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 clear to me that short-term missions is one of the most
powerful ways to do discipleship that has long-term life-transformation
condensed into a short, but impactful, period of time. It’s basically
following Jesus’ model of discipleship by traveling with teens to do
ministry as you teach and model for them them what discipleship is all
about. (Note: there’s a difference between missions trips and work
projects. I’m talking about missions trips.)Because of that, it seems to me that, not only should we be doing
more mission trips, but we should also be pushing more resources toward
it than we do.Since my church’s fiscal year starts July 1, I recently
proposed reallocating over half of my youth group’s budget toward two
trips to Haiti next year, which will probably be approved.Listen to the
testimonies and stories from the adults and teens on our last trip
to Haiti. It explains why.
Read more from Tim’s blog: Why my youth group is going back to Haiti
What do you think – is it drastic to allocate half of your budget to mission trips? Or could it be closely in line with Jesus’ model of discipleship, as Tim says?
