Youth With A Mission - History

History

Youth With A Mission was conceived by Loren Cunningham who tells how in 1956, while a 20-year-old student in the Assemblies of God College, he was traveling in the Bahamas when he had a vision of waves breaking over the Earth. He says when he looked closer the waves appeared to become young people taking the news of Jesus into all the nations of the world. He envisioned a movement that would send young people out after high school to gain a sense of purpose when going to college, and would welcome Christians of all denominations.

In late 1960, the name Youth with a Mission was chosen and the small group embarked on their first project, a vocational mission trip. The result was that YWAM sent two men in their early twenties to Liberia to build a road through the jungle to a leper colony. This was the organization's first official mission trip.

Loren Cunningham married Darlene Scratch in 1963. By this time, the new mission had 20 volunteers stationed in various nations, and the Cunninghams were planning the mission's first "Summer of Service". Later in the year, YWAM teams were being sent to West Indies, Samoa, Hawaii, Mexico, and Central America. By 1966, there were 10 full-time YWAM staff including the Cunninghams and hundreds of summer short-term volunteers. That year YWAM ministries also began in New Zealand and Tonga.

In 1967, Cunningham began to work on his vision for the first school. It was to be the School of Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland, which was held from December 1969 to the middle of 1970 with 36 students. The students' lodging and classes took place in a newly renovated and leased hotel in Lausanne. By the end of the year, YWAM purchased the hotel and made Lausanne its first permanent location.

The School of Evangelism was formed in 1974 in New Jersey as well as Lausanne. With a focus on biblical foundations and character development as well as missions, much of the material from this course is now taught in the present day Discipleship Training School (DTS). A format of three months of lectures followed by two or three months of outreach is still used in most Discipleship Training Schools today.

By 1970, YWAM had a total of 40 full-time staff. That year, 1000 volunteer YWAM staff headed to Munich, Germany, to prepare an outreach for the 1972 Summer Olympics. This was the first of many YWAM Olympic outreaches.

The University of the Nations online magazine has stated that Cunningham met scientist and professor Howard V. Malmstadt at a conference in 1974. They started giving educational seminars together, and Cunningham asked Malmstadt to help expand the training arm of the mission. In 1977 YWAM purchased the Pacific Empress Hotel in Kona, Hawaii, and began renovations to turn it into the campus for what was initially called the Pacific and Asia Christian University—the forerunner of University of the Nations. In 1978, YWAM began Shining Lights, an outreach to prostitutes in Amsterdam.

By 1979, YWAM's Mercy Ships ministry was launched with the commissioning of the ship "Anastasis" (the Greek word for Resurrection).

By the end of the 1980s, YWAM changed the name of its university to University of the Nations (U of N). The concept of a YWAM university that would encompass training programs in hundreds of YWAM locations was developed by Cunningham and Malmstadt. When communist regimes in Eastern Europe began to fall in the early 1990s, Youth With A Mission began outreaches to countries there, including Albania. Other efforts in this decade include a school for the disabled in Mongolia.

By 2000, YWAM had over 11,000 staff from over 130 countries and had become almost 50 percent non-Western. Reflecting this diversity, in 1999, New Zealander Frank Naea, who has Samoan and Māori parentage, was chosen to become YWAM's first non-white president in 2000, replacing Jim Stier, who was to continue as international director of evangelism and frontier missions and national director for Brazil. In 2000, YWAM developed a new role of Executive Chairman, which Jim Stier stepped into, and made the presidency a three-year rotating position. By 2006, YWAM had joined the International Orality Network (ION), a multi-agency outreach effort to "the world's non-literate masses", employing verbal and dramatic means to introduce the Gospel to populations which do not read.