Let's send every Baptist student to serve on the mission field

by Richard Ross                                                                                                                     Vol. XIV, No. 5, May 2001

I believe it is time for leaders to challenge every committed student to spend a summer, semester or year in full-time mission work while young. Southern Baptist secondary school students typically participate in local mission projects lasting a day and summer mission trips lasting about a week. Every youth leader knows these are valuable experiences that always will have a place in ministry. At the same time, leaders recognize that the degree and depth of life transformation during such brief experiences must be somewhat limited.

At present, a limited number of high school students serve on the front lines of missions for most of a summer. Some are sent by Southern Baptist Convention entities, and some are sent by other organizations. A larger number of college students serve for a summer or longer. But compared to the vast number of Christian college students, they represent only a small percentage. Some college students who serve a summer or longer are funded by a missions organization or Christian collegiate ministry. Others raise their own support. Almost all high school students have to raise their support. For those with families who cannot quickly write a check for several thousand dollars, the alternative seems to be pleading with church members to make up the difference.

On Feb. 20, 1999, the Great Commission Council, which is made up of the presidents of each of the Southern Baptist Convention agencies, seminaries, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and the Woman's Missionary Union, unanimously approved the following two recommendations:

-- That Southern Baptists challenge all our students to give several weeks or months in full-time ministry or missions.

-- That Southern Baptists challenge parents to create savings accounts for their children that will fund such a period of full-time ministry.

Leaders in churches and in the convention have come to see the potential that high school students have on the mission field. Many older high school students have the maturity and the spiritual strength to serve most of the summer. High school students in such settings have proved in recent years they can pull their own weight in making a kingdom impact on lost communities.

For decades we have known of the amazing ability college students have in missions settings. Whether students choose upper high school or college for their term of service, students will speed the harvest worldwide.

Finances represent a potential challenge. If the majority of older high school students and college students step forward to serve from a summer to a year, millions of dollars will be needed to cover their basic living expenses. Such funds do not exist in the convention. Instead, Southern Baptist leaders are challenging parents to begin savings accounts that someday will fund their children's time of missions service. Ideally, accounts should be opened at the birth of a child. Even couples of modest means should be able to set up an automatic draft that would move $5 or more a month into that savings account.

Churches that do baby and family dedications could use that ceremony as a time to affirm that child's call to missions while young. The pastor could present a check from the church to go into that child's new missions savings account.

Church members attending baby showers might choose to make financial gifts into missions savings accounts. Similarly, members and relatives might make gifts to the accounts at birthdays, graduations and other special times. Godly grandparents might sense God's leadership to make significant gifts to each of their grandchildren's accounts along the way.

Over time, such a plan would result in tens of thousands of students reaching upper high school or college each year with all the funds they need to invest a summer or even a year in an inner-city neighborhood or international outpost. At present, funding is a ceiling that is preventing many from doing what they sense a call to do. If families save for their children, there will be no ceilings at all.

Wise parents will allow even small children to earn money that can be placed in the child's missions savings account. When children become teenagers, they can be challenged to work as hard to save for their mission project as for a bike or car. Obviously, where a teenager's money is, his heart will be also.

Family savings accounts can mean that in 16 years we will see students ready to go overseas who have all the resources they need. But what about 16-year-olds called by God to go now? It goes without saying that if God wills for them to go now, he also will provide the resources they need.

Many (but not all) parents are willing to make significant financial sacrifices to provide opportunities for their children. When the local band is invited to march in the Thanksgiving parade on national TV, when the school French club decides to go to Paris, when a student has had a lifetime dream to go to Space Camp -- parents often make the sacrifices to open those doors. Godly parents and grandparents will help many students gather funds for a trip this year. Awe Star Ministries, Tulsa, OK, has a wonderful plan for building a "board of directors" around a student to assist in fund-raising. Bottom line: Students moving in the center of God's plans will find the resources they need.

Youth leaders sense that Christian students are ready for such a broad call to missions. Their bold response to See You at the Pole, Christian equal-access clubs, peer evangelism, and True Love Waits indicates their willingness to go to the front lines. The martyrdom of some of their Christian peers has only intensified and solidified that boldness.

The International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board are moving quickly to add staff and create new processes to assist in getting large numbers of high school and college students out on the field. The contacts: IMB, 1-800-888-8657 for high school students; 1-800-789-4693 for college students. NAMB, www.studentz.com.

In addition, the missions agencies are partnering with organizations that have proven track records in involving students in missions settings -- such as Awe Star Ministries (1-800-293-7827; www.awestar.org) and Elijah Teams, affiliated with Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, Calif. (1-888-442-8710; www.GoE-Teams.com). Everyone recognizes it will take multiple strategies and sending organizations to handle the students who are sensing the call to go.

Of immediate focus are 4,200 students who promised God at the seven-city YouthLink 2000 last December they would give a summer, semester, or year in full-time missions while young. Many of them want to grab a backpack right now and go do something mighty for God.

Youth leaders can look forward to the time when most grade schoolers will grow up already knowing they will be young missionaries someday. Such children will become high school or college students who always are listening for God to tell them it is now their time to go and serve. Their public affirmation that the time has arrived may become one of the most common decisions at youth rallies and conferences.

Leaders also anticipate even stronger support for Southern Baptists' career missionaries as students return with inspiring stories about serving alongside them. In addition, returning students likely will show a lifetime willingness to join short-term mission projects nearby or away.

Parents who experience the thrill of their own children serving alongside IMB and NAMB missionaries will always have more interest in the financial support of those ministries. Also, the students themselves who have seen God at work in international and North American missions will always have a bond with those movements.

The call to be a career missionary is reserved for a few. But in this era of the church, perhaps God intends to call out most godly students to join him full time for a season to finish the harvest. [BP]

(Ross is the youth ministry consultant for LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, Nashville, TN.)