Sending Students on Mission
I was blessed to grow up in a church where students going on mission trips was part of the culture. I remember being excited to get to 6th grade so that I could finally go on youth mission trips in the summers. At the time, I didn’t realize how formative these trips would be for me. Mission Trips around the Southeast US were where I was first pushed to share my faith with those who had never heard the gospel, where I was stretched to do things I didn’t know I could do, and where I learned the most about what it meant to follow Jesus.
When I was in 10th grade, I went on my first international mission trip. I was struck by the vast lostness in our world and the recognition that God wanted me to be a part of getting the gospel to the nations. While I did not return from that trip with a burning desire to become a lifelong missionary, I did have a renewed sense of purpose in my life and a passion for living on mission in my daily life. God used those mission trips as a student to shape my understanding of who He is and how He wants me to invest my life.
Why Take Students on Mission Trips?
1. The mission field needs students.
Research by the International Mission Board (IMB) shows that 52% of the world’s population is under the age of 29. Since an individual is most likely to hear, understand, and respond to the gospel when it is presented by someone of their own culture, our international missionaries recognize the need to equip local believers to share the gospel in their communities. Just as someone is more likely to receive the gospel from someone of their own culture, young people are more likely to receive the gospel from other young people. Therefore, 52% of the world is desperately in need of our teenagers and young adults to live their lives on mission – both at home and around the world.
2. They will understand God more deeply.
Today’s students have a more global perspective than any generation in history. While they hear stories from people all over the world, they are rarely provided a lens to help them recognize how God is working among other places and people. When students go on mission trips they are able to tangibly see God at work. They recognize that God is bigger and better than they ever thought, that the church stretches far beyond the walls of their church, and that God has uniquely created them to play a part in His mission. Going on a mission trip often causes students to fall more in love with God and to devote their lives to serving Him.
3. It can change the trajectory of their lives.
Younger generations often have reputations of being selfish, lazy, or unwilling to do hard things. This is not true!Our students want to make a difference with their lives and are willing (and able) to do incredible things for the Kingdom! Unfortunately, the loudest influences in their lives often lead them to seek their purpose outside of God’s perfect design. Teenagers are in a unique place of exploring what they want their lives to be about; what will make their lives significant and worth living. For many, a mission trip will help them to understand God’s purpose for their lives and encourage them to consider spending summers, semesters, or even years of their lives serving in a foreign context or in hard-to-reach places within America. For others, they will come back thinking critically about how they can best leverage their future careers and life plans to bring God glory. There is no limit to the impact our students can have if we are willing to equip them and send them out.
How to Get Students on Mission:
1. Engage them in missions discipleship.
The first step to getting teenagers to care about missions is to simply start teaching them about who God is. Help them understand that every page of the Bible reveals God’s heart for the nations and that He has a role for each of them to play in fulfilling the Great Commission. Let them hear stories from our missionaries serving all over the world, challenge them to live on mission in their daily lives, and spend time praying for the work God is doing both near and far. If you need help getting started, check out www.wmu.com/students for teaching materials and training resources! Also, sign up your female students for a weekend of fun and learning about what it means to live on mission (www.scwmu.org/madeformore)!
2. Provide local missions opportunities.
Our students are capable of more than we think they are. Furthermore, they do not want to merely be a part of a social group that gathers on Sundays or Wednesdays. If we want our teenagers to prioritize their relationships with Christ, we need to help them understand that God wants more for them than church attendance and occasionally opening their Bibles – He wants them to spend their lives making Him known. They need to see what an authentic, passionate relationship with Christ looks like and that will always include living on mission.
Find ways to help your students live on mission right where they are. Provide training for them on how to share their testimonies and how to share the gospel. Provide weekend missions opportunities to meet tangible needs in their communities, to pray with people in parks, or to grab coffee with a lost friend. Hold them accountable for sharing the gospel on a regular basis and inviting lost friends to church. Our students want to be challenged to grow in their faith! Check out www.christianleaderlearning.com for some training courses that you can do with your students to help them begin living on mission.
3. Get them outside of their community.
Once you have your students regularly living on mission in their day-to-day lives, don’t stop there! Give them opportunities to get out of their comfort zones and experience what it looks like to live on mission in a different context. Take them to a new city to partner with a North American church plant or compassion ministry (www.sendrelief.org/trips), explore opportunities to partner with international missionaries on IMB trips specifically designed for teenagers (www.imb.org/go-impact), keep an eye on upcoming opportunities for your whole youth group to join on an SCBaptist summer mission trip (www.scbaptist.org/scgostudents), or fill out this form to receive information on sending individual students on a summer trip with SC WMU (https://form.jotform.com/252883562640159). Students are never too young to serve God on the mission field!
Pray for Our 2026 SC WMU Student Mission Team
This July, SC WMU is sending a group of students and adults to work alongside IMB missionaries in Eastern Europe. The team will be partnering with local churches to lead a Vacation Bible School in a community that has less than 0.5% evangelical Christians. This is certainly a hard task! During the trip, students will also spend time ministering to local believers, sharing the gospel throughout the city, and meeting other needs of the local churches. Here are a few ways you can be praying for our team:
- Pray that God would be preparing the hearts of Eastern Europeans even now to hear and respond to the gospel.
- Pray for opportunities and boldness to share the gospel.
- Pray that the team will be able to encourage and strengthen local believers.
- Pray for students and adults on the team who are discerning a call to ministry. Pray that God would use this trip to provide them clarity on their next steps.
This blog was written by Lauren Morris, SC WMU Student Consultant
