There is a value that has always been part of our YWAM ethos, but to my understanding is not adequately covered in the current 18 values. It has to do with YWAM’s relationship with the broader Body of Christ.
Although Loren Cunningham himself came from a Pentecostal background, he established YWAM to be open to all confessing Jesus as Lord, whatever church background.
YWAMers therefore come from all sorts of churches: Pentecostal and Charismatic, to Evangelical and mainstream Protestant, as well as Catholic and Orthodox. Many YWAMers are prayerfully, faithfully and financially supported by these churches. YWAM is not called to work independently from the broader body of Christ, whether local churches or other mission organizations. We are called to work in a healthy interdependence. Paul writes to the Colossians (2:2) about the body of Christ being ‘knitted together’ in love. From the earliest days of YWAM, we have engaged in promoting unity among the various streams in the Body, often quoting the saying popular among the Moravians: ‘In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, diversity; in all things, charity’. For over six decades now, YWAMers have taught in church seminars, worship services, workshops and conferences about prayer and intercession, praise and worship, forgiveness and reconciliation, marriage and family, evangelism and church planting, gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, worldview and spheres, promoting the renewal of Biblical practices in local church life. YWAMers are constantly speaking in church gatherings about the task of reaching the ‘least, the last and the lost’, sharing from their own expanded horizons to challenge others, particularly the youth, to engage in missions. We often talk about a calling in YWAM to ‘convene and converge’, drawing other members of the Body of Christ together for concerted prayer and collaborative strategizing. Our ability to do so depends on the relationships our leaders have with other leaders in the Body of Christ. We do this at the local, national and global levels. So, should we not then articulate what we have been doing all these decades as one of our YWAM values?
In the YWAM Core Beliefs there is the following statement: “Fellowship: We are called to commit to the Church in both its local nurturing expression and its mobile multiplying expression”. What exactly ‘commit to the Church’ means is not spelt out. Dean Sherman, one of our early YWAM pioneers, once said: ‘the day YWAM stops listening to the body of Christ is the day I leave YWAM’. We need to be actively seeking accountability with church leadership at all levels, allowing our own blind spots to be exposed. By definition, we cannot see our own blind spots. We need the protection of those with perspectives from outside our own sub-culture to bring correction where needed. So, after sharing these thoughts with former and present senior YWAM leaders in Europe and some members of the Founders Circle, I proposed at the recent European Leaders Gathering in Albania that we add following value to our current list of 18, for regular reflection and application:
Value 19: YWAM seeks to promote unity, renewal, mission vision, collaboration and accountability with the body of Christ locally, nationally and globally.
This need for us to articulate this value was underscored last March when we had quite an historic event for YWAM The Netherlands. We held a full-day symposium on YWAM’s legacy on church and mission after 50 years in Holland. Although it was about YWAM, it was held under the auspices of the Dutch Evangelical Alliance (MissieNederland), and on the facilities of the Christian University of Applied Science in Ede. So it was a healthy exercise to be evaluated by non-YWAMers, a sort of external audit, including three professors, one of whom with DTS experience in NZ. About 20 speakers contributed, some with YWAM experience, but most were observers from outside. One takeaway at the end of the day was: while YWAMers may well be ‘out-of-the-box’ thinkers, would it not be healthy if they were encouraged to think occasionally outside the YWAM-box? The YWAM NL chairperson, Johannes Woudstra, presented the current 18 YWAM values to begin the day; yet as the symposium progressed, one value emerged that seemed to be missing from our official list, concerningour relationship with the broader body of Christ. Articulating this value would encourage periodic evaluation of our relationship with the Body of Christ at each level. What do you think?