Author: Adventures

Here is a note from AIM’s executive director and founder, re-purposed from an old blog post he wrote in 2008. It’s even more relevant today:   A friend recently asked me, “What’s the best discipleship curriculum you can recommend?” “You are,” I answered. He was befuddled. “No, I mean like a book,” he clarified. “You mean you want to use a book to disciple instead of having them imitate you? Well, it didn’t work that way with Jesus. He WAS the curriculum, just like you are.” “Right, I understand, but...

Tim Schmoyer is a blogger, youth leader, and was a participant with the YMATH group that went to Haiti in February.   Since then, he has taken a group of his own back to Haiti and seen the impact it has made on students’ lives.   Short-term missions have become so important to his discipleship model that he was compelled to do something pretty drastic. You can read about it as he shares the following:   It’s only been a couple weeks since we returned from Haiti and already we’re planning our next trip back, most likely in October. It’s becoming...

Mission trips get a lot of grief for being “too emotional” or “short-lived.” But those of us who have had experience with young people on the field can’t deny the stories we’ve heard of positive impact. For the longest time, I was a skeptic (and still am to some degree). Then, I started listening to the stories.   Here is a video in which students share how their short-term trip to Philadelphia provided them with an opportunity to grow in their faith. Watch it below.   Let’s put our negativity and cynicism on pause for a moment....

I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder about school.   Teachers were usually monotone and uninteresting. The classroom venue was built for efficiency, but didn’t hold my attention. Most of the time, it bored me to tears.    Too often in our churches we model our discipleship and our services off of our failed model of schooling.   Discipleship is caught more than it’s taught.   If you lead a youth group or a Sunday school and the big culmination of your time is a sermon or some talking head, then maybe it’s time to get a new paradigm,...

In the following video, youth pastor Bobby Gatlin how short-term missions has not only impacted his youth group, but the church as a whole.

In America, everything seems to have a half-life of a McDonald’s hamburger.  Marriages are swallowed alive by the pace and pressure of modern life.  Today’s beloved Christmas toy is tomorrow’s landfill.  TV’s herky-jerky treatment of even the most serious subjects renders us numb (“God and existential neurosis, what can be known?  More in a moment…Having trouble with irregularity?  Occasional discomfort is normal…”) Thus it is when we bump up against someone or something which doesn’t reek of superficiality,...