by Becky Hefty | Aug 25, 2021 | Connections Article
Many students of YWAM’s Discipleship Training School graduate with a desire to serve full-time in the mission, and YWAM campuses worldwide need people just like them to achieve their mission goals and thrive. MBI brings these two dynamic groups together through our After DTS program.
DTS graduates can now explore opportunities and locations through volunteer placement, allowing them to experience a variety of service opportunities, places, cultures, and causes. Graduates may learn new skills, encounter new people groups, fall in love with a ministry vision, find their “tribe” of like-minded missionaries, and more! They volunteer at global locations, build lasting relationships, and find their best fit for long-term service. MBI makes easy what used to be laborious and time-consuming.
Dawn Mekunwattana from Thailand did her DTS in the spring of 2011 at YWAM Lakeside and knew she wanted to join their staff someday. She spent time mission building on campus between the secondary schools she attended after her basic training. She says:
“My mission building experience gave me a snapshot into the behind-the-scenes life of missionary members on campus and helped to solidify my desire to serve full-time in Montana. I loved the Mission Builder community!
We had our meetings and times of connection and prayer outside of the regular base meetings, and I loved connecting with all the people who would come through for those short seasons to serve and bless others. Mission building also grew my confidence—I could serve and work in many capacities! It’s been ten years since I did my DTS and six years since I last worked as a mission builder. Now, I’m finally here as a full-time missionary member!”
DTS graduates like Daniel, Fabio, Presley, and others have utilized the After DTS program to explore the exciting ways and places available to them to serve within YWAM as they’ve fulfilled God’s call on their lives.
Are you a DTS graduate with a passion for moving to the next step of service? Apply at www.missionbuilders.org to volunteer with After DTS and discover your next step!
by Becky Hefty | Mar 2, 2020 | Connections Article
MBI’s newest ministry, Leadership 13 (L13) came into existence in 2010 when colleagues Ron Brewster and Dawn Masucci and I felt compelled to combine our years of leadership experience and expertise into a concerted effort to respond to a cry for help from a number of the promising young leaders serving within Youth With a Mission. Those leaders were being called upon to shape this rapidly growing, international, interdenominational movement of Christians called to bring the whole gospel to the whole world.
Though each of us desired to see YWAM succeed at the macro level, with all of its myriad of expressions, we shared an even more pressing passion to see this current generation of leaders adequately equipped to face the challenges of successfully stewarding their respective ministry locations. Having invested 30-plus years of service at the senior leadership level in one location, it was and is our firm conviction that any lasting leadership legacy can only be accomplished when those “to whom much has been given” graciously acknowledge and respond to the second half of this biblical mandate that “much is required.”
L13 was forged in the fire of finding ways to pass on our life lessons and expertise in any way God might want to use them for the benefit of YWAM leaders. The end goal was to see the advancement of the kingdom of God globally.
Since embracing that call 9 years ago, it has been our privilege to have assisted in training and coaching leaders in approximately 16 YWAM operating locations from the U.S. and Canada to far flung regions such as Cambodia, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and Barbados. Though some of the leaders we have had the privilege of serving are mature and experienced, the much larger percentage have been young, inexperienced , and, in some locations, first generation Christians.
These God-called, amazing servants find themselves responsible for some of the most innovative ministry expressions we have ever seen, ranging from the foundational YWAM Discipleship Training School (DTS) to numerous other secondary expressions such as the School of Biblical Studies (SBS) and School of Community Development, just to name a couple. Because 2 of the 18 foundational values of YWAM are about being “visionary” and doing “new things in new ways,” there is no end to the creative ventures we have observed as these ministries explore how they can more effectively take the age-old gospel message and contextualize it to reach the cultures to which God has called them.
The gospel is going forward to some of the least-reached areas of the world through creative approaches that include everything from very sophisticated English/computer education programs to AIDS orphan homes to micro business enterprise (designed not only to provide income streams for the local ministry but do so in a way that serves to generate financial support for full-time, indigenous workers). The challenge is that, in many cases, their remarkable effectiveness has become a double-edged sword. The accelerated growth these ministries are experiencing has outstripped the leaders’ knowledge and expertise as to how to keep the ministry healthy, thriving, and appropriately funded. These are wonderful challenges, but these leaders are often ill-equipped to navigate them.
This is exactly the point at which L13 discovered that our year-long approach of coming along side these ministries has borne good fruit. Our expertise joined with their energy and desire to lead well has produced a winning combination. The tools we’re able to give them through our on-site visits as well as Skype coaching and mentoring has proven to be very effective in equipping them with understanding in areas such as organizational dynamics, healthy systems, and strong staff development. Coupled with our core value and commitment toward “developing servant leaders for lasting growth,” L13 not only encourages the leaders we serve but arms them with the confidence necessary to lead those whom God has placed in their charge so that the entire ministry can learn to walk in the footsteps of our great servant leader and master, Jesus Christ.
Since its inception, L13 has been blessed beyond measure to add four more players to the team, Jason Howard, Lane Lackey, Veronica VanSchuylenburg and occasionally John Briggs. Each brings with them a skill set that has broadened L13’s ability to help in even more areas.
Just over a year ago, L13 was delighted and blessed to be invited to make Mission Builders International its permanent home. When the opportunity first presented itself, it almost seemed like a no-brainer. The call of MBI, “So Others May Thrive,” seemed like a hand-in-glove fit with all that L13 desired to accomplish.
Even though it seemed obvious, however, the final decision to join forces was only made after a great deal of prayer by all of those involved as well as a serious discussion with the wise and godly board of directors that serves MBI. At the end of the process, all were in hearty agreement that to add L13 to the MBI family was a match made in heaven. MBI’s call to the larger Mission as opposed to any one location is a call that we share together.
As the times we live in become increasingly uncertain, we invite you to join your prayers with ours that MBI and L13 will find ever-widening circles of influence where our passion, “So Others May Thrive,” can be expressed in and through our Mission and ultimately to the ends of the earth.
~Gordy McDonald
by Becky Hefty | Mar 20, 2019 | Letter from the Director
I have had friends, family, supporters, and fellow YWAM coworkers ask ‘why MBI?’
When I was a young base leader in my early thirties at YWAM Lakeside, MT, I was faced with many challenges. Not enough people to help accomplish the vision. Not enough resources to realize our goals. More leadership development needed in my personal life. There were always projects and needs that required extra help and expertise, and God often provided those things through Mission Builder volunteers.
When YWAM Lakeside was given a motel that was located a mile away, we had to set the three massive, incoming sections of the hotel on foundations. God brought a team of volunteers to help, and now the Bayshore is a gracious home to students and visitors. When we discovered that one of our twenty-seven houses was sinking into the ground, we had to demolish half of it and figure out how to rebuild in such a way that it would not sink again. A visitor “happened” to be walking through, saw our dilemma, and said, “I can help you solve the problem you have with this house sinking.” He volunteered, and 13 years later, the house is still standing.
These stories might not seem like much to some (and we have many stories of God bringing volunteers at just the right time), but to me, as the campus director, those volunteers were like water to a person thirsting in the desert.
It’s now been three months since I became the director of MBI. We have a great team working hard to continue the legacy of volunteer placement that MBI is known for as well as adding new vision. We’re stretching to reach goals connected to our expanded focus of seeing YWAM locations thrive through increased volunteer placement, leadership support,and staff and organizational services.
Beginning with volunteer placement, we have prayerfully and in faith set a goal to grow from recruiting and sending 500 volunteers yearly to 3,000. How? We have to tap into new pools of potential volunteers, so for the next six to nine months, we’ll be focusing on recruiting:
• Volunteer teams: Families, couples, and singles may serve as a group at a YWAM location, assisting with specific projects. In turn, they’ll be deeply and personally impacted through what we call a “mutually transformative experience.” One expression of the volunteer team concept that we want to multiply to other YWAM locations is a program called Vacation With A Purpose (VWAP), which has helped transform the YWAM Lakeside campus over the years.
• Discipleship Training School students: Many graduates of the DTS program are excited about missions but not sure what God is calling them to next. We now offer those students a platform (called After DTS) through missionbuilders.org where they may volunteer and discover where God may be calling them to serve long-term.
In our next newsletter, we’ll expand on MBI’s newest areas of focus: leadership support and staff and organizational services. We believe that with MBI’s new three-pronged approach we can more effectively help build the mission.
Why MBI? So others may thrive.
P.S. Watch for our new newsletter design, coming this summer!
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