It had never occurred to me [Brad] to invite grandparents along on a student mission trip.
Then Julie asked me if her grandparents could join us for two weeks in Costa Rica.
I was a little hesitant. After all, her grandparents were in their 70s. I was several decades younger, and I wasn’t so sure they would be willing to follow my lead. Truthfully, I wasn’t so sure I would be impressive enough as a leader to garner their respect. Plus, this was a high school trip. What would the other teenagers think when a couple of old folks joined the team?
As it turned out, in many ways Grandpa Bob and Grandma Jean were the heroes of that trip. They offered an ultra-safe presence to kids and adults, and their years of wisdom steadied us without smothering us. Also, a slightly arrogant young youth pastor (me) learned something important about leading a great mission trip.
Sometimes missions needs to move beyond the youth group.
Creating Sticky Mission and Justice Experiences
In our Sticky Faith research at the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI), we studied more than 500 youth group graduates across the transition from high school to college to determine what churches and families can do to foster lifelong faith in young people (see StickyFaith.org for more).
One of the early themes that emerged in our study is the power of intergenerational relationships to strengthen teenagers’ faith. While this may feel obvious on the surface, in our experience working with churches from across the country we’ve found that moving from rhetoric to action often proves challenging.
The most typical obstacle leaders find when connecting teenagers and adults is the lack of shared contexts. Adults and kids aren’t together very much in most churches. We’ve become experts at creating age-level programming for everything from Sunday School to mission trips. While we’re fans of age-appropriate contexts and content, we think this all-exclusive approach means we all miss something.
The good news is that most of us can tweak what’s already on our ministry menu in order to create contexts for connection. Mission trips, service projects and justice-seeking advocacy work all offer fertile soil for the cultivation of intergenerational relationships.
Following is a list of ideas and best practices from churches across the country, many of which have been part of our Sticky Faith Cohort process during the past three years.
1. Adults can provide important scaffolding for young people on a mission.
A Texas youth pastor named Cory tried something new this past summer when their high school ministry took a mission trip to Chicago. Ahead of time, they invited older adults in the church to adopt every student and adult on the trip. These adults prayed for the team members for the month leading up to the trip and throughout the trip itself. They also wrote their prayer partners letters that were given to them by the leaders in the middle of the trip.
After they returned, they gathered students, families and older adult prayer partners to a shared meal (Chicago-style pizza, of course). They watched a recap video, and students shared discoveries; then they invited the older adult prayer partners to share. Cory writes:
“What I didn’t expect was the response from the older adults. They got up and shared how important the trip was for them and how proud they were of our students that they represented our church and Jesus to a group of people these older adults never would meet. It was—by far—the best thing we have done in our student ministry in a long time.”
Cory’s story represents a way many churches utilize their existing structures as catalysts to engage adults and students in initial relationships. These adults can serve as scaffolding around young people during an intensive experience where extra support can make all the difference.
Here are a few ideas for building scaffolding around young people before, during and after a mission:1
• Meet with your church’s mission committee so its members understand the goals of your service. You may want to invite a few students to attend the meeting with you. Report back after the trip, and talk about next steps together.
• Ask your senior pastor if you can invite the church to pray for you and your students. Provide a list of specific prayer requests and pictures of your students in your church bulletin. You might also ask specific small groups or adult ministries to provide prayer support.
• Ask your children’s ministry if your students can pair up with one or more children and ask those children to pray for them.
• Communicate well during and after the trip. Any Sunday you’re gone, give some sort of report at church services through phone calls, video conference calls or emails (depending on the technology available). Plan times to share with the whole congregation and smaller groups afterward.
• Afterward, invite adults who can help your students become justice advocates back home to meet with your students. There might be a city council member or community leader in your church; if not, someone in your church is likely to know that type of leader.
2. Experiment with intergenerational trips.
Our youth pastor friend Keegan was inspired by Sticky Faith to make a bold move in his congregation. Recognizing their tendency to plan separate youth and adult mission trips each year, he and his team intentionally created a combined intergenerational trip. Keegan shared afterward:
“I did not realize how difficult this was going to be for us. We have become accustomed to segregation by ages in the church, and because of that we do not know how to engage relationally with one another…In the months leading up to the trip, I would remind the people we are in this together. I would say to adults that they could get work done faster without the teenagers, but if they would take the time to teach the skills and be present with the teenagers, they would be offering more than just skills in building a park or church building.”
It took two months to get adults and students to sit together and talk, and by the time the trip began there was just a little more interaction happening. The trip itself went well, and partway through Keegan could tell connections were being made.
It wasn’t really until after the trip, however, that the real sparks flew. On Sunday mornings, he noticed students would call the names of adults from across the church patio and run to them for a hug. Parents remarked that their kids were talking about others on the trip whose names they didn’t recognize from the youth group until they put it together that they were talking about adults who were now their friends. One 66-year-old named Vic decided to join the youth ministry volunteer staff. When Vic walked into youth group for the first time, the room filled with a resounding “VIC!” and a stampede of young people embraced him.
Keegan’s story is great, but note that he started with an experiment. He vowed to go back to their normal way of doing things if it bombed. Three years later, the experiment is still running strong. Many leaders find they start with smaller experiments in their context, such as a local intergenerational service day at the nearby homeless shelter or packing school supplies for kids in need. Wherever you start, getting adults and young people serving side by side creates all kinds of synergy for Sticky Faith.
3. Don’t underestimate the parents.
Young people who engage in service and justice usually have parents who do the same. Sometimes that influence flows both ways.
Ellen, a middle school pastor in Tennessee, shared with us a story of two girls and their parents who participated in a church family trip to Haiti last summer.
The story actually begins the prior year when both girls traveled to Haiti for the first time with the youth group. While they were there, the Lord ignited their hearts for the people of Haiti, especially for the orphans they served. When parents were invited to participate in the following summer’s trip, the girls convinced their parents to come back with them to Haiti. Ellen shares:
“It was a wonderful picture watching these two parent/student duos experience Haiti together. In a unique role-reversal, the students actually led the parents most of the trip! As a result of God using these teenagers in unexpected ways, their parents’ hearts slowly became more and more open to all that God was doing in Haiti.”
Part of Ellen’s work was facilitating conversations at night between the parents and their kids. She knew this dialogue about the experiences they shared was shaping these students’ faith in a way that coming on a mission trip by themselves never could.
You may or may not have parents who are ready to join a mission trip or kids who are willing to let them (this is a conversation to have on both sides!), but there are countless ways to see parents beyond their typical roles as checkbooks and chauffeurs.
Here are a few simple, strategic ideas to engage parents during your service work:
1. Encourage parents to gather together to serve in your community while your team is serving elsewhere. Then be intentional to have parents and students share about their experiences afterward.
2. During your service experience, invite parents to meet together at your church or a home to pray for your group regularly—maybe daily.
3. Depending on the technology available to you, provide a forum in which students can send email to parents and vice versa; or designate a contact parent who will receive group update emails and pass them along.
Serving together boosts both kids’ and parents’ faith. Researcher Diana Garland found in studying more than 7,000 church members that serving “is the most significant and powerful contributor to faith for teenage and adult Christians.”2
Garland also has seen the difference between family members serving together or separately. She has found that “unlike family service, individual projects can be a strain on family life, pulling family members away from one another rather than together in shared activity.”3 Because families often look to the church to help them find ways to serve and seek justice (and to make sense of this action in light of their faith), youth ministry is well-positioned to be a catalyst for families on mission together.
Not only is expanding mission beyond the youth group good for your students, but is good for their families and your church. In our experience, it’s good for you, too, as you see the kingdom enlarged before your eyes.
1 This list and some of the other ideas in this article are adapted from our short-term missions curriculum titled Deep Justice Journeys: 50 Activities to Move from Mission Trips to Missional Living (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009).
2 Diana Garland, Inside Out Families: Living the Faith Together (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010), 43.
3 Diana Garland, Inside Out Families, 71.
