A Full-On Rant

It's been a good experience, but I would not be able to commit to YWAM forever, and I have absolutely no desire to do so. Here's my critique.

This week was the celebration of YWAM's 50 years of existence. They didn't say this overtly all the time, but a lot of it was about how great YWAM is. It reminds me of Ancient Egypt, in that the Pharaohs might have thought the pyramids were symbols of how great Egypt was, when really, it really just told you a lot about their workforce. In the same way, the whole base has worked really hard to put this gala together, including working on the weekend of Thanksgiving. It's different than the Egypt analogy however, because we're paying them to work here.

The 50th Celebration had a 3-hour morning session and a 3-hour evening session. Our school leader has been very emphatic about how mandatory they are. There's optional sessions throughout the day too. What the sessions have lacked in substance, they made up for in long-windedness. To give you an idea, yesterday's evening session was a graduation ceremony. Like graduation ceremonies for a real college, the long ceremonial formalities were a complete waste of my time, and I'm not insulted, but I think it would be reasonable to be insulted that they would have such a long mandatory session that I had no connection to. Yet the whole thing didn't feel any different than every other session. They were all that bad. David Hamilton makes Jose Zayas look like a great, concise speaker. The other night, I had a headache, which I dubbed a "David Hamilton headache."

The food situation has taken a turn for the worse this week too. We used to be limited to one portion of meat for lunch and dinner. Now, they're limiting the rice too, to just one scoop. They've also stopped setting out peanut butter and jelly sandwich stuff at lunch and dinner, so it's even harder to get filled up. So after the night session, we've all been going to McDonald's. Except tonight we went to Jack in the Box, and it was the best trip to Jack in the Box I've ever had. I had 4 tacos, a Jr. bacon cheeseburger, onion rings, and 2 leftover portions of a girl's Oreo milkshake that they couldn't finish.


While I'm at it, I might as well mention a few other shortcomings of the YWAM setting in general...

Everything is over spiritualized here. Everything does involve God in a way, but our school leader has guilt-tripped us about keeping our rooms clean and not being late to anything. As I've been saying, "It sounds like they don't want us to break any of the big commandments. You don't sell drugs to children; you don't commit murder; and you keep your room clean."

At home, I'll get to do engineering and entrepreneurship. I fix computers and cars. I do skilled stuff! Here, I'm a peon of the masses. It may be humbling/character building/good for you to do labor that would normally pay minimum wage, especially when you're not actually getting paid at all, but still, it'd be offensive to God to throw away the ability to do more in the world. Even if I got invited to be on staff, I'd be underutilized.

The minimum wage job is a really good comparison because it also hits on the supervision aspect of things. Some managers really suck. YWAM's philosophy on putting people in charge seems to be based on the verse "My strength is made perfect in weakness." ("No qualifications? You're perfect! We're just going to trust God.") I think a big part of it is what I mentioned in the previous paragraph about being underutilized. YWAM can't hold onto skilled guys because they move on.

Lastly, related to being productive, I would make a much, much better supporter than a supportee. Money/lifestyle are limited here, which I can do really well, and I live simply anyway but not to the extent of people living on a missionary base. Here's what I mean for the luxuries that everyone currently not living on a missionary base gets to enjoy.... It's annoying that I can't get any white shirts clean-looking at all cause the washers here don't use hot water. I wouldn't choose to have 6 roommates for an extended period of time. I don't like having to walk to Walmart; I miss having a car. I don't like having my food as rationed as it is. I would almost be tempted to just cave in and flat out ask for a care package with snacks in it to be sent to me, but we're only going to be here for 11 more days, so it'd be too late anyway.