WHY YOUR MISSION TRIP WAS BIGGER THAN YOU THINK

 

If you went on a mission trip this summer, you were part of something bigger than you might have imagined – because you could have sat at home or gone to the beach or done a billion other things. Instead, you chose to do this small thing called service with a week of your summer.

 

 

But your mission trip was bigger than you – because you were part of a team who came together to travel together to serve together to worship together to process together to return home together. And hopefully your team grew together as a result.

 

But your mission trip was bigger than your team – because you banded together with other churches and YouthWorks staff members whom you met along the way. You got to know people from a different place and come together with a common purpose.

 

But your mission trip was bigger than the people who went – because there was a community who received you – who provided housing and showers and service projects and evening activities. The community you entered shared their strengths but also showed their struggles, and in some small way, for one week, you became part of the bigger story of that community.

 

But your mission trip was bigger than that one week – because students like you entered that community and served and learned like you did all summer long.

 

But your mission trip was bigger than this summer – because YouthWorks will continue to stay connected with that community. We will ask questions about how we can better serve and learn and grow together. We will sit in church pews and in coffee shops and at dinner tables, and we will have small conversations that matter, so that next summer students like you can come back to that community to serve and to learn and to grow.

 

But your mission trip was bigger than this one community – because across the continent other church groups like yours went on YouthWorks trips all summer long. In over 70 communities, students and adults stepped out of their comfort zones and into service. They made new connections with God, each other and the communities they visited. And some will never be the same because of the way they encountered Jesus during their YouthWorks trip.

 

But your mission trip was bigger than YouthWorks – because there are so many other incredible organizations that are seeking to serve and to love and to listen. There are churches who are teaching God’s truth and reaching out into their communities and encouraging those in need. There are disciples of Jesus everywhere who are coming together to form the Church – the kind with a capital C, composed of Christ-followers across the globe.

 

But your mission trip was bigger than today’s Church – because every time you follow Jesus as you seek to be part of the way God is making things right in the world, you are joining a movement that has crossed continents and woven its way throughout history… an establishment that started small – like a mustard seed – over 2,000 years ago, but has grown and grown… a divine undertaking called The Kingdom.

 

This summer, you did this small thing – a week of service in another community. But if you let it, perhaps its influence can reach into your everyday life. Perhaps it can grow, and you will discover that what you’ve been looking for is all around you, what you’ve been praying for is already here, and this thing you were a part of is becoming a part of you. God’s Kingdom is often not what we expect. It chooses the weak over the strong… the poor over the rich… the small beginning over the grand entrance.

 

But this Upside-Down Kingdom invites us in – to be participants and citizens in something eternal. To have a place to belong in the way God is slowly, steadily making all things right – in and through God’s people as they follow Jesus.

 

And that is something big.

 

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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.