Why Do We Choose Missions?

Thinking about our New Years goals and resolutions, we’re asking ourselves why we keep doing missions as a part of our ministry to students…

Why do we go through the long planning process throughout the year? The fundraising? The parent meetings?

What makes a mission trip worth it?

Over the past 21 years, we’ve seen thousands of students step out of their norm and into a week-long, sweaty, tough, but amazing experience of serving those in need. We’ve seen them with blistered hands from hammering a homeowner’s new roof, covered in paint from a week’s worth of renewing a family’s home, and dirty from hanging out with the city’s poorest under bridges.

We’ve seen young lives radically changed. And even more incredible, we’ve seen students come back leading their own group of youth on the same kind of mission trip that changed their life years before.

The reason we think mission trips are worth it is because God designed us for missions.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

We are made in God’s image—a God of love, compassion, and mercy. As students learn who God is through nightly chapel services and learn how to serve others selflessly, they become more of who they were created to be in Him. That’s amazing!

And being young doesn’t mean that God gives small callings. God speaks to our students in power and makes world-changers on mission trips!

Another reason, and perhaps the most important, is God commanded us to do missions.

Matthew 28:19-20 says, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…”

We all started following God for a reason. Maybe someone had compassion on us in one of our darkest moments. Maybe we met someone who was so radically different in the way they cared for others because of their faith. Maybe we just heard someone speak God’s word and it was unlike anything we’ve heard before.

The point is, we all became followers of God because one person was obedient to their call to preach the Gospel through their actions and words. God has entrusted us with telling the good news of His saving grace, and our students have an incredible opportunity to bring this news to their generation!

God’s inexhaustible love for us is what compels us to do missions, in the mundane everyday and on trips outside of our norm. We believe in missions because it has transformed our hearts.

WHY DO YOU KEEP CHOOSING MISSIONS?