Many of you have asked me to go deeper into what makes a good student mission trip so I want to take some time this week discuss mission trips. I want to start with the essentials; what must every trip provide? I think that every student mission trip must have these three elements:

1. Spiritual preparation
Most student mission trips have pre-trip meetings where all kinds of issues are discussed but little time is spent on the purpose of mission. God made mission part of the life of a believer and many of us don’t understand why God has called us all on a mission and how to live out the mission. We need to let students know God’s purpose and their part in it. This will allow them to see that mission trips are not summer options for students but power packed opportunists to see God at work. God doesn’t need us or our students; He only invites us to come and see His mighty work!

2.  Student focus
We like to think that this year’s trip will change the world, but it won’t. In reality though, it could change the world of your students. We need to understand that student mission trips are about students. Trips allow them to see God at work and allows them to discover their strengths and gifts. There is nothing like a mission trip to show students that God is real. So plan for impact, spend some of your time on the trips letting students study God’s word and teach them about prayer. Give them time to process and debrief each day, give them tools to think and dream. Some of the commitments they make on a trip will last a life time. Whenever I talk about this many youth workers go crazy and think this so wrong. Just ask yourself about last year’s trip and the student reports when they got home. Did any of them say, “I went on the trip to serve others but in the end I was the one who got the help”?

3.  Debriefing
When most student mission trips end the youth worker takes a two week vacation. Just when God is at work in the students’ lives and youth ministry takes a month off. This drives me nuts. When the trip ends is actually the perfect time to start to work with them, processing through the experience and helping them make decisions about their future. We must debrief the experience so students will make mission their life.