YWAM International History
When Youth With A Mission was founded in 1960 in North America, the focus was to get youth into short-term mission work and to give them opportunities to reach out in Jesus’ name. YWAM’s co-founder, Loren Cunningham, believed that years of theological training did not necessarily qualify people to serve the Lord effectively, nor should they be a requirement before encouraging young people to pass on the love of Christ through missions. At the time, this was considered a revolutionary concept.
The idea of having relatively untrained youth doing missions was generally not considered and was even seen as potentially dangerous. However, over the years, while mistakes have of course been made and learnt from, the concept of short-term missions has added huge numbers of people to the task of world evangelization. It is now accepted as a valid contribution to mission work. Over the last 40 years, YWAM has grown to more than 16,000 regular volunteers and missionaries in over 1,000 bases on every continent and in over 160 nations around the world.
YWAM’s 40th anniversary event took place in Mangere, New Zealand. The week-long “Hui” (a Maori word for “gathering”) featured cultural expressions of all kinds from four different stages, with video teleconferencing links to eight sites on four continents simultaneously.
“I walk away astounded,” commented Loren Cunningham afterwards, “astounded that I’m allowed to be a part of this mission, that is so diverse and so global and such wonderful people. I love being with such radical people. They can be radical in their praise and celebration and then the next minute radical in their repentance and weeping before God.” He added, “I think the future will so much more glorious than the past. That’s what I fully expect.”
This year, 2010, marks the 50th Anniversary of YWAM! Celebrations are being held all over the globe. Check www.ywam50.com for more details.
For further information about the history of YWAM International we recommend you read the book Is That Really You, God? by Loren Cunningham.
Youth With A Mission’s Statement of Faith
Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is an international movement of Christians from many denominations dedicated to presenting Jesus personally to this generation, to mobilizing as many as possible to help in this task, and to the training and equipping of believers for their part in fulfilling the Great Commission. As citizens of God’s kingdom, we are called to love, worship, and obey our Lord, to love and serve His Body, the Church, and to present the whole gospel for the whole person throughout the whole world.
