The YWAM Leeds team: Dave Nevard, Doug and Beth Howland

The team, which was started in September 2009 by Doug and Beth Howland, is using the visual arts to build community in the poor and ethnically diverse neighborhoods of Harehills and Chapeltown, opening up opportunities to share Christ.

“We want to introduce people to God in all His expressions,” said team member Dave Nevard. “We are creating a space for people that meets them where they are, taking them step by step and leading them to Jesus.”

The team believes that it is important for people from all walks of life to have avenues to express themselves, particularly in areas of economic hardship like the area where YWAM Leeds works.

“Giving art to people for free gives them life,” Doug said. “This part of the city has always been a dumping ground for different people groups who immigrate here. Some are asylum seekers or refugees. There’s not a lot of programs available at low cost for people here to learn how to do art or other activities to enjoy life.”

Youth work has also become a key focus in an area where parents are often absent, and children clash as they wrestle with a new culture.

“Youth work keeps falling on our lap, even when we don’t announce who we are. There are a lot of young people who have been kicked out of school. They have no role models,” Doug said.

Beth added, “There are a lot of kids who are out of school, but just hanging around. There are lots of opportunities for them to get in trouble. Art is the perfect outlet for them.”

As the team’s work and influence in the city expanded, the house they used to establish the ministry in Leeds became cramped.

The YWAM Leeds team is working to build relationships in their new neighborhood.

“Once, we had a Nigerian pastor over. They are a lot more formal, but the kitchen didn’t have room for a table, so we had to eat in the living room.”

“There was not enough space in the other house to do hospitality in a way that would honor people,” Doug said. “Hospitality is a big thing with us, so we knew something had to be done.”
They prayed for new accommodations. In September, their prayers were answered in the form of a new house nearby that gives them plenty of room to entertain, welcome new staff, and continue building relationships to bring change to the city.

The kitchen, which could contain four kitchens the size of their old one, is now the center of hospitality.

“Eating is a big thing for us, so having a huge kitchen is a blessing,” Doug said. “We can all sit together and talk while cooking. It has made a huge difference in how many we can invite into our home.”

The team has noticed a difference since moving into the new house. Many neighbors turned up for their house-warming party, brought cards, and made them feel welcome. One man invited Doug to a Ramadan celebration.

“There’s something cool about this neighborhood. A lot of people in the area have been really friendly,” Dave said.

To create dialogue and give people the space to interact with art, Dave decided to rent a studio space in Chapeltown, doing his own artwork, and creating a drop-in program in the afternoon.
“The word I had when I got the studio was about it being a training ground and a classroom,” he said. “I’ve started doing a drop-in for anyone in the community to have free materials, lessons and workshops in the arts.”

Dave said that his own feelings of loneliness in moving to Leeds made him recognize others must feel the same. “The art space is where people can come and meet, build friendships, but also learn to develop creatively and find their voice.”

YWAM Leeds continues to expand their network, and hopes to draw more staff who want to join in the work of opening lines of communication about God through the arts.

“It’s harder, and easier than you think it is all at the same time,” Beth said. “Daily, meeting people, that’s not complicated. But it can be spiritually difficult. There are spiritual implications of moving into a new city, and you definitely feel those.”

Doug summed up the experience as only an artist can. “Pioneering is daunting at times, but it’s really fun having a blank canvas and creating from nothing. It’s exhilarating,”

“2012 is a significant year for the UK. With all the things YWAM is hoping to do surrounding the Olympics, it is a significant year for YWAM as well,” said Hayely Bullen, who is leading the prayer team.

Participants sign up on the Brick by Brick Website, taking a “brick” of time, and pledge to pray. All the bricks together build up to create a wall of prayer for the UK during the Olympic year. People have already begun filling time slots.

The initiative is open to both individuals and groups, inside YWAM and outside, and every person is encouraged to use the time as they feel God leads. Each prayer slot will have a different feel, depending on who initiates it. Individuals can take an hour each week, or at random as they have time. YWAM bases and churches can take a day, week, or month, and format the time to fit their personality. Bullen is putting together resources on the Website to give people ideas.

“Instead of giving a format, we’ve given people lots of resources and a list of things to pray for.”

Brick by Brick is not about YWAMers joining in a year of prayer already in progress, but making it integral to the next year of the mission.

“I feel that this is something God has said we need to do as YWAM,” Bullen said. “Not just have YWAM join in a year of prayer that was already happening, but as YWAM, having a year of prayer.”

YWAM Harpenden, where the Forever team is based, is taking the first week, and will kick off the year by reading through the Bible over a four-day period. Other bases have shown interest in doing a 24-hour worship session. The Brick by Brick site has a list of resources to help direct the prayer and give people ideas. The field is wide open, Bullen said.

Following the old adage of ‘Do first, then teach,’ the team at YWAM Harpenden organized a week of 24-7 prayer in October to prepare for the coming year.

“Before I could ask other locations to pray for a week, I wanted to be able to say I had done it. In Olympic terms, this was the athlete’s warm up. We wanted to stretch some spiritual muscles so we would know we could do it again,” Bullen said. “During the time I’ve been here, that’s never happened.”

The week was focused on intimacy with God, and truly had an impact on the staff who participated. Bullen hopes that the attitude of prayer will grow as people join the Brick by Brick movement around the world.

“God often does things in layers. The surface layer for Brick by Brick is to pray for the UK during the Olympics, that it would be a nation that blesses other nations,” she said. “The layer underneath, I am wanting to see YWAM learn how to really pray in unity for things again, to take our prayer to the next level.”

November 10th, Manchester: New Hope Community Church with Pastor Ezequias Santos was one of our favorites for freedom and worship. We danced and jumped and enjoyed God’s goodness. Carl Tinnion gave another powerful message, and we felt we were a prophetic voice in that community.

November 11th, Leeds:  Getting up to the North was fun for me because it’s more familiar terrain and it feels more homey. We had a nice kebab with the YWAM Leeds team and a  bit of a break that afternoon before our venue. We had a fantastic night with the youth at Bridge Street Church in the centre of Leeds. Dan Baumann joined us that evening and gave a powerful message about how missions comes out of a response to the love of God. We were all so moved to hear his powerful story of God’s goodness to him while he was imprisoned in Iran.

November 12th: We visited Easington Lane Apostolic Church between Durham and Newcastle. The presence of God was so strong the whole evening as we shared our hearts with a small congregation there. 

November 13th:  This Sunday morning we visited Elim Pentecostal Church in York. We were really blessed to have such a youthful and international gathering at the church and a wonderful lunch together with the Elim congregation. That afternoon we made our way to St. Michael Le Belfrey for the Grace and 7 congregations…two services and our “finale” to the tour. This was by far our favorite night of the tour, especially at the 7. The energy and anticipation in the room was electric and it felt like the roof was going to come off the church from the roar in the congregation. Some people told me it was the best service they had ever seen at St. Michael Le Belfrey. I felt very privileged that the leadership of the church trusted us with the services and gave us room to “go for it” but I have to say that this church has been a real blessing to me personally in York and I have nothing but respect for the leadership.

To read more updates from the Trumpet Tour, click here.

With so little time to plan an alternative venue, I was devastated. I just cried.

I asked people to pray and began making inquiries. I must have asked about 20 people but nothing was moving. I was wonderfully surprised when Emma, a girl I mentor in York, told me she thought I should come to her home church in the Wirral. I could feel the anticipation and faith rising in my spirit.

Emma referred me to Christine, a youth pastor at Emma’s church, Christ the Good Shepherd, and I could sense right away it was the perfect venue for us. Things fell into place and the leadership agreed to let us come to the church.

Then a few days later I was praying for the church and I began to write a song for that night. These words came out:

“Verse 1:

I was made for more than this

I was made to fly

I was made for greater thing—

To spread my wings and touch the bluest sky…

Bridge:

Jesus, I want to see who you are

Show me the way

Show me my part

Jesus I want to be where you are

Show me the way to touch your heart

Chorus:

And I’ll go where you want me to go

I’ll pray for your kingdom to come

I’ll go just as long as I know

You are here,  I am not alone

I’ll go where you’re going

I’ll say what you’re saying

I’ll be what you’re calling me to

Trust you with my whole life too…”

Verse 2:  I was made to see the heavens

I was made for life

I was made to live forever

To feel Your love in the pleasure of Your smile…”

I sang the song for the first time with Emma and the Trumpet Tour band at the Wirral meeting Maged Kalta preached. Over 120 people were there, mostly between ages 11 to 18. One young man, who wants to go into the marines, was crying because he was so touched during the response time.

Maged had encouraged us to obey God the way Moses obeyed God even though he felt inadequate and unable to do it.

Christine said the youth group has a phrase they have been using recently: “availability, not abilities.” Maged mentioned this several times in his sermon and the young people were a bit amazed at how God was speaking and confirming things to them and how this fit into the rhythm of where they are. As a team we had prayed for the evening and felt the youth were going to be the ones leading the church. Christine was so encouraged by that.

The conversations and prayer times that followed the service were impacting. Christine showed me a text she got from one of the kids who she said was “on the fringe” and it said “Thanks for tonight. It really changed my thinking.” Christine was so excited that God had reached this young boy.

Many of our team were talking and praying with people who lingered, wanting prayer, well into the night. People kept thanking us for coming and for the special song. The vicar of the church said it was the right timing for us to come as they are in the middle of the series about “stepping out of the boat.” 

To read more updates from the Trumpet Tour, click here.

I had no contacts, no team members, no money and no idea how to start planning the tour.
All I had was the peace that this was the right decision and the “green light” from my leaders to go ahead with it. There were moments when I had to ask the question Loren Cunningham, YWAM’s founder, asked many years ago: “Is that really you, God?”

Believing God every step of the way was not easy, but I have to say I am by nature a risk-taker and I like challenges. So I went for it…even if at times I had to question why I would create so much work for myself!

But God was faithful to guide me to the right places. One morning I woke up from a dream with a sense from God, “You need to go to Holmsted Manor (one of our larger YWAM bases in the south) and recruit for the tour.” That day I began to write e-mails back and forth with the leaders there to organize a time I could drive down there from York…a good four and a half hour drive. In the end, half my team came from Holmsted Manor, including my amazing co-leader, Gary Morgan, who has trained up the communications team and organized services for us. The team has experienced incredible unity and an easy family feel. I couldn’t have asked for a better team.

Now we are more than half way through the tour, and I am so pleased with the results. The birth pangs, contractions, and the final push to get things moving all feels worth it now that I can see the fruit and how blessed the churches have been by our coming. The team was buzzing last night with all the great conversations we had.

Yesterday morning we were at Plume Avenue United Reformed Church in Colchester where we are being hosted three nights (November 5-8). Last night we had our largest audience with 110 people from Kingsland Church, a congregation that meets over an Aldi Supermarket in town. Carl Tinnion was speaking all day and encouraging the team in Colchester. He did a remarkable job in bringing across a missions message that was accessible to all ages and every denomination.

In the morning an older man came to him and said, “Would you pray for me? I can tell you are a man who is positive towards the elderly.” Carl had just shared a message about his parents getting a missions call in the advanced years of their lives. Many of the older people in the congregation felt affirmed and renewed in their vision for what God could do in their lives.

I had a chance to encourage to 13-year-old girls about our summer outreach program for youth as well as DTS. In the evening several of the team spoke to young people about DTS and were amazed at how touched people were by the program. People stayed and chatted for a long time after the service.

To read more updates from the Trumpet Tour, click here.

We arrived in Taunton very focused as the DTS trainees and some of the core team walked and prayed in the city and enjoyed the hospitality of St. James Church in Taunton Keith and Melanie Whitaker, who are beginning a YWAM work in Taunton, organized all our food and accommodation and general promotion for the event in the town.

The audience in Taunton was a bit older but even so people were very encouraged about how God could use them. Hannah, an 18-year-old trainee on the DTS, spoke to a man in his 60’s who had been with YWAM and wanted to go back to Uganda. Hannah was able to pray for the man and encourage him.

Gonzalo, who is 21, talked to a woman who said to him, “All my life I was taking care of children, but I was so encouraged because of what you were sharing with us…that God could use me at my age.” There were many good conversations going on throughout the night about who God is and what He can do, and I wish I could convey the excitement from the team as a whole.

This was the last night of the tour for the DTS trainees and staff from King’s Lodge, and we said goodbye to the team on the morning of Nov. 4 as we thanked God together for all He had done. The group expressed regret that they could not keep going to more churches with us, but were excited to go to the DTS gathering in London, where over 200 YWAM trainees were expected together.

“I thought this whole week was going to be exhausting,” said Magda from Austria, “but I was so blessed every time we worshiped and prayed.”

After our goodbyes, the core team drove four hours to Cambridge. One of our cars got stuck in traffic behind an accident and it took them almost eight hours to arrive at our venue! They arrived just as we were meant to be starting. Unfortunately they had all our instruments so it was a flurry of trying to set things up at 7 p.m. and we had a late start 15 minutes later. Even so the night was full of the sweet presence of God. John Peachey led a DTS of 40 people from Harpenden to Cambridge for the day and his group were really touched by the worship and the message.

To read more updates from the Trumpet Tour, click here.

“I’ve never seen so many happy people. Why are you all so happy?” one of the young people at Milton Baptist church in Weston-Super-Mare told one of our team members.

Last night the Trumpet Tour team had a fantastic time in this coastal city of just over 70,000.

After almost four hours on the road from Romford, the DTS were up for a little adventure. Connie Taylor taught some basic principles of evangelism before the school hit the streets of the town in order to talk about Jesus with the locals. The students had a great time and several good conversations. Connie talked with a skater to wanted to follow Jesus and prayed with him to live for God right there on the streets! We were all rejoicing when we heard the news.

The evening meeting was powerful during worship when Edi from Germany shared the story of how he came to know the love of God. As a teenager he was invited to church to play electric guitar on the worship team even though the band knew he hated God and believed church was a prison. His church just continued to love him and invite him into meetings unconditionally. He was so amazed at this kind of love that he wanted to know Jesus personally. Edi shared that everyone can come to Jesus as they are.

The youth were visibly touched by Edi’s testimony and Connie’s radical stories of faith as she shared the “Call of the Wild.” One of the staff said she could see faces changing during the service. Connie’s message was essentially calling people to live for more than IPOD’s, video games, “steak” and good living, and material wealth. She was calling all of us to live for the great adventure of following God.

After the service Connie and James went over to talk to the youth and continued to share stories about their experiences in China. Connie also shared England’s great heritage of sending missionaries to the nations and the inheritance of all the people who have gone before them. The youth were all so hungry to be a part of it that they allowed several from the team to pray for them. James said it was like a “commissioning” time for them. The youth are planning a trip to Uganda later this year.

The youth leader told me privately that these youth are not normally excited about church and he told me he has been trying to challenge them to get baptized. He was amazed that they were so excited about a missions message.

The DTS is continuing to have lectures this morning as the “core” team for the tour processes program details and how to make things even better in terms of our communication and message.

I have to say I have not seen such a great DTS in a long time. They are completely available and ready to do whatever is needed and they are such an enthusiastic group of worshipers, ready to pray when the need arises and displaying great attitudes. It’s obvious to me God hand-picked this group to be on tour.

The over-all feeling is positive and full of faith for the next leg of the journey.

To read more updates from the Trumpet Tour, click here.

20. Million. Can you even begin to wrap your mind around that? When I first read these words on International Justice Mission’s Website, I couldn’t grasp the numbers.

To be honest, I live in Letter Land, that happy place where writers live in oblivion to things like numbers. Slapping a number in front of the word million doesn’t phase me.

20 million what? Dollars? Writers never make that much, so that’s out. Words? That’s a Dostoevsky novel. Perhaps too many words.

20 million people? What does that even look like, that mass of humanity, nameless and faceless?

To make up for my numerical deficiency, I have taken to creating word pictures to make more sense of numbers beyond the reach of my imagination. It’s a journalist’s trick my former editor taught me. We are in the age where information often gets thrown at us with little or no explanation, so we have to grapple with the meaning of the numbers.

So, 20 million. Let’s put that into a frame we can understand:

First, Fly to New York City. Check out the Empire State Building. Cruise Broadway. Then enslave the entire city — everyone from Mayor Bloomberg and the Rockettes, down to the last struggling mother in Harlem.

Don’t stop there. Next, travel to Los Angeles, and make slaves of the entire population of metro LA, celebrities included. If you’ve ever driven through LA County traffic during rush hour, you can imagine what a difficult job it would be.

But that only puts you at 12 million. To get to 20 million people, you need to conquer Chicago, Houston and Phoenix as well.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot – these numbers are from 1999. The numbers have now leaped to an estimated 27 million. And numbers from closed countries are hardly accurate. So you can easily throw in Philadelphia, San Antonio, Dallas, San Diego, San Jose, Detroit and San Francisco into the mix as well.

I am not an alarmist. I tend to walk pretty calmly through life. I’m not easily rattled, even when others around me are whipped into a frenzy, squawking about global warming. Or food chemicals. Or the inherent evil of (insert cause here.)

But when I started looking at these slavery numbers and figuring out what they might look like in real life, I was ready to throw a full-on, loud-mouthed, squawking activist fit.

Once I calmed down a bit, I started asking questions. Who are these people? What does slavery look like?

Take a look at the tag on your shirt. Look at your shoes. Many of the items we wear, particularly cheaply made clothes, are made in factories where people are bought as slaves and forced to work long hours in horrible conditions.

You know that sketchy massage parlor in town, the one people talk about as being “that kind of place?” Women are often trafficked in from other countries and forced to work as prostitutes.

In some foreign countries, slave laborers make bricks and toil in the hot sun next to their master’s palatial homes. Sound familiar from history class?

According to Paul E. Lovejoy, in his book Transformations in Slavery, from 1650 when the slave trade began, until it ended in 1900, 10.2 million people were transported. While slavery is tragic no matter what era, double that number were reported in one year just 10 years ago, and it is on its way to treble that.

In various countries, from North America to Asia, in small pockets of tens and hundreds and thousands, there are 27 million people with no option where they work, where they live, how they move about.

It’s enough to make a journalist squawk. So let’s do something about it.

Sure, you say. It’s easy for me, sitting behind my computer, making weird noises, to talk about doing something to impact a global pandemic. It’s overwhelming.

I know. Even I am sometimes overwhelmed with the facts, but if we are all concerned, and we move in one thing to stop slavery, imagine the difference it could make.

We all have a voice, which might seem insignificant. But add it to another voice, and another, and the sound grows to a roar.

What will you do with your one voice?

My challenge is this: Educate yourself. Visit International Justice Mission, Not For Sale and Because Justice Matters. Read about slavery, and be informed. Let the information soak into your soul, let the numbers go past your head and into your heart. See where it leads you. It just might change the world.

And that’s something to squawk about.

Lauren Nelson is the editor and chief troublemaker for Hope Ink Magazine. She is currently fascinated with 19th century English fiction, tea, and print making. You can e-mail her at hopeinkmagazine@gmail.com.

As I was chatting to one of the elders of the church, Emo, who is originally from Nigeria and moved to the UK 10 years ago, he said that he feels the UK brought the gospel to Africa and that it was their responsibility to bring the gospel back to this nation. Emo said his hometown honours the missionary Mary Slessor and her work amongst Nigerians to abolish the practice of killing twin babies. He said he was so blessed to hear Connie share about this woman’s life and work in Nigeria. Emo has visited Mary’s grave in Nigeria.

We held three services at the Apostolic church on Saturday evening, Sunday morning and Sunday evening. The services went from two hours to three and a half hours long. On our last night, we just kept worshiping God and there was an altar call for healing. Trainees from the Discipleship Training School were filled with faith after a weekend full of encouraging teaching from Connie. “Living by faith is not living in unreality,” Connie said. “It is facing the facts and saying ‘God, you are bigger than that!’”

Connie had been sharing about the father of faith, Abraham, and how he believed in hope against hope that Sarah would have a child when her womb was “beyond dead.” The messages of the weekend were essentially “Nothing is impossible for God.”

After the Sunday morning meeting, one church member told us, “I’m not leaving until the next meeting begins.” She waited in the church for hours because she was so touched at the Sunday morning service where one of the DTS students, Carissa, shared how she was healed of cancer as a child. She had the disease at age 11 and suffered for a couple of years before God healed her at a youth camp. She testified powerfully to the fact that God is able to do more than we think or imagine.

Another young DTS staff, Phil from the UK, shared miraculous stories of healing while he was in Uganda where someone was healed of malaria, and praying for healing in Spain. He said, “The same God that was in Africa is here in Europe!”

Connie preached about God being a covenant God. She shared some of the church history of England, and talked about God re-opening the wells of revival in the nation. The Apostolic church finds its roots in the Welsh Revival and revivalist Evan Roberts who is renowned for waiting on the Holy Spirit and maintaining a sensitivity to the Spirit of God. In our worship times we felt that same sweet sensitivity to wait for God.

The school leader for the DTS, Matt Partington, said to me, “It’s interesting how you never know what to expect. I didn’t realize we would be so blessed just to worship God here.” The worship times have been powerful.

There has been unbelievable unity amongst all the team members and people can be found praying in twos and in groups regularly. I have to say this is the most loving and unified team I have ever been a part of and feel very privileged to work with these people.

To read more updates from the Trumpet Tour, click here.

The team hopes to “sound a trumpet” as a kind of wake up call to the church here in England. Biblically speaking, the trumpet was used to gather people, to announce God’s power, to rouse people to fight, and to prepare people for battle. There is a sense of that the church in England is gathering and networking with new and unprecedented unity. It seems God is getting the church ready for another move of God and this is just the right season to call people into what God is already doing.

It is the message of Youth With A Mission to call people to know God in intimacy and then go forth to share this message with a world in desperate need of Jesus.

For the first week of the tour, the “core” team of 11 will be joined by 15 trainees and staff from The King’s Lodge who will help to pray and intercede for churches, set up for the tour at each location, and be available to share their testimony of God’s goodness. Connie Taylor is the guest speaker visiting from Cambridge and traveling with the team to spread a fiery message of God’s call to burn like never before for Jesus.

The team began the tour in Nuneaton at Lifechurch Friday night, and will continue the tour Saturday and Sunday at The Apostolic Church in Romford.

A part of this series, we will have perspectives from Lisa Cuellar, who is leading the YWAM England Trumpet Tour.

Lisa’s Take

I have never done anything like this. I began planning the tour about eight months ago, and I am a bit amazed at how God has brought things together. The last three days here at the Lodge we have been working 11 hour days together, getting ready for the tour, doing team building, communication training and band rehearsals. I think the team is a perfect mix because we have the “know God” part of YWAM’s motto represented in what the worship team is doing to call people to intimacy and we have the “make him known” part being communicated through the communication team.

My team is a mix of people with varying degrees of missions experience. I have people from age 21 to 45 on the team and it seems to be a perfect fit of giftings and teamwork. Gary Morgan has been heading up the “communication” team that are doing the main MC and media parts of the tour, including testimonies and creative intercession. I have been working with the worship team to get ready to make the worship something that is accessible and challenging that will also reveal God’s heart for people and the lost. In just three days there is a huge sense of family. I am loving every minute of this.

Tonight I got to a pray with a 22-year-old man named Pete. He was so moved by the worship and Connie’s challenge to be “wild” for Jesus that he is seriously thinking of doing a Discipleship Training School, because he said to me, “I can tell you all have something I need…”

God is at work.