In February, Apex asked me if our youth group could pilot a new, in-development student ministry curriculum. I was happy to accept! While I’ve not yet brought my group on an Apex mission trip (due to a shortage of high schoolers at our small church), I know the Apex leaders and have been impressed by their discernment in thinking through short-term missions that are beneficial to all parties and by the quality of the trainings they offer. So I trusted the curriculum would be equally valuable.
My youth group currently consists of about a dozen middle schoolers—a fun, enthusiastic group of students who have grown up knowing the Bible stories from a young age. I love the solid foundation they have, but I want to push them to own their faith—and to share it! I like finding ways to gently shake them out of their comfort zone and stretch them to grow and to think more deeply.
The combination of Bible texts and missionary stories painted students a fresh picture of just how good the news of the gospel is.
In middle school (slightly more than in all of life), it’s tempting to focus on yourself and your small circle of friends; the rest of life and the world can feel pretty distant and inconsequential. So, I was excited to take some intentional time to raise awareness of what God is doing in the world and to encourage these students to consider their part in it.
After our four weeks leading students through Apex’s “Here to Everywhere” curriculum, I saw three significant areas of growth in our youth group.
Outward focus
In hearing exciting stories of how God was at work in people around the world, our students gained a fresh vision for the power of the gospel. In our comfortable suburban church context, it’s easy for the gospel to become familiar; in these stories, they were reminded of how powerful it can be in transforming lives and communities. The combination of Bible texts and missionary stories painted students a fresh picture of just how good the news of the gospel is. They saw how much people had given up to share it with others. They saw how gratefully others received it. And they heard Jesus’ call to all of us as believers to be a part of sharing His good news with the lost all around us.
When we broke into small groups, we considered people in different arenas of our lives who may not yet know Jesus, and we took time to pray for them. We talked about the people we know who come from different cultural backgrounds and how we can be good friends and neighbors. We learned simple ways to start gospel conversations, and we practiced sharing the good news with each other. (Our strategy was to use the colors in a bag of M&Ms to illustrate the simple gospel truths.)
One Wednesday night, just a couple weeks after we finished the “Here to Everywhere” series, a seventh-grade girl brought a friend from basketball, and she could tell her friend was a little lost during the message, having no prior church experience. I smiled when I watched her grab a bag of M&Ms from our snack shop and use them to share the simple gospel with her, just as we’d learned together.
Global perspective
The curriculum included videos of real missionary stories and an alternative prompt to check in with your church’s missionaries. Because I saw the value of connecting our students with the missionaries that we’d continue to have contact with, I sent emails to all our church’s global partners. The missionaries were all eager to participate, and we wound up being able to have a video conversation or get a personalized video from each of them over four weeks. All of them were encouraged that we were studying missions and that we had reached out to them.
After these conversations, our students now have personal connections with real people who are serving God for the long-term in these places.
Our students heard how people were serving Christ in various parts of the globe—from Europe to Southeast Asia and here in the States—and in various creative capacities—as videographers, Bible translators, professors and good neighbors—and how each of these varied roles gave them opportunities to build relationships and share the good news. These video conversations expanded their assumptions about what missionaries are like and what mission work entails.
Students’ perspectives were enlarged as they learned about different cultures and languages and the challenges that brings to ministry in other countries. We attempted to say a few words in Chinese. We got a teaser of the difficulties of translating Scripture into languages with diverse vocabulary. We prayed for wars that don’t even make our news feed but which deeply affect people our missionaries serve. We learned what life was like for a middle schooler in Thailand on mission with his family. And we heard stories of people coming to Jesus and having their lives changed.
I felt deeply encouraged hearing how God is actively at work in countries we’d have a hard time even identifying on a map. God—and His church—is so much bigger than our mental capacity! And after these conversations, our students now have personal connections with real people who are serving God for the long term in these places, and I pray they continue to stay interested and connected as they hear their reports and prayer requests.
Ongoing mission
The four-week study went fast and became a catalyst for helping us think missionally and creatively. While I’d hoped to do a mission trip this year, we didn’t have enough commitment from families to take their middle schoolers for a week in the summer. However, with a little out-of-the-box thinking, we found a way to give our students missional and global experiences in the Twin Cities.
After reaching out to the EFCA North Central District, I connected with three sister churches within 30 minutes of our church: an African congregation, a Hispanic church and an inner-city church plant. We joined the ethnic congregations for worship on Sundays and heard more of their stories. It was an incredibly encouraging experience on all sides!
I look forward to seeing the fruit that might come from our churches collectively calling the next generation to actively be a part of taking the gospel “from here to everywhere.”
Later this summer, our group will join the inner-city sister church to help them with neighborhood outreach and learn about church planting in the city. In the meantime, we helped a local mobile home community ministry put on a carnival for families, and boxed up Bibles and other resources for a local Christian book distributor to send around the world.
Our students have eagerly joined in these opportunities, and I’m sure the foundation of the studies and discussions we had during our “Here to Everywhere” month have shaped their involvement and enthusiasm. I look forward to debriefing together at the end of the summer—and hopefully building on this momentum to make service, missions and evangelism more a part of our regular rhythms.
Apex’s mission is “to serve the local church by helping them mobilize the next generation of gospel influencers to take the gospel from here to everywhere.” I am thankful for this small but important way they’ve served our church and helped us mobilize our middle schoolers to be gospel influencers in their own spheres and to consider what part of “everywhere” God might someday call them to serve. I look forward to seeing the fruit that might come from our churches collectively calling the next generation to actively be a part of taking the gospel “from here to everywhere.”
If you’re interested in taking your students through this four-week curriculum or on a short-term missions trip through Apex, learn more at apexmissions.org.