My Students Just Love Serving

By Sami Tierney. Sami is the Director of Youth and Family Ministry at Messiah United Methodist Church in Plymouth, MN. She went on a 2016 YouthWorks Trip to St. Louis with her youth group.
 

 
My students love YouthWorks mission trips. When I started this position and met with students to learn about what they like and value in our church’s youth program, one of the things they cited again and again were “YouthWorks Mission Trips.” In the past year, I’ve learned that my students just love serving. We’ve packed boxes for Operation Christmas Child, we make meals to send internationally with Feed My Starving Children, and we serve locally at our community food shelf (which happens to be across the street from our church).
 
This year we went to St. Louis on our YouthWorks mission trip. I was intentional about this location, as I think the service opportunities we had there are similar to opportunities we have near us in Minneapolis. We served at a crisis nursery, cleaned apartments at a shelter, helped with a kid’s summer camp, and even served at people’s homes. These kinds of organizations are all accessible within 20 minutes of our church. It helps my students connect the work we drove 10+ hours to do in St. Louis with similar concerns in our own community. Students who went on our mission trip are able to teach their peers, adding perspective to our local service opportunities. They are also able to continue processing their mission trip experiences through the year.
 

 
We have an active missions committee at our church that pours time and energy into a few consistent ministries both locally and internationally. During the year, I value the opportunity to welcome them as guest speakers to our youth groups, Sunday School, and Confirmation classes. When opportunities arise for us to serve and learn together, I love that students have an understanding of ministries our church supports, and people in the church who are passionate about those causes. As a church, we serve monthly dinners at a homeless shelter, and we’re going to have our youth group on the schedule a couple times this year, serving alongside church members who would otherwise not interact with our youth in this way. I think this is one of the greatest things that comes from serving – that we do it together.
 
Because service is modeled by our church, our students have multiple touch-points for engaging in service opportunities throughout the year. We participate in a sleep-out to raise awareness about suburban homelessness with other churches and businesses in our community. We have interfaith service opportunities with youth from a variety of religious practices. We invite our neighbors to pack a grocery bag during food shelf month. Students are not limited by the service opportunities offered by our youth ministry; the whole church serves and students are welcome and encouraged to be part of the ministry of the Church. This helps us connect our mission trip to the church, and connects the church to our mission trip, and we grow together by sharing these stories and invaluable experiences of loving others as our response to God’s love for us.
 

This is why we do what we do. Be a part of moments like these. Register for a 2017 mission trip today.