7 Reasons Churches Love YouthWorks

It’s my tenth YouthWorks summer. That’s ten summers of sitting among students at meals, serving alongside a diversity of church groups and meeting youth workers from all different backgrounds. And in 10 summers (and a handful of winters, too) planning and facilitating mission trips, I’ve noticed  that many of those churches keep coming back on YouthWorks trips year after year. As far as I can tell, there are about seven identifiable reasons why these churches seem to love YouthWorks.

 

 

1. We take care of all the details. Our job is to make your job easier. We coordinate service projects, set up housing, buy food, deliver programming, facilitate community activities and much more – all so you can focus on your ministry with teenagers.

 

2. We create quality mission trip content, including devotional journals, evening talks and group resources for before, during and after the trip – all connecting Jesus, the mission trip experience and your students’ everyday lives.

 

3. We seek to respectfully serve communities through listening closely, speaking carefully, serving humbly and participating gratefully in what God is already doing in these places, and we invite churches to do the same.

 

4. We hire and train incredible staff teams. Each of our summer staff go through a competitive interview process and receive quality training. All summer, staff live in the community in which you’ll serve, and they’re present with your group during your entire trip.

 

5. We have plenty of options, including different trip types for all ages in over 70 unique communities across North America.

 

6. We have lots of resources. From fundraising ideas to discussion-starters to road trip activities, we have a lot of resources built to help you have a successful mission trip.

 

7. We keep asking “What’s Next?” And that question has helped us create new things like mission trips for families and meaningful after-trip resources and even little things like better salad bar options. We think this year is great, but we believe next year can be better – for students, for communities, for churches and for staff. And so we will continue to eagerly ask, “What’s next?”

 

…and you can too! If you think broadened perspectives, sparked passions, deeper faith and a lifestyle of service is what’s next for your teenagers, a YouthWorks mission trip might be the right place to start.

 

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Sam Townsend helps write training, programming and marketing materials for YouthWorks mission trips. When he isn’t hanging around teenagers at church or digging into seminary homework, he is generally looking for a good conversation and a hole-in-the-wall restaurant to have it in. Sam still considers his first couple summers working for YouthWorks in Virginia and Pennsylvania communities some of the most transformative times of his life.