We sat on the cabin stoop at 1:30 a.m. at a camp in Arizona toward the end of the high school mission trip. The freshman boy was recounting his broken heart. His best church buddy sat nodding sagely. As his youth leader, I was the one who sought him out to check-in after seeing a certain young lady blow through him like he wasn’t there - the original ghosting.
Suddenly, he said to me, “You are really calm and super helpful. How?” I explained that sadly, this wasn’t the first time I had listened to a high schooler share about a broken heart. It happens a lot to high schoolers, some mid-highs, and a lot of adults. People who date get their hearts broken. He told me he was glad I was a good listener.
The following summer he and his girlfriend (the third that year his sage buddy would tell me) would be on the high school mission trip together. He had invited this girl to come with us knowing she was a non-practicing Roman Catholic, but he said everyone should get to go on these trips.
This is a great idea. Everyone should be able to come on a church’s mission trip. Yet, in three different churches church leaders would press against this. Here were their reasons;
Our tradition is to pay for 1/3 or 1/2 or all of the trip and bringing people from outside the church costs money.
The perfect size of a mission group is 9, 10, or 12 people (whatever size they usually had).
If we bring a large group, you will lose the good feeling of knowing everybody.
They haven’t joined the church, been here long enough, or attended our worship services.
At that particular church, we had 900 in membership and 11 high schoolers active on a high school mission trip. The success of that trip led to more active high schoolers at youth group (Sunday School was still only three bleary youth forced to be present).
Then the Associate Pastor left, and I arrived as an interim associate. Working with good volunteer youth leaders the mid-high and high school youth groups grew. My first high school mission trip doubled the size of the group. And growth was on.
After the Arizona trip, youth ministry exploded. A 900 member church should have a lot of high school-age youth. We reached out to them. We sought them out (more on this to come in another post).
With this next trip when the young man invited his girlfriend, we ran into the budget issue (the other issues will be covered in a future post). The church had always done a funding model of Parents paying 1/3, Youth fundraising 1/3, and the church paying 1/3. For this Costa Rica trip, 1/3 would be $300 per student. We had 21 youth who wanted to go: 21 x $300 = $6.300. The church also covers the adult Leader Team of six: 6 x $1,200 = $7,200.
Total $13,500. And we haven’t started to fundraise yet.
Not many churches have $13,500 set aside for the high school mission trip. The lead Pastor liked the idea of growth. He also believed God provided.
So we took the problem to the Christian Education and Finance committees. We brainstormed together. We decided that this church would welcome anyone who wanted to go on the trip. But we couldn’t cover the cost this year. So we asked the parents of the non-attending families to pay $600 or 2/3 and the youth would fundraise the last 1/3 with their peers.
We signed four students up. And then someone wanted to bring her brother. Five students.
At the church’s Session (board meeting), an older member learned of all this discussion and decisions made by the committees. She was not happy. This was not the kind of church she wanted. Everyone should go. Next year let’s budget this better she told the church board. Everyone agreed with her. And that is was they did.
The next summer those parents who learned that the trip would be 1/3 cheaper for them were thrilled. Youth ministry continued to grow.
And some families returned to active life in the church. Later one of those young women who went to Costa Rica would tell me (at our youth group) that she was attending her church each week and her parents had started to go to church with her too. They all went to their Episcopal Church.
The broken-hearted freshman and his sage buddy would go on all four high school mission trips. Two years later, that first young man would go as an adult leader on my high school mission trip at my next church. This trip would be a joint trip with three churches (2 from Michigan, 1 from Florida) and have over 70 people. He was a great youth leader and a good listener.