Think swarms can’t work in missions? Think again. There are swarms all around us. Youth With a Mission is a classic example, and the easiest because lots of people wonder whether YWAM has any structure at all. It does, clearly – but only if you think of it in swarmish terms. Let’s break it down:
Swarms are visionary
1. Plausible Promise: “To know God and make Him known.”
2. Shared Values: Worship, Holiness, Witness, Prayer and Fellowship. (In addition, these foundational values when combined with YWAM’s Beliefs lead to 17 “core values”: know God, make God known, hear God’s voice, practice worship and intercessory prayer, be visionary, champion young people, be broad-structured and decentralized, be international and interdenominational, have a Biblical worldview, function in teams, exhibit servant leadership, do first then teach, be relationship-oriented, value the individual, value the family, rely on relationship-based support, and practice hospitality – see http://ywam-mn.org/values.html.
3. Teachable Behaviors: All bases, courses, and ministries use similar methodologies that can be taught and replicated: for example, consider the standardization of DTS, SOFM, SOE, etc.
4. Modular Strategies: Every base builds its own ministry strategy based around the standardized methodologies. When a base recruits a new worker, they come already infused with the YWAM DNA and can easily pick up the strategy because it’s just a “restacking” of existing YWAM values and behaviors.
5. Measurable Milestones: This is one area where YWAM seems a little weak at times, as their plans tend not to be publicly communicated very well (try finding them on a website). Nevertheless there are plans (such as 4K etc).
Swarms are Collaborative
6. Open Membership: becoming a member of YWAM is a fairly straight forward process. You have to have a pastoral reference and you have to go through a DTS. My personal belief is that YWAM should have an “affiliate membership” for people with existing independent ministries that don’t need the basic discipleship in DTS but could profitably ally with YWAM – call this an “ATS” or Associates Training School to inculcate the YWAM DNA.
7. Roles & Responsibilities vs. Ranks & Rights: YWAM is a remarkably flat organization, with a high degree of representation. It may seem from the outside that there is no structure but there clearly is. Every YWAM base within a country is formed with the approval/blessing/support of the national leadership, and all base leaders become part of the national leadership. National leaderships in turn make up Regional leadership; regional leadership in turn makes up Global leadership. Bases are made up of leaders of the individual members on base. The emphasis here is not on “rank” because YWAM is a volunteer organization.
8. Crowdsourcing: YWAM does tend to break up big, impossible global tasks into smaller, possible chunks, although this could perhaps be done better in bigger ways.
9. Standard Communication: I don’t know how well this is done right now. My impression is that there’s plenty of room for improvement in the standardized communication of opportunities, but as I’m not a YWAMer I’m not privy to internal email lists.
10. Permissive Accountability: which refers to the ease with which someone can undertake a new work and the thoroughness to which work is held accountable to the Plausible Promise and Shared Values. I don’t have first hand knowledge of this, but plenty of YWAMers have told me they have experienced both the ability to start new ministries and strong accountability systems.
11. Self-Directed Leadership: YWAM has very much a grass-roots leadership system, as noted above. There are no top-down orders.
Swarms are Sustainable:
12. Autonomy: Interestingly enough, there is no formal international centralized YWAM headquarters. Each individual base is incorporated according to the laws of the country in which it resides – some as charities, some as corporations. Some bases aren’t even incorporated at all, since they don’t have any assets. There is nothing to take over.
13. Localization: To what degree does a YWAM base rely on local support, and to what degree does it rely on support from other locations (e.g. money from other nations)? This is the degree of localization and it would vary from base to base. I don’t have access to any studies of this but would estimate the degree of localization is much higher than many other missions, simply due to the internationalized and decentralized nature of YWAM.
14. Distant Horizons: to what degree is a YWAM base connected with others who are “unlike” it (because the “new” is generally discovered from people who are less like you and more into things you’re not expert on)? Many YWAM bases have relational connections with other bases in distant countries due to “migration” of staff over time. Due to the strongly relational nature of YWAM, they are often well connected in this way.
15. Virtuous Cycles: the larger and more successful the swarm becomes, the lower its costs and more able it is to do things. YWAM has certainly demonstrated this through its growing ministries. Obvious in this is Mercy Ships, which has gone from being a YWAM ministry to being released as its own ministry.
16. Viral Actions: To what extent does YWAM’s actions advertise YWAM itself? One example of this is DTS, which serves as a sort of basic discipleship program for new believers. Young people take a season away for spiritual renewal to attend DTS. They become inspired—but they also learn a lot about YWAM. The same thing happens through the School of Evangelization and the School of Biblical Studies.
Swarms are Sustainable:
17. Minimal Structure: On a highly important side note: *no* finances flow through YWAM to an individual. Individual YWAM members have to have a 501c3 covering—like a church—to collect their donations. So far as I can detect as an outside observer, YWAM has no financial interest in its individual members (aside from the fact that all members of a YWAM base pay a share of the base expenses in order to support the base’s assets etc—thus bases do not do much (any?) fundraising for the base, and are not in competition for donor dollars). YWAM Bases have only the amount of structure that is needed and paid for by their members.
18. Reorganize the Environment: YWAM bases with which I am familiar are often in neighborhoods and houses. These are constantly being improved, along with the surrounding neighborhoods, as a way of making more ministry possible.
19. Cultural Change: most ministry by a YWAM base is focused on the community immediately surrounding the base, and seeks cultural transformation. A great many (if not most?) of YWAM’s new members come out of people who have converted through their ministry.
20. Bravery: YWAM has demonstrated a consistently peaceable yet brave response to outside threats.
Swarms are Adaptable:
21. Continuous Improvement: whether YWAM exemplifies this is questionable. They are probably among the most adaptable and flexible organizations that I am familiar with, but there is still much improvement to be made. Toyota is my baseline model here, and I don’t know of any organization that comes even close to its highly refined processes for continuous improvement.
22. Greenhouse of Innovation: the birth of many of YWAM’s ministries actually remind me of the birth of many Google products: as “20% projects” for Google staffers. (Google allows staffers to spend 20% of their time—1 day a week—on personal projects; these have given rise to things like Google Mail and Google Reader). YWAM’s global ministries were once base-specific ministries.
23. Pure Research: As a heavy % of their effort, I don’t think YWAM devotes an enormous amount to research—but they still have some research efforts, including the 4K Project and others.
24. Exploration/Randomization: This category has to do with the discovery of the unplanned and the unknown through serendipitous or random happenstance. YWAM seems to be quite open to exploratory ministry.
Swarms are Open:
25. Open Source: due to the often low personal support budgets of YWAM staffers, I imagine that a lot of them use open source software—although I couldn’t say this for sure. (Anyone want to write in?)
26. Standards-based tools: this is one area where YWAM seems to shine—the ability to create standardized curriculum for training and ministry and to roll it out rapidly for worldwide implementation in a highly decentralized fashion.
27. Encouraging mashups: taking two existing standardized tools and putting them together to create a new tool is a “mashup” (because you are “mashing” the two together). YWAM’s adaptable bases would seem to do this although I don’t have specific examples.
Swarms are Multiplying:
28. Growth in numbers: YWAM’s existsing goal is to grow by an order of magnitude, from 20,000 to 200,000 staffers. Most bases that I have experience seem to be fairly stable in their numbers but have a high degree of turnover, and so have lots of “alumni.”
29. Planting Swarms: I’d like to note here an interesting thing about the way YWAM plants a base. Nearly every base starts with a catalytic founder who has a heart for it—but until the vision attracts a team, a base cannot be formed. (Up until then it is a Point of Presence). Thus YWAM is really a swarm of swarms.
So that’s it. 29 identifiers of swarmishness, which YWAM is a classic example of. If you enjoyed this article or want to add a note, be sure to use the comments below. If you like this case study, I can post others!
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