As many of you know, I have spent most of the previous 18 months in Kona, Hawaii, staffing discipleship schools with Youth With A Mission — or YWAM for short. YWAM is an evangelical Christian ministry devoted to spreading the gospel, spiritual mentorship and practical training. My work with this ministry has included leading or co-leading oversees trips to Uganda and Panama. Now, for an indefinite period, I’m stepping back from discipleship schools to focus on four projects that could potentially have larger ripple effects than anything I’ve done in ministry before.
First, I will be helping get the word out about ministries I’ve interfaced with in the past. Up until last fall, my previous experience with YWAM in Kona had exclusively been with Voice for the Voiceless/PhotogenX. In addition to discipleship, this ministry’s focus is training “media missionaries” with the skills needed to document important humanitarian causes through photography and videography. It has used these means to spotlight people around the world who are working on behalf of these causes. In the coming months, I will work to expand the audience for these pieces to help worthy ministries request the financial support and recruit the manpower that they need.
Second, I plan to increase my evangelistic efforts around the city of Kona. This is a very spiritual city, but not in a good way. Rastafarianism and New Age worldviews are prevalent here. I am challenging myself to initiate 15 Gospel conversations per week. In the previous month, I had stepped up my efforts to share the Gospel here. Now that my full-time discipleship duties are behind me, I hope to take more initiative and be more bold in sharing the Gospel.
Third, I will be writing a book. That’s not something I ever thought I’d do. I’m a journalist by training, and we typically have short attention spans — we’re excited about a topic for as long as it takes to write a 500- to 1,000-word article. But this book will be on a topic that I’m very passionate about: The importance of Christian fellowship to the spiritual-maturation process. And this project will require me to spend a lot of time reading the Bible, which is also something I’m passionate about. Pray that I’m able to complete this book in no more than six months.
Last (but not least) I will be working with one of the elder statesmen of YWAM. He is a dynamic teacher of the Bible and evangelism and someone who I respect as much as any other teacher in the Body of Christ. I will be helping him with some writing projects, doing a little gofer work and we’ll also hit the streets to evangelize together. It is a privilege to partner with him.
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