Most YWAMers today would not have recognized YWAM in 1964, the year of our first big outreach to the Caribbean. We mostly came from one nation and one denomination. We guys wore white shirts, dark slacks and skinny ties; the gals wore dresses below the knees with long sleeves.
Loren Cunningham would often call me up during our public meetings to mobilize young people into missions, and introduce me by asking me where I was born. "China," I would routinely answer. "China!" he would exclaim. He would go on to explain that I was a Russian born in China, living in the USA and now working in the Caribbean. In those days, that was the extent of our being international. I'm being a bit facetious here, but you get the point.
Bob Dylan was singing, "The times they are a changing," and the Beatles were luring thousands of our baby boom generation eastward in search of what they called "truth and freedom." The jet age was beginning…and in the midst of all of this, Jesus showed up. In the late 60s and early 70s, the "Jesus Revolution" began as thousands of young people came to know Jesus.
The times also changed for YWAM as we suddenly exploded in the South Pacific, and all over Europe YWAM communities were pioneered as God provided the housing we needed in old hotels, crumbling castles and canal boats. We suddenly found ourselves living in community with young people from many different cultures. Nationalities and denominational borders disappeared. We were Lutheran Norwegians, Austrian Charismatic Catholics, Dutch Reformed, American Baptists, and together we discovered a dynamic in life that could only be described as a touch of heaven.
As fun as it was to grow from sharing each others' cultures, the diversity in giftings was really the awesome thing. In the mid 70s, my family and I lived in one of those old hotels in the Alps in Austria. From our perch on the mountain, we could look down and on a clear day see beyond the "Iron Curtain" that separated us from the Slavic nations that God had called us to. We never would have made the breakthroughs we had into Eastern Europe without the quiet perseverance of the Finns, who long before we came along had a burden for their Russian neighbors, and the determination of the Dutch who taught us how to build for the long term. We began to see a new culture, a blending of all the good things each of us brought, a kingdom culture.
What made it all work was there was no putting down each other's cultures or denominations. There was an appreciation of the good in each; learning and adapting to those positive things made us strong. We discovered from God's Word and from discovering the strengths in each other, that He made the nations, He loves each one, and one day each nation will stand before Him in the beauty of what makes them unique. We had the privilege of experiencing a taste of that as we lived and worked together.
Since then, we have gone even further a field. We continue to live and work in international and interdenominational teams all over the world, growing together and reflecting more and more of who God is to the nations. We have discovered new aspects of His character and ways reflected in the music and dance of many nations, and seen God powerfully affirm the identity and destiny of a people through cultural presentations of the gospel. I have watched Native Americans awakened to the beauty of their culture as Pacific Islanders minister to them through Island Breeze, our YWAM South Pacific culture ministry team.
Recently I was recruiting in Norway with a group of Koryaks, a nomadic people who herd reindeer on the tundra up in Kamchatka, Russia [see photo]. Only fifteen years ago, there were no believing Koryaks. Their music and dance is very different from ours, but tears well up in many eyes as they portray how God has come to them and how they are now free to soar with eagles. They wear reindeer fur and feathers; instead of a skinny tie they wear a bear claw on a leather string. I don't know what denomination they are; all I know, and all that matters, is they are YWAMers and I'm proud to serve with them.
--Al Akimoff is YWAM's international director of Slavic Ministries
'International YWAMer Magazine', February - May 2007
