Ministry Impact and Financial Stress

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Last night I had a look at a post from 5-years ago called “What is the Impact of the YWAM Podcast” to see what has changed since then. Two things really stood out to me …

  • In 2014 my audio programs had been downloaded 110,000 times. As of right now the YWAM Audio Podcasts have been downloaded 415,000 times! The top download being a podcast about Mobilising Two-Thirds-World Missionaries …
  • In 2014 our monthly support was around $2400. During those five years our expenses have increased significantly, but as of today our monthly support is sitting at only about $2500.

Ministry

Recording the YWAM Podcast

Me looking excited

The fact that the audio programs I produce have been downloaded 415,000 times really excites me with what I am doing in Youth With A Mission. In addition to the audio programs I am also responsible for most of the news content on our main global web-page, ywam.org, and have been responsible for the mailing out 345,000 YWAM newsletters and prayer guides so far this year.

I was also able to help another YWAM Centre to launch their podcast, called the Converge Stories Podcast. They have been doing some great programs, and I hope to be able to continue helping other centres with their communications moving forward.

Support

The support figure was rather disheartening to be honestly. This is what I wrote in 2014:

I hate sounding like “one of those” missionaries, but we are really struggling with our finances at the moment. Our currently level of monthly support is sitting around $2400 per month. This isn’t really very much, and even with some government supplemental benefits, we are barely meeting our monthly expenses at that amount.

Between then and now our expenses have greatly increased and our support is still well below where I would like to see it. I have been serving full-time in missions for over 20-years now and it seems to be a constant struggle to have our financial needs met.

Would you please consider partnering with us financially and prayerfully in ministry? You can find out how to partner with us on the Donate page on our web-site, or your can message me directly here.

 

The Converge Stories Podcast

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YWAM Converge launched their new podcast last year out of The Podcasting in Missions Course with stories from guests about when everything comes together so that the guests could be a witness for God in a particular area of influence, what they call a “Converge Moment”. There are interviews with mission leaders from around the world, as well as people who have been a part of the internships that YWAM Converge offers around the world.

It’s been personally exciting to see YWAM Converge go from their desire to learn how to launch a podcast, to having released 14 episodes by the end of The Podcasting in Missions Course, which each episode increasing in quality. I’m really looking forward to continuing to listen to future episodes, and hearing what is happening with their ministry.

Here is the latest episode that I’ve had a chance to listen to. It’s about Declaration Films, who are heading to South Africa to create films to tell missionary stories.

You can hear their podcast for yourself and subscribe to future episodes at convergestories.com.

What Happened in 2018?

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Last year was an exciting year with my continued ministry with YWAM. It was my 20th year of ministry with Youth With A Mission, which really seems kind of nuts to think about!

In my role with the Global Communications Team of Youth With A Mission my main jobs are:

2018 was quite productive, with significant impact in many of those areas:

  • Over 50,000 audio programs were delivered
  • Over 250,000 news and prayer updates sent
  • 14 podcast episodes released by participants in the Podcasting in Missions Course

I’ll be writing more next month about the YWAM podcasts launched out of the Podcasting in Missions Course, as well as what I’m hoping to accomplish in 2019.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers for the ministry. I am a full-time volunteer with Youth With A Mission, and without the financial support of people like you I would not be able to minister in the way that God has allowed me to for the last 20-years…

Copyright Issues with The Bible

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Currently I am looking into a new project to go along with the 6-month New Testiment Bible Reading plan that I put together. That plan has been downloaded almost 3000 times and I’ve received some great feedback about it, including it being used for home school curriculum!

As a companion to the NT Reading Plan I’ve been considering putting together a daily podcast and email so that people can listen to the New Testament in 6-months. In looking at how to best do this I have run into the issue of copyright law and what versions of the Bible I’m able to use for this sort of project …

The most popular, modern versions of the Bible can not be used for a project like this. They have restrictions that allow a maximum of 500 verses, and must not exceed 20% of the printed (or in my case recorded) work. They include, but are not limited to:

  • New International Version (NIV)
  • New Living Translation (NLT)
  • New King James Version (only 250 versus) (NKJV)
  • Holman Christian Standard Bible (only 250 verses) (HCSB)

There are a number of Bibles that are available as Public Domain since they are old enough that their copyright as expired. Most of these unfortunately use rather archaic language, which I reckon I would have a rather hard time recording …

  • American Standard – ASV1901 (ASV)
  • Darby English Bible (DARBY)
  • King James Version (KJV)
  • Webster’s Bible (WBT)

There are a few other translations out there, including the New English Translation (NET) Bible and the Lexham English Bible, that seem to have fairly open copyright rules, but I’m not a lawyer, and they are unclear enough that I’m not sure if using it in this way would qualify for free use.

Recently there have been efforts to put together Bible translations that can be used without copyright issues. They are published either as Public Domain, or under a open Creative Commons licence. They include:

Those are the two translations that I will be exploring for this project, so we will see how we go …

(Source for most of my research was the Christianity StackExchange Forum)

Podcasting in Missions Course

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I’m excited to say that the Podcasting in Missions Course will be starting up on September 24 and running for twelve weeks. The planning for the course started in 2012 with others in YWAM, and then interest in the development of the course dropped off.

Last year while I was in Canada, around the time of the last International Podcast Day, I felt led to look again at developing the course.

In developing the content for the course I realised that the best way that I could use my time was to build off of what I used to teach myself how to podcast, The School of Podcasting by David Jackson.

So now the course will be starting on September 24 and will cover a lot of different topics specific to Podcasting, and also look into Biblical communication.

You can find out more about the Podcasting in Missions Course on the YWAM Podcast web-site.