Just Wait'll Next Year
Are sophomores too young for a mission to Mexico? After a teen has gone on one outreach trip, what's the encore? Rory Wineka is a youth pastor who has thought seriously about such questions. The program he designed at The Chapel in University Park, Akron, Ohio, is closely geared to what various ages can handle, and it builds intensity as it goes along. • Level 1 involves mostly tenth-graders doing Vacation Bible School no more than 50 miles from home. That's enough distance to be special; yet the assignments are fairly basic and easily controlled. (Teens practice their teaching in The Chapel's Sunday school before they head out to the rural area.) • Level 2 takes high school juniors to the inner city of Charleston, West Virginia (200 miles away), to work with all ages, from street kids to alcoholics to the elderly. The cultural gap is greater here, with less predictability. They have also served on Indian reservations in Minnesota and the Dakotas. • Level 3 for seniors is door-to-door evangelism in the West Indies, under the direction of a missionary radio station. One summer the group worked on St. Croix; the next they went to St. Kitts. • Level 4 and 5 are summer-long ministries for collegians in Alaska, Europe, and Mexico. College students also work on the beaches of Florida during Spring break. "The momentum keeps building from year to year," says Wineka, "as kids realize how much they can do in evangelism. We're interested in more than manual labor on these trips; we want kids actually leading others to Christ. Last year 185 different young people participated, and over the last 11 years, we can count 28 church young people who have headed for career ministry as a result." The training program is extensive, putting teens through ...
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