One of the key spiritual growth engines in a youth ministry
is helping students serve-and one of the great ways to get a concentrated burst
in that area is to take your students on our short-term mission trip. I led
lots of different trips over the years and I’ve learned a few things that I’d
like to pass on.
Crawl, Walk, and Run - If possible, design your missions
opportunities into 3 steps for students at various spiritual commitment levels.
Do a local mission opportunity (Food Drive-one afternoon, easy, free). A long
weekend/extended school break trip (4 days, higher cost, some travel). A global
trip (international travel, 11 days, very high cost). Doing these incremental
steps gives various students and parents options as to how committed both
financially and timewise they are to mission opportunities.
Work the Cost for Leaders into the Cost per Student-A common
question is what do you do about leaders cost, especially when budgets are
tight-if you’re fortunate to have access to one in the first place. Several
churches that I’m aware of work the leaders cost into the price of the missions
trip, team or event. We don’t like asking our volunteers to pay to minister
alongside students on a big event like a missions trip, because they are
probably already taking hard earned vacation time. That’s just one philosophy…
Yours may very.
Don’t Get Lost in Fundraising - Speaking of money,
aggressively plan the price for the trip so that you don’t take the joy out of
the trip by getting lost in fundraising help. It would be better to take a trip
that cost less rather than getting stuck with a huge bill that can only be
satisfied by 432 car washes and bake sales. Finding creative ways to fund raise
will help take a lot of the burden off of taking a big trip. (Fundraising is a
blog article in and of itself)
Bring the Family - If you have a family and it is
appropriate I highly encourage you to incorporate your family on your mission
trip. While your kids may be too young for the trip, they can learn a lot by
watching other students in missions. Plus, it gives you some good family time
together and an experience that could change your family’s life forever.
These are just a few of the things that I’ve learned, what
would you add to this list?
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