Story by Lindsay Van Zee
We were incredibly blessed to have an adult outreach team come and partner with us from Calvary Chapel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. One of the friends they made was a teenage guy named Cid. The conversation started with him showing them a few tricks on his bike and then shifted into Cid’s story. He had a vaguely Catholic upbringing but was not sure who Jesus was.
Story by Michael Browne
On the streets of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, we find a great many services being offered. Food, clothing, shelter and medical resources. All these are beautiful endeavors. Often we can hear the Gospel being preached in a nearby park where worship and sandwiches are readily available. It would seem to some however, that the hole in our Gospel is the lack of relational discipleship. It is from this gap that YWAM’s 360 community was birthed.
So how many churches are out there in San Francisco? If you scroll down on the map you will see the exact information at the bottom. Pray with us that San Francisco will continue to see more churches grow.
That is a question I had been asking since I resettled in San Francisco in 2007. I got all kinds of answers ranging from a few churches to almost 1000 in the city and county of San Francisco. Missiologists who work with a strategy called Saturation Church Planting tell us that there should be a church for every 1000 people in a city. That means for a city like San Francisco there shoulc be 800 churches since it has a population of almost 800,000 people. Well just how many churches does San Francisco have?
Hey friends of YWAMSF! Next March, we’ll be hosting our next Community Night. We’re letting you know now so you can book in advance, because it’s going to be great! Our speaker this time around will be Mark Scandrette, a local authority on the ins and outs of San Francisco.
A former pastor and community development worker, Mark Scandrette is an author, speaker, activist and networker among innovative Christian leaders. His books include Practicing the Way of Jesus: Life together in the Kingdom of Love (InterVarsity Press 2011), and Soul Graffiti: Making A Life Together in the Way of Jesus (Jossey-Bass 2007). He is a contributing author to books including, An Emergent Manifesto of Hope(Baker 2007) and The Relevant Church (Relevant 2005). Mark is the founding director of ReIMAGINE: A Center for Life Integration based in San Francisco (www.reimagine.org), where he leads an annual series of retreats, Learning Labs and projects designed to help participants integrate the teachings of Jesus into all aspects of life through shared practices and intentional community experiments. He and his wife Lisa and their three children live in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Join us at 7:00 for drinks and refreshments, check out what our ministries are up to, and hear a compelling and inspiring talk on understanding San Francisco.
You should come!
Find out more about what’s going down here.
One of our favorite aspects about YWAM Internationally is its decentralization. Because of this, there are tons of initiatives around the world, and across the States, doing so many awesome things for the Kingdom of God. Today, we take a moment to tell you about something happening in our ‘neighborhood’: the School of Supernatural Missions, hosted by YWAM Mendocino Coast. Check it out! Here’s a word from them:
“Do you long to experience the tangible love of God? Do you need more power in your ministry? School of Supernatural Missions (SSM) is an opportunity to experience supernatural breakthrough and learn principles for growing in a lifestyle of miracles. Join us on the spectacular Mendocino Coast, March 26-May 31, with an optional outreach to Nepal and Northern India. Check out this link and please share this with people you think would be interested! http://ywammendocino.org/?page_id=694”
“Nathan and Cindi Wagner who are hosting this school have years of experience working in missions in a restricted access nation as well as a continual pursuit to see God move supernaturally. I am always challenged in my thinking, in my spiritual life and in my ministry whenever I am around them. Beyond that the school is located in Mendocino on the Lord’s land which has a history of supernatural visitations! This is a school you wont want to miss…” -Tim Svoboda – YWAM San Francisco
Hey Friends! Again, I’ve been awful at this being a disciplined blogger thing, and for that I am sorry! So let’s just get right into it! I have two different weeks to tell you about. First is PLUMBLINE (get ready) and then there is “The Cross”!
Alright, I really hyped up Plumbline, and going back into my notes, that was very justifiable. Not only was there really good lectures, there was some really awesome “God Moments” as I like to call them.
So, some of you may be asking, “Nicole, what the heck is Plumbline?” Let me tell you! Plumbline, in the context of YWAM DTS is a life changing week full of forgiving others and asking for forgiveness. It’s known for the freedom received from God during the week.
But in general a plumb line is a tool builders use to make sure what they’re building is straight. Basically it’s just a string with a weight at the bottom.
So for us, what is straight and true is God’s love and truth. But in our fallen world, we easily swing one of two ways (or in my and many other people’s case, both ways): rejection or rebellion.
Behind that rejection or rebellion is some deep seeded pain and like my boldly scribbled notes say, “when you bury pain, you don’t bury it dead. It’s still alive and you’ve had to work your whole life around it. And if you don’t deal with your pain and issues they’ll deal with you.”
So, this week was very centered towards exposing our deep seeded pains and GIVING THEM TO GOD. Which let me tell you, is NOT easy, but once it’s done it’s so freeing.
And though it’s hard to give it up, it’s so important. This is the same mentality we had to have the second half of the week when we asked God for forgiveness. Though I did not get the opportunity to do this, I must commend my fellow DTSers because there was SO MUCH courage in getting up in front of 25 people and confessing your sins and asking for forgiveness.
Truly, seeing my brothers and sisters that vulnerable changed something in my heart and I’m sure that’s true for them too.
I also want to just commend our speaker, Jerry Peraetzel, for being FREAKING AWESOME. He was such an example of God to us and it blew my mind.
So to end, here are two awesome quotes from Jerry regarding forgiving and being forgiven:
“We can’t be bitter Christians. We are forgiven forgivers.” And “If you want Winnie the Pooh to show up, have lots of honey. If you want God to show up, have lots of humility.” BOOM.
This leads me to the next week, “The Cross” with Peter Iliyn. Peter has a PHENOMENAL story to tell about both his life and his father’s, and that’s what he did the first day. So many students left that day in tears because his dad’s story brings forth SO MUCH hope in God it’s..CRAZY (that’s the only word I can think of. I thought “I should come up with some big word to make them understand how crazy it was,” but alas, nothing; just crazy). Since there’s no way I could tell you the whole story in this blog post I’ll tell you to go get his book, Out of the Far Corners! Do it, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Other than the awesome story this week was full of amazing lectures (which sounds boring, but they never are). Peter talked mostly about living a repenting lifestyle, which isn’t always about asking for forgiveness, but really striving to turn your life around after doing so. The big thing I got this week was the difference between condemnation and conviction. Condemnation is general and doesn’t come from God and his love, but conviction is specific and very loving.
So, those were the past two weeks and we just finished another week that I didn’t mention. (I’m kinda behind! Whoops!) VERY SOON, I’ll do a post about this last week, which was rad because we had some speakers who are actually staff here on the base (Steve Binquist and Ruthie Kim). We all loved them and they’re great, so be excited!
Thank you for your time and please just keep praying for us students and all the leaders and staff here at YWAM! We love you and appreciate you so very much!
-Nicole
(via tessjaylor)
In light of the recent Earthquake and Tsunami aftermath effecting Japan and the Pacific, we here at YWAMSF want to do everything to communicate that everyone here is fine, and will be. Any aftermath set to effect the coast near San Francisco is said not to come any more than one mile inland. The only effected areas are supposed to be the coastal highway, and water may come over the retaining wall no more than about one foot. As we are six miles away from the coast, everyone at YWAMSF is fine. We’ve instructed everyone to call home to let everyone know they are okay.
But Japan is not. As the earthquake and subsequent tsunami have effected vastly Japan, and has swept out through the Pacific, please pray for our Christian brothers and sisters, as well as all people effected by the effects of these events. in Japan, the death count has already by confirmed at least 300, where 2000 people are effected, either being caught in the tsunami, or displaced because of safety reasons. Please pray for everyone effected, the loved ones of those lost, and the safety of those still caught in compromising situations. Thank you for all your love and support for those of us here, and around the world. Below are some links regarding happenings in Japan that I’ve been able to gather today. In limited time, I haven’t been able to get information on the effects on Hawaii or other Pacific Island, but search the web. It’s good to be informed. As followers of Christ, our prayers can move mountains. Thank you all for being wonderful, beloved sons and daughters of God.
-Jon Owen.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/japan.nuclear/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/11/AR2011031102415.html?hpid=topnews
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/11/tsunami.warning/index.html
So, I will admit to you how hard it is to right a blog when you are going through “Plumbline.” But you’ll hear all about that next post, so GET READY!
For now, let me talk about the one and only Art Collins. What a guy! His topic last week was ‘The Bible.’ Pretty generic, eh? Well if anyone can make a boring topic, beyond epic, it’s Art Collins.
Alright, I love the bible. I mean, THE LIVING WORD?! Who wouldn’t love that? But really sitting down and being able to study the word and get into it and gain things from it has always been a difficult aspect of my walk with Christ. But Art’s approach is so phenomenal. On the first day we got a packet full of easy ways to really dive into the word and effectively study it.
Our assignment for the next two weeks was to study the book of Jonah using his preferred method, the synthetic approach, which when you first look at it, it looks tedious and boring, but in reality it’s SO helpful. I’ve read the story of Jonah before, but this method helped me to really UNDERSTAND the point of the story and how I can apply it to my life. RAD.
Usually, for each speaker I write about 20 pages of notes, but I didn’t have many this week because we were working out of the packet, but looking in my notes I got one really good quote: “God does not grant revelation of himself to the casual inquirer, but rather the diligent seeker.”
This week I really gained a hunger to know God more through his word and I would challenge you all to do the same because it’s amazing (:
Thanks for your time and support, and get ready for next week’s post because it’ll be intense!
Hey friends! Nicole here. Wanna know what the Winter DTS learned this week? YEAH YA DO! Just kidding, I don’t know if you do, but I figure since that’s my job I’ll be enthusiastic about it (:
Well you see, this week, our speaker was Dawn Masucci and she talked about Spiritual Warfare.
When I read ‘Spiritual Warfare’ in our manual, I’m not going to lie, I was not looking forward to it. The only experience I’ve had with spiritual warfare was not a very good one, mostly because I was a ‘baby Christian’ and I didn’t really know much about the enemy and it was more enemy focused than Christ focused.
Which brings me to my favorite part of the week: Dawn’s most stressed point is to make Christ our focus and keep the enemy on our peripherals. There was a cool hand motion, but I don’t really know how to explain it.
As well as cool hand motions, every day we went over what spiritual warfare is.
1. Knowing who God is.
2. Knowing what He’s done for us.
3. Knowing who we are in Christ.
4. Walking Godly.
5. Praying.
6. Persevering.
7. Proclaiming the gospel.
This really surprised me, and most students, because this was definitely not the way I viewed spiritual warfare. It was a very eye opening experience knowing that combating our enemy is all about knowing/being with/proclaiming Jesus.
Another really cool thing we did during that week was write down lies the enemy has told us throughout our lives through different experiences and identify them as lies, and then combat that with truths that we know and received from God. This was a very emotional and AWESOME experience for so many, if not all of the students. Dawn encouraged us to keep going back to those truths whenever the lies creep in because “The lies didn’t come in overnight, they won’t leave overnight.” And I think that is brilliant. We have this folder full of truths from God and our brothers and sisters to combat the enemy. RAD.
So, that was definitely a good week.
This week, Art Collins is our speaker. I was a little skeptical of his ‘awesomeness’ because everybody was hyping him up big time but, truth be told, he lives up to what everyone says. But I’ll talk more about him in the next post. And hopefully, I’ll have more pictures to share soon!
Please keep praying for health, and open hearts (:
Thanks so much for your support and time!