A religious movement with an edge –Youth With a Mission takes in just about anyone — even an unstable young man who would later shoot and kill 4 in Colorado. By Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer. December 18, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. — Paul Filidis thought little of Christianity as he backpacked through Afghanistan in the early 1970s, searching for top-grade hashish and Eastern enlightenment. Then his passport was stolen and he took shelter with a group of missionaries who had moved to Kabul to help wanderers on the hippie trail. "They looked just like me," Filidis said. The missionaries took Filidis in and helped him get a new passport. Filidis, who had believed Christianity was only for old people, eventually became a convert. He has spent the last three decades with that group, Youth With a Mission. His 20-year-old, tongue-pierced daughter, Noelle, just finished a YWAM mission to India, where she nursed sick villagers and was attacked by a mob of Hindu fundamentalists.
Youth With a Mission is a nondenominational Christian network that takes in just about anyone — punk rockers, misfits, retired engineers, schoolteachers, fresh-faced teens. After a little training, they are sent to preach the Gospel in some of the most dangerous parts of the globe. That nonconformist approach brought tragedy to the group last week when Matthew Murray, who had been expelled for apparent mental health problems, fatally shot four people — two at the Arvada Youth With a Mission office near Denver and two at New Life Church in Colorado Springs — before killing himself.
"YWAM has been known as a mission that believes in young people and gives them a chance," said Jarod Marshall, 32, a staffer in the Colorado Springs branch. "You believe in people, and there’s a risk in that — but it’s a risk worth taking." Youth With a Mission is considered avant-garde, on the "bleeding edge" of the evangelical movement, said A. Scott Moreau, a professor at Wheaton College in Illinois who studies mission programs. "They are passionate, they are a bit wild," Moreau said. "A lot of agencies are wondering how they’re going to mobilize this generation. YWAM has figured it out."
One veteran calls YWAM (the acronym is regularly pronounced Why-Wham and members are known as YWAMers) a Christian Peace Corps. Projects include working with prostitutes in Holland and orphans in Mexico, and providing clean drinking water or dental care in Third World countries. Youth With a Mission also launched the Reconciliation Walk, a 1,500-mile trek through Turkey and the Middle East to atone for violence perpetrated in the name of Christianity during the Crusades.
It was "the attitude in YWAM that wants to serve, that wants to take the lower road rather than the higher road, that will do the dirty work," Filidis said. Filidis recounted one mission that he views as emblematic of YWAM’s hands-on approach — working in refugee camps in Southeast Asia after the fall of Saigon, since renamed Ho Chi Minh City. YWAMers volunteered to take care of the latrines and spent hours standing in human excrement. A U.N. report noted the group’s commitment to doing practical work, no matter how unpleasant. "I hope we never lose that," he said. The intention is not simply to rack up converts, he said. "We can’t provide a spiritual solution" to poor people, Lang said, "unless we can come into their lives and provide practical solutions as well."
The group’s 1,000 bases are linked solely by the three-month training course consisting of lectures and workshops on biblical principles, plus an official set of shared values. The bases independently stage missions. The bases are a cross between Christian crash pads and college dorms. The Colorado Springs branch is in a former hotel. The dining room has been converted into a coffee bar — fixed up with worn couches, tables and board games — that is the scene for all-night discussions. Many of the 120 staffers live in the hotel rooms, as do the few dozen students who cycle through every three months.
Gil Datz, the base’s worship coordinator, said that the emphasis on communal learning and living means YWAMers learn a lot about their colleagues. "It means a guy like Matt Murray [the shooter] cannot hide," he said. Murray enrolled in 2002 at the base in Arvada, about 80 miles from here. Staffers there decided he should not finish the program because of unspecified health problems that would have made it "unsafe," so he left. He returned five years later, just after midnight on Sunday, Dec. 9, and asked to stay the night. Staffers said no. He opened fire, wounding two and killing Philip Crouse, 24, and Tiffany Johnson, 26. Twelve hours later he killed two teenage girls at New Life Church in Colorado Springs before being shot by an armed volunteer security guard. Murray then killed himself.
Crouse and Johnson embodied Youth With a Mission’s edgy approach. Crouch was a former skinhead who hoped to reach angry teens; Johnson had started a skateboarding ministry to help alienated youths. Many YWAMers point out that Murray was the sort of person they would want to help. "That’s what makes the issue with Matthew so painful," said Jeremy Pyhala, 33, a Colorado Springs staffer. "We look at him with potential."
Teaching Adventures 