YWAM
Training Youth for Missions
Is it possible for a young man or woman with a sketchy knowledge of a language to make a difference for Jesus white in a foreign country for just a few months?
Duff Rowden, of Youth With A Mission's Discipleship Training School at the U.S. Center for World Mission, thinks that it is.
For example, it doesn't take very much linguistic skill to pass out Spanish Bibles in Mexico or Russian Bibles in the Soviet Union, just enough to say a few encouraging words to believers and be able to carry on a polite, if limited, conversation with others.
As Christians, Rowden said, we often make it too difficult for people to become involved in missionary work by requiring they raise $1, 200 monthly support and having a master's degree.
The graduates of the Pasadena school will go to Mexico when they finish their training. Another group is headed for Siberia.
The discipleship schools are designed primarily to teach students to be committed to God to get their theology from their head to their heart, as Rowden puts it. When they come out of training, he said, they are eager to give themselves into God's service.
Although he said there are no firm statistics, he "guestimated" that about 25 percent of the graduates go on from YWAM to become involved in missions through regular mission agencies or churches. Many othes, he added, return to their churches and work there to promote missions.
Although language is not stressed in the Discipleship Training Schools, it is stressed in YWAM's special ministries. For instance, its Slavic Training School focuses intensively on Russian language, culture, history and methods of evangelism among Slavic people.
The group is innovative in its approach to the great commission.
For instance, YWAM has recently bought a 550 foot ship docked in Greece, the "Anastasis" (Resurrection), which has facilities for refugee work, a hospital, and classrooms for teaching teams as it sails around the world.
Sharing the Gospel with puppets
Puppets are another innovation, added.
The little entertainers are very The puppeteers played at the difficult to resist, Rowden said, U.S. Center for World Mission's and can easily be used to pass weekly Thursday night meeting on along the message of Christ. June 5. That weekly meeting, The puppets are similar to the incidently, is open to all. It is Muppets on the Muppet Show, and held at 7:00 in the main auditorium have been used by the group to at William Carey International present Christ in parks, public University at 1539 E. Howard St. schools, county jails, shopping If you are interested in the malls, ice cream stores, and just' ministries of Youth With A Mission, about anywhere people gather. write to: YWAM, Solvang, CA They always draw a crowd, he 93463.
ANFM Literacy Course Begins
Sixty percent of this world's inhabitants have never heard a clear presentation of the glorious message of Jesus and His love. Hundreds of millions of these same people are unable to read the precious Word of Christ, for no one has ever taught them to read. Hundreds of thousands of villages in Africa and Asia are totally illiterate or very nearly so. More than ninety percent of the inhabitants of many countries are blind to the printed page.
Literacy is the key to the scriptures, and to letting the Word of Christ dwell in us richly, to living the Christian life, to teaching His Word diligently to our children, and to effectively witnessing for Christ. Yes, literacy is the key to holding fast to the faithful Word and to holding forth the Word of Life in this sindarkened world.
Political leaders realize that literacy is the key to social and economic development, so literacy. workers are often welcome in lands otherwise closed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Thus in many ways literacy is the key to the furtherance of the Gospel, the key to exalting Christ, the key to declaring His glory among the nations and His wonder among all people.
ALL NATIONS FRONTIER MISSIONS, with headquarters on the campus of the US Center for World Mission, specializes in literacy work and in training national writers. ANFM is sponsoring a two hour literacy course this summer, July 21 to August 15.
If you are planning to work in a preliterate society, this course would be excellent preparation. Emphasis will be upon primer construction, but attention will also be given to motivation, prereading, writing a teacher's manual, training teachers, and conducting a literacy campaign.
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