[Jim Stier : 불가능을 넘어서서] A Word From Fortaleza / YWAM.org Article Library

A Word From Fortaleza
God spoke to us about the importance of maintaining our core values, teachings, principles and unity in our diverse richness of vision.
By Jim Stier

(Image: Thousands saved: Impact World’s GC-Jam performs in a stadium in Fortaleza, Brazil)

How high are your hope levels? What are you expecting from God? Do you have a sense of hovering glory about to break loose?

The theme of our recent Global Leadership Consultation (GLC) in Fortaleza, Brazil was "Multiplying the Kingdom in the New Millennium." I think that’s what we will be doing and I have a feeling that God is up to something big. As in all promises, however, there are conditions to be fulfilled in order to enter into our potential.

God spoke to us about many subjects in Fortaleza. He highlighted the importance of living and maintaining our core values, teachings, and principles. He spoke strongly about unity in our diverse richness of vision. He called us to renewed holiness, obedience, and integrity in our lives. We were reminded to be thankful to one another rather than sinking into an attitude of retribution. Once again we were told that it’s our duty to provide equality of opportunity for women, young people, and people from the developing world.

The times of warfare to take possession of our inheritance were intense and powerful. God gave us special burdens for Africa, Australia, Asia, and China. The centrality of our relationship to God was heavily emphasized. Without Him we can do nothing.

As to vision, we felt reaffirmed in our practice of encouraging grassroots initiatives. We had more far more visions than delegates at the GLC! Much of our vitality and strength come from the room we give people to go after their dreams. However, some things did take on global stature during our meetings. We were invited by the Pacific and Asia leadership team to our international staff gathering, Olympic outreach, and to participate in a two-year emphasis on Asia. We noted a loading of vision towards the unreached in the written reporting. God powerfully admonished us not to forget Africa. Loren gave us a teaching on multiplying through training.

Meanwhile, mighty things were happening. Over 300 churches in Fortaleza used our meeting as a stimulus and united with YWAM to promote evangelism and missions in the city. All around us tens of thousands of people were getting saved and hundreds of pastors were making commitments to missions. This in itself was a clear word to our mission. The reason we have programs, courses, meetings, structures, etc., is to result in the transformation of people from darkness to light.

One of the most encouraging times of the week was when we heard from Luis Bush. He understands us so well and has such high expectations of us that it inspired everyone. We began, I think, to expect more of ourselves.
In 1960, YWAM started already different from other missions in some ways. We have continued to develop in a unique manner. Right now, roughly half of our mission force comes from the developing world. Our next president, Frank Naea, is a Samoan/Maori. We are following an organizational concept, the family of ministries, which seems to have few if any precedents. Throughout the consultation God encouraged us to be bold and accomplish our goals in new and creative ways.

I’m full of hope, and proud to be a part of YWAM. We have some problems, but we also represent a singular resource in the hands of God as we come up on the new millennium. It’s a portentous time to be alive. Let’s respond to God with wholehearted love, obeying His conditions and thus enabling Him to bless and use us to the maximum of our potential.

[Jim Stier : 불가능을 넘어서서] Asia and the Pacific / YWAM.org Article Library

Asia and the Pacific
I think God has wanted to do something different, something more organic, something closer to the true nature of things within YWAM.
By Jim Stier

The focus on the Pacific and Asia over the next two years has real potential to make a big impact on the 10/40 Window. Let’s do it with all of our heart from all over the world! I invite you and I challenge you to be a part.

Wouldn’t it be more efficient if we would just mandate involvement in reaching the unreached of Asia during this time?

On the surface it might seem so, but the fact is that we would pay a terrible price. We will never be able to re-deploy our mission force by decree from a central office somewhere unless we first change the whole nature of what we are.

As I’ve been reading some books about new discoveries in science, I’ve come across fractals. Initially, this was through a talk Winkey Pratney gave to the GLT, and I have followed this up with some reading. In nature, fractals are very common. These are structures like snowflakes, clouds, or ferns. All snowflakes look like each other, but no two are exactly the same. You can recognize a fern as a fern, whether you’re looking at the whole plant, a single branch, or a tiny little sub-branch.

What does "fern-ness" consist of? It turns out that you can express it in a precise and fairly simple mathematical formula. All ferns follow a pattern. They are clearly ferns, but no two bits are exactly the same.

I think YWAM is meant to be more a multiplication of fractals than a traditional organization.

Traditional western organizations are built according to the Newtonian world view. The model is the universe. It is seen as a giant, impersonal machine. Western institutions and forms of organization have come out of this basic approach.

It has never really fit YWAM. I think this is because God has wanted to do something different, something more organic, something closer to the true nature of things.

You can visit a YWAM base in Africa or South America, or Thailand, or India. You might not speak the language. You might not even see any physical item you have seen on any other YWAM base, or hear any music you have heard before. You will, however, immediately recognize that you are in a YWAM setting. What is it?

There’s something at the core of things which defines "YWAM-ness." I believe it consists of our values and principles.

In order to grow into something better, and this must be done or we grow stagnant and die, we must start at and strengthen the key values and principles at the root.

We must flood our mission with the values that lead to the unreached being a priority. If we can do this, the battle is won and practical results far beyond our normal expectation will result. People will go because they are convinced they must. They will be zealous, loving, and enthusiastic. Multiplication will take place simultaneously all over the world with all kinds of ministry expressions. We will release a dynamic life force which will be impossible to stop.

If we can’t do the job on the level of values and principles, nothing else will do much good. YWAM can look a lot like chaos, where each one does what is right in his or her own eyes. At the core there is order, though. There is someone bigger than ourselves directing this whole thing. I believe that we will get even better results through being faithful to our nature and working within that framework.

Even as I sit here writing I’m aware that God is calling individuals, bases, and ministries from all over the world to be in Sydney and to go from Sydney up through the Asian region. They are responding not because an international office has ordered it, but because they habitually respond to the Lord in obedience. It’s our way. It honors God. It works.

[Jim Stier : 불가능을 넘어서서] Don’t Stop Now / YWAM.org Article Library

Don’t Stop Now
Are we willing to commit to the next step that God wants us to take?
By Jim Stier

Our fortieth anniversary coincides with the beginning of a new millennium and the air is full of portents. Opportunity beckons, and expectancy is high. Mediocrity and disaster hover in the wings, and we can sense the prickle of danger. What are we going to do?

Are we willing to commit to the next step that God wants us to take? Will we embrace the danger of obedience as we have in the past, or will we settle for what we’ve already got?

I can clearly remember the sweaty palms and butterflies in my stomach when I sat down to sign a rent contract on a big house in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in February of 1976. Pam and I didn’t need such a big house. The rent was more than our total monthly support. How could I sign that contract?

Then again, how could I not sign it? We had felt from the beginning that God wanted us to mobilize and train Brazilians so they could be a part of reaching the world for Jesus. If we were to have them with us, we needed to have a big enough place, but as I sat there looking at that contract it surely seemed impossible.

Since we had gotten to Brazil, everyone, from expatriate missionaries to Brazilian Christians, had told us that what we wanted to do was unworkable. There wouldn’t be enough finances for it, and the Brazilian young people weren’t suited to this kind of life.

At that moment, all of those voices echoed through my brain. Were Pam and I embarking on a doomed endeavor? It would be so easy to just change course a little and do what was possible. I had started to get invitations to speak in churches. People liked us. Surely we could have a good personal ministry in Brazil. Our support had grown to a level where we could rent a little place for the two of us and work out of there, speaking, teaching and exhorting in a normal way. It seemed so tantalizing.

That wasn’t what God had defined as our inheritance, though. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants leg, gripped the pen, and signed the contract. I’m so glad that I did! Last month we had a national staff conference in Brazil and when we counted our workers there were over fifteen hundred. They are on all of the continents of the world preaching the gospel, planting churches, reaching unreached people groups, caring for the needy, establishing schools, succoring orphans, etc. What an inheritance!

When I risked everything to sign that contract in 1976 it really wasn’t so hard. ‘Everything’ didn’t amount to much. Will we do it now?

In Genesis 11, God calls Abram to leave and go to a land which he didn’t know. With Abram were his father and his nephew, Lot. According to verse 31, "they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan." On this long journey, Abram and Lot prospered, and finally the land couldn’t support them and all of their animals together. Their servants had started to fight over scarce resources, so Abram had a serious discussion with Lot.

Abram let Lot choose, and the Bible says that Lot saw the well-watered plain of the Jordan and chose to go there, while Abram proceeded to Canaan. It doesn’t seem like Lot did much wrong here. He had been traveling since he was a boy. He saw in the well-watered plain the prospect of comfort, security, prosperity and a better life for his family. He wasn’t going to abandon God. He was just going to move to Sodom. In 2 Peter 2:7, he is even described as a righteous man during his time in Sodom.

The trouble is, Sodom wasn’t meant to be Lot’s destination. It was just a stopping place along the way, and not his inheritance in God. It became a comfortable, secure, and prosperous alternative to the real plan of God for him. It looked like a reward for all of the years of wandering with Abraham, a deserved rest from risk and conflict. The result was corruption in his family and the loss of everything.

I think YWAM is at a similar crossroads. God is pointing towards Canaan. He doesn’t seem to really define what is there, so everything seems a little distant and not very clear. It’s risky to go on. Our battles up to this point have carved out a pretty good place to rest. We’re a big mission and can be proud of what the Lord has done through us. We have a lot of properties and ministries to take care of. Our reputation is at least as good as it has ever been. Will we put all of that on the line and commit to the next challenges, difficulties, and risks needed to move on to take our true inheritance?

Do we really need fifty thousand workers? Isn’t that a lot of trouble? Can we really disciple nations? What does that mean anyway? Do I have to multiply my ministry? Can’t I just be satisfied with taking care of what I already have?

In the answer to these questions and others like them we will determine whether or not we will go on to Canaan, or whether we will just settle for having been a pretty good mission.

We’re not there yet. We’re still east of the Jordan. We’ve subdued some kings, but the land is still unconquered. Will we turn aside like Lot, or will we press ahead like Joshua and Caleb finally did so many centuries later?

I believe we will move ahead. I believe the best is yet to come. We just need to believe and obey God and He will give us so much more than we have now.

[Jim Stier : 불가능을 넘어서서] Extending Ourselves / YWAM.org Article Library

Extending Ourselves
It seemed like a heavy burden for God to remind me of our obligations with the ends of the earth when we often didn’t know how we were going to eat or pay the bills.
By Jim Stier

I’m greatly encouraged by the response of YWAM to the challenge of the unreached over the last several years. We have bases and ministries all over the world who have adopted people groups. They have researched and know a lot about these groups. They talk about them. They pray for them. They carry them in their hearts.

Many have launched works amongst these peoples, and YWAM’s contribution to the completion of the Great Commission amongst the unreached has become significant. This is a source of great encouragement to me.
However, this is more a time for vigilance than for self-congratulation.

Most of our adoptions still seem to be at the level of the conversation my friend and I had recently about fishing. We have some memories. We have some testimonies. We have some warm feelings and expectations. In reality, though, we haven’t actually fished yet.

It would be a great tragedy if we were to stop here. The fish are still in the river.

Inertia will have a natural tendency to dampen our enthusiasm as we come up against the initial resistance. The early excitement dies down. It’s easy to get involved with new projects and forget the people group we adopted; to think that maybe prayer was enough.

Whatever ministry you are in, you must extend it to finally include adopting the unreached and whoever you adopt you must extend the adoption until you attain the Kingdom amongst them.

Recently I was with a group of enthusiastic young workers from Newcastle in Australia. They were full of excitement about what they are doing to reach their generation. It was so good to be with them and see their dynamism.

Then I asked them what plans they were making to extend what they were learning in Australia so that the unreached could profit. They were a bit perplexed at first because they had never really extended their thinking. They had done outreaches, but hadn’t thought of those as the beginnings of something permanent. The idea quickly caught their imagination, though. The energy and creativity of the ideas that flowed could only have come from a divine anointing.

In the LTSes which I run, we now ask every student to include in their project a projection of how their plans will finally impact the unreached. There is no implication that they should work in the 10/40 instead of fulfilling a vision closer to home. We must do both.

Years ago, at a moment of enormous difficulties in our Brazilian work, God gave me a word that it was too small a thing for us to reach Brazil. He wanted us to take His salvation to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:6). This had been the initial vision when we went to Brazil, but had been obscured in the midst of our struggle to survive and win souls in Brazil itself.

It seemed like a heavy burden for God to remind me of our obligations with the ends of the earth when we often didn’t know how we were going to eat or pay the bills. We took on the challenge, though, and now there are many Brazilians working amongst the unreached on every continent of the world.

A while ago, I was in a tough tennis match, and was getting pretty badly beaten. A friend who is a very good player watched for a while and then coached me. In my tense desire to survive in the match, I had frozen up a bit and stopped following through on my strokes. As a result, my balls were mostly going out, and I was getting massacred.

Let’s not make the same mistake in our adoption of people groups. Let’s follow through with confidence. We have started well so let’s not let anything hinder us in reaching the peoples of the earth with the gospel.

[Jim Stier : 불가능을 넘어서서] Values - Living with Freedom / YWAM.org Article Library

Values - Living with Freedom
Value Seven: Be Broad-Structured and Decentralized
By Jim Stier

     In 1975, early in my YWAM career and pretty early in YWAM's history, Pam and I were allowed to go to Brazil and begin our efforts to pioneer our mission there. I was 24 and she was 21.
     We weren't given a job description or told what to do, but we were given a rich foundation of teaching on the character of God and on the values this produces in our lives. We knew and trusted our leaders and had a good understanding of YWAM's general goals. We had received deep, practical teaching on how to get our guidance from God.
     With this foundation, decisions regarding details in our adaptation to the Brazilian reality were left to us. We tried to recruit and train people who could function under similar liberty in the context of healthy relationships, and who could take creative, effective initiative. There were many difficulties and setbacks, but now there are something like 1,500 Brazilians in YWAM.
     The broad structure and decentralized nature of YWAM is very effective as a strategic posture that produces innovation and initiative, but this value goes much deeper than that. It comes from the very nature of the Body of Christ.
     Jesus taught that wherever two or three are gathered together, He is present (Matt 18:20). He gives no hint whatsoever that a certain level of leadership is necessary to legitimize such a meeting. His teaching is very minimal, describing relationships that are horizontal and democratic. Any two or three believers can enjoy His presence, including His power, love, guidance, and the mind of Christ. Why can’t two or three make quality decisions according to His will? Must they have a headquarters that has to initiate everything or set narrow parameters? Of course not!
     Jesus cautioned us very strongly that we should not see leadership as the world does (Matt 23:10; Jn 13: 12-17, 1 Pet 5: 2,3). He gave this warning because there is something in mankind that wants to give the responsibility for decisions over to leadership. There is also something in leaders that finds such control over people seductive.
     It seems like Jesus' vision of leadership has nothing to do with authoritarian control and everything to do with the transmission of values, inspiration, motivation, and teaching. That's much harder than imposing control, but pursuing Biblical leadership is certainly worth the extra effort.
     The concept of the universal priesthood of believers (Rev 1:6) is behind our deep respect of people's freedom to pursue the dreams that God has given each one. It's so good to belong to a movement where such respect and freedom is guaranteed in our foundational values, within the protection of shared values and eldership.
     Most innovation happens in companies with 25 or fewer employees. With over 16,000 staff, YWAM can become a centralized monstrosity or it can continue to produce hundreds and thousands of free initiatives. We will fulfill the dreams that God has for us as a mission to the extent that we are able to release and support the enormous creativity and insight that will always be there in the people who God gives us. I believe that as we continue to set them free to seek His face, they will find thousands of ways to see His will done on earth as it is in heaven.

Jim Stier is YWAM’s Americas Field Director