Dear Parent Whose Child Does Not Want to Go on the Mission Trip -
I know your family has hundreds of worthwhile options for how to spend it's time each summer and that you can't do it all. I can also only assume it's far easier to send your child...
My first year in ministry, I was haunted by a girl I never met.
Her name was Laura and she never attended anything.
She didn't come to our weekly youth ministry gatherings.
She didn't come to our special events – regardless of whether they were ...
Two years ago, during our Youth Room makeover, we set aside an area of the room to use as a dedicated prayer space. To differentiate it as such, students painted several verses about prayer on the wall in that section of the room.
For two years,...
We in the church often spend a lot of time debating (or even fighting) one another over a variety of different issues. Among them?
Whether or not short-term mission trips are worth it.
Trust me, I know short-term trips are expensive. I just...
What the book's about: Cross-Cultural Connections by Duane Elmer is a book designed to prepare people for cross-cultural experiences, and more specifically, for cross-cultural mission trips. While the book is really oriented to long-term...
The country of Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills.
As it turns out, this nickname is no joke.
I experienced these hills on a recent high school mission trip to Rwanda. While there, we traveled from one side of the country to the...
I hate international mission trips.
Not all, but some.
More specifically, I hate international mission trips that plop teens down in an exotic location far from home and fail to make the connection between what goes on there and what goes on at...
I just returned from a two-week mission trip to Rwanda with my high school youth ministry. Twice now we've been privileged to partner with International Teams Rwanda for the international leg of our three-year mission trip cycle.
The trip was, in...
One finding that's stuck with me from Sticky Faith is, "More than any program or event, what made kids more likely to feel like a significant part of their local church was when adults made the effort to get to know them."
One of the best ways my...
On my youth ministry's recent mission trip to Milwaukee through Youth Works Missions, we spent an evening with Life Changers International – a ministry to former gang members in inner city Milwaukee.
During our time with Life Changers, a panel of...