It’s a huge, eternal, proven fact that God uses disaster to bring people to Him. There are more stories in the Bible of people coming to the Lord through the disaster than through success. In the Old Testament, we see this in the Israelites. In Acts, it’s especially evident in our model for how we are to live today: the Early Church. The First Church didn’t grow so quickly because it was seeker-friendly or had an engaging worship experience. It spread through persecution. When Stephen, the first martyr, was killed for his faith, people panicked and fled. They scattered to...

In the spring of 2016, I spent three months coordinating relief efforts for Adventures short term teams and World Race Squads in Greece. During that time, God challenged me in ways I never could have imagined. The thing about any kind of disaster response is that you’re dealing with people who are hurting. They are the most broken they might ever be. They are in desperate situations. You see the greatest need and the deepest hurts, and you’d have to be heartless for it not affect you. In Greece, we were dealing with people who lost everything. They had family members literally blown up,...

We’ve heard it asked a lot: is it really possible to have a long term impact on short term mission trips? The short answer is: “Yes.” The long answer is: “Yes, because long term impact comes through discipleship.” This might sound complicated, but in reality it’s not. At its heart, discipleship is simple. It’s about about connecting people to Jesus and showing them what it looks like to walk with Him daily in a continual relationship. There’s no way connecting people to Jesus does not have long term impact. The key is to make sure we are connecting people to Jesus, not us. If they are...

Every morning when my alarm goes off and I turn on the lights, the brightness and noise shocks me awake. It’s uncomfortable, but highly effective. There’s no going back to sleep once that happens. But as hard as that moment can be, it’s also one of the best parts of my day, simply because of the possibility before me. When it comes to sending high school students on mission trips, the possibility of what God will do in their lives is endless. Mission trips can be uncomfortable at times; traveling to another culture and experiencing new things always is. Students are challenged in their...

The first rule of the harvest is simple: you reap what you sow. If you plant corn, you’ll reap corn, not pumpkins. The second rule is just as important, but much more overlooked: you can’t fully count the harvest until the seeds have stopped growing and replicating. It’s easy to look at short term mission trips as “one and done” in terms of impact. You go, build a house, play with some kids, tell someone about Jesus, and after a week, you leave. Was there impact on the trip? Absolutely. God was glorified, His love was shared, and the Gospel was presented. People came to Christ and their...