A Global Online YWAM Gathering

Today 104 YWAM communities and groups around the world signed online to participate in a global meeting. One of the locations was in Nigeria. Loren Cunningham, co-founder of Youth With A Mission, gave a testimony of a woman in Nigeria who fell and died in the middle of a church service. Paul Dongtungda, the YWAM leader there, was encouraged to pray for her. The community was afraid and would not enter the church. Paul entered and immediately prayed and bound the spirit of death in the church. The woman rose from the dead, Loren said. And then, at that moment, we saw and heard that very woman on our screen. The woman spoke quickly in a thick accent. Her testimony confirmed that she was raised from the dead. We were extraordinarily encouraged!

This message of resurrection became a theme for the remainder of the global gathering. John Dawson shared how the elders of YWAM, our Global Leadership Forum, met in Mexico recently. They focused on several things, including Eldership.

Our elders asked many questions, which John Dawson shared with us during the global online meeting today.

What are your circles of covenantal love? What kind of agreement does that produce? How should we appoint what is lacking in our groupings?

What is the principle of Eldership?
Is it merely gathering in prayer and “covering” people? Is it merely older, more mature people? Or is it also walking in agreement and standing in the gap on behalf of others and on behalf of the future.
Is it not also to receive words from the Lord and declare His thoughts? Is it not releasing into the heavens the intents God has for a group through the power of agreement?

Do you really know one another personally? Do you meet together and pray? If you are praying, can you really cover one another if you don’t know each other? Can you protect one another from the spirit of contention? When you meet with love, John Dawson suggests, ask each other personal questions with affection and kindness. By doing so, you will be creating an altar of agreement so that the “work” of the ministry can be accomplished with God’s blessing.

John shared much of the word from the Lord given by Loren Cunningham during the Global Leadership Forum meetings. Loren encourages us all to follow the biblical injunction to make altars of worship.

An altar was made of stones, each of which is unique. They are an example of unity in diversity. Each altar is different, as each individual contributes to its creation in unity. Paraphrasing the apostle Peter, “We are like living stones built together as a holy priesthood.”

This eldership is not something we delegate to others. This is something we do in the grace of God with an authority that comes through unity in the place of prayer.

To overcome the spirit of fear in our communities, we need unity in eldership. Most of us face fears, not as triumphalists, but with a complete dependence on the grace of God. In that dependence and in the unity of the Spirit, we have powerful authority to bind the spirits of darkness that would attack our communities and those to whom we serve.

To close the global online gathering, John Dawson exhorted us and led to pray in the power of agreement over the things that are broken, the dreams and hopes, that have been broken. We prayed together and took up each others causes in love.

Though some may have been tramatized by loss, we declared together in the Spirit and we appealed to the Lord to heal and restore and resurrect those things. We released over the global YWAM family, a new day of beginnings in the grace of God.