Providing Life-Changing Adventures for Students
Chapter 7
Love Explores
Providing Life-Changing Adventures for Students
“Pastor Jim?” asked Daniel as he finished a slice of pizza and watched the college students walk back and forth along Telegraph Avenue. “Do you think we’ll ever do another wakeboarding trip?” I (J. Warner) smiled and looked at my good friend Brett Kunkle, who was sitting next to me. He started to laugh.
Years earlier I asked Brett to speak at our high school summer camp, one of many board-sport trips our church took in the early months of my ministry. Brett introduced our group to Christian apologetics during that memorable week, and he helped me recalibrate our youth ministry over the next two years.
“Well,” I replied to Daniel, “we could definitely add a wakeboarding trip to our calendar, but it would require us to cancel one of these mission trips …” I paused. Daniel looked thoughtful. Brett and I waited for his response.
Something Timely
“Never mind then,” he said succinctly and then continued eating.
As fun as our board-sport camps had been, they really couldn’t compare to the TAB training missions that had become a part of our ethos as a group. Daniel had been part of a twenty-five-student team who had just spent the afternoon on the campus of UC Berkeley. Telegraph Avenue is the main street that leads onto the campus; its lively boutiques and restaurants provided a festive environment for our team. We had been sharing the truth of Christianity with students on the campus, and although our students were much younger than their university counterparts, they were equipped and prepared, exploring their faith as Christians in a way that grew both their knowledge and their confidence.
Many of these students would tell stories about these trips for years to come. Most would say they were transformational. Our Berkeley mission trip was one of several challenges we calendared to turn teaching into training. These TAB trips were designed to take advantage of our students’ adventurous natures and create an environment where young believers could explore their faith and thrive.
And they were more popular than anything else we did as a group.
Imagining the Challenge
First responders understand the importance of training. Fire, medical, and law enforcement personnel train because they know they will eventually have to deploy. In fact, there’s no point in training at all if you never plan on deploying! TAB training comes to life when you schedule a deployment. This single act (of calendaring a challenge) turns teaching into training.
It doesn’t take much to activate what you’ve been teaching your kids or students. You don’t have to take a week-long excursion to give your young people a reason to study and take their Christian faith seriously. The challenge can be much briefer, as long as it (1) raises the bar, (2) requires young people to make the case for truth, and (3) pushes them just beyond their comfort zone. Let the following brief list of suggestions become your starting point. We have included these examples because they engage all three TAB categories, and we’ve organized them from least involved to most demanding:
Surveys and Conversations (One Afternoon)
Conducting a survey and having a conversation about the topic is perhaps one of the easiest ways to “deploy,” as it requires the least amount of preparation. Consider engaging people publicly about their spiritual beliefs by using a simple printed survey (we’ve provided one in the appendix). Most people are open to answering brief spiritual questions, especially if you begin by saying, “We’re conducting a survey about people’s spiritual beliefs. Do you have a minute to answer a few questions?” We’ve done this in a variety of settings, using the survey as a launching pad for conversations. If your youth are just getting started, they can use the survey to simply collect information. As they become better prepared, they can use the questions to trigger deeper conversations about the evidence for Christianity.
Evangelism (One Afternoon)
For most of us, the idea of sharing our faith publicly is scary enough to motivate us to prepare well. In fact, fear is probably the one thing that keeps people from evangelizing in the first place. What if somebody asks a question I can’t answer? We’ve used public evangelism opportunities to form the basis for several weeks of training related to theological issues (What is the nature of Christian salvation and how can we accurately offer the gospel?), apologetics issues (How will we respond to objections about the Bible, Christianity, or the existence of God?), and behavioral issues (How are we to treat people who believe different things about God? How does our status as Christians affect our public identity?).
Teaching in a Family or Class Setting (One Afternoon)
One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. As youth pastors and teachers, we’ve asked our students to teach a variety of theological or apologetics topics to their classmates or youth group and calendared the day about a month from the assignment. Without needing to be asked, the student-teachers began researching their topics on their own, if for no other reason than they didn’t want to look foolish in front of their peers. Ask your kids to teach during your family devotional, or work with your church’s pastoral leadership to arrange an opportunity for your students during a Sunday school session or midweek small group meeting. If you teach high school Bible at a Christian school, have your students teach a theological or apologetics lesson to younger kids at the school.
Creating a YouTube Video or Blog Entry (One Afternoon)
Given that Gen Zers are digital natives, this kind of task may be just the kind of thing that would activate their preparation. Create a YouTube channel or simple blog (there are a number of free blog-hosting sites), and ask your students to answer a simple theological or apologetics question on video or in a written format. The public nature of this request can be a real motivation, and you can decide if it’s appropriate to allow comments on the video or written post. Set a due date for going live, then tell your students or children that they can distribute the post to friends or family members on social media.
Serving in a Neighborhood (One Afternoon or Full Day)
Service projects help students connect the dots between Christian behavior and evangelism. We’ve helped elderly people and single parents repair their homes, served disabled neighbors who needed their errands run, and cleaned up local parks and beaches. In every opportunity, our Christian service (behavior) eventually opened a door to a spiritual conversation. “Why are you people so kind?” “What motivates you to help me even though I didn’t ask?” “Why are you out here on a hot day?” We’ve used these scheduled events to motivate our students to live out the truth they believe. Often these outings provide the opportunity to ensure that our students know how to both share and defend their faith.
Visiting a Local University Campus (One Afternoon or Full Day)
Pick a local university and ask to visit the campus during an academic session so students will be present in the courtyards and common spaces. You can decide whether your students should use the spiritual survey we’ve described or if they’re ready to engage in more traditional forms of evangelism. If possible, arrange a meeting with a student group (either Christian, religious, or atheist) to talk about spiritual matters, or simply ask what life on the campus is like, given their worldview.
Spending Time at a Religious Community or Facility (One Afternoon or Full Day)
We’ve visited mosques, Mormon wards, Universalist churches, and a variety of religious groups to attend services, ask questions, and engage in conversations. While these trips may seem entirely theological or apologetics in nature, they aren’t. Students who attend these opportunities are challenged to learn how to respond in love, even when someone makes a false claim about Christianity. Exhibiting solid behavioral training prior to these trips is crucial.
Serving at a Local Mission or Ministry (One Day)
Our groups have served at local rescue missions, soup kitchens, and churches (like those on Skid Row in Los Angeles). These trips allow us to explore the behavioral commands of Scripture (related to the dignity of every human being, the purpose of our existence, the necessity of serving the poor and homeless), but they also require some theological and apologetics training. Our students almost always engage people with the gospel and find themselves answering questions and objections.
Taking a TAB Trip (Three to Seven Days)
The TAB trip is the “granddaddy” of deployments, and although we’ve saved it for last, we encourage everyone to partake in such an event. These deployments occur over several days and nights and are more intensive than anything else we’ve described so far, but that’s what makes them so transformational. We’ve taken several trips of this nature in the following TAB categories:
Theological TAB Trips
Theological TAB trips involve three to seven days at a location in your region that has a high concentration of believers from a religion other than Christianity. We’ve taken our students to Salt Lake City to engage Mormon believers, and to areas in Los Angeles County that have high Muslim populations. Our youth trained for eight to ten weeks prior to the trip, stayed at a local Christian church during their time away from home, and interacted with believers on the street, at the temple or mosque, at local religious universities, and door to door in neighborhoods. To prepare for this trip, students studied the reliability of the Bible, Christian theology, and the claims of the other religion to become the best Christian theologians they could be.
Apologetics TAB Trips
Apologetics TAB trips require three to seven days on a secular university campus in your region. We chose the University of California at Berkeley, an aggressively secular campus. Our youth trained for eight to ten weeks prior to the trip, stayed at a local Christian church during their time away from home, and interacted with atheist professors, speakers, and student groups. To prepare for this trip, students studied the evidence for God’s existence, the reliability of the Bible, the truth of the Christian worldview, and the philosophical, theological, and scientific objections of atheists to become the best Christian case makers they could be.
Behavioral TAB Trips
Behavioral TAB trips involve one to two days helping in ministries that serve the poor, homeless, needy, and addicted. We decided to partner with local ministries for our behavioral trips because we wanted our youth to develop relationships they could continue long after the trip was over. We also wanted them to understand that these issues are local and affect our communities and neighborhoods. We teamed with rescue missions and churches working in the most impoverished parts of Los Angeles County. Our youth trained for three to four weeks prior to the trip, returned home at the end of each day, and interacted with people from a variety of backgrounds. To prepare for this trip, students studied the behavioral commands of Scripture and the biblical definitions of human identity and social justice (a subject Gen Zers are particularly interested in) to become the best Christian ambassadors they could be.
While all these activities are useful in creating the kind of deployment opportunities that transform teaching into training, the three- to seven-day TAB trips are by far the most effective. For that reason, we’ll spend the rest of this chapter trying to help you make these kinds of trips a real possibility for your family, youth group, or class.
Setting the Challenge
Begin by establishing the kind of trip you want to lead (related to your efforts to teach theology, apologetics, or behavior). Then determine the date and location for your trip:
Pick a Location
Do some research to see if there is a university, religious community, or service ministry that matches your needs and is within driving distance of your home, church, or school. We’ve learned from experience that these TAB trips are far more appealing and impactful to adventurous Gen Zers if students are displaced. In other words, do your best to pick a location that is too far for anyone to return home at the end of the day. When we first began planning our theological mission trip with Brett Kunkle, we realized that the epicenter of Mormonism—Salt Lake City—was just twelve hours away by car. This provided us with a perfect “high density” location to engage people who hold very different theological views that was also far enough away to provide students with an “unfamiliar” experience.
Find a Few Partners
Next, start exploring potential partners to help you host and train your students. You’ll need a location that provides sleeping quarters, a kitchen, and a place to meet as a group. For this reason, hotels are usually not a great option. Instead, look for a local church (with a gymnasium, classrooms or youth rooms, and a kitchen). Some churches are willing to donate their facility to a mission team, while others may charge a modest fee. Camaraderie is achieved and relationships are built when students participate in the mission together—sleeping, eating, studying, and playing as part of a close community. Church facilities encourage this kind of engagement. In addition, students must learn to work together to maintain and preserve the facility as they exercise Christian behavior and responsibility.
In addition to housing partners, look for training partners. Use the internet to find experts who live near your mission field. When leading trips to Salt Lake City, we partnered with three excellent Christian apologists who minister to Mormons: Sandra Tanner from Utah Lighthouse Ministry, and Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson from Mormon Research Ministry. When we first started leading trips to Berkeley, we brought our students to visit with Phillip Johnson, the retired UC Berkeley law professor who is considered to be the “father” of the Intelligent Design movement. Excellent teachers, missionaries, and apologists such as these trained our students while they were on the trip.
Line Up Your Opportunities
Every destination also provides its own unique opportunities to engage people who hold different worldviews. Use the internet to find the best local experts representing the group with whom you are interacting. When in Berkeley, for example, we contacted the local atheist association and arranged for three of their speakers to address our group. We also contacted student atheist groups and arranged meetings at UC Berkeley.
In addition to experts, some locations host local events that can be incorporated into your trip. On our trip to Utah, for example, we took advantage of the ongoing summer session at Brigham Young University and the annual Mormon Miracle Pageant in Manti, Utah. This allowed us to engage students on the campus of BYU and participate in street witnessing during the pageant.
In Berkeley one year, we were able to include a local prescheduled speech given by Eugenie Scott (the former executive director of the National Center for Science Education) on the topic of creationism and education. Look at the local calendar for your location to see if you can include an upcoming event on your trip.
Build Your Team
Longer TAB trips require a dedicated volunteer team. If possible, include one adult for every four to five students. The majority of these adult leaders should attend all the training sessions for the trip, because you’ll need them to help answer questions and counsel students. Remember, however, that responsibilities help create “buy-in” and ownership. Adult leaders should not be doing all the work. Instead, these leaders should delegate many of the duties to students:
Driving Team
The number of drivers will depend, of course, on the number of students you are taking. Each driver is responsible for tracking and retaining all the receipts for fuel and the maintenance of each vehicle. If you have a big enough group, you might even consider getting a bus. If this is the case, your driving team will be responsible for the boarding and unboarding of students to make sure everyone is accounted for.
Meal Teams
Separate teams should be formed to plan and prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner. These adult leaders will (1) select the students they need to help with the meal, (2) make a list of food items and paper supplies that will be needed, (3) coordinate their list with the other meal teams, and (4) purchase all groceries. Be sure to check for any allergies when meal planning.
Worship Team
An adult leader will be responsible for musical equipment and will coordinate students to help lead a time of worship and devotion.
Facility Team
One or more adults will select students to help organize and maintain the proper care of the church you’re using to train, sleep, and eat.
Equipment Team
One team is responsible for collecting the equipment necessary for a successful trip, including (1) sports equipment (basketballs, Frisbees, footballs) and games (board games, chess, checkers, playing cards) for free time, (2) sleeping equipment (if needed), like fans and extra sleeping bags, and (3) first-aid kits.
Memory Team
The memory team is responsible for chronicling the trip with images or video. Adult(s) should be assigned to this task, so students are free to engage the mission without distraction.
Something Timeless
Set a Date
Because I (J. Warner) was TAB training with my youth group, I designed our yearly calendar around the TAB trips we’ve described in this chapter. I took a theological trip to Utah each year in the summer (as soon as school let out in June), an apologetics trip to Berkeley during the winter break (typically around Presidents’ Day in February), and two or three behavioral trips (because they are so much shorter) throughout the rest of the year.
As a high school Bible teacher, I (Sean) led either an apologetics, theological, or behavioral trip each year. I wanted every student to be able to take each trip at least once (students would miss between three and five days of school). I would also encourage my students to go on an additional trip with their local church.
As you consider setting the date for one of these trips, think about the events you might want to engage in the city you’ll be visiting. Also, contemplate how you can weave these trips into your teaching calendar, remembering that every trip is preceded by weeks of training. Make sure to leave yourself enough time to make the most of these training opportunities.
Because you want your students to take these trips seriously (and because there are costs associated), require students to sign up prior to the beginning of training. Calculate a cost and tell students—in advance—that you expect them to raise support as missionaries. This will help them understand the nature and purpose of the trip, and it will give them time to defer costs.
Preparing for the Challenge
Once the training begins, tell students you want to raise the bar. Start by role-playing as an atheist or someone from a different religious or belief system. Push your students in order to reveal their weaknesses in answering simple objections or refuting alternate claims. You could consider bringing in a guest speaker to do this, watch and debrief an atheist presentation together, or show them my (Sean’s) “Atheist Encounter” video on YouTube. The idea is for them to discover, in a safe environment, how unprepared they actually are to respond to challenges to their faith. Once you’ve done this, reveal your plan to help them become better case makers by taking them on an adventure unlike anything they’ve ever experienced before.
Next, pick and assign a reading text. For our Berkeley trip, we used I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. Using the chapter structure of this book as an outline, we established a training schedule and required students to be present for at least six of the eight training sessions if they wanted to go on the trip. All the finances for the trip were collected one week prior to the training. Parents and students were told that a legitimate excuse was required to miss a training session and that a third missed session would result in the student being dropped from the trip without a refund. That may sound harsh, but it energized our training (and not a single student ever missed enough sessions to be dropped from a trip).
Training sessions can take place during your weekly meeting if you’re a youth pastor, during your class time if you’re an educator, or once a week during your family devotional. Because not all my students would go on the trips, I (Sean) found the best training times were Sunday nights and during weekly lunch meetings. There is a great value in training your entire group or class, even if only a fraction of them have signed up for the trip. We required those who were going on the trip to take two written tests in week four and week eight to make sure they were reading the text. We also used the internet to bolster our research material, including videos from prominent apologists that helped make the material visual (see the appendix for suggestions).
Engaging the Challenge
Your mission trip starts the minute you are on the road. While every trip is different, keep in mind these basic principles during your adventure:
Remember to Pray
Cover each day—all the people with whom you’ll intersect and the important activities within each day—in prayer. Model prayer for your team and ask students to take the lead.
Something Timeworthy
Train along the Way
Use every spare minute to continue your training. We scheduled training sessions into each trip, and we even selected theological or apologetics CDs and podcasts for the drive.
Set Boundaries
Restrict phone usage. We didn’t allow students to bring cell phones; parents had the numbers for the adult team in case they wanted to call, and we posted updates daily. If this seems too strict, consider restricting phone use to fifteen minutes a day, after dinner. In addition, limit students’ use of the internet to studying topics related to the trip. (Mission trips like these are Netflix- and Hulu-free environments.) Finally, if a couple in your group is dating, tell them that there will be no outward expression of this relationship during the trip. We want students to be focused on the mission, not on any special relationships. In fact, to promote team building and reduce the amplification of cliques within the group, we required students to perform a “car shuffle” at each stop so students would sit with different members of the group throughout the trip and get to know more people.
Model Christ
Model Christ always, especially during moments of disagreement. You will likely encounter some people who are aggressive or mean spirited. Respond as Christ would, and model this behavior for students. Encourage them to ask questions and interact with others “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15), even if their efforts are rebuffed, ignored, or criticized. This response may even need to be applied during clashes between fellow team members.
Include Some Fun
Students who take these trips usually report that even the most challenging aspects of the trips are fun, but we also want to provide them with some “downtime.” We schedule free time at the end of every day, allowing students to play games, visit, or just relax. If time permits, we take advantage of local, recreational areas. While in Utah, for example, we spent part of one day hiking to Donut Falls. While in Berkeley, we spent part of a day traveling to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
Document the Trip
Be sure to take pictures or video along the way to memorialize how God used your team.
Debrief Often
Stop to organize your thoughts as a group, answer questions, and respond to issues raised by your guests, speakers, or student activities. Make sure you do this repeatedly, so students can have their questions addressed while they are still fresh in their minds (this is something you should also do if you are taking one of the shorter excursions we described earlier in the chapter). Be sure to ask:
“Did they (the speakers, religious leaders, students, or laypeople they contacted) raise any issues that you felt were troubling, or did they pose a question you couldn’t answer?”
“Were you able to spot any logical inconsistencies in their statements or arguments?”
“How does their worldview differ in answering the three big worldview questions?”
“How well were you able to maintain your Christian character while interacting with them? What could you have done better?”
“What do you think you should study (or improve on) so you can do a better job next time you are interacting with people who hold differing points of view?”
Celebrate Afterward
Once you return from your trip, schedule an opportunity to share what you experienced with others. If you took the trip as a family, consider hosting a dinner with your friends and other family members. If you’re a youth group, ask for a few minutes during the adult worship. If you’re a teacher, ask to feature the trip at the next school assembly. TAB trips are impactful. Be sure to share the memories so others can be energized.
As we describe these TAB trips to parents, youth pastors, and Christian educators, most of them eventually ask, “Can you just show us what one looks like?” For that reason, we’ve included two sample schedules from our Berkeley and Utah TAB trips in the appendix.
Young people like Daniel would rather engage their faith actively than surf, wakeboard, or skate. Here in Southern California, that’s saying something. Gen Zers are willing to explore their faith in adventurous ways, if only we are willing to prepare them, guide them to the mission, and release their energy.