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.

Amongst continuing to paint and patch our new apartment, the two of us are enjoying getting back into the fray of what’s happening within YWAM Northern Ireland and the YWAM Closkelt DTS programme. We will be joining a team of five others as a base leadership and management team to represent the different ministries and needs in planning for YWAM Closkelt’s future. We’re also feeling out our role in the Discpleship Training programme and are busy, this week especially, meeting with past and present DTS staff and gathering ideas and experience. For now, we’re taking an active role in the support and development of the January DTS staff and their school, all DTS related administration and communication duties (emails to speakers, student registration, etc.), and also taking steps to present and develop new initiatives and structure to evaluate and preserve experience from past, present, and future schools.

Next week will be a particularly intense period of DTS staff training, so we will appreciate your prayers. We will be involved in that process as well; in fact, our main involvement with this school will be from a position of accountability and development of the staff. We’ll be helping and guiding them throughout the school in their interaction and leadership of the students, in addition to preparing them for outreach. Renee will actually be in the classroom for at least the first month, modeling staff leadership and offering input. (For clarification: we’re not leading the January DTS; it’s being lead by a colleague called Jessica (from Montana, USA), and staffed by Cheryl (USA), Sharayah (Canada), and Francis (Sierra Leone), as well as some one-on-one discipleship help from other staff. These individuals’ ministry will be to the students; our primary ministry will be to them, though both of us are taking one student for one-on-one discipleship.)

The January 2008 DTS starts on the 28th of January.