This past month has been an incredibly full and busy one. With the continued restriction on the gathering of people, I have been doing more live streaming than ever before. Also this month the base has been offering two online seminars and many people both here at the base and across the world are taking part. The two seminars are on the Bible and French. In addition to the normal live streams throughout the week for our normal times of intercession, teaching, and worship I have also been helping to run the daily Bible seminar lectures over live stream as well. The Bible seminar is focused around going through the majority of the Bible using the inductive study method. We have some incredible teachers here who normally staff the very intensive Bible Core Course and School of Biblical Studies. However, these schools are 3 and 12 months long respectively which is not feasible for everyone. Delivering a shorter and more streamlined online course with the same level of high-quality teaching is quite extraordinary. I am so excited to get to be a key part of making this happen. The success of this first Bible seminar in this online format has sparked the idea of running more of these in the future. I find this so exciting because it fits so closely with my heart to use technology to further the kingdom. I feel so blessed to be working on this new format and frontier. There are many exciting things on the horizon and my skills and talents are helping to bring them about, how exciting!
In addition to running all these various live streams, I am also personally attending the French seminar. I have never had a particular gift for learning language and this season has been stretching in a good way. God has been so good in granting me the grace for 4-5 hours of intensive study per day. I have yet to come up with a catchy name of the very specific kind of headache that I find myself with in the last hour or so of study each day. If you have any ideas please let me know! 🙂 I have taken to the written form of the language more quickly than the speaking. After a week, I was able to read at a fairly decent level. Many of the longer words are strikingly similar to English and once I learned the majority of the smaller connective words, things started to move quite quickly. The speaking and hearing are taking a bit more effort but it slowly coming along as well. I am not sure if I will make it to 100% fluency, but I am greatly encouraged by the progress I have made thus far and will continue my study after this month at a more manageable pace.
I have really enjoyed the process of developing and refining the process we are using for live streaming. I recently bought a small soundboard that can hook directly to my computer via a USB cable. This has unlocked a new level audio adjustments with much more finesse and refinements like what is possible in a venue or sanctuary. The challenge of figuring everything out has been quite enjoyable. With each live stream, we are continuing to improve. The people here at the base have been very thankful for the work I am doing. Even the leader of the communications department (the person I work directly under), told me one day that I have really rescued the base from the situation. It has been quite an undertaking but so rewarding to see where we are and what we are headed towards. It has been the unexpected start of something wonderful.
This month I also read the book “Boundaries” by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. If you haven’t read it I would highly recommend it. YWAM is a very special and unique environment where there is such a heavy emphasis placed on relationality. We live, work, and play in community. This is absolutely wonderful, but it does present some unique challenges for someone like myself who is more introverted and compliant. I love to serve, do as much as I can to push things forward, go all in, and achieve all that is possible. In the past, this has made me a great employee and a diligent student, but in a less structured environment like YWAM, I have come to realize that it is all too easy to overdo it. I am realizing that in order to really achieve excellence in some things requires saying no to other things. I do count myself blessed to be in a place where there are so many opportunities. I am learning how to be wise in what I choose to engage with and why I am choosing the things I do. I have even had to make a point of giving myself permission to say “no” especially when their things that are more important or of higher value at stake. This has also lead me to reconsider my values and priorities which has been quite a fascinating journey as well. This is an ongoing process and I am already seeing the benefits of being intentional in this area.
As always, thank you for coming along with me in this adventure of faith,
Ben