Road to YWAM Part 2

My first ever exposure to YWAM came about when I was still a kid. My father's university roomie (for all four years at UofToronto), was Earl Pitts, who for many years was the director of YWAM Canada. Earl was also at the Performing Arts base that Wendy & I connected with in the late 80's. Our daughter Jo loved going there as a one-year-old because, unlike church, she could toddle up to the band and dance her little feet off, or at least until her diaper caused her to overbalance.

While pastoring in Victoria BC, two pastor friends and I started a youth pastors' prayer group, to pray for each other and for the difficulties of youth ministry. While we invited every youth pastor we had met, only six guys came. We became very tight relationally, and the group became not only a prayer group, but also an accountability group. And one of the six was Graham Jackson, director of YWAM Victoria.

Canada Day 1996: Victoria doesn't like having Christians doing anything publicly. They allowed the March For Jesus, which was a breakthrough of sorts, but it was still difficult to get permission or permits to do much in the local bandshells or other public performance areas.

I had created a performing entity called "Stark Raving Mad" which covered live performances by bands, drama teams, or whatever, who needed ways of getting into public places. Through Stark Raving, I was able to get all the proper permissions to hold a three-hour performance in Market Square, just a few blocks up the road from Victoria's Inner Harbour. With Graham Jackson's connections, we were able to bring three YWAM teams (Hawaiian, Vietnamese, and Maori) to perform cultural dances and war songs -- actually, spiritual warfare songs, although not in English. There were some significant gains made that day.

When we were pastoring in Los Angeles, our friend Norm Strauss called from Canada to say, "hey, I'll be in L.A. for a week. Put a band together for me, and we'll be leading worship in the Valley". Guess where it turned out to be? Of course: YWAM Los Angeles, for a Worship & Intercession DTS.

Wendy & I have had various copies of the "Go Manual" (directory of YWAM ministries and training bases) over the years, and we've often looked through them, wondering when & where we would be involved.

In the fall of 2003, while spending another year in seminary (upgrading my M.A. to an M.Div. so I could start my Doctor of Ministry with Len Sweet), I literally ran into Frank Naea in the student centre. Frank is a 6'3", 250 pound Maori guy, so running into him is something of an adventure in itself.

Despite being the main speaker at the missions conference, Frank had no-one to eat lunch with, so the two of us sat down together and I plied him with questions about YWAM.

I was pursuing a doctorate as a door-opener to teach at a Bible college or seminary, out of a desire to work with the next generation of leaders. And while I really enjoyed the times I was able to be a guest lecturer at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, the culture in the world of academia isn't really what puts the caffeine into my coffee, if you know what I mean. I love teaching, but to me, investing tons of time in getting papers published in obscure theological journals sounded like the ministerial equivalent of decaf.

When I was given the left foot of disfellowship from my denominational job last March, Wendy and I both had a very strong sense that, after over sixteen years, the time to join YWAM "officially" was NOW. So, after much prayer, we felt that we should move 2300 miles west to BC, and we arrived here last August, taking jobs wherever we could (St. Arbucks for me) to pay the bills until YWAM starts (tomorrow!).

So now we're back in the familiar territory of living by faith and praying for finances to come in. And we're really excited that the YWAM dream is finally starting to unfold for us; we've always been kinda nomadic and occasionally even risk-takers, so we're eager to see what God is going to have for us through this next transitional season at YWAM.

Stay tuned...