YMI's Vision: A Global Movement
Youth Missions International is not content with just sending youth from the United States on mission trips. We are not content with training only youth within the U.S. for mission work. No, God has supplied us with a much larger vision. We firmly believe that God wants us to take our ministry and replicate it in countries all over the world.
When we began YMI, all of the founding members were singular in focus: we wanted to have a mission organization that did more than just send young people on mission trips. I had seen too many mission trips leave this country only to cause more damage to the mission site the team served at while not yielding much fruit in the lives of those who went. In fact, there are those today who would question the purpose of short-term mission trips (especially international ones!). This is due to the amount of time, effort and cost that are poured into trips with what they perceive as little return in the form of fruit borne for the Kingdom of God. I can't say that I blame them and I don't think my fellow board members at YMI would either. In 2007 we felt the call to form YMI and our goal was to provide trips that made a positive impact for Christ in the mission field and in the hearts and minds of the young people who went. That's why we chose our mission statement. We take seriously the spiritual growth that short term mission trips can have on those who go. We know that these experiences can lead to the mission team members wanting to do more evangelism at home.
In fact, this summer YMI Team members who went on trips the past two years partnered with a church here in Washington State to do a sports camp for lower income children in the community. This ministry effort (from YMI's side) is being overseen by the board, but run and coordinated by YMI Team Alum. In fact, the person heading the effort caught the vision for sports ministry through doing short term mission work. She went to Los Angeles and did an inner city sports camp before going to Brazil twice to do sports ministry there. It is the experience in the inner city and international mission field that has caused these young people to assemble and help churches run a sports camps! There is no doubt that short-term mission trips can have long term implications for those who go.
While this is true, this was not the only reason why we founded YMI. That was really only half of it at the time. There were missionaries who we knew wanted to have teams come to them. Once we founded YMI, we were fielding more requests for teams than we could handle. The trips we were going to put together not only benefited the young people, but also the international missionaries! We felt good about the partnerships we were developing in 2007. It seemed that YMI was going to mainly focus on training and sending as many quality youth teams as we could to support missionaries around the world. It was something we had been trained to do and knew how to continue doing in the future. All that needed to happen was to spread the word about our organization to more places. We felt strongly that God would grow the ministry and that we were fulfilling His vision for YMI. That was until the end of 2007 and into the beginning of 2008.
During the final few months of 2007 and leading into the YMI Board Meeting in January of 2008, God began to reveal a much larger vision of what YMI could potentially become. Missionaries and board members began talking with me about how other countries desired to have a YMI-type organization training and sending young people on mission trips. In my travels during the year to coordinate and set up ministry for the summer's mission work, I have been asked by several countries about this possibility. Many countries around the world are now wanting to train their own mission teams. They also want to invest in the next generation - their youth.
So, in concert with the YMI Board and according to the vision God has given, I have begun traveling and planning travel to places that have a desire to begin YMI ministry. Prayerfully, it is in our 5 year plan to begin two of these ministry efforts outside the U.S. This means that by 2012, there could be three YMI organizations training and sending youth around the world. This is exciting not because YMI will have sister organizations on different continents. It's exciting because of what these countries will be able to do. Youth from other countries will be able to reach places effectively that teams from the U.S. cannot. For example, a team from Brazil could go to Cuba, or be received well in a Muslim country. Not only does this mean more people being reached worldwide, but more youth who begin to see their entire world as a mission field, having a desire to share the good news throughout their lives. This is the vision God has given us: a whole generation - around the world - taking their faith in Christ and sharing it with others.
