The other day I was thinking about a bit of an odd analogy. Comparing YWAM to a type of phone operating system is certainly strange, but I think that in this case it can be accurate.

I’m sure that many YWAMers I know would rather associate YWAM with Apple, but they need to get over it. YWAM is much more like Android than it will ever be like Apple.

Google Android is an open source operating system for mobile phones and more recently for tablet computers. It has many different flavours and versions, and has been covered in many different “skins”. I reckon that this is a pretty good description of YWAM.

Youth With A Mission is built from a few core values. The foremost of those is:

To Know God and to Make Him Known

The YWAM Foundational Values are at the centre of who we are and they define how we live out the mandate of YWAM “To Know God and to Make Him Known”.

One big thing that we need to know as we look at YWAM is that no two YWAM locations are the same. What you experience at one location will not be the same as what you experience at the next. All 1250+ locations represent a slightly different aspect of who God is, even though we are all part of the same tribe.

The variety in YWAM allows us to minister into many different situations and countries, but also means that no one voice or location can truly represent who we are. The diversity and decentralised nature has been described as Youth With A Mission’s greatest strength, but also as it’s greatest weakness.

Like the Google Android Operating System I believe that YWAM will continue to diversify in who we are, but the challenge is to continue to remain compatible and unified in the core mission of Knowing God and Making Him Known…

One of the things that I have the privelege of doing in Youth With A Mission is interacting with some of our YWAM Communication Teams around the world. Lately I’ve been doing quite a bit with the team in Africa called AfriComs. Their aim is to keep people regularly updated with what is happening with YWAM in Africa.

If you ever wondered why the need for teams like this is so important than have a look at this map showing Africa’s major infrastructure that was recently released by Le Monde Diplomatique.

According to this article over at one.org only 30.5 percent of the total sub-Saharan population and only 14.3 percent of the rural population have access to electricity. If you can imagine that, imagine how few people also have access to the communication resources that we take for granted.

So that you can see a bit more about what the YWAM Communications teams do in Youth With A Mission around the world have a watch of this video…

You can read more about YWAM Africom and their work on their blog, and find out more about YWAM Communication teams over at the YWAM ICN Web-site.

YWAM has been described as a family, albeit a very diverse family. Using more accurate terminology though I would say that YWAM is a Tribe. One of the challenges within a tribe is identifying other members of your tribe…

To help us identify other members of The YWAM Tribe I’ve designed a few badges for YWAM Bloggers to put on their blogs and promote their place in the YWAM Tribe. This will help us to identify with other members of the tribe…

Here are a couple of YWAM Blogger badges for you to grab for your personal blog. Just copy the code that is embedded next to the image that you want to display on your blog and put it in your sidebar, footer, or where ever else you might want to put it.

Black on White, 150x150px logo (the one I use in my sidebar)

Black on White, 150x150px logo, rounded corners, transparent background

White on Blue, 140x140px logo

White on Red, 140x140px logo

Who can use the YWAM Blogger Badge

My intent is for the YWAM Blogger Badge to be used by individual bloggers who are current full-time staff in YWAM. If you do choose to place the YWAM Blogger Badge on your blog please also include a disclaimer in the footer of your site stating stating that your views do not necessarily represent those of Youth With A Mission since it’s not an “official” YWAM web-site.

If you are blogging using the Blogger or Blogspot platform I wrote are article explaining how you can add the badge to your sidebar.

With social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, so pervasive in the lives of people it’s important that we look at what kind of affect it has on students. The Discipleship Training School (DTS), and other second level schools in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) have previously been completely immersive experiences mainly because of the difficulty and cost of communication.

Now, with easy communication tools like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, e-mail, etc. the YWAM DTS and other schools are not the isolated experience that it once was. Now it is possible for students to stay almost fully connected with friends and family back home while on their Discipleship Training School. The question we need to ask is how is that affecting the school experience and how can we as YWAM leaders use those tools to the advantage of our students?

With those thoughts and questions in mind please have a look at this infographic entitled “Is Social Media Ruining Students” and let us know your thoughts in the comments below the graphic:

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Sometimes it’s amazing how much you can help, through something so little…

In rural Papua New Guinea one in seven women die in childbirth! Yep, that’s right, 1 in 7 women die in childbirth! That’s a shocking statistic to say the least. To give birth to a child a mother has a 15% chance of dying, can you imagine?

A friend of mine, Adriel Booker, in Australia works with YWAM Ships, a ministry that is currently working on delivering medical help into Papua New Guinea. She is a Mom, blogger and fellow YWAMer who has a strong passion for helping other mothers in need. To help expectant mothers in Papua New Guinea she has started a program called Bloggers for Birth Kits to help reduce maternal mortality in rural Papua New Guinea.

The way to help is so simple that anyone can do it…

For as little as a $2.00 donation you can purchase a Birth Kit. The Birth Kit is very simple, but according to the Birthing Kit Foundation can greatly help to reduce the incidence of infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. The kit includes:

• 1 plastic sheet to provide a clean birthing surface
• 1 bar of soap for clean hands during the birthing process and to clean the umbilical stump
• 1 pair of plastic gloves for clean hands
• 1 sterile scalpel blade to cut the umbilical cord
• 3 cords / pieces of strong string to tie the umbilical chord
• 5 gauze squares to clean the baby and mother

The kit is simple, yet effective. Adriel made up her own (which you can watch on the video at the bottom of this post), but I think the most effective way for us to help is to donate.

If you do want to help with this great project, and for only $2.00 who wouldn’t want to help, you can read more about it at Bloggers for Birth Kits.

I’m going to now do a major SEO faux pas and post this to all of my blogs and web-sites, but I’m hoping that the more people that hear about it, the more people will participate, and the more women in rural Papua New Guinea can also be helped…