Beware What You Post …

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This is a subject that Tamara and I have been talking about for a long time …

When we found out who Caleb’s possible teachers were going to be one of the first things that we did was to go home and “Google” the teachers names. We wanted to find out who they were, what they stood for, what they were involved with and of course, do we want this person teaching our child?

I can guarantee that we were not the only parent’s to do this, and I know that employers are doing the exact same thing with job applicants. Here is a good example of three job applicants, and three bad search results.

When we searched for Caleb’s potential teachers we found that one was heavily involved in their church, and the other one was involved in short term mission trips with her family. Both of which were very encouraging finds for us as parents.

But what if we had found a binge drinking party animal, or someone who was having a whinge about their students on a blog? I reckon we would have been walking into the school and requesting NOT to have that person as our kid’s teacher.

In the days of Facebook, MySpace, camera phones, blogs and an unrelenting desire for exhibitionism in some people I can guarantee that you are being searched for, and found.

What are people finding when they search your name?

Update:

Slashdot has a great ongoing discussion about this exact topic, and the ethics of searching for potential employees here.

Working with Generation Y in YWAM

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This had me nearly rolling with laughter while watching this video:

The main target audience for Youth With A Mission – YWAM is the young generation, “Generation Y”. Many of our leaders and teachers within YWAM come from the same generation as Louis LK (Baby Boomers), or from Generation X (where I fit in). This leads to challenges as we learn to work together to fulfil what God has called YWAM to.

I can mostly speak for the YWAM base that I have worked with here in Australia, so my views do not represent all YWAM bases, but here they are …

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Free Photos for Missionaries and Ministry

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Sometimes I reckon that I subscribe to way to many blogs. It can be overwhelming at times just to sort through all the content, even if it’s good content.

Honduras-0580-21 (Medium) Today however in a recently subscribed to blog I came across a real gem of information.

The International Missions Board is making available a whole boat load of missions and ministry focuses photos available, for free for individuals and churches who need multi-cultural photos for web-sites, presentations, videos, etc.

From reading the original article that I found what you can see in the IMB gallery at the moment is only a bit of what will be made available soon for use.

Bangladesh-8623-30 (Medium)

At the moment you can check out about 160 free photos of people, places and events. The photos are all very high quality and can potentially add a lot to whatever project you are needing them for. Already they are a great resource for Christian Missionary Pictures, and they should be even better once the full gallery has been added.

Unfortunately there are no missions related IT or Communication type photos in the gallery. Those are the type of photos that I am needing right now as I prepare new support materials to help us make up the $1330 budget deficit that we will be shoulder with when we finally make the move to Canada.

You can check out the photo over at the IMB Picasa Web Album.

Source: Mission Leader – Want Great Mission Photos?

Become a Missionary – The YWAM Way

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There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways that you could become a Christian Missionary. Rather than looking today at how you can be a missionary in your home town or work I’ll look at how you can become a cross-cultural Christian missionary through Youth With A Mission.

I am also going to avoid for the moment the discussion about short-term missionaries and the value that actually comes from that. There are some good discussions and debates from both sides of that topic, so I will include short term and longer term opportunities through YWAM.

Youth With A Mission has many ways that people can become involved in Cross Cultural missions. Every year over 200,000 mostly young people go through YWAM missions programs around the world. Here are a few options that are available:

  • Mission Adventures
  • Discipleship Training School
  • Business as Missions
  • School of Frontier Missions
  • Joining YWAM Staff

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How I Became a Christian Missionary

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I have often looked back and asked myself how I became a Christian Missionary. I have been a full-time missionary now for 10-years (since January 1999), and it is something that I never would have thought I would be doing.

I’ll save my testimony for another post, and just focus on what happened after I decided that God had better plans for me than I could even have for myself.

Shortly after deciding to follow after God’s plan for my life in November 1997 I caught up with a friend named Tyler Rousell, who had just completed a YWAM Discipleship Training School in Mexico. He spent about 2-hours telling me the "short version" of his YWAM DTS and some of the things that God had done in his life over the six-month school.

For me, being a fresh Christian, a YWAM DTS sounded like a great way to "figure out who God is". Prior to that I had always wanted to go travel to Australia with another mate, so I started to look at how I could do a YWAM DTS in Australia.

After finding a YWAM DTS at Reef to Outback in Australia to go to I booked a one-year open ended ticket because I figured I might want to travel for a bit after I completed my Discipleship Training School. My plan (notice I didn’t say "God’s plan") was to be in Australia for 6 – 12 months, then head back to Canada with a clear vision of what I was to do with my life.

I got to my YWAM DTS after also completing a YWAM Niko with YWAM Calgary. It was a very intense time of realizing just a tiny bit of what it meant to live in accordance with God’s will. Somehow during that time I had also agreed to come back to Reef to Outback to join staff for the next Discipleship Training School in January 1999.

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