Summer Missions projects over. Raise your hand if you know what was transformed.

August always hits me like a brick as I find myself overwhelmed thinking about how the summer ended up and preparing for the upcoming school year. One of the things I find myself thinking about a lot is what to do with the 100′s of students that we took on missions projects in the last two months. There are some great resources out there to walk through this process but I will be the first to admit I often am not intentional enough in my use of them.

So for 2009-2010 we are moving toward a more intentional model of preparation, during the trips and with debriefing. We will be modeling all that we do after the Deep Justice Journeys curriculum (Leaders Guide and Student Journals) from the Fuller Youth Institute and I’ll be blogging along the process. It’s my hope that in my staff and students’ interactions with the resources that I can model how to best use them and show what the results are.

It’s got to be more than a trip.

It’s got to be more than a singular experience.

It’s got to be transformative for the students and the families because we need change. I’m hoping that using these resources and being intentional about writing how we are using them will be better than a traditional forward in a book saying how great it is. I’ll write about how it really works, what doesn’t work and in my particular context how we have modified it to reach our students and families.



Read more of Lars’ musings at his blog, www.larsrood.com.

©2009 Fuller Youth Institute