Deep Justice Journeys Leader's Guide: 50 Activities to Move from Mission Trips to Missional Living

by Kara Powell, Brad M. Griffin

When students participate in short-term mission work, parents and youth leaders hope the experience of serving others will be transformative. But for mission work to make a real impact, leaders and students need to spend more time before, during, and after their service processing and preparing for their experiences. This curriculum and student journal helps leaders prepare students for what to expect on their mission trip, allows students to reflect upon their experiences, and enables them to genuinely debrief. Students will engage in learning exercises that help them gain new insights about themselves, their relationship with God, their teammates, and the world we’re called to love and serve. These steps ensure short-term mission work that has a deeper effect on students and on those they serve, and helps students apply what they have learned in the mission field to their own lives. Also included are ideas to help get parents and the church engaged in the youth ministry’s short-term mission work.

Genres: Young Adult

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2009

About the author

Dr. Kara Powell is the Executive Director of the Fuller Youth Institute (FYI), a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary, and Fuller's Chief of Leadership Formation. Named by Christianity Today as one of “50 Women You Should Know,” Kara serves as a Youth and Family Strategist for Orange, and also speaks regularly at parenting and leadership conferences. Kara is the author or coauthor of a number of books, including 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager, Growing Young, Growing With, The Sticky Faith Guide for Your Family, Sticky Faith Curriculum, Can I Ask That?, Deep Justice Journeys, Deep Justice in a Broken World, Deep Ministry in a Shallow World, and the Good Sex Youth Ministry Curriculum. Kara lives with her husband Dave and their three teenage and young adult children, Nathan, Krista, and Jessica, in Southern California.

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally saw this book when a leader of mine used some things from it during a missions trip I was part of a couple of years ago. Since I've been co-leading a trip this year for some youth from our church, I searched around for various books, but I kept coming back to this one.

This book really hits the mark for me. It asks the hard questions of whether we're really making a difference, in both our students and our world--troubling questions that have surfaced from research as short-term missions have exploded over the past few decades. It does not come from an assumption that all missions trips are wonderful and are helping so many people, but rather from an honest perspective that there are real questions we should be asking about how we approach STM.

"As we come to terms with the bad news that our service is more superficial than we would hope, we're all eager for tools that help us make a deeper impact on our kids and our world."

And this is what this book dives into. It begins with some chapters about some best practices for leaders as we walk through this journey with our students or teams. It also has chapters on engaging both parents and the rest of the church (we used 1 idea for engaging our church this year that has gone great--simply, to have members of the church body sign up to pray for 1 student while they are on their trip--it was simple yet effective to get more of the body connected).

It then delves into 3 sections: before (framing), during (experience and reflection), after (initial debrief, followed by ongoing transformation). Within each of these are various activities and discussions to lead your group through, focused on the team, individual relationships with God, and cross-cultural topics.

All of these topics and activities came from both research and leadership summits with experienced leaders. They asked tough questions: How can our service work be part of God's kingdom justice? How do we move service beyond spiritual tourism? What are the most important theological threads that should weave their way through our service? How can we move beyond rhetoric to true partnership with those we're serving? Through that, they came up with activities/discussions that were field tested by youth leaders and their students, then revised and compiled into this wonderful resource.

Hands down, I recommend this book to anyone planning and leading a short term missions trip, even if you're going with a larger organization. It has the flexibility to allow you to choose which activities fit your group the best and what you feel the need to focus on (it's not intended for you to do all of them).

[Wade · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some helpful tips in here for youth ministers leading mission trips. The big help is seeing the significance of meeting with the team before, during and after a mission trip (as opposed to just meeting during the trip). There are a lot of different ideas in here (some are good and some are honestly just OK, in my opinion), but a thoughtful leader could take what fits best for his or her group and use many of the great ideas in this book to fit the team that he or she is leading and therefore greatly benefit form this book.