Youth With A Mission (YWAM, generally pronounced as "why-wam") is an international, inter-denominational, non-profit Christian, short-term missionary organization. Founded by Loren Cunningham in 1960, YWAM's stated purpose is to "know God and to make Him known".
YWAM now includes people from over 150 countries and a large number of Christian denominations, with over half of the organization's staff coming from "non-western" countries even despite the fact that overwhelming majority of the top leadership and middle management are still Western. YWAM currently has over 16,049 full-time volunteer workers in over 1,000 operating locations in 180 nations and trains 25,000 short-term missions volunteers annually.
Read more about Youth With A Mission: History, Structure, Doctrine and Practices, Associations and Working Relationships, 2007 Shooting Event, Political Affiliation and Involvement, Criticism and Controversy, Responses To Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words youth with, youth and/or mission:
“Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of his enthusiasm, and there are now men,—if indeed I can speak in the plural number,—more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest of sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)