My original plan, coming out of high school, was to do a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) after I'd done a few years of college, and then I could compare the experiences and decide which one I wanted to continue in. Doing a DTS had interested me for a few years, but I thought I just HAD to go to college to get experience in the "real world" first. Even after I missed the registration deadline for the school I wanted to go to, I thought, "No big deal. I'll just work for a few more months, save money, and start school next semester."
I wasn't until my best friend Mark was leaving to do his DTS in England that everything changed. A guy Mark knew from work was throwing him a goodbye party at his house, and at that party I was just super bummed out. My best friend was leaving me for a long time, but that wasn't the only reason I was sad. I had this gut feeling that I should be pursuing the same thing, but there was still a big part of me that wouldn't accept it as a possibility. I'd been conditioned to believe it would be irresponsible for me to pursue anything in life without going to college first.
I was getting overwhelmed with emotion, and knew I was going to cry, so I darted inside. The guy throwing the party, who owned the house, was in there talking to a few people, and saw me run to the bathroom. I spent a few minutes in there crying, then tried to compose myself, and started to head back outside.
However, the guy who owned the place was waiting for me in the kitchen when I came out of the bathroom. He could tell I was upset and asked what was wrong. I opened my mouth to try to say, "Nothing, I'm good", but instead I started bawling. He came over and gave me a big hug and just held me while I composed myself all over again.
And right there, in the kitchen of a complete stranger, I started to express all of my feelings, feelings that I hadn't talked to anyone else about. I told him about how lonely I was feeling because Mark was leaving, about how depressed and purposeless I'd been feeling for the past year, about how I wanted to do YWAM as well but also felt like I needed to go to college first...
When got to the part about how I was waiting to go into YWAM until after I'd done some college first, he stopped me. What he said next I'll never forget. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but what he told me then radically changed my life.
He said: "Don't wait. Don't EVER wait to do something God has called you to do Once you start putting it off, there will always be something else that you'll want to finish next."
"If you do two years of college, then you'll say, 'Well, I'm just two years away from my degree. I'll go after I get my degree.' Then when you get your degree, 'Wow, I'm in a lot of debt. It'd be irresponsible of me to go until I've paid that off. I'll just work for a few years and save up and then I'll go.' And then, by the time you've paid off your debt, you'll be in a career that you love, or maybe you'll have a wife who has no interest in going into missions, or you'll have kids that you have to take care of. None of that is bad, but you'll have missed you chance at living the way God really made you to."
He finished by saying, "You can always find reason not to what God has called you to if you look hard enough, but the truth is no reason is ever really good enough, because whatever it is God is calling you to is going to be the most fulfilling thing you could ever do with your life. It might not be the easiest, it might not make sense by the world's standards, but it's going to be the best thing you could possibly do."
He then proceeded to pray for me, praying that God would make it clear what I'm supposed to do, and that He would give me the strength to do it. That same night, after the party, I went home and started looking at DTSs.
***
Now here I am, 3 years later, about to embark on another journey. Tomorrow afternoon my team of 7 people departs for Nepal, where we'll be running Biblical Education and Leadership Training (BELT) seminars. I'm co-leading that team. After a few weeks in Nepal, our team is splitting up. 4 are going to Thailand and 3 are going to a nation in Asia that is closed to Christianity (meaning it's illegal to freely practice Christianity there, which also means I can't write about it online for the safety of the people we'll be meeting with there). In that closed nation, I'm leading the team, composed of two students and myself.
Am I qualified to lead an outreach by myself in a country I've never been to? Depends on what you mean by qualified. I'm qualified in the sense that I've been a student on a team doing the same seminar in a different place, so I at least know how it should work and have a good grasp on the material. That's about as much qualification as is usually required in YWAM to lead an outreach.
However, I've never had any real instruction in the ways of leadership. I've never taken leadership classes or read books on leadership. I know very little about the culture I'm going into. I'm younger than one of the students on my team, and probably younger than all the people we'll be teaching in the seminars. I'm not at all a details oriented person, and there's a lot of details to keep track of when you're traveling for weeks in another country.
In the eyes of the world, I am very much unqualified for this job.
However, in spite of all my doubt, there's one quote that has been a great comfort to me (I tried to find out who originally said it, but when I Googled it I found it attributed to many different people): "God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called."
Now, I would personally say something more along the lines of, "God doesn't only call the qualified, because He can qualify the called." There is something to be said for training and preparing. In YWAM we require everyone go through a Discipleship Training School because we want everyone to have at least some basic level of instruction and understanding of why we do what we do. That being said, if you go down to the roots of who we are as an organization, YWAM absolutely stands for and supports the unqualified in following what they know they're called to do.
***
YWAM was founded on the idea that anyone can be a missionary. When Youth With A Mission began, it was practically unheard of for a missionary to be in the field without the backing of a church or denomination, and churches and denominations would only send people who had been through seminary. They wanted to know that the people they were sending were extremely qualified, so that their congregations money wouldn't be wasted, and so that the people they were sending knew what they were talking about. It makes practical sense, but it was a very restrictive model.
YWAM flipped this model on it's head by sending out young people, many of whom had never been to college (let alone seminary), and enabled them to go out into the world with naught but their Bibles and the testimony of their own personal relationship with Jesus to reach the unreached. It was a missional revolution, one that I'm proud to be a part of over 50 years later.
Even so, as I'm faced with this new task, the doubts keep creeping in. I know I'm following in the footsteps of thousands upon thousands of YWAM staff before me, not to mention all the leaders and missionaries in the nearly two thousand years of church history, but I don't feel like one of those greats. I'm just...me.
The thing is, I know nearly all of those "greats" before me probably felt the same way.
Moses and David are two easy biblical examples of average people becoming extraordinary. Both were humble shepherds, one very old and one very young, when they were called to lead a nation. Neither had, by the world's standards, what it would take to undertake such a task. God, however, looks past what we're capable of doing in the moment, and rather looks at what we're capable of becoming with His guidance and power.
There's a million good quotes out there about following your calling. While he isn't exactly one of my "heroes of the faith" (and I'm not sure in what context this was said), Stephen King apparently once said, "If God gives you something you can do, why in God's name wouldn't you do it?" Jackie Pullinger, one of my actual heroes of the faith, said "It is very much easier to do what God made you for than to not."
Both of those quotes ring equally true. God, the creator of the universe, has given us each individually different gifts, passions, and interests, and has a unique purpose for each and every one of us. The best possible way to live is to search out that purpose and follow it wholeheartedly.
I think often the hardest step is the first. We have to trust that God sees what we cannot, trust in His perfect plans rather than our own imperfect ones, and start doing what we know He wants us to do. Once we start doing that, and it starts actually working, we can build greater trust in God for when He calls us to even bigger and more difficult things.
***
So, regardless of the gnawing doubt that is still somewhere in the back of my mind, I go forward into this outreach with confidence. Not confidence in myself, but confidence in my God, who is the real leader of this outreach, who is the one who gives me strength each day and directs my steps. Even if things go wrong, even if I mess up, I know that if I submit myself to the Lordship of Jesus each day, then I'm doing the best job I can possibly do. If I do that, I know God will be proud of me, and He'll work everything out for the best.
This is my Nepal team (I'm in the Pac-Man shirt). The two girls on the right side of the photo will be the only students on my team for the second half of the trip in the closed nation we're going to.
Please pray for our team while we're away. We leave tomorrow, September 1st, and our flight back is on October 18th. If you want to meet up with me when we get back and hear about the trip, send me a message either by e-mail (christopherpaulhickey@yahoo.com) or over Facebook.
