February 2, 2000
Spring youth fall into
new mission this summer
___By George Henson
___Staff Writer
___SPRING--Spring Baptist Church will spread the gospel around the world this summer as teenagers from the church will scatter across the face of the Earth.
___Rather than a traditional group mission trip, Youth Minister Darren Carver felt the time was right to try something a little different--sending the church's teenagers out separately to impact the world.
___"What we're trying to do is place our students around the world," Carver said. "We wanted our students to really impact the whole world. We couldn't send them every year to a different continent, but we could send them all around the world in the same year."
___While the month-long trips are expected to have a great impact on the teenagers traveling to the far part of the globe, Carver expects a great carry-over effect.
___"We're hoping this won't just affect our individual kids, but our youth ministry and our whole church," he said. "We think it's going to be an exciting thing for our church this summer when we literally have kids all around the world spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ."
___The Spring church has done a variety of mission projects locally, around Texas, in other states and Mexico, but wanted to make a global impact. Carver said the church has had record mission offerings in the past year and an overall excitement about missions. That excitement and a maturing in the youth group led the church to believe the individual projects was the right avenue to take.
___"We felt that putting them out on an individual basis so that decisions are more personal rather than a group sort of thing would be good for them and allow them to grow more spiritually," Carver said.
___Pastor Forrest Lowry is a big supporter of the idea.
___"Our youth minister's heart is for our kids to do missions on a local, state, national and international level before they graduate high school," Lowry said. "These kids had done the others, but they had not done international missions. Our feeling is that if we can get them out on the international mission field sharing Christ, at least some of them are going to come back with the world on their hearts and maybe become international missionaries."
___The teenagers will be traveling as a part of Teen Mania Ministries, a non-denominational ministry that has led teenagers in doing international missions for 13 years.
___The Tyler-based ministry will send groups to 33 foreign countries this summer, including Bolivia, Botswana, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, India, Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Russia and South Africa.
___Participants have the choice of a two-week, one-month or two-month mission trip.
___The two-week and one-month trips are spent performing a drama and then telling those who display an interest about Jesus after the performance.
___Those choosing the month-long trip also spend time visiting churches and building relationships with the people who live there.
___The two-month trips are church planting endeavors in villages.
___"The first month you just show the love of Christ to people, not with your words, but with your actions," said Meaghan Shankey of Teen Mania. "After that first month, you began to tell the people you have established relationships with that, 'I love you so much, but Christ loves you so much more.'"
___The trips range in pricing, but the Spring teenagers' month-long trips average about $2,500 each. The church has set aside about $30,000 as a basis of support, but much more than that will be needed. Youth are devising additional means of raising the needed funds.
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