Are Mission Trips Biblical?

The Gospel Coalition has just run a fantastic series contributing to the ongoing debate surrounding the effectiveness and biblical basis for short-term mission trips.  As youth groups everywhere spend their summers on trip after trip, often the crux of the youth ministry experience, it is important for us to examine this practice through a gospel lens.

Take a look and let us know - what do you think about youth short-term mission trips?

Celebrating the Short-Term Mission Boom

Why You Should Consider Canceling Your Short-Term Mission Trip

Toward Better Short Term Missions

Mike Horton on Ministry to Youth

Mike Horton, whose book Christless Christianity was part of the impetus for Rooted, writes about how "narcicism is unchurching the church" in "Generation Me and Youth Ministry Today" over at the White Horse Inn, and gives some suggestions for curbing the tide here.  Check it out!

Family Discipleship As Law

Christopher Schlect, Critique of Modern Youth Ministry (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1995). 21 pgs., paperback.

Christopher Schlect has written—what many would undoubtedly argue—a “timeless” critique of youth ministry by shifting the burden of training youth in the faith back to the family, especially to the fathers.

Schlect begins by giving various reasons why there exists an age-segregated youth ministry within the church today:  (1) the intentional age segregation of public education in the early-to-mid twentieth century and (2) the rise of para-church ministries that have targeted teenagers, such as Youth for Christ and Young Life.  Churches, to meet the challenges of these “competitors,” developed their own age-segregated and anti-family youth ministries.

He points out, rightly, that youth ministries today communicate an unhealthy message when they entertain teenagers instead of engaging them in biblical discipleship or modeling the importance of family.  Schlect also, rightly, argues for cross-generational ministry, one that places the responsibility of training younger members in the faith primarily on older people, especially parents.

He is also right in saying that parents, and especially fathers, are largely abdicating their responsibilities of raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.  He maintains that youth ministers should seek to point students back to their families for godly instruction.

While the above points are helpful, I have four critiques of the book: 

First—and most disappointing—the book is law-driven and offers mere behavior modification as the solution.  There is no gospel.  He offers nothing about the role of justification, imputed righteousness, or the atoning work of Christ that would encourage families and youth ministers to adopt his thesis.  Thus it lacks the proper motivation for family-based youth ministry.

Second, Schlect advocates a Christ-against-culture model of ministry that is foreign to the Christ revealed in the Gospels.  Our task should be about the transformation of culture by the power of the gospel, not complete avoidance of culture—being in the world, but not of it (John 17:11-16).

Third, Schlect offers very little advice (he touches on it briefly on the last couple of pages) for youth ministry with regard to the overwhelming trend of children being raised in non-Christian homes.  Obviously, we should reach out to those families, but are we to wait until those families are saved before “biblical” youth ministry can take place?  I agree that parents have the primary responsibility to train their children in the instruction of the Lord.  But the fact that children are raised in truly non-Christian homes is now the majority report in America rather than the minority one.  The book is nearly 17 years old, which might explain why this element is not drawn out a little more.

Fourth, he seems to de-value the role of the church body.  While he doesn’t explicitly say this, it is implicit in the pages.  Rather than advocating an either-or approach (family or church), it would be better to advocate a both-and approach—one that emphasizes the importance of both the church body and the family in instructing youth in the faith.

Schlect does a fine job at helping us understand the misguided and unhealthy state of youth ministries today.  And his solution is also helpful:  godly parenting.  But the absence of the gospel makes such a call an impotent, moralistic plea.  We are to trust in the merits of Christ on our behalf.  He took the penalty for our parenting failures and gave us his righteousness so that we now, with grateful hearts, are enabled to strive for student ministry and parenting that pleases God.

Brian H. Cosby, the Rooted blog's newest contributor, is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America, Associate Pastor of Youth and Families at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church in Peachtree City, Georgia, and author of Giving Up Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry from an Entertainment Culture (P&R Publishing, 2012).

Give Up the Goldfish

The Rooted Blog's newest contributor, Brian Cosby, is the author of the new book, Give Up the Gimmicks: Reclaiming Youth Ministry From the Entertainment Culture, which he promoted on The Gospel Coalition website this week.  Read the article here in which he implores youth ministers to "give up the goldfish", so to speak:

"With all my heart, I plead with you to not be tempted with "success," professionalism, or the fading fads of our entertainment-driven culture. Rather, pursue Jesus as the all-satisfying Treasure that he is and feed his young sheep with the means God has provided."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.  Welcome to the team, Brian!

The Return of Reasons

Check out this piece from Christianity Today about the shifting trend in youth ministry toward an increased desire for apologetics.

A Preacher's Decalogue

Have you ever noticed that, although student ministers typically lack any formal training in theology or schooling, they are often required to preach and teach more than the head pastors of their church?  

A large part of Rooted's mission being to equip student pastors for grace-driven ministry, we see a huge need for education and training among student ministers in the skills of theologically informed, cross-centered preaching and teaching.

Along those lines, we'd like to point you to Sinclair Ferguson's "Ten Commandments" of preaching over at The Gospel Coalition.  We found #3 ("Don't Lose Sight of Christ") and #6 ("Speak Much of Sin and Grace") particularly helpful!

Itchy Ears Want Works

Joel Brooks of the Gospel Coalition offers some honest insight about how ‘itchy ears want works’. Check it out here.

“I confessed earlier that there were times in my past that I preached works while just assuming grace. The results that I saw from this were substantial. People loved it! I first thought that sermons like this would turn people off and drive them away, but how wrong I was. Especially younger Christians cannot get enough of it. It grieves me to look back and think of those times I looked out at the masses, got caught up in the moment, and briefly abandoned the gospel in order to scratch some itchy ears.”

Dinner Without Food

Kenda Creasy Dean, author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church and professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, shares her thoughts on the Top 10 Characteristics of a Healthy Youth Ministry.

"Doing youth ministry without God is like doing dinner without food: you can come to the table, but there's nothing to eat... so why bother?"

(Almost) Everyone's Doing It

A must-read from Relevant Magazine, this article examines the high rate of Christian singles having sex and digs deep into why our abstinence campaigns aren't working.  Also check out CNN's take on the issue here.

Considering the staggering statistics that are cited (80% of single Christian evangelicals between 18-29 have had sex), Joanna Hyatt says, "You cannot talk about sex within the Christian community without also [mentioning] God's grace.  If we're serious about people growing in their faith, we have to help them see this issue will stand in the way of their relationship with God, but it doesn't have to keep them from God."

Carissa Woodwyk argues that in order for chastity to stand a chance, we must "go back to the beginning": "Our image of God and His heart for men and women and couples needs to be revisited and corrected.  God didn't create this beautiful and sacred and amazing act called 'sex' to tempt us with = it and then make it a bad thing," Woodwyk says.  "Could it be that if God is in everything good, that God reveals Himself through the profoundly breathtaking act of sex, too--that God reveals Himself specifically through men and specifically through women?"

A Gospel That Sticks

Sticky Faith, a ministry of the Fuller Youth Institute, recently released a new video in which a student minister sees the harmful effects behavior-based youth ministry had on her students who messed up in a big way.  Watch the video here.


How many students (or adults) do we know who have distanced themselves from the church because they feel God and the church will no longer accept them after they "mess up" sexually?  When thinking about how we teach students about the Theology of Sex, Lord help us combat this lie with all our might.

Never Stop Preaching the Gospel

Joel Brooks of Redeemer Community Church in Birmingham, AL writes an excellent article on how ‘Itchy Ears Want Works.’ Check out the article here.

Matt Chandler, an elder at The Village Church in Denton, TX, shares a powerful story of coming to understand the grace and mercy of Christ in relation to sexuality.