Three years ago, as I interviewed for a new youth ministry position, regardless of the size or type of church I was interviewing at, I always knew one question would be the same: “How important do you think short-term mission trips are for youth ministries, and what experience do you have leading them?”

As a staunch supporter of short-term mission trips, I looked forward to answering this question and to asking the search committee to answer it, as well. Almost always someone would answer with some variation of, “They’re the most important thing our youth ministry does,” to which I’d typically respond, “Why?”

Invariably, that’s when I’d get the blank stares.

While everyone seems to know short-term mission trips are important for youth ministries, few people seem to be able to articulate why. Despite this, knowing why you do mission trips is a critical aspect of planning your mission trip. Your reasons for offering a mission trip will affect nearly every aspect of it, including how you prepare, where you go and what you do.

More often than not, churches say their youth ministries do short-term mission trips in order to help or serve others. While trips that are done well can help others, in reality short-term mission trips are typically far more beneficial for those who participate in them than they are for the community being served.

Knowing this, I would actually argue the primary reasons for taking youth-oriented short-term mission trips are as follows.

First, short-term mission trips create and solidify community as nothing else I’ve seen in 10 years of youth ministry. Away from home and their regular peer groups, united by a shared goal and forced to depend on one another, mission trips give students a shared experience in which to bond as a group and form lasting friendships with one another.

Because of the stressful conditions under which even the best mission trips are lived, during these trips, students not only find themselves depending on each other, but also on God and prayer more than they ever have before. This can fuel incredible spiritual growth, and for some ignite a new faith in Christ. For others, mission trips are a chance to live out the faith they’ve learned about but rarely practiced. In many ways, mission trips become a laboratory for students to discover and learn about their gifts and to experiment with how they might use them to serve and honor God.

As they do, students begin to see and experience things that cause them to question the world around them and their faith. For example, as students experience poverty and injustice by serving at homeless shelters or soup kitchens, they might question the goodness and fairness of God. They might wrestle with the roots of injustice and with what it means for Christians to be called to “act justly” (Micah 6:8). As students encounter God in unexpected places, they might also realize His arms extend far wider than previously thought. As one of my students said after returning from our international mission trip, “I always though God just lived here in America. Turns out He’s at work everywhere.”

As the faith of students grow, so too will their ideas about how to live out that faith in their daily lives. The result? A life of service that’s not limited to any one week or place, but rather, is directed to whatever place students call home.

Jen Bradbury, Director of Youth Ministry at Faith Lutheran Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She is also working toward an M.A. in Youth Ministry Leadership at Huntington Univeristy. She is a frequent contributor to YouthWorker Journal and Immerse Journal and blogs at YMJen.com.