youth leadership | Youth Missions Insider

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts Above and beyond…

We received this email in our office a couple weeks after one of our one-day service events, The Big Day of Serving, in St. Louis, MO. This is what you, you crazy youth workers, do all the time. You share your heart and passion and serve those in need in ways that are above and beyond what anyone could realistically expect or imagine.

Just to let you know. The lady we did work for had not had a refrigerator for 6 months. When we got back to our church the next day 150 miles away…….we announced it in church and I had my youth all give a talk about what we did and what they thought. Someone donated a almost new frig and we will be taking it to her….God is Good….thanks, for the opportunity to serve…

Deana – Lake Wappapello, MO

God is so good. He calls us to serve. And youth workers and youth ministries and churches do. Over and over again.

Thanks for all you do serving people with needs near and far. God bless!

Add Comment May 4, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts GUEST POST: Do as I have done for you

Christ is the perfect example of serving others, as he humbly takes on the role of a servant to wash his disciples’ feet during the Last Supper. Christ says, “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:15). For the last 9 years, the Senior High youth of my church have participated in one of Group Mission Trip’s week-long mission trips. Many of our Senior High youth are active in sports and have full time summer jobs. When it comes to the summer mission trip though, the youth and adults agree that this reminder of Christ’s humble nature as a servant, trumps the summer pay check or the air conditioned house. As a youth leader, I am very proud of the Senior High youth in that they see the greater significance of leaving their busy lives behind, in order to spend a week serving in Christ’s name. Sure, the weekly pay-check is nice if you are going into college or just looking for some extra fun summer money. Nevertheless, the youth truly embrace John 13:15- that as Christ as called us to serve others, putting our needs aside- the youth never hesitate to tell the boss that “Yeah, I am not available to work for this week- I am going with my church to serve others and spread the love of Christ.”

In the many years of our youth going on mission trips, they have done a variety of activities to both prepare spiritually and financially for the week-long experience at work camp. One new activity the youth are doing to prepare spiritually for our mission trip to Wilmington, North Carolina this year, is joining with a congregation member to be “SOUL sponsors.” Given the new unique experiences and faith journeys of our Senior High youth, each Senior High youth has been paired with a congregation member who has similar interests both inside and outside the walls of our congregation. As a “SOUL sponsor”, the congregation member will get to journey with a youth in their faith walk, get to know them and do fun activities with them, outside of worship. In addition, other ways that our Senior High youth prepare for the work camp experience include: serving Easter breakfast and doing a summer rummage sale. Through their fundraising efforts, the youth realize that although it does take a lot of money to attend a mission trip, the sticker tag on the trip is nothing, when you compare it to the actual experience of working on a home, alongside other Christian teens.

Nothing excites me more after coming home from our mission trip experience, than the change the other adults and I see in our Senior High youth. Through our mission trip experience each year, our youth grow closer to each other, new friendships form, and each youth is strengthened in their faith. As previously mentioned, Christ has already set the example for us, serving others with tremendous love; we, as his disciples are called to live this out in our everyday lives. Each year, the Senior High youth come back home from the mission trip, with a renewed spirit and passion to serve others. Many times, the other Messiah youth leaders and I are surprised by the innumerable requests by the youth to participate in service projects. I cannot help but smile and work to organize the next service activity for the youth.

Samantha (Sam) Crowell has been involved in youth ministry for the last five years. I currently serve as the volunteer adult leader of the Junior High Ministry and the youth ministry communications coordinator. This year’s mission trip to Wilmington, North Carolina will be her ninth mission trip with the Senior High youth group.

Add Comment May 2, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts Making “The Drive” Part of Your Mission Trip

“The Drive” (or flight or train ride or whatever) isn’t simply the way you’re getting to your mission trip location. It’s part of the trip. It’s not the part you endure and suffer through to get to the real thing. It’s part of the trip. It isn’t a means to and end. It’s part of the trip.

Those hours you’ll spend together are valuable. Here’s some ideas to make the most of them:

Prepare devotional material for your students to use during the long hours of the drive. You know that there will be plenty of time to sit and stare our the window. Redeem that time with some purposeful thoughts about the experience they are about to have. Are you using a theme for the week? Introduce that in a devotion during the drive. Are you serving a very specific place with a specific culture? Prepare your students for that one more time right before they arrive. Are you directly serving people as part of the “projects”? Help get your students pray for those people as they travel.

Play games together. Name that tune on the radio. Find all 50 states license plates. “I Spy.” Those are all goofy games but they get your group engaged and interacting while you drive.

Journaling is a great way to process and remember the mission trip experience. Have your youth group start their journals on the drive there and continue on the drive home. What are they expecting? What did they just experience?

If possible have people switch seats on the bus or vans or cars at every “rest stop.” (or have them switch into a different vehicle) It’s a good way to make sure teens are getting the chance to meet new people and get to know others before they are put in the amazing, stretching experience that the mission trip is.

Don’t be afraid to simply let students “hang out.” You can over program the drive time also. There is something beneficial in letting everyone get ready for what they are about to experience in their own way. NOT the entire time. But it’s not bad to leave hours of down time “scheduled” into the drive.

With a few of these simple ideas you can turn the drive to and from your mission trip into an integral part of the experience.

Add Comment April 19, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts I hope he will get the chance to feel as close to God as I do…

For the past several months I’ve been writing posts about the struggles youth leaders are facing getting students to commit to the mission trip. So far the focus has been on things like the business of students and the failure of parents to understand. We received another take on this issue last week.

The quote below is from a student to their youth leader about their friend who signed up for the mission trip:

“I was talking to my friend about the mission trip this summer, and as he was talking about it with his parents, they brought up the point of how he would miss some baseball practices and a tournament. If I was him, I would skip the baseball stuff and go to work camp in a heartbeat! But, he’s not as committed to this as I am, and this is also a baseball team that him and his parents pay some amount of money for. I was really hoping he could come and experience what I have had the chance to go through twice, because its more than words to try and explain how connected it makes me to God. I really hope someday he will get the chance to feel as close to God as I do. I’m really sorry that you had to go through all that trouble and he won’t be able to go. I really appreciate what you did for me and for him! I’m really looking forward to another great summer on our mission trip!”

For this student, the frustration is very real. He wants his friend to attend the mission trip because he knows how much of an impact it can have on his friends life. Going on a mission trip brought the student closer to God than he ever was before. This student wants his friend to have the same opportunity to experience that closeness – just like he did. But baseball wins out. The money his friend and his friend’s parents have “invested” in the baseball is something they just can’t give up.

Here’s the thing… We know that nothing impacts a students like a mission trip. The mission trip experience changes teenagers in so many ways. Realizing there is need outside of themselves. The opportunity to serve someone else. Leadership experience in the context of service and devotion. Real life skills like construction and leading VBS. Transformational spiritual growth. And those were just the ones I could think of quickly!

The only way I know to overcome this issue is to engage parents in conversation and tell them how their child will benefit directly from the experience. We’re fearful of approaching mission trips from a “what we get out of it” perspective but that’s the perspective of any parent. What will my kid “get” from this experience? My advice – tell them. Tell the what amazing experiences their child will have. Don’t be afraid to “sell” the mission trip experience to parents.

1 View Comments April 16, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts Mission Trip Basics

Kurt and Josh have some good, solid, basic thoughts about mission trips. This article is part of Simply Youth Ministry Today.

Mission Trip Basics

Add Comment April 13, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts What’s working with youth leaders

We’ve been out this week meeting with Youth Leaders. It’s been great to hear the stories and meet folks who are giving their lives to the students in their churches. Here’s a couple things they’ve said are working well in their ministries.

- Mission trips and service experiences: Students love serving. The youth leaders I’ve been speaking to hear from their students that they’d rather serve or get involved than just meet, discuss and play games together.

- Relationships are key: Every youth leader this week has said that the youth in their church seem to be crying out for relationship. They value time together with their youth leader outside of “normal” church activity. Meet over coffee. Watch a sporting event. Go to a movie. These times are just as valuable (sometimes more valuable) than a regular youth group meeting.

- Great curriculum works. Bad curriculum is almost worse than doing nothing: Many youth workers have expressed frustrations finding great curriculum. But when they do – the students really respond and are engaged.

- There actually are some churches that aren’t just focused on #’s: It’s been very refreshing to hear about youth ministries that don’t feel pressure for numbers but are free to pursue transformation and life change. A very cool part of this week.

What’s working in your ministry? Please share some of the ideas and things that you feel are going great and helps you to love working with the students in your church?

2 View Comments March 28, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts A mission trip that changed two people

The following is an essay written by a mission trip participant from last summer. God does amazing things…

I sat, staring glassy-eyed at the floor, wondering why I was there. It was high summer, and the heat was still on. As the sweat beaded on my forehead, I listened to some old guy, Elmer, drone on about gardening and knitting and other topics of little interest to me. Paying no attention, I lifted my gaze from the carpeted floor to the walker, to the therapeutic compression socks, to the grey shorts and shirt, and finally, to the big glasses that obscured his face—definitely not someone I cared to know. He and I were two people from different places and different generations, with absolutely no need to meet or know of each other’s existence. In the reflection of his glasses, I saw the not so subtle boredom of my countenance mirrored back at me.

I was stuck in an assisted living home, in The Middle of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, in the middle of a church mission trip, in the middle of summer. Elmer’s needles clicked together as he knit.

“I make Christmas stockings for each baby born in my family,” he explained. Elmer held up a small, red square of yarn, “This is my twentieth.” I couldn’t help but smile. When he switched gears, going on a tangent about baking apple pies, my mouth watered.

“Did you top it with Cool Whip?” I asked.

“No!” he said indignantly. “We cranked our own ice cream.”

Behind the wrinkles, I saw a man who loved his family fully and still savored life. I wouldn’t mind being this man in seventy years.

The clock in the dining room chimed twelve times, signaling lunch and the end of our conversation. I had been listening to Elmer for three hours. The next day for more than a half hour, Elmer recounted his childhood memories of collecting empty milk bottles.

The trip ended, and I found myself at home with my friends. It would have been easy to forget and old bespectacled man with socks up to his knees, but I immediately wrote him a letter.

A week later, an envelope, addressed in slanted script turned up in my mailbox. He asked about cross country and told me to have fun at least three times. I responded and eagerly awaited his next letter. Throughout the rest of the summer, as we exchanged mail, Elmer told me about his wife’s death, his open-heart surgery, and his entrance into the assisted living home. Even after such hardships, he was happy now. “Moving here was no the beginning of the end,” Elmer wrote. “It was the start of a new adventure—a new part of my life. Sort of like your going to college, my young friend. Enjoy life.”

Add Comment March 23, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts One Person Helped Change Her Community!

The following interview with JoAnn Pleasants and Geoff Frahm focuses on the feasibility of an individual to bring transformational change on a local community. Can one person really make a difference?

Geoff Frahm is National Team Leader for The Big Day of Serving. He works with individuals in communities all across the country to help them organize a single-day service event for 500 – 1,000 people. Geoff has been organizing mission opportunities for over 10 years dating back to when he traveled the country for several summers during college leading mission trips.

JoAnn Pleasants is a long time children’s and youth pastor with nearly 15 years experience. Her passion to push her church’s ministry outside of the walls of the building called her to action. Over the past two years she has led a community team in Frederick, MD to organize The Big Day of Serving event that brought over 900 youth into the city of Frederick to impact the community. Additionally, she directs a new program called 4YOUth that steps out of the church to engage youth in an after-school environment.

Geoff: What did you find to be the needs in your community?
JoAnn: In order to make the most profound impact on a specific neighborhood (or neighborhoods), we focused in our downtown area for our Big Day of Serving. We found two city organizations truly needing our help. Our Parks & Recreation Department was in need of landscaping help all throughout the downtown Frederick area mainly due to budget cuts. The necessary supplies were available through the city but the staff had been reduced and the work could not be completed. Another department in need of our help was the Housing Authority, especially with government funded housing communities. There was a great opportunity to share God’s grace with many families and adults of all ages. That was truly a need and we all were blessed to be present in their lives on that day.

Geoff: It has been said that this generation of young people are “wired” to serve. Why do you think that is? Why is there a need for a national movement organizing youth service events?
JoAnn: I’ve been working in youth ministry for the last several years and I believe youth genuinely want to serve. They want to make an impact and help others… and “days of service” give them an opportunity to do so. They see needs, hear about needs, and read about the needs of others and they want to make a difference, but they don’t know how. This current group of teenagers cares an awful lot…and they certainly have the energy to make a difference. Additionally, I think the more youth you have gathered at an event, that energy is amplified and it becomes more fun for them to make a difference…perhaps it’s the power of numbers.

There is definitely a need for a national movement to organize youth service events…especially through the church and youth ministry. In organizing this event I learned that our city and other non-profit organizations are looking to churches to help those in need because they cannot accomplish all that should be or needs to be done. Whatever the reasons that people and our communities are in need, the reality is we can help. A personal reason for me to be involved in a national service day like The Big Day of service is to help empower youth – in my experience they can accomplish anything and everything! They just need to be given the opportunity, encouragement, and guidance when needed. A national movement makes them feel a part of a bigger whole and amplifies their energy towards service, and their productivity towards change!

Geoff: What advice would you give to someone who sees the need in their community and wants to help? How did you find the partnership with The Big Day of Serving helped you to impact your community?
JoAnn: I would say “Go for it!” Take some time to really think about the needs in your community. Talk to people in your church, your neighborhood or some close friends and colleagues to see if they feel the same as you about needs in your community and wanting to make a difference…and then talk to the youth in your church. If you engage them in the planning and have them all alongside of you, that will make a difference. Plus, you won’t be alone in the effort. You need a good team working with you – helping to plan the event. With a great team it’s not the mountain it starts out to be!

I was excited to partner with The Big Day of Serving for several reasons. First, they are well known and have such a wonderful reputation for organizing excellent mission and service opportunities. I also support the goal and vision they have for The Big Day of Serving. I am honored that they trusted and had faith in me to lead an event in our community. Without them we would not have brought together over 900 participants in Frederick! Plus, not only do they know how to put together a successful event, they have a team of individuals always willing to help & support you with your community event. They are truly committed to their mission to unite youth, transform communities in need, and to just share God’s grace!

LEARN HOW YOU CAN HELP YOUR COMMUNITY TRANSFORM NEIGHBORHOODS
To find out more about how you can mobilize youth to transform communities across the nation – go to www.thebigdayofserving.com. You may also contact Geoff at gfrahm@thebigdayofserving.com or by calling (800) 385-4545 ext. 4256.

Add Comment March 21, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts Skateboarding and the first mission trip…

My middle son loves skateboarding. He’s only 10 years old but he skates every single day that he can. After school. All weekend. He’d skateboard after dark if we’d let him. When he first started, he was scared of falling… of getting hurt. It kept him from doing things he know he could do but he was afraid. Now, he really wants to learn new tricks. He’s overcoming his fear and is willing to try new stuff even thought he might fall. It’s inspiring. It’s fun to watch. And I’m really proud of him.

Well… you may be asking, “What in the world does your kid skateboarding have to do with a mission trip?”

It has everything to do with it!

Taking your kids on a mission trip for the first time is scary.

You don’t know what to expect.
Your students could get hurt (literally).
Your kids could end up frustrated because so many mission experiences are unknown.
Things could go different than you expected and your group might be frustrated with you.

So many what if’s…

And then, you take them on that first trip… Things may have gone differently than you planned. A lot of unknown things happen. Your youth group didn’t know exactly what to expect. And – God did amazing things! You witnessed each other part of God’s plan to change the lives of the people you served. God didn’t just work in the lives of those you served. The students in your ministry were completely transformed by the experience. Some have learned that life isn’t about things – they’re now less materialistic. Some actually started their relationship with Jesus on the trip – serving someone else helped them understand Jesus loved them. Your group came back stronger and bonded together.

The best part is now you know that it will be even easier to try your next mission trip. You’ve witnessed the change it makes in both those who are served and in your group.

Just like my son skateboarding, once he knows he can do something he wants to try something even harder and new…

Add Comment March 15, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts The first step in my new relationship with Jesus

This is Caitlin’s story of how a mission trip changed her life:

When I heard about the mission trip, I was so excited. All year long, I look forward to our mission trip opportunity. It is always a chance for me to grow closer to God. It’s the perfect chance to connect to Him. Over the week, I not only made a relationship with Christ, but also with the people I served with. I felt such a deep connection to God over the week. He impacted me to finally want to create a lasting relationship with Jesus. This week has been my favorite mission trip so far. I made friends from other states and built stronger friendships with people in my church. I honestly feel like this week was the first step in my new relationship with Jesus.

Another great story of how a mission trip can help a teenager encounter Jesus. This is what God does in literally hundreds of thousands of people lives every year through a mission trip.

If you haven’t made your plans for a mission trip yet this year, we’d be honored to help you find a place to serve and give your students an opportunity to encounter Jesus like Caitlin. Visit groupmissiontrips.com