Youth With A Mission (YWAM, generally pronounced as "why-wam") is an international, inter-denominational, non-profit Christian, short-term missionary organization. Founded by Loren Cunningham in 1960, YWAM's stated purpose is to "know God and to make Him known".
YWAM now includes people from over 150 countries and a large number of Christian denominations, with over half of the organization's staff coming from "non-western" countries even despite the fact that overwhelming majority of the top leadership and middle management are still Western. YWAM currently has over 16,049 full-time volunteer workers in over 1,000 operating locations in 180 nations and trains 25,000 short-term missions volunteers annually.
Read more about Youth With A Mission: History, Structure, Doctrine and Practices, Associations and Working Relationships, 2007 Shooting Event, Political Affiliation and Involvement, Criticism and Controversy, Responses To Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words youth with, youth and/or mission:
“Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of his enthusiasm, and there are now men,if indeed I can speak in the plural number,more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest of sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life storya story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (19021983)