I’m not actually sure when the spring officially ends and summer begins, but judging by an increase in the occurrence of sunlight, I’m going to assume that summer is about to start (or has started). The time between the start of my second term in February and now has slipped by suddenly, possibly because of some busy-ness at university and with my university Amnesty group. My other activities have not been entirely interesting (unless you think things like backing up a database and writing an email about pesky technical issues is interesting). However, I was happy to spend a little bit of time in the past couple weeks with some friends staffing with YWAM in Rostrevor, continuing to pass on whatever team-leadership advice and help they can desire. I went and talked to the staff who are taking teams to South Africa and Israel & Palestine next month about budgeting, finances and all that exciting stuff, as well as advice about planning and executing an outreach in South Africa. It’s good to put Renee and I’s years of previous experience into some use. We want to continue to be available for that.

The picture: Just after Easter, I drove down to Rostrevor and hung out with Nathanael (pictured), who is one of the South Africa outreach team leaders as well as current staff on their DTS. He was on the team we took to South Africa last year. I snapped this photo with an awful camera as we took a couple of their kayaks out on Carlingford Lough (the An Cuan centre is in the background on the right).

Last week I had the opportunity to spend a few days with YWAM in Rostrevor training their staff team for the upcoming DTS. It was a great privilege and the first time I had done so since leaving YWAM last year. My contribution to YWAM in the last few months has mostly been limited to web maintenance stuff, so this was a welcome break. It was also nice to be able to give input instead of just receive it (like I do at university).

I covered a few foundational topics for the YWAM team, including:

• History and origins of the DTS programme (plus curricular requirements).
• Leadership.
• Roles of trainees, staff and the school leader.
• Confrontation.
• Strategic planning.

I will be returning in the next few weeks to continue with the training, especially to cover how to plan and lead overseas, cross-cultural outreach teams.

You can check out photos from our recent outreach to South Africa here.

We’ve also added some thumbnail links to other videos we’ve created in the video section.

Well, we’re nearly through this DTS’s lecture phase. We’ve got just a few weeks left before outreach begins at the very end of April. In summary, what’s happened:

• Mike Oman teaching on the Father Heart of God. (also a nice group shot photo here)
• Derek & Trich Dodd teaching on relationships and forgiveness.
• Jonny Clark and Davy Kidd teaching on the Holy Spirit
• Local outreach in Belfast (my small group hosts an evening for elderly people on the Shankill every Monday at Feed Cafe)
• Patricia Green (founder of Rahab ministries) teaching on human trafficking.
• Jon Hatch teaching on the Kingdom of God, and why Jesus is more than just personal salvation.
• The DTS serving at the Western European Leadership Consultation (WELC) in Dublin.
• A week of prayer, outreach during St Patrick’s Day, and learning about how to work in the Catholic world as an ecumenical mission (taught by Rob Clarke, of YWAM’s Kerygma Teams)
• Jonny Clark teaching on reconciliation.
• Alec Cartwright teaching on ‘discipling nations,’ and why missions is something every Christian is called to, no matter what profession.
• Emmanuel Entee, filling in gaps of our curriculum, and teaching on freedom in Christ.
• Next weeks: a week of outreach in Belfast and workshops, then story telling and evangelism, then a week on worship. (Then outreach)

(A heads up: all the photos linked in the bullet points above are taken with a phone camera, and the quality isn’t great)

Here are some photos I snapped with my new phone (gifted to me just before Christmas by someone upgrading – the first time I’ve had a phone that can do anything but make phone calls), mostly from windows in our flat:

Before…

In the middle of it…

After…

Christmas Eve at St. Anne’s

Creideamh (pronounced something like kray-jiff, the Irish word for faith) was dubbed the Festival of Faith and hosted a couple hundred people from around Ireland and the world for an outreach in Galway for fifteen days this July. We came along with several other people representing YWAM Ireland to help with the facilitation of the festival and its events – our members doing everything from planning and administration, to electrical work for setting up the festival gazebo on Eyre square, to hosting the various artists who came to perform for the festival.

Renee and I primarily took over the management of festival operations at a local restaurant after its normal closing time, feeding all the festival teams each evening and helping run the festival’s public entertainment venue there, where we hosted musicians, magicians, mimes, and testimony-tellers every night.

Creideamh seemed to have largely been a success. The volunteers got on well and feedback from the community was positive. Teams met in the morning for services, followed by lunch and training, and then would spread out across Galway according to their ministry – ranging from engaging people in discussions about faith to kid’s ministry in local parishes. The artists would perform around town, sometimes on the street, and sometimes in a handful of festival venues.

Well, I could go on, but I suggest you just check out the photos I’ve uploaded to this site (which were also put on the YWAM Ireland Facebook Page, I think), as well as the YouTube video of a member of YWAM England escaping from a straight jacket during Creideamh.

Also check out some of the artists who worked the festival:

• L’Angelus – cajun roots band from Louisiana
• Flip Francis and Sammy Blaze – hip-hop artists from Dallas, TX.
• Crossing the Jordan (CTJ) – band of musicians from four continents, based with YWAM in Harpenden, England.
• Yan Nicholls (E-team) – magician, escape artist, and evangelist based with YWAM in England.
• Collin and Halie (E-team) – acoustic music duo based with YWAM in England.
• Steve Murray – mime artist.

More info at Creideamh website.

The end of this DTS snuck up on me like a forgotten birthday (‘Oh, is this what day it is! Do you mean to say there’s only a few left?’). It was different to be the leader of the school, so involved, but to not go on outreach, and then all of a sudden they’re all back in Ireland and we’re really busy, and then a couple weeks later they’re all gone. Whoosh.

I’m writing this over a week since the last student left, and I miss them. They were a really good group of individuals, and also a good team, and I would be proud if they came back to serve with us here.

They returned from outreach in South Africa to a few days of rest, then a week of debriefing with Emmanuel and Janice Entee, over from Harpenden in England. We culminated in an evening of good food, stories, songs and sharing, followed by an informal graduation ceremony where myself and the DTS staff, Greg and Ariette, prayed for each of the ten students.

Last year, I felt the Lord lay on my heart for this DTS the line from the Lord’s Prayer: Thy kingdom come, as a simple prayer to be said and lived out in word and deed. I shared at the graduation a short word about this not being really the end of DTS but hopefully some sort of a beginning of their active citizenship in this awesome kingdom. I read again from Isaiah 61 (actually from Luke 4 where Jesus reads from Isaiah 61), as a scripture that has often come up during this DTS; we stood with the unknown prophet:

The spirit of the Lord is on me,
for he has anointed me
to bring the good news to the afflicted.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives,
sight to the blind,
to let the opressed go free,
to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord.
(NJV)

I recently traveled to South Africa to visit our DTS outreach team and see a few people ahead of planning for a mega outreach from Ireland to Durban in the summer of 2010.

After waiting at our gate only to find out our flights were cancelled, Chris (a staff member from Closkelt) and I were finally able to fly out early morning three days later. Skip ahead 30+ hours, we arrived in sunny Durban – a city of 3.5 million situated on the east coast of South Africa adjacent to the Indian Ocean.

We joined the team after a drive outside the city to a former sugar cane plantation, where a community of missionaries live, going into towns and collecting bread and food discarded by stores, sorting out the bad stuff, cooking or preparing the good stuff, and distributing it to hungry people in local poorer areas. Our team were serving for a week with this ministry, Missions Ablaze, after having worked the last few weeks closely with YWAM Durban in a township called Burlington.

During the course of my time with the team (only about five days), one of my objectives was to gauge the health of the team in spending time with them corporately and individually, as well as do a bit of ground work in preparing to promote a mega outreach YWAM Ireland is planning to organize for July of 2010 in South Africa. About half way through my time in Durban, we migrated across town to Word Changers Academy, a training facility for the World Changers organization, where I was able to see a few of YWAM Belfast’s sponsor students who work with the organization in various positions of leadership. It was really great to sit down with some of these guys and hear how they’re doing, also collecting video clips for helping to promote our 2010 outreach (‘I came to Belfast and served; now you should come here!’) and have them explain some of the things they’re involved in – life skills courses in poor townships, empowering people in health (some townships have an 80% HIV prevalence) and finding work, among other things.

Overall, I was really pleased with the health of our DTS team and their willingness to roll up their sleeves and do practical work with Missions Ablaze, as well as go out with World Changers and teach practical and spiritual skills in the townships. As I was leaving Durban, I was talking to our local YWAM contacts and got some great feedback; one of the leaders of a ministry the team had worked with said they were the best team they’d ever had.

From Durban, I flew to Johannesburg and spent a couple days there before flying back to Dublin. I was able to see Vusi, a friend, graduate of World Changers, former YWAM Ireland DTS student, and extraordinary entrepreneur, who has started various works around Durban related to life-skills teaching and rehabilitation of criminals (please check out the post I wrote about his ministry last year, including video – “Light Providers, South Africa”). He recently moved to Jo’burg to study criminal justice on a full scholarship at Monash University and is also, characteristically, developing a prison ministry there on top of continuing to oversee his ministries in Durban. Aside from just catching up with him, it was helpful to toss around a few ideas for future outreach (especially in 2010).

I had the privilege of witnessing the incredible, community-transforming work our Zulu friends are doing in South Africa. Beyond their own amazing testimonies of personal redemption, they are pouring out their lives into their communities and successfully helping lift people out of crime and abject poverty into living purposeful lives that transform others through local leadership, and through incarnational spirituality.

Consider taking another look at the work of World Changers Academy or Vusi’s Light Providers ministry and supporting them financially. The volunteers generally don’t receive compensation and come from communities in need themselves, where they would be expected to provide for older parents. For about £50/$75 per month, you could sponsor a worker to do this important work full time. Pray about making a donation of £600/$900 through bank transfer to cover a worker for a full year.

Useful, related links:

• Photos I took in South Africa
• Previous blog entry on Light Providers and Vusi
• Light Providers (lightproviders.com)
• World Changers (www.wca-sa.org)
• Greg’s blog (blog.gregcolker.com) – the blog of one of our outreach team leaders
• Zach’s blog (www.zacharystock.com) – blog of a student on our outreach team
• YWAM Durban

Next time, a more informative entry…

This update is coming a bit later than I intended, but I had no hard drive space to download pictures from my camera, so I had to wait until I could remedy the problem.

YWAM staff from around Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland met in Dublin over the night of Friday 7th of November and the following morning to pray in a new era of our operations in Ireland. In short, on the 8th of November, the works in both the North and the South became united in leadership and vision as YWAM Ireland.

Friday evening we had a time of sharing from Rob Clarke, who has been leading the work in the Republic for about 25 years, reflecting on the ministry of YWAMers and the hand of God during that time. We also had the opportunity to pray in the new leadership, as Rob Clarke passed directorship over any work in the Republic to Jonny Clark (no relation), the director of YWAM in Northern Ireland. The food and craic was great – hospitality provided by the Clarke family – , and having the chance to hang out with other YWAMers we don’t get to see too often was nice as well.

During our time, we had the pleasure of the company and input of Stephe Mayers, the director of YWAM in Western Europe. In the morning, he shared about how to engage in new opportunities (counting the cost, committment, etc.) in relation to being YWAM in Ireland and looking around the island at places for new teams.

We’re excited for the future, and there’s a sense that God has good things in store for our YWAM community – especially good challenges and potential to do new things.

Check out more pictures from the YWAM Ireland event in Dublin in our photo gallery album.

Last week, most of the staff from YWAM N.I./Ireland met up for a time of praying, worshiping and hanging-out. Though we try to get together every month or two for similar reasons, the annual staff conference is when we go away somewhere together for a few days and dedicate the entirety of those days to refocusing ourselves as a national community. It’s usually a great time for reviewing the past year, sharing vision, and looking to the future. And it’s a lot of fun to be together.

This year, we didn’t have any speakers from outside our community come and share, as we usually do. Instead, Jonny Clark our national director shared a bit, as well as Renee and our colleague Erin Seibel. We also spent time praying for our focus nations (Serbia, Lebanon, South Africa, India, Rwanda, Burundi, Israel and Palestine) and welcomed a couple new staff.

One of the biggest themes that seemed to come up in our times of prayer and reflection was this idea of sharpening. God seemed to be saying that he wanted to make us, as a community and individually, sharper. We were challenged to look at some of the disappointments of the last year like sparks of metal being shaved off an axe by a metaphorical grindstone, with the goal of restoring the efficacy of that instrument. Renee also brought a story of farming – of planting and growing crops, then the devastation of violent rainstorms, and the farmer not questioning his calling to be a farmer, but replanting in faith and hope the next season.

I think this past season has had some hefty disappointments for the two of us. I feel like the last half-year has been the best part of my life, seeing as it’s been the only time I’ve been married, and being married has been great; but it’s also been one of the most difficult, especially in ministry. God did a lot in us during the latter parts of this summer, as far as rest and restoration goes, but he wants to do more.

Erin shared a word at our staff conference that she had for our organization that really struck me. She described the coast at low-tide when the water leaves all sorts of interesting tidbits exposed in its absence. In essence, this is a time of low-tide for our community, where we can see our mistakes and our triumphs, areas of failing and areas where we excel. This idea really connected with me because I’d physically experienced it a couple weeks ago, standing on the edge of the Irish sea in a little seaside village on the Ards Peninsula. I wrote in my journal:

Yesterday, I walked down to the beach front during a break in the rain to see the tide have taken the sea back a few hundred meters, leaving an apocalyptic landscape of human history exposed to the birds in its retreat. The previous day’s high tide had left frustrated little piles of seaweed and super-size bottles of alcopops (now vacated by their spirits) pushed up against the crumbling wall that marked a theoretical barrier between the seaside village and nature. Yet now, as I looked out at the sea, she seemed to have given up, sick of pushing back against civilization, and made a temporary escape eastward.
I climbed in her wake, over rocks and partially buried tires, past wilting dunes of sea weed peppered with feathers and deflated grocery bags, to an island crowned in lichen, thick with a beard of barnacles, where I stood and surveyed the evidence of my existence. The tide had revealed a no-mans-land of contrasting and indecisive features: the harsh beauty of beaten rock, the softness of sand, an abandoned and rusty lobster cage, a defeated orange flag, partially buried. And most of all, birds …

Pray for us, that we may love the Lord with all our hearts – He who challenges and comforts.

More photos from the staff conference in our photo galleries…