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Thank you for joining us this month as we take up “The Invitation” and join together with thousands of YWAMers from around the world as we pray and hear from God about YWAM Foundational Values 10 – 12.
- #10 – Function in Teams
- #11 – Exhibit Servant Leadership
- #12 – Do First, Then Teach
YWAM Foundational Values 10 – 12
Photo credits (top to bottom, left to right): YWAM Whitsunday, YWAM Asheville, YWAM The King’s Lodge
YWAM’s Foundational Values have been passed along from generation to generation for over three decades. These values have stood the test of 33 years and have shaped everything – our culture, our prayer time, our growth, our leaders, our students, our curriculum, our ministries, our partnerships, our challenges and our opportunities. While other things have changed, our values have remained steady and true. Our values were developed through the prayerful introspection, deliberation, collaboration and consensus of our leaders. In 2018, The Invitation, YWAM’s global prayer day, focuses on three of our foundational values each quarter. Please pray with us! This is our fourth quarter of praying for our values and so this month’s Invitation is focused on:
Value 10: Function in teams – YWAM is called to function in teams in all aspects of ministry and leadership. We believe that a combination of complementary gifts, callings, perspectives, ministries and generations working together in unity at all levels of our mission provides wisdom and safety. Seeking God’s will and making decisions in a team context allows accountability and contributes to greater relationship, motivation, responsibility and ownership of the vision.
Value 11: Exhibit servant leadership – YWAM is called to servant leadership as a lifestyle, rather than a leadership hierarchy. A servant leader is one who honors the gifts and callings of those under his/her care and guards their rights and privileges. Just as Jesus served His disciples, we stress the importance of those with leadership responsibilities serving those whom they lead.
Value 12: Do first, then teach – YWAM is committed to doing first, then teaching. We believe that firsthand experience gives authority to our words. Godly character and a call from God are more important than an individual’s gifts, abilities and expertise.
Please join with The Invitation during the month of October to pray with us about these three values. You are particularly invited to pray during our prayer day, October 12. If you only have a few moments to pray we would ask you to reflect on these values and pray for the Holy Spirit to move through the YWAM family globally in a continued manner as we saw at YWAM’s big family gathering, YWAM Together, which took place in early September in Thailand. As you pray and contemplate these foundational values, we would love to receive stories from you regarding how these values have shaped your ministry or your life. You can email us at prayer@ywam.org.
Foundational Value 12 – Do First, Then Teach
Photo credit: YWAM Samoa
Prepare to Pray:
As you gather with your group and prepare to pray, we have a fun activity for you! This is a great game to help the group connect in a fun way before getting down to prayer. Laughter and movement are helpful ways to raise the energy in the room before focusing on the prayer topics.
You might remember the childhood game, ‘Follow the Leader,’ in which a group forms a line behind the appointed leader, following her and copying exactly everything she does. If she jumps, you jump! If she skips, you skip! If she stops, you stop. Wherever she goes, you follow, trying to mimic her movements, pace, or any noises she makes. You can have different people take the role of leader for just a couple of minutes each or have more than one group with their assigned leader weaving in and out of one another in the same space.
When your game of Follow the Leader has concluded and everybody has settled down, you might take a brief moment of reflection. Have everybody reflect quietly on these questions:
If you had other people mimicking the way you live your life, what aspects of your life would you be happy to see them model? What aspects of your life would you want to hide from them, or prevent them from imitating? As you hold these things before God, what is His invitation to you, in those areas you feel are presentable as well as those you feel are not?
After a few moments of reflection and an opening prayer, you may direct your group towards the prayer points noted below.
Foundational Value 11 – Exhibit Servant Leadership
Photo credit: YWAM Perth Music DTS
Pray for YWAM Foundational Values 10 – 12:
- Praise God for a wonderful 2018 YWAM Together event in Thailand. Praise Him for bringing our family closer together. Pray for the changes that we will make as a ministry as a result. Thank God for providing the funds and opening calendars for so many YWAMers (3,900) to be together in Thailand.
- Praise God for providing wisdom to our leaders over 30 years ago in identifying and defining our Foundational Values. Pray that they will continue to guide us along the ways of God. Ask the Lord to give us wisdom as a global movement and guide us to continue to align with our foundational values as we grow and change.
- Pray for YWAM locations and ministries to wait on the Holy Spirit for his leading for “where to from here.”
- Thank God for the clear model that He has given us of Jesus as a servant leader. Pray for clarity about servant leadership for our Discipleship Training School (DTS) students.
- Jesus had a do first, then teach strategy with his disciples. Aleck Cartwright from YWAM’s University of the Nations explains three levels of Jesus’ teaching to His disciples. Pray that all YWAM teaching will apply His model well:
- Level 1 was quite formal – what we could call lectures, teaching and speaking in front of crowds of people.
- Level 2 was informal, these were impromptu moments when the disciples were perhaps shooing the children away, or when a blind man is led toward him and he would ask, “What do you want me to do for you?”
- Level 3 was also informal – unguarded conversation, chatting into the night about all manner of topics, meals around the table where discipleship occurred by simply watching Jesus’ humanity and divinity at tension in the most everyday occurrences as they walked and talked or joked with each other.
- Pray for continued unity that results from functioning as teams, being servant leaders and wise teachings through “doing first.”
- Pray for the anointing by the Holy Spirit of our YWAM leaders who are teaching people first to do and then to teach. Pray for God to humble us where we need humbling.
- Pray that the joy and life that was experienced at YWAM Together 2018 would continue as we do ministry through our functioning in teams, our servant leadership and our do first, then teach teaching model.
- Pray that YWAMers would mimic Jesus in every way through formal teaching and even in the mundane and everyday.
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
John 14:12 (NIV)
- Pray for effective feedback and evaluation on our teaching so that we grow in our theology and in our faith. Pray for many opportunities for us to “do” so that we can be more fruitful in our lives and as a global ministry.
YWAM Foundational Value 10 – Function in Teams
Photo credits (left to right): YWAM Wylie
Take Action
- Review and discuss the following Bible verses and discuss the benefits of functioning in teams:
- Ecclesiastes 4:9
- Proverbs 27:17
- Ephesians 4:11
- 3 John 1:8
- Romans 15:5
- Hebrews 10:24
- 1 Corinthians 1:10
- 1 Corinthians 12:14
- Do this YWAM Turner Valley Bible study and take the secret servanthood challenge: http://ywamturnervalley.org/2012/12/10/the-first-word-on-christian-leadership-servanthood-matt-2020-28/
- Read and discuss this article on servant leadership: Five Marks of a Servant Leader: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/five-marks-of-a-servant-leader
- Consider the various teams you are on and identify ways that you could improve the functioning of your team through your actions. If you do not already have one, ask the Lord to provide you with a mentor who is a good example of a servant leader. Also if you do not already have someone you are mentoring in this area, ask the Lord to show you someone you could mentor.
- Ask God to reveal to you how well you are aligning with the YWAM foundational values. Consider improvements where you are weak. Asked God also to give you strength in these areas. For a list of all 18 YWAM Foundational Values: https://www.ywam.org/about-us/values/
- Review videos from YWAM Together 2018 and look for examples of Do First, Then Teach: https://ywamtogether.com/home/
- Share stories on Facebook and send email to prayer@ywam.org regarding how YWAM foundational values have impacted your walk with Christ, your family, your ministry or other aspects of your life.
- Share on facebook.com/youthwithamission, post a picture and add a comment about how you prayed.
- Go to twitter.com; search for #praywithywam and tweet about your prayer time/post a picture. You can also post a photo on Instagram and use the same hashtag, #praywithywam.
- Send an email to prayer@ywam.org letting us know how you prayed and what God revealed to you.
How We Prayed
September 2018 – Kolkata
- YWAM Champagne, France prayed and sensed God saying He is going to give a new strategy for YWAM in Kolkata, India. They received a picture of the city being drawn together with unity between the poor and the rich, a new mentality about castes and a refuge for street children.
August 2018 – YWAM Together 2018
- YWAM Cascades, Idaho had everyone who prayed plant a seed in a container of soil, representing a harvest field. Among other topics, they prayed that all nations would be represented and that this conference would be the start of something new like a pebble in a lake that causes ripples throughout Thailand and Asia.
- YWAM Hong Kong National Office had a “knock down, drag out” intercession time. Some of the key points were that everyone attending would make divine and strategic connections and that the worship time would be flooded with the Spirit of God. Several verses from Isaiah 42 were brought to light.
Future Topics:
- November 8, 2018: Muslims (North Africa)
- December 13, 2018: Moscow
- January 10, 2019: YWAM Foundational Values 13-15
#13 – Be relationship-Oriented
#14 – Value the Individual
#15 – Value Families
Don’t Miss The Invitation:
- Sign up for prayer updates. Go to ywam.org, find the “Stay Connected” box on the home page, put in your email address and click “Sign Up.”
- Download prayer updates in a specific language. Go to ywam.org/theinvitation. (Currently available in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Indonesian, Korean or request other languages.)
- Join the conversation about how God is leading in these prayer times. Comment on the Facebook page on the second Thursday at facebook.com/youthwithamission or on Twitter @ywam, hashtag #praywithywam. You can also post a photo on Instagram and use the same hashtag, #praywithywam.
- You can now listen to The Invitation as a podcast. To sign up or listen to past episodes, go to: ywampodcast.net/prayer.
- If you sense God giving you a word or a direction for YWAM’s prayer, please contact us: prayer@ywam.org.
