Program Cost: $2500 – this includes the Discipleship Intensive at Victor Harbour, weekly program and resources, and end of year retreat.

Mission Exposure Trip: $2800-$3000 – we will be participating in the About Face overseas program, and the final cost will depend upon the destination, of which we will have some choice.

That means an overall cost of $5300-$5500.

There is an instalment plan, so that payments can be made in stages throughout the year (details available soon).

Also, scholarship assistance is available from the Gled Hill Trust for an amount of up to $1500 per applicant. You are also encouraged to talk to your minister about support from your congregation.

For more information contact Craig Mitchell on 0417 323 088.

I can honestly now say, partaking in the Big Year Out has been one of the best decisions of my life. It’s difficult to try and summarize what it has been like or means to me. However I can confidently say that the Big Year Out has been instrumental in transforming and expanding what was my sheltered, white middle-class experience of Christianity into something more passionate and authentic.

Everyone’s Big Year Out journey is different. Mine has included
- in Adelaide: visiting Sudanese migrant families and caring for their toddlers at a playgroup, playing darts and listening to the journeys of people with mental-illness at a drop-in centre,
- in the Philippines: sipping out of coconut husks, singing in cave churches and visiting the Banaue Rice Terraces, wading through flooded cathedral water, listening to talks about the devastation of climate change, visiting unjustly imprisoned inmates and touring the rubbish town of Smokey Mountain 2.

One of the best things about Big Year Out is its practical element. The structure of Big Year Out is unique in that it combines learning, devotional and community time with what it’s all about: getting out there like Jesus did and engaging with the marginalized communities of our modern world. The friends I’ve made and the experiences I have been blessed with through this program will never forget…. they continue to challenge and inspire me to this day, a year later. If you are considering taking part in the Big Year Out, I offer my story as encouragement. The Big Year Out is relevant, exciting, challenging, thought-provoking, and utterly fantastic.

Grace
(pictured top right)

The Big Year Out was literally one of the greatest and most transformative experiences of my life! Like nothing before, it taught me the value of ongoing Christian community and how important and life-giving it can be. It allowed me share my faith journey with people my age whilst being guided by those further along the path, whose invaluable pearls of wisdom still pop up in my mind all the time. The mission exposure trip to the Philippines has left a permanent imprint on my psyche and continues to inspire and challenge me to be a be more, do more and love hardest. Finally, regular service placements showed me how easy it is to touch people’s lives as the hands and feet of God, and reinforced that I had something crucial to offer. as a young Christian, RIGHT NOW.

All of these aspects made the Big Year Out a life-altering journey that, with God’s help, has changed me forever. I can’t recommend it enough.

Ellen, BYO 2008

Photo: Ellen and Pete did one of their BYO placements at Minda, a centre for people with disabilities. They are pictured here with the members of the Minda choir, Tutti.

In 2010 we will be linking in with About FACE – the Uniting Church’s national cross-cultural exposure program, for the mid-year trip.

About Face runs from 26th June – 17th July 2010, and will offer several trip options – indigenous communities in Australia, and visits to partner churches in south-east Asia and the Pacific, and south Asia. Depending on the size of the Big Year Out group, we will participate as one group, or as two or three smaller groups visiting different locations. Participants will have a choice over whether they go to an overseas or an Australian location.

Costs for the mid-year trip are approximately as follows:

$2,000 for the indigenous placement within Australia
$2,800 for a placement with one of our partner Churches in Pacific and SE Asia
$3,000 for a placement with one of our partner Churches in South Asia

More details about overall Big Year Out costs will be posted shortly.

The Application and Registration forms on this website now contain Victorian contact details. For more info about plans for BYO VicTas email Age.

Victorian BYO participants will be joining with SA participants for our Discipleship Intensive, February 22-26 at Victor Harbour, on the coast south of Adelaide.

The Big Year Out is a ‘gap’ year for young adults with a focus on Christian discipleship. You can do it part-time or full-time. The part-time option allows you to work, study or sleep in your remaining time.

The Big Year Out involves
- a week-long discipleship intensive at Victor Harbour (22-26 Feb)
- one day a week of community life, personal and spiritual growth, and learning about faith, culture and service
- one day a week of Christian service in an agency, school or church with people who are disadvantaged or marginalised
- a three week cross-cultural exposure trip in July. In 2010 we’ll be linking with the Uniting Church’s national About Face project – you can choose to visit the Philippines or an Aboriginal community in northern Australia
- a 30 week spiritual formation program a daily exercise and a weekly group reflection
- meeting with a mentor every few weeks
- an end of year retreat

Last year’s BYO participants say that their lives were transformed by this experience. Watch this space for their stories.

Details about the program cost for 2010 will be here shortly.

Parkin-Wesley on YouTube

Also, some new photos of this year’s Philippines Trip at out Flickr page.

In the Philippines things are very different. I try to keep up with events in the world and so over time I have seen so many stories of famine, war, government abuse and corruption. When you see these stories you realise that outside your living room is a messed up world, but in this fast-paced world of images and multimedia it’s all gone by the time the sports bulletin comes on. Going to the Philippines was eye-opening because when you look out the car window and see children doing what would be called slave work in Australia, there is no sports bulletin coming up to hide it out of view again. On just about every street even in the richer areas, you see people living in dodgy little ‘houses’ with less structural integrity than a shed here. On the side of the streets you can but for them it is just about trying to survive. It’s something you experience rather than just see because a report on TV or in a newspaper cannot fully capture the smells, the sounds or any more than a small rectangular view of the sights. But the most amazing aspect of what at times felt like a Foreign Correspondent report come to life was to meet the people who are the story.

Seeing it all on the side of the road or visiting a place like Smoky Mountain is too real for comfort, but to then hear the people at the centre of these stories share personally is like a knife to the soul – you feel the pain yourself. Many of the pastors we came across are classed as enemies of the state by government agencies and some had experienced some kind of harassment from the government. We heard stories of friends who had been murdered, blatant corruption in electoral processes and of institutional corruption ripping off poor people. The greatest example was Pastor Berlin Guerrero – a man we visited in prison who has been tortured and unjustly imprisoned because of his faith, but yet he still chooses to be a revolutionary because of what Christ has done in his life.

To meet people officially labelled enemies of the state merely because of who they choose to worship was very humbling because they pay a heavy price for their faith while my government protects my choice to follow Christ instead of persecuting me. This idea of citizenship and how the meaning is so different in various nations then got me questioning things on a much deeper level. What does it mean to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God? It’s a tough one, and one that has so many perfect answers of what it should mean as opposed to what it can mean.

The answers to this big question that resound with me the best are found in the writings of the apostle Paul which have against all odds survived over 1900 years after he died. Paul understood quite well that to take citizenship of God’s kingdom seriously meant becoming a revolutionary because being a citizen of God’s kingdom was to oppose the unjust and self-serving systems of the world. Since about a week into our time in the Philippines I now take this citizenship of God’s kingdom seriously, and in turn that means investigating the risky idea of being a revolutionary. In the book of Romans, Paul passionately makes the case for why it is best to choose to be a citizen of heaven despite the consequences on earth. He particularly exhorts his friends in Rome to “not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2)

Refusing to conform carries a heavy price. Like the people of the Philippines these days, Paul knew quite well that any government facing a revolutionary movement will attempt to crush that movement with the entire might of their military forces. The Roman Empire was the dominant superpower of the day, so for Paul to state “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37) was an extremely bold move. Today we know Paul was correct – the great symbols of the power of Rome are now mere tourist attractions while the revolution Paul chose to join continues to grow stronger even in areas the leaders of Rome never knew existed. This price for refusing to conform does applies to everyone, each price different according to the circumstances – since the trip I have met a young person whose own parents deliberately oppose their decision to follow Christ.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul also makes two points about this revolution and how it’s going to work that are extremely important for me personally. The first is that citizenship of God’s kingdom is not about being a subject or slave of an overlord who wants to make life miserable.But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:16-18)

Choosing to join the revolution requires surrendering to God because our own ideas of freedom are false and inevitably lead to slavery. His freedom is different because it is a transformation that happens from the inside out. We begin to be more like God because our priorities are turned upside down and it becomes the greatest expression of our God-given freedom to live life walking in step with him. The revolution starts at that point when the choices we freely make begin to line up with the choices that Jesus would make in the same situations. The other point from 2 Corinthians is about what the revolution will look like to an outsider. Paul says “we are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:20)

In international relations, ambassadors are sent by nations only to other nations with whom they have friendly relations. An ambassador’s role is not to attack other nations but instead to reason with them as representatives of all that their own nation stands for. If we are ambassadors, it means this revolution is not about opposing others but actually about loving them. Christ refused to condemn the people of the world (John 3:16-21) even as he was tortured on the cross (Luke 23:34) so our response should be to do likewise – love others even when they don’t love in return. Many of the situations we saw or heard about in the Philippines made me value what we have as Australians like never before. Likewise, something happened during our time in the Philippines and now I’ve realised that the importance of living a revolutionary life is so much bigger than I ever thought it could be. This whole revolution thing suddenly means so much more than ever before.Every day God offers each of us a chance to be part of the revolution. I’m on board, are you?