Let me just start by saying that I see this as a HUGE thing for our youth today! I see this as something that can be done across the country! I may be dreaming big here, however, I wanted to give you a wonder youth ministry idea about doing a local missions trip.

Last week I participated in a local missions project in our community called REACH. We named it REACH – you could name it whatever you like.

What is REACH?

REACH is a week long local missionary experience available for participation among the local churches in the county area. The whole idea behind REACH takes on a “missions in your own back yard” approach to mission trips for youth ministries. While participating in REACH, students will be divided into crews that will work together on “hands on” projects ranging from cleaning up yards to roofing houses. At the end of each day, students will come together for a time of corporate worship, reflection, and inspiration.

With that being said I have attached a packet that you can download to see how we organized it (at the bottom). I highly recommend that you pray about this for next summer as an opportunity that you can have with your youth ministry! Start by downloading the packet and going to the website we created for it: www.REACH2010.org and just pray within your youth ministry alliance in your community.

The things I enjoyed about it:

• Physical labor – im not a physical labor kind of a guy – but it was good for me and my students to learn how to “work” and see something accomplished together through a team effort.
• Spiritually encouraging - at night we had worship through a live worship band and a guest speaker all week. It seemed as though those times were more intense and enjoyable as we had worked all day helping those in need and then coming together and worshiping God.
• Results – We got to see our project getting completed each day. We got to see and share with the residents! It was great!
• Encouragement bags – At our place where we were staying each crew had bags with each crew members name and you could write encouraging notes to each other and drop little candy gifts inside them.
• Youth Ministries Coming Together – It was SO awesome to see the youth ministries coming together to get this done and I think it will actually strengthen all of our youth ministries because of it.

Here’s a video of the event we just got done last week:

Here’s a picture of my crew: (we painted this house all week long)

Below is information that you can download:

Reach 2010 Packet

Medical Release Form adult form old format

Adult Volunteer Information

Community Information

Reach 2010 Brochure

If you have any other questions you can talk or contact those that administrated the event at www.Reach2010.org