Youth Missions | Youth Missions Insider

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 Another New Fundraising Idea

Raising money for your summer mission trip (or summer camp or any summer activity) can be hard. Here’s another idea to help you get the funds you need.

Kroger grocery stores (King Soopers in the West) have a gift card program that helps people in your church as well as you. The basic idea is for your group to give out rechargeable gift cards that friends, family, and people in your church use to buy groceries. Kroger/King Soopers then credits a portion of those purchases to your groups account. The details vary a little by location or region of the country. The best way to get started would be to visit your local Kroger or King Soopers and ask to speak to a manager.

Here are two links to information for example programs at King Soopers and Kroger.

King Soopers

Kroger

My oldest son’s best friend’s baseball team uses this program and they love it. Everyone needs groceries. Kroger/King Soopers are pretty reasonable. It’s a very simple way to help your group raise funds from something everyone in your church does every week.

Let us know what you find out from your local King Soopers or Kroger.

Add Comment April 10, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts From Bad to… Way Better!

I received an email response to my recent blog post about Youth Worker’s Pain. It came from a youth worker that has been in ministry for several years now and she wanted to let me know what she thought of my post…

“First of all- read your blog post the other day about the biggest pain for youth workers. And I’m going to go ahead and concur with all of them. BUT – we probably all agree on a lot of the biggest joys of youth workers too, like students growing in their faith, watching students serve, getting to spend significant time building relationships with them… conveniently, all things that happen when you go on a Group Mission Trip!”

Here’s what I love about her comment. She easily and quickly turned an article about negative pain points for Youth Workers into the positive reasons all of us do what we do. It’s all about relationships, engaging students, growing in their faith, and helping them understand a relationship with Jesus. I love that we can move from the stuff that is hard, difficult, and painful to the true reasons why we do what we do.

It’s something like (but nothing truly like) the truth of Friday transformed into the Brilliance on Sunday that we celebrate Easter Weekend. God is in the business of turning negative into positive.

God bless all of you and your ministries this Easter Weekend!

Add Comment April 6, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts Great New Fundraising Idea!

I just witnessed a great new fundraising idea last night! There is a pizza restaurant chain that has locations across the Midwest and the Great Plains. Pizza Ranch has 163 Locations across 9 States including Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, Illinois and Kansas. And they have a pretty cool Fundraising program.

A youth group from Dubuque, Iowa that goes on mission trips and is helping to organize a Big Day of Serving in their community was having a fundraiser last night. They bused tables and helped serve guests. They got to keep a percentage of the tips and all the sales for the 3 hours they served the restaurant. The details are here. The youth leader for this youth group told me that they have made as much as $300 (or more) in one night. What a great idea!

I also want to give Pizza Ranch some props. Here’s the vision statement right off their website. “To glorify God by positively impacting the world we live in.” How cool is that?

1 View Comments April 5, 2012

Jeff ThompsonMore Posts The biggest pain for Youth Workers

Over the last week we’ve been meeting with youth workers and hearing from them about their ministries. It’s been fun and rewarding to hear what God is doing in ministries all over the country. I posted about some great things happening here. I’ve also heard some stories of things that are painful and frustrating. Here’s a few of the most consistent points of pain we’ve been hearing:

- Finding resources can be difficult: many youth leaders express frustration with finding a resource (curriculum, lesson plans, games, activities, etc.). It’s very difficult to find something that they felt met all their needs. The common response was to find and use several resources that added together to what they needed.

- Parents just don’t understand (just like The Fresh Prince): youth leaders everywhere are struggling with parents not viewing youth ministry as important to their kids life as school, sports, music, whatever. We blogged about this issue here. Parents don’t believe a Bible study, Sunday school class, youth group meeting, retreat, mission trip, or service experience is as important in the life of their child as those other things. It’s almost universal in youth ministry right now.

- Students are over-committed: nearly every conversation I’ve had in the last 2 years with youth workers involves this topic. Kids just have so much (too much) going on. Between school, jobs, sports, family commitments, boyfriend/girlfriend, and whatever else their is youth group can barely be fit into their lives. They have to be here, do that, finish this, attend whatever and then try to make it to youth group if they can. It’s really hard to develop deep relationships with students you don’t see very often.

- Money: it’s a fact of ministry life right now. There isn’t as many dollars available for ministry as there used to be for many people in ministry. And yet great youth ministry is still happening. People fundraise, do less, choose less expensive programs but they are still doing ministry.

What about you? What’s the big pain for you in ministry right now? We’d love see if we could help.

1 View Comments April 3, 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 Oh no… Paperwork!

I know that we just mailed the individual participant forms for everyone going on a mission trip with our ministry this summer. So… if you’re going with Group Mission Trips this year, check your mail they should be there by now.

Regardless who you’re serving with this summer, it is time to start gathering the info necessary to organize and provide a safe mission trip for every person attending. Here’s some helpful tips to help you do that well.

Take time to get it right. If the organization that needs your forms will be scanning them, they could require blue or black ink, writing in all caps within the boxes, or filling in the circles completely. Spend a few moments before you hand them out so kids and parents know what’s required. Remind them. And give them the right color pen. Most organizations require the original forms with original signatures—not faxes or photocopies.

Know the due dates…then back-track two weeks. There are good reasons why organizations need your paperwork by a particular time. If you fail to do that, you might not be able to participate. Try telling THAT to your kids and parents: “Um, we can’t go because I didn’t send our stuff in on time.” So play it safe. Whatever date the forms are due to the organization, require your young people to give them to YOU two weeks before. That allows a little grace period for that one family that ALWAYS misses the deadline. It also gives you a last chance to look through them to make sure everyone filled out all the required places and signed in all the right places.

Remember privacy laws regarding medical information. HIPPA laws require health and medical information to be kept locked up and viewed only by those who need to know it. While it’s important for you and other adult leaders to know one of your students has a certain medical condition, it’s not allowed for you to share that with any of the students or other parents—even as a prayer request. Under the Health Information Privacy Portability Act (HIPPA), you can be sued for sharing such information with the wrong people. And this HAS happened in churches before. Shred these forms when you’re finished with them.

Have a forms and information night…that everyone must attend. If you’re going on a mission trip or other major excursion, you’ll likely need to distribute and collect a small forest of paperwork. If so, announce several months in advance—so everyone can get it on the calendar—the date of the required “Parents and Youth” night to talk about the trip. Announce this several times so it sinks in. Tell people to bring their insurance cards, birth certificates, passports…or whatever it is you have to have. As people arrive, hand them the paperwork to fill it out right there. If forms need to be notarized, have a notary available. Have another adult collect the paperwork and double-check that everything is filled out properly and all the signatures are included. If something’s missing, hand it back to the person to make the corrections. You should also talk about other important aspects of the trip while you have everyone there. Have this well in advance of when the forms are all due…because I guarantee a youth won’t show up, or a parent won’t show up (“I didn’t hear about this!”), or things will happen.

Make copies for your own records. Before you send everything off in the mail (so it arrives on time), make a copy for your own records. You might need to know the information during the trip, or you might need to have a back-up in case it gets lost in the mail or something. I always kept all these forms in an accordion file that I could take with me on the trip. I had everything I needed from forms to vendor agreements to hotel reservations to everyone’s T-shirt size. If we needed it, I had it. Right then. Right there. You’d be amazed how much easier this makes your life.

Hope this makes dealing with the mountain of paperwork associated with taking your group on a mission trip just a little easier.