Summer mission tour season is fast approaching!
What an amazing opportunity we have to invest in the lives of students and help them serve, learn and join God’s mission in the world.
Youth and young adults regularly point to mission experiences as transformational moments in their lives. There is something about seeing God’s people in action, joining in healing our broken world, and hearing about Jesus at that same time, that impacts our hearts.
Here are a few resources we’ve used and really like for preparing youth for mission. We like them because they help students think beyond the mission trip to on-going missional living. #1neighbourhood
1. Deep Justice Journeys: 50 Activities to Move from Mission Trips to Missional Living by Kara E. Powell and Brad Griffin. This is an excellent book we’ve used ourselves again and again. It engages students in activities and then helps them debrief the activity in a way that invites the students to discover the mission value being emphasized. There are lots of great opportunities to engage in Scripture. It thinks beyond the week of the mission trip. It looks at lasting partnerships, on-going learning, thinking more deeply about root causes and prejudice that perpetuate difficult situations and challenges us towards living missionally every day.
2. Wordeed: An Intergral Mission a little book available as a pdf HERE from our friends at Canadian Baptist Ministries. This little book lays out a description of how God is transforming our world. We love their approach! They invite us to think about the whole person and the whole picture. They invite to both show and tell the Gospel, in deed and word. Jesus “did” the Kingdom and taught about the Kingdom – Wordeed invites us to do the same.
3. Alpha Youth Film Series available HERE, is an exceptional free resource. A new version is coming out within the next year! This is a great resource to prepare a team, if you want to make sure your team understands the basics of their own faith. Alpha is designed to help those that don’t know Jesus to explore Jesus. SO, if you used Alpha with a group of youth preparing for a mission trip, it should be with the challenge that then those youth are prepared to run an alpha in their school or community. Train them and prepare them to be leaders for the next Alpha, as you go through the series together. Get them praying for who they will invite to their Alpha group!
4. The 31 day Neighbouring Challenge available HERE invites everyone to open their eyes, ears, heart and mind to God’s work around them every day. Simple, daily challenges invite students to join God, even in small ways, every day. Four devotionals (powerpoints with notes for the leader) are also available with this resource. This is a great resource to prepare peoples’ hearts and attitudes for serving God. It’s a great resource to encourage people to start noticing how they can join God in their own lives.
5. Step Up: Becoming the Leader God made you to Be by Denise VanEck. This workbook is exceptional at calling out leadership skills in students. This would be a great resource for a mentor and mentee to work through together. If you have a group of students that is ready to be challenged to step up in leadership, this would be the book for you.
6. 6 Habits of Highly Missional Youth available HERE The Verge network has lots of great ideas and resource. This one is about helping youth understand and apply the Gospel in life.
7. Building Young Leaders: Using Mission Experiences To Help Grow Youth As Leaders by Mike McDonald and Bruce Fawcett. This is an oldie but a goodie. It’s no longer in print, but I assure you you’ll find copies kicking around most churches in Atlantic Canada. This book provides a detailed step by step guide to prepare the details and your group for a mission tour, and in particular Tidal Impact.
You’ll find some more resources on our CBACyf website:
Under our “How to videos” – Check out “How to plan a mission tour part 1”
Under our “Tidal Impact” resources – Check out
“TI2017 How to be a Visiting Church for Tidal Impact” and
“T12017 How to be a Fantastic Host Church for Tidal Impact”
There is still a small window of time to join in Tidal Impact this summer! It’s a mission tour for middle school and high school students where together we’ll be impacting the neighbourhoods in and around Bridgewater and Halifax, Nova Scotia. All the details are available at: http://cbacyf.ca/tidalimpact
Hope this helps!
Thank you for investing in students and equipping them to join God in their neighbourhoods and networks every day!
Praying for life-changing mission experiences in this season. Praying these learning and serving opportunities create a people that join God in their neighbourhoods every day, everywhere!