Youth With a Mission’s Culture of Giving Examined

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have my co-hosts, researchers, and friends, Jenny McGrath, and Shelby Hauffer, former members of Youth with the Mission.

Jenny, Shelby, it's good to be back and to talk about money. There's one aspect of Youth with the Mission that I find really fascinating, and it's the same question that my grandfather asked in his resignation speech, whenever he and the entire staff of the Brannem Tabernacle resigned.

They said, where is the money going? And I want to ask that question, but I want to say very carefully because there are some legal issues with talking too deeply about money. I want to focus instead on some of the testimonies, and I think you have one that we can talk to, Shelby.

I was going to talk today instead about trauma laughter, which we'll put that into the queue and talk about it later. One of the comments is, I got this, I think, on one of your podcasts and also one with Pia Hugo, why do we laugh all the time?

And it has to do with all of the trauma. And to be honest, because while we're having a podcast, we can't just go get a good drink. We start laughing, and that helps with the trauma.

And speaking of drinks, Ginny came to share her trauma experiences with us over nice, fancy drinks downtown. And I got some pictures I'll throw them up here on the screen, but we had quite a good time talking about all of the battle scars that we have of being in high demand groups and high control groups.

And anyway, had a lot of fun, and Ginny, it was good to have you here. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. It was so fun to get to hang out and to talk about many of the things we talk about on here, but it was much more fun to do it over a good meal and with a nice drink.

And the red Yeti was like, we raved about that meal for days. It was like one of the best things we've eaten. So I so appreciate your time. I know our life is chaotic. We literally message you and we're like, we're in town. Let's hang out. And you said yes.

So, so glad it got to work out. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's one of my favorite places. There are multiple high demand groups in this area. And what I found out is the red Yeti statue outside scares them all away.

So we can eat there in peace and then we can go into the real world of high demand groups that are scary. cared for Ed Yeti's, but anyway, we do have a serious topic today. The money, like my grandfather said, where does the money go? And Shelby, you were telling me that you had some feedback from somebody who was listening and it tied directly into this conversation, so I'll let you kick it off.

No, we got some really helpful feedback from listeners. So when you guys send in your comments or emails to the podcast, it's really helpful, always in perspective and just sharing other people's stories. So when we all read it, for me, it was really like this person is exactly correct. This happens all the time. I certainly saw it in the various parts of the world that I was with. Why, why? And I thought it could be really helpful to sort of read some of this feedback and then talk about the ways that we're seeing some of

this and the why, things like this are happening that are directly connected to why one's foundational values as we've been talking about. So this person was wanting us to address what happens often. This person had been based in a majority world context, even though they were not from the majority world. And so they were saying, you know, some local usually staff. So people who are usually coming on staff from the local context cannot pay their staff fees. So when you go and you join staff or you join a school, you have to pay to go to that school or when you eventually join staff, there are what's called staff

fees that are meant to often cover things like your rents or your food costs. Sometimes there's admin or internet costs in that, you know, insurance, things like that. So it's often sort of lumped into one sum that you're meant to raise yourself as a staff person.

Some places will give a sliding scale based on the country that you come from. And some places it's the same across the board. But there comes a time when often these local staff cannot pay their staff fees and they end up in debt to the base. For some, living on a base is an upgrade from their normal life. So whereas for some staff, it's a really significant downgrade in their living standards and move on to a YM base. But for many people, especially often in the majority world, it is an upgrade for them. For some being on staff gives access to the possibility of raising international

funds in a country where it's difficult to get jobs and where many people live in poverty. So YM often has insurance, a safe building that will maybe withstand, you know, natural disasters, they have food, they have international friendships, and a lot more sort of benefits to being part of that group. So this tends to put some staff in a very vulnerable position. And this I 100% agree with and we'll talk about that, especially if they're not able to raise.

the needed funds for the fees and the outreaches. So if you are on staff and then maybe you're staffing a school, so a DTS or another course, and you have to go on an outreach as a staff person, you are often required then to raise your own funds for that as well.

So sometimes that sort of those needs, those fundraising needs that leads to debt of months or years, this is absolutely true. I've seen people here in Switzerland, tens of thousands of francs in debt to a wide land base. What do you do with that? We're going to talk about that.

It also makes it close to impossible to leave the organization without also losing relationships or more. I heard a horrific story of someone from a South American country going to another South American country. They got in debt at the base and the base leadership took their passports so that they could not leave that base before their debt was paid. Pretty sure that's illegal in a lot of places. So this person says they had seen staff who aren't able to raise enough funds, they have years of debt, and what often happens, this is so true, is the debt gets posted

on whiteboards for the entire base to see. So they'll say, these are our prayer needs for the community. So-and-so, it was this much, so-and-so, it needs this much, that's it, that's that. And then as money comes in where people give, it's erased and sort of updated.

And they're often, it's often framed as a way of like, well, if people don't know about the need, how can they give to the need? And so we're here to just pray for it. We want it out there. But there's not consent actually in that it's you need to sort of agree to have this up.

Another problem is that people with debt are not as easily able to gain influence or leadership roles. Fundraising is sometimes seen as a breakthrough. Like if money comes in, it's God's favor on you that, oh, finally, like, there's been some spiritual breakthroughs, spiritual warfare, and then it's seen as maybe God has blessed and anointed that person. So if there's a staff person with less funds, they somehow wind up living at the mercy of the other staff. Depending on them, for covering their basic needs, such as laundry soap and hygiene articles, they're often more at the subject of prayer meetings. So they're required to sort of lay their personal details out

for everyone, or it's done without their permission. This dynamic also leaves a higher possibility of Westerners with access to funds becoming influential, or being in a position of defining the premises of who amongst the locals becomes influential. So I have money, I have power, I have whiteness, and I can actually say, you know what, I think that person, yeah, I know they're struggling financially. I think they'd be a great leader. Let's see if we can get their debt cleared.

You know, let's see if we can do that, and those voices are often listened to more. So, I thought that was a really helpful feedback because this is something that is entirely common across the board.

And if we want to talk about linking that into why one's foundational values, value number 16 says, practice dependence on God. Why one is called to practice a life of dependence upon God for financial provision, for individuals and for any why one team or community, this comes primarily through his God's people.

As God has been generous towards us, so we desire to be generous, giving ourselves our time and talents to God with no expectation of renumeration. And then there's a slew of Bible verses meant to back that up.

In tandem with that, value number 13 is being relationship oriented, and this is often where it's believed that you're supposed to be living in community in the way that why one defines living in community, which is most often in one sort of, you know, base situation.

But it says why one is dedicated to being relationship oriented in our living and working together. We desire to be united through lives of holiness, mutual support, transparency, humility, and open communication rather than a dependence on structures or rules.

And I just want to echo gratitude for people sending in stories because the more stories we have, the more we can talk about these different things. So we don't take those lightly and we do read them and we do appreciate the different insights and directions that folks are sending in.

So just want to echo a thank you for that. And as you were reading, I was thinking about one of the times I was in Africa and I was talking to a friend who said, you know, whoever idea it was to come up with living on support was not African.

They clearly had people in their lives that they could rely on for support. And that really struck me because at the time, you know, I specifically did my School of Biblical Studies in South Africa because for me coming from Colorado, it was affordable.

And I could leverage, I think part of it was like a savings account that my grandmother had started for me to go to college. And I was like, well, this is the type of college that I'm going to do.

And so I could use that. And I also had a lot of financial benefit from my parents, from my church, from different things that allowed me to do that. And I didn't always appreciate that and the privilege that I had to be able to fundraise around folks who were affluent, who had more than what they needed, who could give.

And so I think it does create a lot of disparity between how people live on Y-Wan basis. You know, on the same base, you'll have people that spend every day going to coffee shops or Starbucks or different things like that.

And also people, like you said, that are struggling to pay for laundry detergent. And it's this facade that we're all in this together. But it is a microcosm of economic disparities that are across the globe just really, really condensed into the different bases.

So from my perspective, it's not just youth with a mission that has this perception of a problem that exists with financials. Almost every group that we've examined that is a high demand, high control group, there seems to be some level of accountability issues, whether they are real issues or whether it's just perceived issues.

And many members talk about this. We were in a high demand group with the brand of organization. And I remember there was a point in time when we were just about to make the decision where we were going to leave.

And they were at that time collecting penny jars from the children to give to the organization, teaching them that it's good to give to God is kind of how they framed it. And it's really sad because as a parent, we had the perception that they needed a lot of money.

And while these are penny jars, they take just a fraction of your paycheck, what they're asking for pennies, they probably need dollars. And we gave them hundreds of dollars. I wish that I could take that back.

But there was a point of time in which, after I left, the news media published the fact that they had $100 million in extra assets, right while they were collecting all these penny jars.

And I was thinking about that. And I was also thinking back about something that happened with my grandfather. My grandfather was a very humble man. He drove an old Osmo Bill, too, and from church.

Everybody knew him as this guy that just wasn't really looking for money. And I was surprised when he died. And his estate had millions of dollars in it. It just blew my mind because I had that perception of him.

And I can remember being at his house with that perception and watching others who had that perception come and hand him large sums of money because they felt he needed the money. There's a point in time in which he did not drive the Osmo Bill.

He did, for a brief period of time, have him Mercedes. And I remember the conversation clearly. He said, I wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea. So I'm going to sell it and get another Osmo Bill.

Now that I look back on that situation, it was all about the perception. He wanted to give the people the perception that he needed money because if he did, they would give him money.

And that's literally what happened here. So when I hear things like you're telling and some of the others who have shared... stories about not just youth with a mission, but many of these organizations, they want to give that perception because there's a strategy behind it. So it, in some way, I have to believe, and this is my opinion, I can't prove it, I don't have their accounting records, but I have to believe there is a strategy of perception that comes with these high demand groups.

I agree, and as you're saying that, I feel a little whiplash because I think the perception in Y-Wim is like this double bind where on one side you're supposed to martyr yourself and Jesus didn't have a place to lay his head. And then on the other side, like Shelby was saying, like, it's considered a breakthrough if you have your funds and if you have enough.

And so it's this weird thing of like either way get spiritualized whether you are impoverished or whether you're, quote unquote, blessed that there's this kind of really confusing whiplash, I think, and it sort of becomes such a powerful way to manipulate people in wherever they are in the socioeconomic spectrum. And so I'm thinking about that too, where a lot of times it was like, I'm not doing something right because I don't have my fees, but at the same time, I'm so Christ-like because I can't afford a meal I want to have.

Absolutely. There's such this sense of what we should, you know, almost like a poverty mentality in some ways, but like you said, it's that double bind because on the other hand, if you have, you know, you're given more finances or you get more supporters or you are trying to raise money to buy your own house, like, I would love to buy a house, but I have to work for that. You know, then you're seen it as blessed. And one of the other Y-1 books I've been reliving through is Friend Raising by Betty Barnett. It's ubiquitous

in the Y-1 world with, this is how you raise funds, it's not fund raising, it's friend raising. And straight away in the book, you know, she's talking about these biblical principles and says, in short, conviction and attitude permeate everything we do in life, ministry of angelism and missions per se, and often open or close the door to God's storehouse of provisions for our missionary support, right? So there you have this really explicit formula that's saying, like your attitude and the way that you think, just sort of the way that you are if you have a bad attitude, if you're sad, if you have doubt, whatever,

then you could be closing the storehouse door to God's blessing. And as you get further in, I mean, even I think it's the next page, it says lack of confidence in what God has said, like in terms of your calling, if he's called you to missions, will greatly affect our communication with others who will not want to support a missionary with an uncertain calling.

And I think when we're talking about perception, a lot of the feedback that I see in the comment section is people often defending why we're saying, well, that's just two people, you know, you've not, you know, it's not everybody and all of that, which is a real sort of strum and argument on its own, but you can read through the foundational values and be like, oh, that sounds okay. That's that's not so bad, right? But when you actually see the implications and the consequences of these being lived out, then you begin to see the harm, you know, so they can be this sense of, well,

that sounds quite okay. I can, as a non-whilamer, I can go and look at their website and I can see these are their foundational values. That sounds quite okay. Maybe I want to send my child a young person to go join, you know, join this ministry. And I saw really, let's be generous and say naive comment on one of the episodes. I think one of the upcoming episodes by this time it'll be out that said something like, oh my gosh, like people just need to be discerning and mature and, you know, not be caught up with this stuff. And like, we can't just go around canceling everybody and

burning down a whole organization. Like, people just need to do better. And if only that were so, that would be excellent. But we're out here talking about these things because that's not the case. We don't live in a perfect world. We live in a very broken world in so many ways.

So the perception and the reality, I think is so often missing each other, particularly when it comes to finances in the organization. And in some ways, there's another part that goes hand in hand with the perception. And you can tell me if it matches what you experienced or knew about youth with a mission. But in the Pentecostal style organizations, from which all of this really eventually was birthed, there was this idea of living by faith if you're a missionary.

You basically, you don't have any centralized salary for the missionaries. There's no, there's no system for providing yet some of the organizations that are sending missionaries are holding these big conferences. They have lots of money. They, they, like I said, they're sending out penny jars and they've got hundreds of million dollars in assets. Well, I knew missionaries who were out in the field. Some of them barely had food for their children. In fact, I've got one example on the website. The children were starving so much that there were, there were some issues that arose because of it. So while all of this money is flowing through the organization,

they're telling people that this is a move. that's built by living by faith and your support comes from the churches, from the family, friends, donors, it basically creates a culture of giving. And if you can establish the culture of giving, people will give.

That's part of the culture that was established, yet at the same time, while they're proposing this culture of giving, they have the corporation structures that could actually provide for their people. And so you've got this opposing force of ideas.

On the one hand, we want all the money so that we, in the organization, can live comfortably, but you're going to become a missionary and we're not going to supply you. God will provide your needs.

And they go back to the verses in the Bible where, you know, they go into the field not having anything but the clothes on their back and the shoes on their feet. That's all well and good, but in that scenario, there wasn't a corporation behind those people being sent.

It was just Jesus sending the apostles and disciples. So for me, it's like two opposing viewpoints. One is the corporation, one is the culture of giving, and there are two different worlds. What we're seeing when these groups go destructive is they start, those two worlds start to collide and people begin to wake up and realize, wait a minute, on this side of the equation, they've got a lot of money and they're living comfortably while I'm suffering.

And on my side, everybody thinks that we have to give in order for me not to suffer. Why aren't they giving? So the two worlds begin to collide. This is what becomes really insidious about, like you said, joining those two things together.

Again, sort of quoting from this book, the author, you know, says that times will come when we and others will feel that we are so needy that we have nothing to give, nothing to be generous with.

And then she said, this is our greatest test. So right here, you're trying, you're faking out a biblical principle, like God is going to test us. God may not just to give what little we have, even in extreme poverty.

And then she talks about like the population of Macedonians, given to Paul, but then she talks about the like, Paul redefined receiving gifts as a genuine privilege. We often feel guilty for receiving donations and fail to understand God's hidden agenda.

Talking about like honoring people when they give beyond their ability and I see God blessing and honoring them as a result. So when this is sort of the understanding that you are steeped in where the idea is to always give beyond your means to if I'm in extreme poverty, if I don't have, you know, whatever to give.

And it's sad because you can take a beautiful concept of generosity and twist it into this prosperity gospel of when you give out of your extreme lack, God will bless you. God will give you more and more money and that will be a sign of God's favor.

And so it becomes this tumbler that people in extreme poverty give more, and I don't want to dismiss or diminish the ways that when that's working in a healthy way in terms of community and giving, I have some so I can get more sort of thing that can be a really beautiful situation, but that's unfortunately so often what doesn't happen, and then you see what this person who gave us, you know, sent in this feedback was talking about the cycle that happens of shame and guilt and indebtedness, and in Y-Wam people are, it's talked about that debt is sometimes

it's talked about that debt is a sin, you shouldn't be in debt, and if you are in debt you're in sin. When you can't pay that debt, what do you do? Like you're just living in sin somehow, or that is a sign that you're lacking God's favor, that you lack maturity, that you are not trying hard enough, and when you see like I saw this being in Switzerland, people coming from the majority world, they pulled all of their family resources in order to get here, right, to get the plane ticket, to get the visa, to maybe if there's sometimes there's like you have to put

like a small down payment towards your staffies so that you know you can have some time like once you reach the ground and you can you can start raising more funds, but it's this weird dichotomy of being told, God will provide, so just come, and then now that you're here and God's not providing, well you've done something wrong, there's something wrong with you, and then you just become more and more indebted, and all of the psychological challenges that come from that, the emotional weight that that carries, the guilt and the shame, especially if you're living

in a different culture, it becomes just a big ugly mess that we're requiring of people in order to advance in the organization. Just the sad irony that if from my perspective the Bible has anything to say about this, there's a lot of disparaging passages about keeping people in debt and what that means to, to have people in debt to you, and there's a lot that's like don't do that, live more justly and mercifully, and I keep having this idea on my head of like where are those staffies even going to? What is that money even going to if supposedly no one is making any money,

and you have all of these people paying school fees that should be enough for the ministry to stay afloat, and so I'm just kind of like where is the money being siphoned to, and I know we keep asking this, but I feel like the most, and I know we've talked about this before, but it just feels like such a pyramid scheme, where those who are on top of the pyramid have the most resources.

You know, when I was in South Africa, there was months that our base didn't have enough money, and we were eating nothing but lettuce and mayonnaise and bread and peanut butter. That was like the only food that was available.

And then we, a group of us women from our School of Biblical Studies were invited to the house of one of these like international Y-WAM leaders. And she lived in this ginormous house by herself in a gated community.

There was like baboons on her porch. I'm like, where, what, how are we in the same world? And we've talked a lot about different crannums of what Y-WAM stands for, and one of them is youth without any money.

And that feels so true for the youth, but those that are holding the most positions of power, I personally have not seen base leaders or international leaders struggling for finances. I've seen them if anything pretty affluent and owning a lot of resources that are not the same for the folks that are continuing to try to invest into the pyramid scheme, the mission, however you wanna put it.

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I've been researching these groups for quite a long time and there's so many avenues of research that I have not yet published, some of which may end up in a book, some of which may just end up in my head and when I die to go to the grave with me.

One of those avenues of research is something that I feel is strongly untapped in this religious arena that we're talking about. I'm a businessman. I know how business works. I know how donors work.

I have been in business with non-profit organizations. I've been in business with corporations. I have been in business doing consulting and I've been on projects where the entire project, which was... in the neighborhood of $100,000 budget, $200,000 budget, the entire project was for something that they didn't really ever expect to use.

But the fact that they were building it created the perception of having something, even if it was never used. And so other people who might invest or might be a donor, they see that as an asset, okay, they've got this thing, this project in progress, this is this wonderful thing, let's donate to this company, let's invest in this company.

And so the perception from the donors is different from the perception of the workers. I, as a worker, kind of knew what was going on. I could tell you that something's a little bit off here.

I don't, they're not really paying close attention to this project, like they do the others, something's off, and then I find out later all of this stuff, right? Well, in the Pentecostal Care's Medic world, there came a point in time in which radio became big.

They got into the radio, they got a radio slot. When you got a radio slot, now you are competing against other people who want that slot. So if you bring in lots of money, then you can be valid competition and you can keep your slot.

If you stop bringing in the money, the radio is gonna go to the other guy that brings in the money. So you have to create a culture as a radio minister back in the day.

You had to create a culture of giving because you had to have that money coming in. And one of the ways in which you do it is you give the people a sense of urgency.

We need this now. We don't need this next year, we need it now. And with the sense of urgency came the doctrinal sense of urgency, the world is ending now. You're not gonna need your money tomorrow.

We need your money today. I mean, that kind of stuff was happening and that was radio. Then it began to transition to television. Once it hit television, now the numbers needed are exponential because it's not just the religious world, it's not just the radio talkers.

You're talking about programming that could be very expensive to produce and very expensive to fund. So you had to bring lots more money and the money strategy,

to be a religious person in one of the slots, you really had to have a massive operation of giving. And I'm not saying it's wrong, it's just part of the business. If you didn't have it, you were kicked out.

You didn't keep your radio slot. There were organizations, I'm certain, and I can't prove this. This is where I'm still in the area of researching. But there were organizations where there would be missions much like the business that I said where they're building something that they're never gonna use.

Because if you create the perception of need, then the donors will give to that perception of need, especially when combined with urgency. And I've not told either of you this until this very moment, but part of my reason for wanting to dig so deeply into youth with a mission is I literally want to find out what it was.

I know what it has became, but I want to know. Oh, what it was. And with all of that background, I'm gonna say that this podcast could get very interesting as we go. Certainly.

Yeah, it's because I was in for almost two decades, which feels like a long time, but I think it's been around for like 60, close to 60 years now. And so in terms of the longevity of the organization, it's a little bit different.

But what's also interesting is one of the newspaper articles that you had put on your webpage about Lauren Cunningham when he first started youth with a mission. He was telling the newspaper that their goal was to go and help the missionaries that are already there to sort of take off practical work from missionaries working wherever they were working.

You know, they could just be the hands in the feet. They didn't have to have any special skills, although I think they were trying to have people who had certain skills like agriculture skills or carpentry or things like that, so that they could be a help to the missionary and the missionary, something to the effect of could do the real work, you know, the Lord's work in that sense.

And I thought, you know what? If that's what I had remained, that would have been cool. Like, we're not missionaries. We haven't gone to seminary. Like, we don't know nothing, you know, but we can use the skills that God's given us, you know, to do this.

So I'm very curious how it went from that to, we need to have our own university because clearly nobody else out there is doing it well enough. We need to do it better. And, you know, more often it's what it is today, but talking about just sort of that flow and the finances, I've seen two big projects recently, one for Wyland, Argentina, and then one for Wyland, a base in France called Pondavi.

And Pondavi is trying to raise 100,000 euros. And I want to say Wyland, Argentina is trying to raise like 900,000 or something like that. Don't quote me on that, but it's a very big number.

And to, you know, get buildings, sort of fixed buildings, Pondavi is to fix their building, you know, this massive property that they have there in this, you know, sweet French village. And the way that it's framed is so fascinating because it is a lot of this, give to us and like you will be blessing future generations.

You will make sure that, you know, missionaries are sent out that, you know, trained and sent out that the gospel is shared. And I'm like, can we see some numbers on that? Because how many people have actually gone out from your base over the last 20 years and become full-time missionaries living in a culture, learning the language, learning the culture and cultureating themselves, building a life in a location and sharing what they believe is the gospel.

It's, it is like Jenny has said, and we've said multiple times it has so much the feel of a pyramid scheme because there is so little accountability in my experience in Y-WIM and even to my present experience with Y-WIM.

when there is often an aversion to outside eyes on the situation, on the reality, whether that's something like accounting or whether that's some sort of other situation. We don't want a mediator to be brought in to help with the situation, up with the locals or something like that.

There's this aversion to even saying, okay, we need money to fix our buildings, so let's go get a bank loan. We have millions in property, like let's go get a bank loan so that we can fix our buildings and things like that.

They would much rather have private donors, private loans, even, I've seen that like loans, I'm taking loans from people in the region so that they'll pay them back at some point. Not sure how, it's just where does it end and where does it go and who has eyes on it?

And who suffers the most? And if we wanna even just say being a missionary is to go help people that live in that region and if you are most harming people that are from that region,

then in my book, you're really failing at the mission and if the people that live there are being put in debt and human trafficked if they are having their passports taken and just like very, very egregious things, then that's not really what mission should be if that is something that you get behind.

There's so much to explore. So on the first topic, the Pyramid scheme, I wanna talk through that just a bit because I do need to set some boundaries around where I go with my research.

So Pyramid scheme is illegal, you can't do it. And I have no evidence to suggest that they're doing anything illegal. So if somebody's listening to this and they think that John has said their youth with a mission as a Pyramid scheme, I don't.

I don't have any evidence to support that. I do see a culture of giving being promoted. Is that wrong? Technically, it's not. You can give to anything that you want. I could set up a hot dog stand and have all the neighbors donate to my children and give them money for their hot dogs if they wanted to.

But here's where it gets a little bit problematic for me. There is the aspect of the legalities and I don't see anything illegal. But there's also the types of things that you can do that aren't quite ethical or immoral.

And those set outside of the law, and interestingly, you can almost examine any church and you can find some little aspect that is just sitting there right outside of the boundaries of legalities. One of the things that I see that concerns me is that there are organizations who...

whether they're doing it on purpose or not, they're allowing people who are serving with them in a religious capacity to go in need because people in need attract donors. Whenever they see somebody who is in need, oh my gosh, look, these people don't have much.

Let's give them some money. Let's give, let's fund the organization so the organization can get the money. That's where it gets into the questionable area for me. It's not illegal. It's not anything that you could sue them for, but it creates that perception.

And that's why I wanted to target the perception in this conversation. Think about the perception from the aspect of a person who might be in one of those organizations that's not being supplied what they need.

They have the perception that the organization doesn't have much money. From an organization that isn't very open with the books. I'll say it like that. I have no way of even knowing what they are.

Now, I assume that you can go to the IRS and you can get some of the tax forms, et cetera. But remember, these are spread into multiple countries and you can't see the ledger books within each country.

I've tried to do this in multiple organizations. But in those organizations that I'm referring to, not youth with a mission, some of the others, they also have the same perspective. There are people who are really suffering in need.

Let's have a donation drive. Let's give these people some money. Yet I see some of the things that are happening in the organization, the corporations. And I'm seeing there's a lot of money here and there's not much money here.

Where's the balance? And it all goes back to what I said before. There is the religious perceptive perception to go into the field, take nothing but the clothes on your back and the shoes on your feet.

But there's also the idea that once you start doing this, you will be supplied. God will supply your needs. That's what they're telling you. Well, if you've got two sides of the equation and God has supplied the need over here, shouldn't it be distributed over on the other side?

That's really the question that I have. I think what we see so often is because of all of that perception and because of that sort of theology, if you will, or ideology that is explicitly and implicitly taught from the moment that you join Y-Wam.

So from your DTS all the way through, because fundraising is a constant need, there will be people who have privilege and access to more resources, whether those are financial or other. And those people are continuous, they called upon to make up the lack for those who don't have access to those same resources.

So that could be split across a cultural divide as this person gave us feedback on, that's very, very true. And I think it's probably the most common. So you see that split across a cultural divide.

And that can get... really wearying for all parties involved, people who are giving, people who are receiving, the people who are receiving often more on the receiving end, let's say they were given a computer or they were given a new phone or a camera or some new shoes or something like that and why one regularly has these things called giving nights where you come together as a community, whether like this person said it's up on the whiteboard for everybody to see who needs what or whether it's just, hey, we know we've got needs in our community, so we're going to have a giving night and we want everybody to pray and

ask God what they should give. So again, if you go back to that person who maybe only has a computer as a term in terms of an asset to their name or a phone or something like that, there's often a pressure for them to give that to someone else who needs a computer or who needs a new phone or something like that with a belief that because I'm following this concept of generosity and giving out of my lag, I will be rewarded and God will give me back something and if he doesn't, then I have to wrestle with the fact that I guess

I don't need a computer to communicate with people, supporters that I'm supposed to be raising money or I don't need a phone or I've done something, I've displeased the Lord in some way, so I'm not receiving this back and it just creates this cycle of giving fatigue and I think there's so much shame that comes on both sides because if you are someone with resources and you give and you give and you give and you know you might become fatigued at some point to say, oh my gosh, I just got bursty money from my auntie, maybe I should give it to someone, you know,

this person who is needing to pay their staff fees, but I really wanted to, you know, get this thing and then there's shame and guilt that immediately chases that. So well, I should, that's so selfish of me, I shouldn't want that. And another aspect that I've seen play into that, that same thing is often the leaders at least in my experience would come and say, well, we've had it so much worse like your apartment may have mold in it for instance, but we raised, you know, two babies in one room and look at how God's blessed us now, now we have our own house, you know, so it's this idea that

you have to suffer in order to get to a certain point, then you'll be blessed and the sort of lack will be no more that you won't have to deal with that anymore. So it's a perpetuating cycle, you know, the snake sort of chasing its tail that never ends. Like you said, there's always going to be a need that is put forth and there will, that need will never stop.

And I think that that can become extremely unhealthy for so many reasons. I don't know sure we have time to go into all the reasons and the implications of that sort of understanding, but you see people trapped, you see people in debt.

living below the poverty line. I was living in Switzerland, living below the poverty line. So people think, oh, you can live in Switzerland. Like, wow, that's amazing.

Yes, I was living here. I was surviving as so many do. So whenever you were in the field, were you fully supported? That's something actually an extra point on perception is that I was living here in Switzerland and when I got engaged to my husband who was not a missionary, he was not a Y-Wammer, I actually lost most of my support because people were sort of like, oh, well, you're going to be fine. You're going to be taken care of because your husband, you know, has a salary and so we don't need to continue to support you living in Switzerland.

And now I'm like, fair. The biggest question for me really goes back to that passage about take no thought about being provided for, take the shoes on your feet, the clothes on your back.

That model I can understand, that makes sense to me. Whenever I see the two opposing worlds, one, a corporation, one, the, the people in need who are in the missionaries, the question that comes to me first is this, does success in the mission require perpetual expansion? Because look at what's happening with not just youth with the mission, but many of these organizations, once they show a little bit of success, well, now we need schools.

Now we need campuses. Now we need more staff. Now we need more projects. Now we need to go after more nations. We just keep expanding. And here's where it gets really odd is once you start doing this, the growth itself is actually creating the permanent financial need. So anybody who's donating to the original cause, that might have been good. Well, now you're donating to the donation of a cause. If that makes any sense, it's a vicious cycle that never ends. Absolutely. Yeah, I think you you would not have this version of YLAM if you didn't have the version of like capitalism that we

live in. And it is this system that is dependent on expansion and extraction. And it is like you are on a treadmill that every time you just catch up, it speeds up a little bit more. And you have to run a little bit faster and a little bit faster. And you know, I've shared this before, but when I was in Montana, my work duty every day for two hours for a couple, like a portion of my time was stripping copper wire so that the base would sell this copper wire. And this was granted, you know, 15 plus years ago. And so a year ago, I took my husband to a YLAM community night

that was open for the public to come to. And I was blown away at the upgrades that existed on the base where I lived in a Montana winter and had cold, misty showers. And now they're, you know, they have like their own kind of studio space and all of this stuff, this entirely new

like theater that was there for the services and I was like, wow! What if we had just had enough? Like, what if we had had just enough and we could exist and it wasn't this expansionism?

And I think that that's true, it's, it is always about better, newer, bigger, you know, in the, in the base in Colorado Springs, staff doesn't own it, it's in an old hotel, but staff that live there for years or decades, they might spend a lot of money hiring contractors to fix their bathrooms, to make an extra room for their kids.

All of that then just adds to the capital that the base owns and then when they leave staff, they lose everything because they don't actually have that equity or that ownership. It is all owned by the organization.

What's interesting is when you see this continuous expansion like Jenny was talking about and it's absolutely true, you see this across the world. There's a lot of, you know, sort of like rejoicing and stuff when they acquire a new property, you know, because this is God blessing Y-Wam, this is how it's perceived God blessing Y-Wam by a growth and growth is defined by more properties, you know, hopefully more people in their eyes, you know, but certainly more assets.

And then what you begin to see, like there was this, there was this big boom of this. I'm not entirely sure when it was if it was through the 90s and the early 2000s, you know, there was, we could certainly tie into a lot of these social and cultural situations that were happening in those decades.

But then they've acquired all this property that they can no longer care for because they don't have the people coming in as they used to. They don't have the funds flowing as they used to.

And this deep reluctance to let it go. To say, you know what, this has gotten too big for us now. We're a much smaller team in this location. We should probably just sell this off.

And then we can move to something smaller, you know, something more manageable for a scene because there's always this fear. Well, this is what I've heard and experienced. There's this fear of the what if God has a big boom, you know, and all of these big, there's another revival or something.

And then all of these people want to come to YWAM and we don't have the place to house them. And I'm like, well, then wouldn't that work if that happened? Wouldn't God provide for that?

Like again, or did he only provide the one time? So there's there's a very deep reluctance in sort of letting go of those of those assets. And I think there could... in multiple ways that could be explored as to why that reluctance exists.

But I think when we talk about why I'm wanting to train and send out missionaries, unfortunately, what happens across the world, so often is people are spending the vast majority of their time tending to these crumbling downbuildings.

Stripping copper wire for two hours a day to sell to get some money. I'm not entirely sure that's what God had in mind when He wanted us to go out and share about His love.

So usually I end with some statement that makes everybody feel good. But I'm actually going to end this one with a question, because this is the question that I'm really, really driving at with this avenue of research that I'm doing with use with a mission.

Like I said, I was studying the prosperity gospel, how it worked, the radio slots, the television slots, as we talked about. And when you create that type of ministry, it relies on the donations.

Without the donations, the whole thing fizzles out. It goes away. And it created a culture of donations because everybody joined into this thing, thinking that, oh my gosh, they need so much money so that they can have the radio program or television show.

Well, that turned into the prosperity gospel because now let's fund the conventions. Now let's fund this that and the other. And what it does is it's almost inevitable. It creates these communication strategies where you have to have the urgency and you have to have the donations to continue the ministry.

So you create this continual perception of urgency in the doctrines. It's inevitable that that's going to happen with this type of ministry. Here's where it gets odd. And this is the question that I'm going to leave you with because I think we can drive to this point hopefully in this series.

It is my opinion and it's just my opinion that the Seven Mountains mandate wasn't really designed as a doctrine so much as it was for something else. And I'm wondering, is that what this is for?

Was the Seven Mountains mandate to create the perception of urgency so that it can feed the giving donation culture and keep the cycle going? Was that the whole reason why it was established? And I'm not going to answer that.

Hopefully we'll drive to that question. Thank you so much for doing this. I love that question. Thanks so much for having us. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-Brandom.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.