Nothing has the power to transform your teenagers’ lives better than an outside-my-comfort-zone mission trip or service project. Outreach is the lifeblood of a thriving youth ministry, and serves as a microwave for life-change.
What You’ll Find
The Missions and Service section provides guidance, inspiration, and ideas to help you find or create life-changing experiences for your youth ministry. You’ll find stories of epic triumphs and epic fails, along with how-to’s that will aid you in planning a trip/project, fundraising, recruiting volunteers and even post-trip follow through.
Few things have greater leverage for spiritual growth in the lives of your teenagers than summer trips—and that’s just why they’re a magnet for disaster. Embedded in these EpicFail stories are profound lessons on effective youth ministry. Summer trips are the lifeblood of a thriving youth ministry.…
As you ramp up for your summer-trip season and scramble to recruit adult leaders who can serve as chaperones, counselors, and guides, it’s prime time to remember a few imperatives: 1. There is no “perfect” criminal records search that provides every court record.…
5 Best-practices for communicating the crucial details for your summer-trip adventures. There’s one sure-fire way to frustrate and alienate the parents in your ministry—do such a poor job of communicating the details of your summer trips that they feel disconnected, uninformed, and nervous.…
Our “Wired Ministry” columnist Brandon Early is a longtime youth pastor who’s collected a few pet peeves along the way. Here’s one that’s focused on financial frustrations that orbit typical youth ministry trips—we asked youth workers who serve on our “In the Trenches” team to take a whack at answering Brandon’s question, below: “What’s the system you use to help students pay for trips and retreats?…
The van-ride home from a retreat or trip alternates between chaos and peace as kids relive highlights from the week. The caffeine is finally wearing off, and the exhaustion is setting in. If you’re like me, when I pull the van into the church parking lot I have two emotions sweep over me: relief that we made it home, and a kind of sadness that the experience is over.…
Discipleship is the endgame for youth ministry. So how do we help teenagers break free from the gravitational pull of a conventional life? How do we “achieve orbit” in a life defined by a passion for Jesus? Well, I know from three decades of youth ministry experience, and from in-depth research projects, that nothing in our ministry toolbox has more “rocket power” than a mission trip.…
The trip was doomed from the start, and it was my fault. Mike and Matt were twins who barely got along. Ryan was an introvert who wanted to play it safe all week. Lena was home-schooled, and this was her first overnighter trip away.…
Looking for ideas to raise funds for your next mission trip? How much time do you have? No, really. When it comes to fundraising, it’s a question of time. For example, you’re in one of two timelines right now: Time is of the essence. …
You’d be hard-pressed to find a youth ministry of any size that does not prioritize service as a bread-and-butter strategy for reaching and impacting teenagers. We know firsthand that service trips have a powerful ability to crack open the door to trajectory-changing moments in kids’ lives.…
Sometimes the devil really is to blame. Let’s say you’re on a mission trip and everything goes backward. It may not be a random accident that what you intended to be a win for the Kingdom of God has become a loss for everyone involved.…
