Student Missions’ Impact on an Adult Leader
As a Student Ministry staff member, my calendar is dotted with all sorts of activities, camps and events. But, each year when July rolls around, the calendar reaches its peak. Our Student Missions Trip seems to have found its home in mid to late July on the Crossroads calendar, and thus has formed a kind of climax and finale to our year, before we hit the reset button and jump into the the fall, head back to school and continue our battle with athletic schedules.
Having studied missions and development in college, I’m no stranger to the debate of whether or not short term missions trips are sustainable, bring good change, or are even a good idea. But from the perspective of a Student Ministry Staffer, there is no other experience that can replace the life change and challenge that comes from our week long trip. But, we have taken our role as leaders very seriously when searching for quality organizations to partner with, who maintain year-round relationship and commitment with the communities they are anchored in.
At Crossroads, our missions mantra is to go deep, not wide. We would rather be wise in choosing our missions partners, and commit to pouring into them for the long term, rather than dance around to different places and experiences each year.
And this is what has led us to return for the second year in a row to the Portland neighborhood in Louisville, KY. And it has been amazing to watch our students’ perspectives shift from merely focussing on the little projects they were assigned throughout the week, to realizing the big picture of the relationships that are being built and maintained over the course of the year. Our students are already asking to make sure that we will be returning once again to the places and people that they have now ministered to and worked alongside two years and counting.
But, that is not what I want to write this blog about. Though absolutely incredible, I am not going to recount the ways that the Lord showed, the details that he worked out, and our students’ lives that seriously encountered him.
Rather, I want to write about how my life, as an adult leader, was changed by being a part of this student missions experience.
Growing up, I was a part of short term missions experiences, and it was through these that my heart was broken and my call confirmed for missions. And I have had quite a few missions experiences, the height of which was spending a year living and teaching in Cambodia with my husband.
But it is a whole other experience to be a part of a trip where your life is not the only thing in focus, but rather getting to observe the movement of the Lord across a large group of individuals, all who are in very different places.
Our group of 73 was composed of both students AND adults, some who were in the midst of their very missions experience, some who I have watched as young students who were leaders, and some who were receiving very specific directions and calls from the Lord throughout the week.
I watched bad attitudes melt away, unlikely friendships sprout up, and individuals realizing the potential roles they could fill in the work of God’s Kingdom.
The role of an adult leader on a student missions trip is not to chaperone kids for a week. I am finding that most of the time, my life is challenged in a unique and powerful way as I watch students serve tirelessly, open up so vulnerably, and respond to the Lord’s work in their lives so quickly.
I do not need parents and families to thank me for taking their students to Louisville, but rather I am the one who is thankful for the blessings and wake-up call I receive by being a part of their trip. And when I hear the testimonies of our site partners down there speak of the reputation that our students are building, of being the group that they look forward to every year, and the lives that are changing in their wake, it is only further confirmed that there is no work that I could try to take credit for anyways.
The Lord is doing incredible things in and through the lives of our Crossroads students, and being a part of it has changed my life as well.
