So what does this mean?

We are no longer YWAM staff, though Mikael will continue to work for YWAM in Northern Ireland on a limited part-time basis. Both of us want to pursue developing our gifts in new ways over the next few years. Mikael is entering a three year undergraduate degree programme at Queen’s University in Belfast, and Renee is looking for work – hopefully in caring for adults with special needs, a field where she has prior experience.

We will appreciate your prayers for this new season. We continue to remain committed to seeing justice and mercy for the downtrodden and outcast through living the values of the Kingdom of Christ. Our life in missions isn’t over; this is simply a new chapter.

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)

The Discipleship Training School (DTS) started just over a week ago now, with 21 trainees from America, Canada, Germany, England, New Zealand, Israel, and South Africa. After the new year, we have felt like we’ve really hit the ground running – first in terms of preparation and continuing staff training, and now in all the little details of organising a group this size for activities, housing, food, ministry, etc. We’re glad for Saturdays like this one where we can take time to just breathe and be with each other.

The experience of staffing a DTS in Belfast is new for us and offers some unique opportunities and challenges. The variety of ministry possibilities for the DTS is abundant, and hosting the DTS on the Shankill Road (where we live) connects the trainees directly to a lifestyle of outreach, where we live in the same places as the poor, addicted, and bereaved. As you may know, we don’t have a central ‘base’ in Belfast, and our staff are housed in various flats in the Shankill area, and the trainees are in two different houses about a 15 min. walk apart. Our lecture space is rented from a local church. The challenges, therefore, that are most different than in Closkelt are in managing the community aspect of DTS. We think it’s going quite well, but it’s a lot of work to get meals organised and have people show up at the same place at the same time.

Our DTS staff team are these people: Jonny Clark, the Belfast and Ireland director, is leading the DTS; Mikael is assistant leading with Jonny (as he is also busy with other responsibilities); Renee is staffing and helping train the new staff; Rob is a pastor of many vocations – from prison chaplain to hospital chaplain – and is staffing a first DTS after many years in ministry; Stephanie is a talented artist and graphic designer staffing her first DTS; Bless is helping with the DTS part-time after moving with her husband and son from Thailand where she is from and has been with YWAM for many years. Other YWAM Belfast staff are helping when possible.

The group is strong and talented, but we are a bit stretched after one of our DTS staff had to return home suddenly the day the DTS started.

Yesterday, we announced that our outreach phase locations will be 1. Ireland & South Africa combo and 2. Ireland, Israel & Palestine combo. The trainees have until Tuesday to pray about where they feel they should go, and then we will form the teams.

Locally, Renee and Steph are leading a small group which will be doing children’s ministry in a school on the Shankill and with a church working in a socially deprived area across town. Mikael is leading a small group that will be working in the Feed Cafe on the Shankill doing ministry from there, as well as ministry around town (the group is quite musical, and we’re excited to get them involved in open mics, etc.). Jonny and Rob’s small group will be working with teenagers.

We appreciate your prayers very much.

If you want to stay better updated, you can:

• Follow us on Twitter for insights into our daily life.
• Follow YWAM Ireland on Twitter , where insights and pictures from DTS activities are often posted.

(Someone actually gave Mikael a Blackberry phone before Christmas – quite an upgrade from a phone that was just a phone. After a month of figuring out how it works, he’s trying to use it to communicate while on the go – such as posting pictures from lectures this week via Twitter).

Ok. Enough words.

Thanks for all your love.

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

‘Redemption & Reconciliation: Heart of Christian Worldview’ Peter Adams from YWAM Ireland on Vimeo.

We were about twenty five people that week, meeting in a couple different locations on the Shankill in Belfast. Usually, this annual conference is held in the summer, so our group was perhaps not as diverse as normal, since most people would be busy during the weekdays in November. However, we were a nice combination of YWAM Belfast staff and volunteers, YWAM Harpenden School of Humanities, and Sword of the Sprit gap-year volunteers. In all, we represented the nations of England, New Zealand, USA, Rwanda, Cameroon, Turkmenistan, Norway, Central African Republic, Lebanon, the Netherlands, and Ireland. A good mix, anyways.

Jonny Clark (Director, YWAM Ireland & YWAM Belfast) led us through a brief but meaningful examination of Irish history to set a practical context for our surroundings and the teaching we would have. Our primary guest speaker was Peter Adams (http://www.reconciliationtalk.com), who is involved in reconciliation work in England and overseas. He spoke at length about peacemaking as part of the Christian mission, as well as God’s plan for the reconciliation of all things, and how we participate in that – in relating to people and in speaking about Jesus. He used many stories about his work in Luton (England) with the Muslim community and his work in places like China and the Middle East.

In the afternoons, there were field-trips to community projects around Belfast to see how various groups engaged with the needs of this city. The purpose of these outings were to inspire and spark ideas, as well as connect the teaching with practical application.

[The video at the top was taken at the conference, and I pieced it together from a 75-min talk Peter Adams presented on God's plan of ultimate redemption for all of creation and our call to participate in it (Vimeo - about 30 min.).]

Peter’s blog: reconciliationtalk.com

Last week, the January DTS finished their three-month Lecture Phase, and today, two teams of seven (six students and one staff each) are leaving for two months of outreach: one team to India, and one around Ireland. They will return at the beginning of July for a week of debrief before their DTS officially ends.

The Ireland team is lead by Sharayah Prowse (of Canada) who will also be working closely with some YWAM staff in Belfast. For a majority of their outreach, the team will be in Belfast, living on the Shankill in the YWAM Belfast offices, working across sectarian divides in largely working class communities. During the weeks, they will be working with the Forgiveness Programme, bringing workshops on forgiveness to youth of all ages in segregated neighborhoods and schools, and helping out in a YWAM outreach cafe on the Shankill Road. The team will also be doing youth outreach in Kesh, Co. Fermanagh, as well as outreach in conjunction with Summer Madness (Ireland’s biggest Christian youth festival) in Belfast and the Urban Soul street outreach in Dublin.

The India team is lead by Francis Khamanra (of Sierra Leone), who will be teaming up with a variety of YWAM and non-YWAM ministry contacts across India. They will arrive tomorrow in New Delhi, where they will meet up with a DTS team from Belfast for a week and orient themselves to a new environment, before heading off to Calcutta for two weeks. In Calcutta, the team are ministering in local churches, as well as participating in outreaches to homeless, widows, and orphans. Similarly, they will also work in local churches in Varanasi, where they will be for three weeks, also offering practical assistance to local missionaries and helping with evangelism in surrounding villages. The team will also be working with colleagues in Greater Norda.

Our desire for these next two months is not only that these teams, through partnership with long-term contacts, will be able to impact their nations for Jesus, but furthermore, that the participants in these outreaches will be changed to live long-term missional lives. The purpose of a DTS is not a one-off fulfill-my-commitment-to-Jesus time of missions service, but rather a time to lay foundations for a life of dedication to the Great Commission. Having spent three months in lectures and Christian community, only applying that time of learning to the needs of a world that ‘groans’ for a new existence (Rom. 8:22) will make it more than just personal theory. We pray that this experience will be transformational for all that are involved.

Related blog content:

• Renee and I will be visiting the team for two weeks while they are in Varanasi. Read about our pastoral visit plans.
• Pictures from the final days of this DTS’s Lecture Phase are available in our photo gallery.