The Missions Trip

In the aggressively symbolic world of Evangelical Teen Culture, certain events rise to the level of sacrament. First and foremost is the conversion story, preferably a glamorous one involving drugs and sex and alcohol and a miraculous, tearful delivery into the arms of Jesus. Most Evangelical Teens, though, don’t have the raw material for that kind of milestone: they grew up in the suburbs and dutifully steered clear of those vices (or are still hiding their vices). Everyone, though, can participate in the second rite of passage: The Missions Trip.

Some religious groups make this very explicit: Mormon culture, if I understand correctly, makes it a pretty clear expectation that teenagers will spent time abroad evangelizing when they turn 19. Christian Evangelical culture in the US is a bit more vague, but the idea is still a very important one. The mechanics of a Missions Trip are usually pretty straightforward. The most common scenario involves a church in a relatively stable area (say, Iowa) getting in contact with another church that needs assistance in some sort of local project (say, disaster recovery or street preaching in Mexico). The church’s youth pastor (there’s another phrase that needs unpacking) organizes a trip and members of the youth group — usually junior or senior high school students — sign up to do their gig.

Because they tend to involve groups of students heading off for a week or so at a time, missions trips are usually a summer tradition, too. Obviously, there are exceptions — and adult missions trips happen a lot, too. But the summer missions trip is firmly embedded in the circadian rhythm of any church or youth group. Sometime after the end of the school year but before families vanish for trips, there’s a window that youth pastors know should be filled with This Year’s Missions Trip.

In addition to planning, missions trips tend to need money. That’s not because the church is trying to make cold, hard cash. Rather, it’s because bundling up a couple dozen teenagers, bussing them to New Orleans, keeping them housed and fed for a week while they rebuild houses or what not, and paying the insurance necessary to DO something like that… well, it adds up. Some churches have enough in their coffers to write a check, but most missions trips also come with a fund-raising component. Group fund-raising like youth group car washes and bake sales are pretty common. In some cases, individual kids have to find people willing to support them by donating towards their slice of the expenses. It’s like selling magazines for your school, but for God.

Now, junior high and high school students are not usually the first people to jump in line to sacrifice their summer vacations — and pay money — to man soup kitchens in disaster zones. There are definitely big-hearted, highly motivated kids out there who are driven by that desire to help others, but for the most part, the members of a given youth group have to be convinced. Sermons on the essential nature of missions in a Christian’s life fill the time before the trip, and there are usually get-togethers beforehand where the youth group learns about the profound needs of the place that will be visited.

In addition — and this is important — the Christian world is full of stories about Missions Trips. More accurately, stories about things that happened on Missions Trips. Stories about people who became Christians after hearing the kids talk about Jesus. Stories about lives that were saved. Sometimes, stories about miraculous events like people getting healed or kicking drug habits. Because these trips aren’t just about doing something good in the general sense (building a house, giving out sandwiches). They’re also about sharing Christianity, and more importantly, tapping into the rich vein of Christian history that surrounds going someplace strange and unknown, and telling the locals about Jesus.

At its worst, this leads to immature teenagers blowing through a foreign country doing puppet-shows and telling local kids that Jesus will change their lives — then returning to a comfortable suburban existence warmed by the excitement they remember seeing on the kids’ faces. Do I sound cynical? I don’t think I am. Because at its best, this kind of thing leads to something that is really life-changing. A sixteen year old, say, who’s never grappled with needing anything more than a new iPod can realize that there are people right now trying to keep their kids safe from cholera while living at a landfill in Mexico. And that sixteen year old can spend seven days getting sweaty and dirty and helping build them a shack with his bare hands.

The usual Missions Trip? It lies somewhere in between. Some kids — the passionate ones — treat it like a pilgrimage that is all but essential to one’s spiritual development. Others feel like they’re really, really supposed to and get the feeling they’ll be looked at as less-than-Christian if they don’t participate. Others see it as a cool thing to do to help out the less fortunate. Still others treat it like the squeaky-clean version of Spring Break, a chance to go someplace different with the kids you hang out with in Sunday School.