Why YWAM Has Staff Conferences and Gatherings

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In this day and age when teaching, updates and the like can be sent out and distributed so easily via on-line tools and services it is easy to question the value of Youth With A Mission conferences and gatherings. Shouldn’t the money and time that we put into gatherings and conferences be put towards fulfilling the mission?

The reason why gatherings and conferences are so valuable in YWAM can be sumerised in one word:

RELATIONSHIPS

One of the foundational values of Youth With A Missions has to do specifically with relationships:

13. BE RELATIONSHIP-ORIENTED

YWAM is dedicated to being relationship-oriented in our living and working together. We desire to be united through lives of holiness, mutual support, transparency, humility, and open communication, rather than a dependence on structures or rules.

So while we are busy fulfilling the mission that God has called us to in missions we must not forget the value and importance of the relationships with the people that God has brought into our lives. If you avoid or are removed from these YWAM relationships you can lead yourself down the road to burnout, which is what happened to me last year and I talk about in the latest episode of my podcast.

How do you see the value of being relationship oriented being lived out in your life and ministry?

The above video was produced for the YWAM European Leaders Gathering 2013.

Burnout in Ministry and Missions, What Happened to the YWAM Podcast?

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Frederick Malotov

The Accidental MissionaryAfter producing the YWAM Podcast for over 50 episodes and two years I abruptly stopped after our Christmas episode in December 2011. Unfortunately the reason I stopped the podcast was because I got burnt out …

A good definition of how I felt was written up by my friend Samuel John in an article about Burnout on his Missions Manual web-site:

How do you know if you’re getting burned out?  Everyday becomes hard and harder.  Off days, days you mean to relax, keep you frustrated and thinking about your ministry.  You see no point in the ministry any more   You feel unappreciated.  You constantly feel overwhelmed.  These are obvious signs of your workload being too heavy. It can feel like you’re trying to push a car uphill by yourself.

Seven signs that you might be burnt out (from Ministry Best Practice:

  1. Can you sustain your current pace of life?
  2. Are you better known online than in real life?
  3. Do you feel trapped by your circumstances with no apparent way out?
  4. Does it feel like there are more attacks from the enemy on your life?
  5. When around other people do you pretend to be happy, but wish you were alone?
  6. Are you actually enjoying life, or are you just trying to survive?
  7. Do you feel lonely, isolated and misunderstood?

Mad Church DiseaseSome resources for burnout in ministry:

Some projects for 2013

An Audience of Sheep for Todays Recording

Top image by guy_on_the_streets

How “Clean” is Your Facebook Profile?

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Something that Facebook’s new Graph Search has once again highlighted to us is how easily accessible information is about us on-line. From what you like, to what you say and what photos there are of you online people can get a pretty good picture of you by looking at your Facebook and other online profiles.

Facewash

A new Facebook App called FaceWash seems to do a pretty good job at checking your Facebook Profile for what they view as “unclean” or suspect items that are posted on your Facebook profile. Out of curiosity I decided to install and run it on my profile and here are the results …

FaceWash-Results

You can click on the image on the right if you want to see everything, but for all intents and purposes it came back pretty clean. One rather odd result is that FaceWash decided that the fact that I liked the Canadian television show “Corner Gas” could be suspect. I guess they don’t have the same sense of humour that I do …

In addition to the automated testing that it does you can also include your own words for the app to check for. You can see more about how the app works here. I reckon that it could be something worth checking out.

Why Every Missionary Should Podcast – TAM 12

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The Accidental MissionaryOne of the things that I have previously written about on my web-site is the importance of us telling the story of what God is doing in our ministry and life. As full-time volunteer missionaries there is the additional need for us to maintain regular communication with our supporters and sponsors as they are invested in our ministry and lives. I believe that podcasting is a valuable way for us to do that …

The best place to go if you are wanting to start a podcast is The School of Podcasting by David Jackson. There you will found many hours of useful advice through the articles and podcast episodes that David Jackson has produced.

Usually I would not recommend trying to use a free service for podcasting, but a way that you could get your feet wet, with no financial outlay, would be using a free service called AudioBoo. Their free service gives you three minutes of recording for free and you can make those recordings using many different ways, including:

While three minutes may not sound like a lot of time, if you are deliberate with that time you can communicate quite a lot.

Using another free service like Google Feedburner you can then set it up so that your podcast can be accessed through iTunes or even have your subscribers updated via e-mail when a new podcast is available.

Sample AudioBoo Recording from my iPod Touch

listen to ‘Testing out Audio Boo for Missionary Support Raising’ on Audioboo

If you decide to get serious about podcasting then let me know and I would love to help get you set-up for podcasting with a WordPress installation with proper media hosting…

A few weeks ago I was a bit shocked by the following sign that I saw next to a travellator / autowalk. Listen to the podcast to find out why …

No Gophers on the Autowalk

Check out the new Google+ YWAM Community.

The last podcasts that Justin Long listened to are:

Tomorrow, December 14, we get our new house! We hope to be moved in by Christmas as long as things go smoothly with the delivery of our shipment and appliances…

View the Geminid Meteor Shower in Adelaide

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Yes I’m a geek, but this looks pretty awesome …

Geminid Meteor Shower in Adelaide

The Geminid Meteor Shower is a yearly event that happens in mid-December. It can be viewed from almost anywhere in the world and produces as many as 120 meteors per hour. I’m hoping that might even be enough to keep the kids interested …

The best time to view the Geminid meteor shower is on the mornings of December 14 and 15, with it starting on the morning of the 13th. Between the hours of 1 and 4 am should be the best times to catch a glimpse of the meteor shower.

If you can head out of town that would be best and you will want to find a place that allows you to have a clear view of the Northern sky.

You can read more tips about viewing the Geminid Meteor Shower in Adelaide here.

Photo credit: Sean Molin Photography / CC BY-NC-ND