Here are some helpful tips from a blog about how to build the right team for your upcoming mission trip. Selecting your team will be essential to ministry success on the field.    As you pray about putting together a group to serve on a short term missions trip, the following practical tips can help. 1.  Select the right people. They need to be solid followers of Christ, flexible, adaptable and teachable. 2.  Meet on a regular basis. Prior to the trip, you should meet monthly to pray, inform, and innovate. 3.  Train the team members.  Provide seminars by...

There is something so cheap about a program that graduates students. Maybe it’s just that I don’t like to let go? Or maybe it’s just that I can’t reconcile the theological ramifications of shoving a copy of My Utmost for His Highest in a kid’s hands and saying, “Thanks for the memories. Have a nice life!” The way my youth ministry career has gone, in many ways that relationship is just getting started when they walk across the stage to accept their high school diploma. It’s not over, we’re just changing gears! And yet, the programmatic...

I recently wrote an article for the Youthworker Journal called “The Best Way to Make a Disciple” (for their “Best of the Best” series). In the article, I argued that taking your youth group (or children) on a mission trip is the best way to disciple them. Here’s an excerpt from the full piece:   Just as in the first century, discipleship for us begins with a journey. Taking your students on a trip that breaks their hearts and tests their faith in God may be one of the best ways to turn them into disciples. Call it a mission trip, a justice journey or your...

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....