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

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…

Nonetheless, every year “the Twelfth” is commemorated in Northern Ireland with nationwide parades (starting after Easter but culminating on the Twelfth) and bonfires the night before. Many Protestants say the Twelfth is a celebration of their cultural history, but for other parts of the community (certainly Catholics), it’s an annual reminder and agitator of the communal divisions that still haunts this place. The symbols of celebration are often sectarian – such as the placement of Irish flags or a Papal effigy in the celebration fires – and the parade routes of the Protestant fraternities sometimes find their way into Catholic neighborhoods, occasionally sparking conflict.

On the news this year, officials were hinting at the possibility of marketing the Twelfth as some sort of tourist attraction. Certainly Twelfth-related riots are increasingly rare, and two years gone are the soldiers policing contentious parade routes under the mounted weapons of armored vehicles; however, folks traveling to gawk at a spectacle still steeped in tension may continue to seem a bit… uncomfortable, to say the least.

Having spent the previous evening indoors with the wife and not with some colleagues braving crowds for photos in Belfast, I arose on the morning of the Twelfth this year, forgetting which day I was greeting, and was somewhat surprised, when driving some folks that morning to the airport, to find myself driving at 2 miles per hour down a small country lane, directly into an oncoming parade. We’d been directed to that road by police advising us on how to avoid the parades scattered between the country villages, and to no one’s delight, instead turned up in the midst of one. It was an awkward situation: bowler-hatted Orangemen and a full flute band flowing over my bonnet and dousing us with percussion and knitted brows. I was driving through the bulk of them on a very skinny road, fighting a nervous smile. People were gracious, splitting at our bow and letting us through, and we were eventually on our way.

We weren’t out on the street this year to snap any photos for you, but some of our friends were. I would highly recommend you check out some of the sweet shots a colleague of ours (Heather) took of the bonfires and decorations from the Shankill in West Belfast a few nights ago and posted on her blog.

Thanks to Heather Clark at hebsclark.blogspot.com for use of the photo.

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.

Yesterday (which was Sunday), I decided that after a week of office work and little fires to put out, a short excursion into nearby nature would be exactly what I needed. So I seized some hours on a sunny morning just to refocus my mind and enjoy the environment (and hopefully learn a lesson: Let’s not forget that Jesus said ”the stones will cry out” even if we run out of praises (Luke 19:40). Nature is never short of good words.).

I took some pictures on the short hike up Slieve Croob which I hope you will enjoy (even playing a bit with the self-timer, as you may have noticed). The peak is about 534m and gives a great view of the Mourne Mountains and the coastline all the way up to Belfast, although the summit itself is actually littered with communications towers and the like. The trailhead is only a few miles away from Closkelt on the way to a village called Dromara.

         

I met up with Renee after a few days of separation at YWAM Amsterdam on Saturday the 29th of March. She had spent the past week with a group of others from various parts of YWAM Europe praying for YWAM, the leaders, and for the upcoming Western European Leadership Consultation (or WELC – I think this is the fi). That Monday, we traveled with a few friends from YWAM Northern Ireland two hours east by train to a small village called Delden near the Germany-Netherlands border. We were arriving for the WELC, unsure of what to expect (my previous experiences with YWAM gatherings outside of Northern Ireland, although very limited, is that they tend to be very enthusiastic and “Pentecostal-ish”; I’m not opposed to these adjectives, but I prefer them in small, evenly spaced doses).

I was very pleasantly surprised with the ‘consultation.’ Although the schedule was full, it wasn’t overwhelming according to YWAM conference tradition; although over 200 people were there from all over Western Europe, it felt somewhat more intimate (and 200 isn’t necessarily a whole lot either). Through the four days of the WELC, we had some lectures, talks, discussions, worship, interaction, prayer, and working groups (sort of like seminars with small group discussion and think-tanking). In our free-time, I enjoyed catching up with old YWAM acquaintances from other parts and hearing what was going on with them, as well as meeting new folks.

Most constructive, however, were the specific points we tried to cover during the consultation, either in lecture, discussion or our working groups. A lot of ideas were traded, and new thoughts voiced. Here’s an idea of some of what we discussed throughout the week:

• Update on what is happening with YWAM globally, YWAM in Western Europe
• Working together as a multi-generational YWAM (the Abraham, Isaac and Jacob generations), now that YWAM is 40+ years old with three generations of leaders.
• YWAM and the ancient traditions – exploring how YWAM can be a greater part of traditional denominations (especially the Catholic world in Western Europe)
• YWAM & the emerging church.
• Defining the word ‘base’ – What is a base? I highly recommend the wiki over at the YWAM Knowledge Base on the subject.
• Homosexuals in YWAM
• Pioneering new YWAM teams.
• Immigrants and asylum seekers, opportunities for YWAM to work in those communities.
• Do big bigger bases suck too many resources away from smaller bases?
• The church in exile – The role of missions in a post-Christian Europe. (Transcript/summary of Jonny Clark’s talk at the YWAM Knowledge Base)
• Risk taking.
• The 4k project, Omega Zones, and world evangelization (more at ywam4k.org).

And a lot more. -Mikael

Relevant links:

• The YWAM Knowledge Base Wiki has a category with summaries of all of the main talks and devotions given at the WELC ‘08. A lot of the points listed above are further explained at this link. A great resource.
• Sixteen photos are available from our time in the Netherlands and at the WELC in our photo galleries.
• Donovan Palmer’s blog – Donovan is the national director for YWAM England. He had a couple sweet posts on his blog regarding the WELC ‘08, the first one a great post about the WELC in general (here), and secondly a nice video blog interview with Stephe Mayers, YWAM’s regional leader for western Europe (here), which I highly recommend.

This time happens every year (except usually the newer school isn’t in Belfast for most of the week), and the results are often mixed–some days a collission, some days amounting to nothing more than happy story times. Best case scenario, the DTS staff hope that the students in the midst of their lecture phase are able to take a step outside their DTS bubble and breathe the fresh air of a bigger picture, seeing:

What is, has been already,
what will be, is already….(Ec. 2:15, NJB)

On the other hand, sometimes this meeting can be more like the aforementioned collision, especially when rules differ from school to school, or a particular team has had a hard outreach, or when the old school takes umbrage at the sudden population of familiar spaces by new people.

I think neither extremes were present with these past two weekends, and the experience was probably largely positive for both schools. Since the Jan. DTS was in Belfast for much of the week, the Oct. DTS was able to have some of their old space back for a while; both Oct. and Jan. DTSs are relatively small (9 & 14 students, respectively), so there was also plenty of room available for everyone.

And after a week of debriefing, our friends who just returned graduated amongst celebration, and nearly all will have boarded flights within the day’s end. But, for the others, the adventure continues.

Related posts:

Pray for our outreach team in Bosnia (26/02/08)

Related pictures:

            

Saint Paul writes to Timothy:

Across the hour we were there, we were able to spread out amongst the other participants and pray with them, coming before God on behalf of their country and their newly formed government. In groups, we were able to pray for all of the constituencies and their MLAs by name. We prayed that they would have the father and mother hearts of God in their leadership, a new step for a nation where many children are fatherless and the nation was fatherless without her own government for a number of years. The seven students in attendance (all of whose DTS outreach will be on the island) seemed to be greatly encouraged and able to connect with God’s heart for the nation.

(Note: no pictures were allowed inside the actual chamber where we met.)

Over the next few months, Transformations will be hosting two more such events at Stormont–once in April and once in June. Please visit the Transformations – Ireland website for more info about who they are, the Global Day of Prayer, and events that they’re hosting.

Thanks for your patience, and we hope that you’re able to enjoy the posted pictures. You can reference the post called Wedding and Honeymoon for more info on the whole experience.