It has always been in my heart… something about God and people. I never fully understood what it all meant until after I graduated High School.
In 1996 I moved to Kailua-Kona, Hawaii and attended a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM), an international missions organization my family had served with in the mid to late 80′s. This school changed my life forever and set me on a path I never would have expected to be on. It marked the beginning of a journey that I am still on today.
From my DTS in January 1996 to August 2003 I served as a full-time volunteer with YWAM/University of the Nations in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii . My specific area of focus was the discipleship of young adults from all over the world. Those 7 years of service proved to be transformational for me spiritually and mentally. After staffing 6 Discipleship Training Schools, leading 6 missions trips to Central and Southeast Asia, and establishing University of the Nation’s first Kona DTS Alumni Department, I began to realize that I was ruined. I had become ruined for the ordinary. I had tasted something so rich and fulfilling. There was nothing less that would compare, a lifestyle of dependency on God alone. A life based on letting go rather than holding on, something that challenges logic and understanding and begs to call on faith to guide my steps. The crazy concept, turned reality, that I have been given an invitation, an opportunity, to know my God intimately and personally and a commission to then make Him known on a worldwide scale!
Staffing DTSes and leading mission trips opened many doors of opportunity and experience. Evangelism, church planting, community development, and mercy ministry were several areas of ministry I would be involved in year after year, but discipleship was my passion. From this passion came a desire to see ongoing discipleship in the student’s lives. Discipleship that was not limited to the span of a 6-month school. The kind of discipleship that was so effectively exampled by Paul throughout the New Testament.
In 1999 steps were made to see this desire manifest and the Kona DTS Alumni Department was established. From its conception in 1999 until it’s merge with YWAMConnect.net in 2004 we connected with over 1500 Kona DTS alumni through quarterly newsletters, an alumni focused website, and annual alumni tours reaching Europe and North America.
As effective as the Kona DTS Alumni Dept. may have been, it was only a forerunner for so much more. It was the spark before the flame, and the flame to illuminate a greater need for continued discipleship, not only in the lives of DTS students in Kona, Hawaii, but for YWAM as a whole and possibly beyond. This is where I find myself today, with questions that demand answers and answers that command a response.
In June 2005 I joined a team of pioneers to help establish a new Youth With A Mission campus in Ozark, Arkansas. My specific area of involvement was the development of the Discipleship Training School. For me, it was an opportunity to implement the vision of “continued discipleship” into the foundations of a YWAM campus and DTS department. My goal was to create an alumni focused discipleship program, rather than a student focused school.
In 2006, we successfully ran our first DTS including an extended 3-month commitment from the school staff to continue intentional discipleship in the students lives. We saw 100% of the students making resolutions to return to the mission field!
After the DTS, I began developing a framework for the YWAM Ozarks DTS Department, with hope that it will remain alumni focused, running Discipleship Training Schools that implement the vision of continued discipleship.
Currently I am beginning work on the bigger picture of discipleship within YWAM as it relates to YWAM Alumni, students, and staff, with hopes that it will move beyond the borders of YWAM and into the mission field world wide.
