006 TAM – My Testimony of How I Came to Follow Jesus

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Today in the sixth episode of the Accidental Missionary Podcast you the listener help me to fill out some paper work for my YWAM Adelaide staff applications form …

Despite sitting down over a dozen times to try to write down my personal testimony of how I came to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Saviour I have always managed to walk away with a blank piece of paper. To help me in writing it down I decided to record and release my personal faith testimony as an episode of the Accidental Missionary Podcast.

In this episode I talk about some of the key events in my life that lead me to accepting Jesus first and Saviour, and then finally as Lord.

David Ring

Zig Ziglar

Who Are You Really?

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I love this video and the question that it asks, “Who are you really?”.

Are we being authentic?

I think that unfortunately many of us fall into the trap of trying to be who we think others want us to be. What the video highlights is what can happen when we are all pretending to be someone who we aren’t …

If I am honest with myself, and with the readers of this blog, being authentic as a missionary is challenging!

Being Honest and Authentic as a Missionary

I don’t always want to admit when I am struggling. When I am unsure or wavering in my faith of where God is leading me, or what He is asking me to do, I usually don’t want to admit it. There are expectations that I feel people have placed on me, and struggling with hearing from God and understanding clearing what He is saying to me is not one of them!

Although I know it is unfair to think, but I often feel like there are higher expectations on me as a missionary to be able to hear and obey God’s voice. Often I feel like I am under a microscope. Like the men in the video above I try to put on the “super spiritual” persona of someone who is constantly sure of what God is saying and where He is leading.

Unfortunately though, like many of us, I struggle with hearing God’s voice and times and knowing where He is leading…

  • I am not perfect.
  • I don’t stand unwavering at all times in my faith…
  • I struggle…
  • I hurt…
  • I doubt…
  • I fear…

But I press on, trusting that if I stuff up God will be there to catch me. As I walk in obedience and submission to Him and His will for my life He will be there to defend and protect me.

The Challenge of Humility

Even though God doesn’t want us to have that intimate of a relationship with anyone other than our spouse God still desires us to be humble and authentic before Him and others.

God opposes the proud
but shows favour to the humble. (James 4:6)

So, how about you, do people know the real you, or the image and / persona that you want them to know???

How To Get Students to Write for Your YWAM Ministry

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A few weeks ago we had a great discussion over on the YWAM Communications Facebook Group about how to better engage Youth With A Mission students for generating content for a YWAM Ministries blog or website. One of the challenges that we have as a ministry is communicating what God is doing in the nations, and getting the story out there.

Monika Allen has been extremely successful at engaging with their students at YWAM Madison to create some great content for their ministries blog. She was kind enough to share how she engages with their students to generate the news and stories for their site:

How to get U of N students writing for your YWAM blog

1. Enrol an Editor

While the stories look like they are written solely by the students, I actually edit them (sometimes heavily, depending on the students’ writing ability) or create them from interviews with the student. I then say they are by that student or at times will say “by … with Monika.” In other words, I’m the blog “ghostwriter.” This way, we’re able to keep a more consistent voice and quality to our online blogs while also showing the diversity of our student body.

2. Coach your Outreach Teams

We coach our teams before they go on outreach. I also teach on writing in seminars and in other YWAM schools. I’ve developed a teaching on how to write an outreach story, as well as a packet with sample stories that we send with each team. One of the things I go over with them is how to discover a story. Ideally, each team has one or two people who think of themselves as an “embedded journalist.” Their job is to listen to their teammates and watch what is happening on the outreach (while also being involved, of course) — they then send me at least one story per week while they’re on outreach. Depending on the outreach and internet access, they send me more than that. I also try to get them to send me a couple good pictures, otherwise I search through our archives or on Flickr’s Creative Commons for compelling images.

3. Value Communication

Cultivate an atmosphere of communication and storytelling — we see it as a ministry and as something that God directs his people to do — to tell about his great works among the nations!

Another teaching I do in the DTS is an hour on Psalm writing, which also adds to the students’ confidence in being able to write and share what God is doing in their lives. It helps that our Children at Risk DTS seems to draw the creative types who are very passionate about the cause of helping children. Several see themselves as writers or photographers already, so it is fun to give them a couple tools to better communicate. What has also helped draw these kinds of students, and help our current students and staff see the value in communicating and telling stories, is our blog!

4. Be-friend your students

I am Facebook friends with many of the students, so I see their blog posts that they share with their friends. If I see a particularly moving blog post, I ask for their permission to post it. (Sometimes I lightly edit.) Or, in my times hanging out with the students or listening to the staff share about what’s happening in the school, I hear something interesting and then seek out the student to have them tell me their story.

5. Connect with Students’ Contacts

Before our teams leave for outreach, we have them push for their friends and family to subscribe to our email updates. I then send out a weekly email update with links to the latest blog posts. This excites the students to send more stories and also helps those who may not be as good at communicating home. It also helps their parents and churches to have more understanding and trust in our organization because they can see what is going on, they can pray, and they can be excited for the students “in real time” not just at the end of the outreach. We strive to make our stories concrete and visually descriptive.

6. Recruit for Communication

I now have a communications assistant who will help me interact with other schools and departments on our campus. We also try to have a “communications liaison” in each department/school.

Photo by kanglapass

005 TAM – Trusting God and the Need for Confirmation

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This we I talk a bit more about why we are moving from Canada to Adelaide, Australia and I also give an update on how we are progressing with the move.

I also talk about an article written by Mathew P. Gahm over at ExcelGodsWay.com. The article is called “Are you more like Noah or Moses?“, and it talks about our need or desire for further confirmation when God speaks. I talk about my own personal struggle with trusting God, or more accurately, trusting myself to know when I am hearing God, and what He is saying.

While talking about hearing God I also touch on the subject of submitting our hearts to Him so that the desires of our heart align with God’s desires. I wrote a bit about this subject in two other articles on this site:

The fantastic introduction music to this episode of the podcast is provided by Rachel Frecka. The song is called “Holy” from the album “Rays of Mercy” and can be purchased from Amazon.

Some of the projects that I am currently working on are:

Should the Goal of All Missions be Short Term Missions?

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It seems that it is quite fashionable to bash the effectiveness of short term missions…

While Blimey Cow does make some good points in that rather sarcastic video, painting all short term missions as a waste of time and money is rather narrow minded …

What actually prompted this post was reading the missions statement of a church planting team going to Nicaragua. Their goal is to be in a location in Nicaragua for a short period of time, replace themselves in the newly planted church with local leadership, and then move on to another location.

I found that team’s mission and goals to be quite inspirational in it’s ability to be multiplied, and the heavy emphasis on training and mobilising local leadership.

Biblical Models of Short Term Missionaries

While I completely understand the need for long term missionaries to serve in missions organisations around the world (I have been in YWAM now for 14- years, which I guess would be considered long term) there is also a place for short term missionaries.

Jesus’ ministry on earth only lasted 3-years. During that time Jesus never stayed in one place long, and never established a permanent or “long term” ministry location. By many people’s definitions that would be considered “short-term”, but no once can deny the impact and effectiveness of his ministry, can they?

Paul never stayed long in any one location. During Paul’s many years of ministry he never stayed long in any one location. His travels took him all over the Mediterranean and most of what we now know of Paul is his letters written to churches after he had left them. Would current short term missions critics consider Paul’s travel to be joy riding, an excuse to travel the known world, or a “vacation”?

Short Term Missions Can Serve God’s Kingdom

A well thought out short term missions trip can do great things to help in the advancement of God’s Kingdom. Whether building homes in Haiti, restoring eye-sight in Papua New Guinea, or serving and loving AIDS patients in Africa, short term missionaries have an important role in God’s plan to show his love and compassion to the nations.

Let’s not, as long-term missionaries or critics of short-term missions, dismiss the idea out of hand. Instead let’s look at how God wants to use short term mission and what our role is in making it effective for the nation or location being served by the short-term missionaries, and also something that can inspire the participants to desire a long term role in missions…