YWAM & Church Planting
Our primary objectives in Frontier Missions must be defined in terms of the desired results. Whatever the processes or strategies we use to pursue those primary objectives, (and I’m in favor of using a lot of them) we still must reach the goal. No matter how we get into a place or what ministry we’re concentrating on, if the end result doesn’t include churches, then we’ve failed.
In the defining of the goal, some might want to go beyond the implantation of churches to a fuller expressions of the Kingdom in a society. That’s OK, but I can’t see anything further ever happening if the Church isn’t first planted and multiplies amongst a people. Certainly the state of “unreachedness” (how is that for a word?) would end long before all of the sectors of a society are discipled.
If we were to minister for years in a people group, showing a lot of love and meeting a lot of needs, but failing to plant and structure churches, then our work will end when we leave and that people continue to be unreached and on their way to Hell. I don’t think that they will thank us for that on judgment day.
I believe that we need to be very inclusive and creative as to processes, and very focused and unyielding with regards to objectives.
-James Stier, YWAM International Chairman, 23 August 1995
I know of nobody in the University of the Nations International leadership who does not believe that evangelism, saturation church planting and frontier missions are our first and most urgent priorities, and the critical foundations for any discipling-nations movement. There is no Biblical or historical or practical basis for discipling a nation, except through first evangelizing it and working toward a strong and vigorous national church.
-Tom Bloomer, Leader of U of N in Europe, Middle East and Africa, March 1998
It is not enough to do evangelism or to plant a single congregation. We have not done our job unless a movement of fully indigenous, mission-minded, multiplying churches is planted in a people group. Then they can evangelize their own people, city or nation.
Floyd McClung, former YWAM International Executive Director, Late 1980’s
From “GUIDING PRINCIPLES: Multiplying Churches Among The Unreached”, a publication prepared by Kevin Sutter, YWAM CP Coaches.
YWAM began with a vision. Loren saw waves of young people who advanced in stages, and eventually covered the whole earth. Not only did God give us our own specific revelation on reaching the whole world, but the universal call for God’s people to bless every nation on earth is emphasized throughout the Bible. Therefore, the drive to reach every people is both our Biblical responsibility, and inherent in our earliest roots as a mission, permeating our corporate calling.
YWAM’s Commitment to Reach All Peoples – March 17, 1995 – Einigen, Switzerland
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