Youth Ski Trips and Discipling our Kids

Michael Spencer with an amazing push for the minstry of Gospel for Asia by challenging our leaders of youth to change perspective a bit and forsake the ever common youth ski trip. Sounds like a big phat downer right? Read the post. In it he says:

I know this kind of thing can get a big discussion started. You aren’t a bad person to go on the ski trip. Your church isn’t bad for sponsoring it.

Here’s the thing: your church thinks that ski trip is what you want. They believe that you want the kind of youth or college group that goes skiing, has a huge “spiritual” experience, then comes back and schedules a mission trip for next year.
But you and I know that there are millions of young Christians who don’t need the ski trip or the concert or the entertainment. They don’t even need the once a year week on the mission field. They need to live the life. They need a passionate vision and opportunity to give till it hurts, to sacrifice, to connect with the cause of Christ. They want the church in America to stop being a joke and to become the asset to world missions and church planting movements that it can be.

You can start that. Start it with Gospel for Asia or another ministry that is there on the ground with the real needs. You don’t need to ship your youth group overseas to build the building. You need to give the money and make the thing happen. And then you need to do it again, and again, and again. Till the youth minister gets saved, the pastor starts preaching on missions and the parents are afraid you’ll spend your college money starting churches in Mongolia or building clinics in Appalachia or tutoring in the inner city.

Ruin your ski retreat for Jesus. And have fun doing it.

Read the whole thing here.