A Chance to Start Over

I've made my share of New Year's resolutions. I've kept some and broken some. On balance, however, I'd say the discipline of "starting over" has been good for me. Some recent resolutions:

1. Get the name of every person who waits on me at a restaurant and refer to that person by name in a friendly way throughout the meal.
2. Balance my checkbook monthly and keep track of the times I use my debit card as a credit card.

Those resolutions have gone fairly well, and I think they've helped me live my faith responsibly. This other resolution from a few years ago isn't going so well:

1. Win the Tour de France 7 times and get Sheryl Crow to fall in love with me while raising millions of dollars for cancer research.

So another guy beat me to it. You win some, you lose some.

In over 17 years of youth ministry experience, I've learned the importance of giving youth the opportunity to "start over" in their faith. Many of my students had a relationship with Jesus that resembled the car I drove in high school -- it ran well sometimes, but often it would go in spurts where it started and stopped, died, wouldn't start, or run super fast for a while then conk out. My car needed to "start over" with a massive tune-up.

As a youth pastor I saw how short-term youth mission trips were the ultimate tune-up, the ultimate opportunity to "start over" for my teens -- and for me -- in our relationship with God.

There's something powerful about taking kids out of their comfort zones, away from their relative affluence, and plunging them into a culture of need. It's valuable for them, as Jim Burns puts it, to have their hearts broken by the things that break the heart of God. It's life-changing to see what putting their faith into action really means…for the people they serve as well as for themselves.

I've been going on short-term mission trips with teenagers for over 17 years now, and I'm not stopping until my body can't take it any more. Why? Because they're a great "start-over" in my faith. And because I've seen the lives of so many kids change by having the chance to "start over" on mission trips.

Among the many heroic things you're doing to serve teenagers in your church, consider a resolution to give your kids a chance to "start over" by taking them on a short term mission trip this summer.