that you seem to be referring to is still needed, but may soon become redundant. As for YWAM, there seems to be, in many situations, more people “raising awareness” over an issue than actually doing something about it. When this happens it becomes top heavy and ineffective.
hi bill,
…we have never met, however, i have enjoyed your blog. when you get a chance, check out http://www.jesusfreaksmovie.com . you will see several webisodes as well as the trailer for our film. we are on the film festival circuit now with “JesusFreaks.”
also, i would love to send you a copy of the documentary we filmed on YWAM.
we get what you do…you guys are our hero’s.
again, it’s http://www.jesusfreaksmovie.com
katherine cobb
interesting thoughts. i do agree with Andy that much of YWAM seems to be only “raising awareness”. i used to direct DTS’s and i felt that much of what i did in lectures and outreaches did not have much integrity. i lived mission through the program. if you took the program away, what mission did i actually live? through several years of confrontation with that issue and a new focus on my local community’s needs, i’ve come to the conclusion (at least for me and my household) that my authority in mobilizing is out of my relational examples that i show to others. the challenging verse for me has always been Phil 4:9
“Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
my personal conviction is that mobilizing and discipling must be more relational than strategic. that i should be mobilizing and discipling those whom i already have relationship with, those whose lives i can speak personally into. but i don’t have your gifts.
Bill, i feel it is important to have a pulse on what’s going on in the mission and to communicate what’s out there (what you are doing is important). it inspires and connects us to something greater than ourselves, perhaps even challenges and motivates us to our own personal applications. when we read your articles, i really hope it’s more than just feel good stories that we’re filling our souls with, but that’s not up to you, it’s up to us how we apply the information and make it part of our lives. probably, you will never realize how or who you motivate into the Kingdom call. at the same time, there is a challenge for yourself as to what you’re doing in your daily life that’s Kingdom (what people in your personal circles of influence are learning, receiving, hearing or seeing in you). that i cannot comment on and only you can evaluate your integrity there.
anyways, these are just the ramblings of an old man. i thank you for this post, the question you pose and your honesty is refreshing. thanks.
Bill,
I wish you the best as you refine your strategy and focus on mobilization.
Oh, and pay no attention to Andy (comment above). Information is cheap. Yes, people from the field should (and already are) sending updates from the “front lines,” but nobody is listening to them because there’s no connection.
Obviously, you won’t be communicating for them; your role is to build an audience that will listen to the workers. Don’t get out of the way, get in the way, and help the tribe sort through all the noise, spam, and distractions.
The missionaries need this.
Many of them already have blogs, newsletters, etc., but few are really connecting with an audience. More of the same won’t make a difference. They need you.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
-E.Goodman
I like the blog and the discussion. Though I think we need to be careful in making generalisations about YWAM. YWAM is huge and to say words like ‘much’ of YWAM would be in my opinion taking a big leap. Maybe ‘some’ or ‘my experience’. YWAM is founded on a value of Do First Then Teach and I have been a witness to that globally. Just take a look at ministries like Homes for Hope, ARMS, Marine Reach and the YWAM Ships in Australia. They are mobilising hundreds of thousands to go and ‘do’. I personally am privileged to be part of a youth ministry in YWAM called Youth Street that weekly reaches out to a lost and hurting generation through meaningful relationships.
Anyways loving what you are doing Bill. So much of what God is doing around the world is unheard of. It’s those stories that often encourage others to go and do the same.
I reckon I didn’t expect such response to my comment. I am a YWAMer and very much pro-YWAM. I am very much for the mobilization that is written here, but do believe that it will eventually become redundant. I concede to Daniel that my comments are very general, but based on observations from personal experience. To Mr. Goodman I would like to say that I have been on the “front lines” for the past twelve years and my experience has been that mobilization has been much easier and effective from here than from there. It is true that many are not connecting with the audience, but to say that nobody is listening to me/us is flat out wrong!
Some great comments here. You’re doing a superb job Bill, keep it up! What I love about my life as a ‘missions’ communicator’ within YWAM is that I’m combining my skills – teaching and communication – with my passion – missions, reaching the unreached, and justice issues. As I travel around Africa I see needs, interact with people involved in providing solutions to these needs, and get involved myself. Through my communication and teaching I’m also able to inspire others to give, pray and get involved. The missions world is huge and varied, and it needs ‘full-time’ communicators, dedicated to mobilizing and inspiring others.
Over the last few years I’ve seen concrete results to my own communication. My travel to places like Sudan and Angola exposes me to grassroots-needs and brings a freshness to my communication. As I teach later in places like South Africa or Germany, or write articles for websites or magazines, my communication is more powerful and alive. As a result people are stirred up, ready to give, pray and get involved.
Quality communication, coloured with real-life situations, is powerful. It honours the heroes doing the hard work in Sudan and Angola (who rarely have the time to communicate about their work themselves). It also honours God, and gives me the chance to ‘declare God’s glory among the nations’ … amazing things are happening around the world, what a blast that we get to celebrate them in our work!
I agree with Tim when he says that those doing the hard work rarely have time to communicate about that work. I found this in teaching. While in the classroom each day, working with students, I did not have time to run around telling people what we were doing. Had I done that, I would have cheated my students of the time I needed to spend with them. I only wish I would have had a communications consultant who could have told my story about what was happening in the classroom and with the students. Now that I am not teaching, I hope to do that for an organization that is doing good work but doesn’t have time to tell its own story.
This is a great topic and a very helpful discussion… thank-you!
My two cents… mobilization includes activities such as recruiting, telling stories and raising awareness but for long-term effectiveness it must include so much more. It seems clear to me that most mobilization is aimed at picking the fruit of more people, prayer and finances for the task remaining. While we should definitely pick any fruit that is ready how do we proceed when we encounter an overall lack of fruit? I am convinced that the only way to see more fruit on the tree of the Body of Christ is to deal with the world-view roots and not just the fruits. We must find ways to nourish the roots of the tree with world-view shifting topics such as Biblical basis for mission and the Biblical motivations for mission. Tools like Perspectives and the Kairos Course accomplish this very well. In my world there are only two groups those that are being introduced to Christ and those that are being mobilized to find their role in introducing others to Christ 🙂
Wow, thank you for all the comments. I certainly wasn’t expecting this much of a response to my article…
I think that Andy is right in saying that no one can communicate better than the person in the front lines and on the field. The challenge though is like E. Goodman said though, connecting those people in the right audience and potential partners.
Like I said in my main article, I want to connect the people to the need, and connect the people to others who are already doing the work. That is one thing that I want to work on by bringing more people onto the Podcast to share, and trying to provide easy platforms for our workers in the field to share their stories and needs.
I continually get enquiries from people through the YWAM Podcast and the YWAM News page asking how they can help or join, and the first thing I always do is send them the contact details for the people who are already there. It’s the same if you look at the YWAM Facebook page. Whenever there is an enquiry come through on that page we try to connect them to a local ministry, either where they are or where they are wanting to go.
What often frustrates me though is how poor some of our communication from and on the field can be. There are some terrific communicators our there, but then there are some people who are not as consistent or clear with their communication. There are also many other situations in the mission where the technological challenges make communication difficult. Unfortunately I quite regularly find broken links in the older articles that I write because the ministry I linked to shut down or changed their web-site or hasn’t updated it since the days of the Mosaic and Netscape web browsers (there’s a good nerd reference for you).
People like Tim who travels all over Africa to help communicate what God is doing there are a huge blessing to the workers in the field who struggle to get their stories out, and a blessing to others around the world who may never hear about those stories without dedicated communicators / mobilisers. Tim enables the workers in the field to communicate, which is very needed for many missionaries in the field.
I want to deliver the “macro” view of news, and then if people want to know more they can follow the links to find out the details and to connect to people like Andy who are out there working on the field…
[…] Why You Should Use Buffer for Your Twitter Account 2011 July 20 by Bill Hutchison var addthis_product = 'wpp-261'; var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true,"ui_language":"en"};Twitter has proven to be a great place to share interesting links and stories that I find online. I find the ability to share what I know with a group of people who are interested in similar topics to me to be very beneficial with my role as a missions communicator. […]
I’ll tell you right now.. .I can’t get enough of your posts… For some reason I feel extremely inspired and pumped up after reading any of your articles. I feel like God has led me to your posts. My life calling to to be a missionary (whatever that may involve) but seeing your life written out has showed me what I can look forward to in some aspect even though God may have a completely different direction for me. I’m just waiting till he opens up doors and I feel as though my first DTS in Scotland is where He wants me to go first.
Keep writing!!! 🙂
Thanks for the comments sendbradey. It’s great to hear God moving in your life and to hear what He is doing with your life. When are you planning to go to Scotland?