Three Local Churches, One Mission Trip

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by Sara Wegner and Gladys Bonnema of Faith Lutheran Church in Hutchinson, MN. In 2016, Faith Lutheran took two YouthWorks trips – one to Puerto Rico and one to Northern Cheyenne, MT.

A fantastic perk of being a youth director is working alongside other churches in our community to help youth grow and experience the love of Christ. Another wonderful part of my job is leading mission trips with our youth. This past summer, I was privileged to bring these two favorites together, as our church partnered with two local churches. We joined together to serve for a week in Northern Cheyenne, Montana. This may seem like an impossible endeavor; two Lutheran and one Catholic Church would certainly clash over the logistical pieces which come from leading a trip.

Our community is unique because local church leaders partner in several weekly ministries. With this partnership, we understand we have important differences, but choose to unite in what matters; Jesus Christ lived, died, and was raised again to save sinners, like us.

In many ways, planning this trip was similar to planning a trip as a single church, but some differences were a lot of fun. As trip leaders, two of us had a long tradition of annual Youthworks mission trips and wanted to share the experience with our friend. We met together to decide on the site and to make sure it would be a good fit for all of our churches, as well as accommodate the combined group numbers. Each church reserved spots individually, did our own fundraising leading up to the trip, all while affirming the trip would be together. As leaders, we supported one another with reserving vans, working through differences in church policies, travel planning, praying for the trip, and making many decisions.

While on the trip, working together came with advantages and obstacles. We were able to split decision making, give the youth different voices/stories to hear, offer experience, support, and were able to experience new ideas and traditions. Bringing three leaders into a shared leadership role can be a challenge where expectations need to be reconciled. With our unique relationship, we knew it would be important to be honest with one another about our desires for our youth and why certain activities would be best suited for our specific group. Our leaders have a great value of trust for one another which was extremely important so we could help our youth be positively impacted and process their experiences. We had an amazing week, and I can easily say the advantages outweighed any difficulties encountered.

Returning home, our hope is to have the youth of our community grow in their relationship with God with a deep understanding of his love, have a desire to serve people at home, and have great friendships and memories to support them along the way. We left the trip feeling exhausted yet entirely filled and plan to join trips again in future years. Our churches will lead separate mission trips next summer to different areas of the country through Youthworks, but we continue to be united in one mission- to serve Christ by serving his people.

THIS is why we do what we do. Find your 2017 mission trip here.

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