Helping YWAMers Leave
Why it makes sense to make a family investment
--by Peter Jordan

YWAMers, relax. It's not about money. This is about our most precious resource: the people with whom we are entrusted--our staff, our students and our shorter-termers. This is about valuing, cultivating, nurturing, honoring, blessing, thanking and protecting those natural resources--the people we work with and the ones who leave us. This is about our family.

From Day One, our starry-eyed, newly-called YWAMer is bombarded with the "R" word—relationship--with God and with all others; that's the message pounded home in DTS and in all varieties of short-term service. For most who join us, this is a welcome and sometimes brand-new emphasis on what it really means to journey well with Jesus--and the people we meet and know. It's easy to imagine a new DTSer thinking, "At last I'm in a safe place where people love each other, trust each other and are committed and accountable to each other. This feels like family."

And so the day approaches when our now less-starry-eyed, maybe not-so-called and soon-to-graduate student must make a decision: stay on with YWAM in some capacity, or return home? As we all know, the vast majority chooses the latter.

(Why is this, when we know the job is great and the workers are few? Are we becoming fussy and elitist? Back when I joined YWAM, we laid claim to every warm body that managed to scrape through DTS. We were needy and we knew it. Take a look today at some of those early trophies of God's grace, who joined us--not to mention the faith and persistence of some of those leaders back then who took risks, even with people like me! Take a look today at the ones who wanted to stay, but who got away because we made no room for them. But I digress.)

After the Airplane

People go home--preferably in the will of God--some of whom are staff, having faithfully served for many years; others are graduating from a DTS or other school; and then there are the thousands who leave after being impacted by a few days or weeks in a YWAM setting. God entrusted them to us to mentor them for His kingdom purposes. My burning question therefore is, "Do we value these folks as a resource--after they get on the airplane?" Remember now, I said this is not about money. It's about family.

The experience of the majority who leave YWAM, including long-term staff, is that there is not much effort expended by the former home base in maintaining a relationship, a relationship that in all likelihood went deep. I heard from one young woman who had been on staff at a large base for several years, who sensed the Lord directing her to take an IBC in another country before returning to her ministry position in YWAM. She felt like the Lord wanted her to go home for a year to earn the money for the school, so she did, and then went on to the IBC. During the year she was preparing for the school, she had one communication >from her home base: an invoice for staff fees. And that proved to be an accounting error. Can you imagine how valued she felt?

That sort of message says loud and clear that we may be valuing our workers and those who leave us, for what they can do to fulfill our vision and ministry; rather than by using our vision and ministry to fulfill them and release them into their calling. When we fail to maintain relationships, people can end up feeling used, abandoned and even rejected. Clearly, it's a major effort to stay in touch with your alumni family, but the rewards are well worth it.

Why It's Worth It

Here are two reasons to maintain these relationships.

1. It's the right thing to do. Read Romans 16, and virtually the last chapter of any of Paul's epistles, and you'll see a man who valued the personal relationships of those he worked with and stayed with on his outreaches. He wrote to them because he loved them, because they were his family, even though he'd never see most of them again.
2. Those who leave YWAM should be our greatest resource for the furtherance of missions in general, and YWAM in particular. We all know that word-of-mouth is the very best of all advertising methods. Each one who leaves us should be a "Missionary for Missions" within their local church and their other spheres of influence.
   
   

A current YWAMer (Bryan Bishop, editor of this magazine) who left the mission for seven years after his DTS told me, "I had a lot of encouraging experiences after YWAM, but I also found it odd that I never heard from YWAM again after I left." He went on to say that upon graduating, "my college seemed to employ the FBI to track down my every movement so they could send me junk mail wherever I went."

We don't want to send junk mail to anyone, but I believe all real relationships that we are entrusted with in this life are valuable and worth maintaining. It's not about trying to build and preserve a "cult-family" that must rely on us forever for spiritual sustenance. It's just that real families communicate and always "belong."

The Local Role

We in YWAM Associates International understand that we are a generic ministry of the mission, and we try to represent all of YWAM; we used to have regular contact through inTouch, our printed magazine (since 2005, we've been waiting for God to raise up a new editor) mailed to approximately 35,000 of our family who have served worldwide. In case you think that's a lot of people, it represents only about one percent of those who are "out there." We now email 5,000 of them monthly, and we hold week-long inTouch Renewal Gatherings in eight or nine countries a year; these are "alumni reunion holidays," with YWAM speakers and are usually held on YWAM bases. In the last 14 years we have hosted more than 150 of these Gatherings in 15 nations.

While YWAM Associates, and Global Target Network—another YWAM alumni ministry—are both broad in scope, a local ministry has the potential, and is in a better place, to maintain and cherish personal relationships with those who have served and gone on. It's a matter of priorities, but the benefits are huge. And it's not about money. It's about love, gratitude and a recognition that family relationships do not end when someone leaves us, and that it is our desire that missions would be a significant part of the warp and weave of the fabric of their lives, whether they're in or out of YWAM.

Questions for Leaders
As a parting shot, here are some hard questions for us YWAMers – especially leaders:

• Do you perceive--and treat--those in your ministry as family?
  
• Do you know what it is like to leave YWAM (not expecting to return)?
  
• Do you know about the challenges of re-entry?
  
• Do you make every effort to prepare your staff, students and others for re-entry? (Especially your long-term staff, who have given you the most.)
  
• Do you thank and bless every person who leaves your ministry? (Yes, even the rebels and troublemakers. You might say, "Why would I bless a rebel?" Answer: so that they might see the mercy and goodness of God in you. And besides, they're family. Would you dump one of your own kids?) You might be surprised at the number of people who leave YWAM with no sense of having been thanked, let alone being blessed.
  
  

If you're a YWAM leader, and you want to maintain this family relationship with the ones who have served you, I would encourage you to do three things:

1. Determine you're in it for the long haul (this is about money – out of your budget!)
   
2. Ask the Lord (and your staff), for someone to carry this ministry; someone with the 3Cs: a Caring heart, Commitment to the task and Communication skills.
   
3. Along with all other aspects of member care (not dealt with here), be sure to help make people's transition out of YWAM as smooth as possible--especially for your staff, the ones who have given the most.
   

It's not my intention to be critical with any of this. My YWAM tribe, for which I am eternally grateful, salvaged me from a life of spiritual indifference. Of course, it was the Lord who did it, but the YWAM family provided the home setting in which God really got to start His ongoing work in me.

--Peter Jordan and his wife Donna direct the ministry of YWAM Associates. To sign up for their eTouch newsletter, visit www.ywamassociates.com or e-mail info@ywamassociates.com. For more on Global Target Network, visit www.globaltargetnetwork.com.