Have you ever had someone outside of youth ministry try to tell you how to run a youth group? You probably have. It\u2019s pretty frustrating when someone who isn\u2019t in the daily trenches of ministry thinks they know more about your students than you do. What sounds good in theory doesn\u2019t always play out in practice in the real world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While we typically dislike when someone does that to us, this posture can easily sneak into our hearts when it comes to mission trips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mission trips have the potential to help young people cultivate a lifestyle of service but there are a couple \u201conly if\u2019s\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although mission trips have the potential for positive individual impact and long-term impact in a community, they also have potential to harm.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When groups enter a community assuming they know what\u2019s best for that community or when they view poverty solely through the lens of material possessions, the experience ceases to be edifying for both the participants and the community they\u2019re seeking to serve. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We become like the person telling us how to do our job when they really don\u2019t know what our daily reality is like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At YouthWorks, we understand that we are not a community development organization. (A statement that is probably true of your ministry too!) We are a youth discipleship organization. We help connect groups of young people to those in local communities who are engaging in long-term efforts to meet the felt needs of people in that community. This means that neither YouthWorks nor churches who partner with us get to decide what projects we engage. We serve at the request of local leaders in the forms that they <\/em>want us to serve in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to selecting the right partnerships, the heart posture that you and your students take during a mission trip is vitally important. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our culture has taught us to size people up quickly. What they look like, who they voted for, whether they go to church, their socioeconomic status. We\u2019ve all become experts at seeing issues instead of seeing human beings made in God\u2019s image. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When students go on a mission trip, it\u2019s very likely that they will encounter people who look and think differently from them. They may see poverty in a way they haven\u2019t witnessed before. They might see or hear about people struggling with addiction. They could see people who have different cultural backgrounds than what they\u2019re used to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s easy for us to make snap judgements in these situations, but the goal is always to see and honor God\u2019s image in every person we meet. This takes an intentional effort on our part to have the tough conversations with our students before, during, and after a mission trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One aspect of serving respectfully is laying aside our agenda. It\u2019s important to admit that we probably don\u2019t know what\u2019s best for the community we\u2019re serving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To serve respectfully, we have to surrender our ideas and solutions for a community we want to reach out to and submit to local leadership who are the experts on the place they live and the people who live there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While there will be plenty of things we\u2019d like to accomplish during a mission trip, we must resist the temptation to turn it into a checklist of tasks to complete. We also need to make sure we don\u2019t hurry our days and focus so much on the work that we miss the people around us. Author and Pastor John Mark Comer says it like this: Hurry and love are incompatible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our presence with the people in the community we\u2019re serving is what really matters. People know when you are truly present with them versus treating them like a project. Talk to your students and adult leaders about slowing down and prioritizing people over everything else during your trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We usually think of poverty only as a lack of material possessions, but poverty can also be lack of relationships. A person could be poor when it comes to money, but rich in love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Poverty is ultimately about brokenness, and because of that, we can all relate. We are all broken by sin and in need of a savior. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett, he says, \u201cUntil we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do more harm than good. I sometimes unintentionally reduce poor people to objects that I use to fulfill my own need to accomplish something. I am not okay, and you are not okay. But Jesus can fix us both.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n We truly believe that wherever we go, God is already there. He\u2019s not only there, but he\u2019s already at work! We aren\u2019t bringing Jesus<\/em> to a community, because he\u2019s already present! <\/p>\n\n\n\n We don\u2019t have the power to change anyone or anything on our own. We should never enter a community like we\u2019re there to save people. Jesus is the only one who can truly be a Savior. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wherever you take a mission trip, it\u2019s likely that God has called people to put deep roots in that community. We want to join in on what God is doing through those leaders. We want to be part of the story that God has already begun. The beauty of that decision to be in partnership is that the work continues long after any one mission team leaves<\/p>\n\n\n\n As much as we believe in the power of mission trips in the lives of young people, it would be a mistake to treat them like the silver bullet of next generation discipleship. A mission trip isn\u2019t magical, nor is it the only discipleship experience students need throughout the year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Without intentionality, conversations, teaching, and continued experiences around service and missional-living, mission trips will merely create a \u201cspiritual high\u201d and leave students relatively unchanged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ve found that those who experienced the most fruit from their mission trips had intentional discipleship strategies before, during, and after their trips. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Intentionality <\/strong>before<\/em><\/strong> a mission trip<\/strong> looks like spending extraordinary time in prayer, having conversations about what respectful service looks like, learning about the community you\u2019re going to, and assuring your trip details are in order so that your head space can be with the students during the actual trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Intentionality <\/strong>during<\/em><\/strong> a trip<\/strong> looks like creating daily feedback loops so young people are processing what they\u2019re seeing, what they\u2019re experiencing, and how they\u2019re seeing God move. This is one reason why we start and end each day of a YouthWorks mission trip with intentionality. Every day begins with time for Bible reading, prayer, and journaling. We create trip journals that encourage students to connect their experiences on the trip to the bigger picture of their faith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We end each day with a time called The Gathering. There\u2019s a focused time of prayer, worship, and reflection for individual groups where youth pastors and leaders can help students process all that they\u2019ve seen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Intentionality <\/strong>after <\/em><\/strong>a trip<\/strong> looks like asking questions about what\u2019s next, storytelling, continuing to fund your mission partners, finding local service opportunities, and continuing to teach and train on service and the mission of God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We believe that most of the (sometimes well earned) criticisms of mission trips can be remedied by engaging in respectful service and approaching a mission trip as just one part of an ongoing strategy to disciple students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mission trips have the potential to impact our young people in profound ways while also bringing support and hope to communities of people that God loves. Our responsibility as leaders is to steward the opportunity and pray that God uses it to change lives and further his Kingdom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have you ever had someone outside of youth ministry try to tell you how to run a youth group? You probably have. It\u2019s pretty frustrating when someone who isn\u2019t in the daily trenches of ministry thinks they know more about your students than you do. What sounds good in theory doesn\u2019t always play out in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":51840,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[523],"tags":[326,538],"authors":[1795],"life-stage":[],"class_list":["post-51837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ministry-leadership","tag-ministry-leader","tag-think-orange","authors-carlos-pinero"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWe\u2019d encourage you to talk with and teach your students that mission trips are about:<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Seeing people not issues\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Their agenda not our agenda\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3.<\/strong> Presence not productivity<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Seeing poverty as a wholistic issue not just a financial one.\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5<\/strong>. Joining Jesus in the community not bringing Jesus to the community.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Another \u201conly if\u201d is only if the mission trip is part of an intentional strategy for spiritual formation.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n