YouthWorks
YouthWorks began in 1994 when 35 churches sent 400 students on our mission trips to South Dakota and Mexico. This past summer, over 30,000 youth joined us! Each summer, churches bring participants to sites across the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Canada. YouthWorks is designed to create opportunities for junior and senior high school students to learn more about Jesus' love through missions.
YouthWorks is a multi-denominational ministry dedicated to providing resources that enable churches to do life-changing youth ministry and mission work. We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation created by youth workers in order to serve churches and youth ministers. We are governed by a dedicated, volunteer board of directors and we are led by full and part-time staff.
We believe our mission is worth more than the sum of the work accomplished. While it is important to be challenged in our ministry work, we believe the most important thing we can do is to live out the love of Christ with all we meet. Building relationships is essential to living out the love of Christ. Therefore, the friendships you and your youth will create with people in our mission site communities are of utmost importance to us. There are all kinds of work ministry experiences set up for your trip that are designed to challenge teenagers. The opportunities vary from week to week and site to site, depending on the particular needs of the communities in which we serve.
Participants will be divided up into small crews to do ministry projects. Crews may do various painting and rehabilitation projects, facilitate a Kids Club program or partner with existing social service organizations. Paint on houses will eventually chip off, and stories and games may be forgotten in time, but the relationships you develop with community members will create a vehicle for everlasting ministry.
Our Purpose
Our purpose is to provide life-changing, Christ-centered youth mission opportunities. This is our reason for being. We create extraordinarily fun and significant mission adventures, targeted to the needs and capabilities of youth, ages 12-19. By crossing borders of race and culture, and by placing students outside their comfort zones, we find something wonderful happens: God gets their attention! Without the distractions of everyday life, God uses YouthWorks to work in the lives of thousands of teenagers. By attempting to be faithful to our purpose, we find God is also at work in each of the communities we serve. Yea God!
Our Values
It is important for people to know what we value and why. We have six points we consider to be our core values. These are our essentials:
Youth Minded
We love teenagers! You have probably guessed it - it's in our name. All that we do is focused on providing life-changing mission experiences for 12-19 year olds. We design our trips to meet the needs of this age group, and we create ministry experiences that will challenge them. We do not believe youth are the church of tomorrow; they are part of the church today. They too, can do God's work if we invite them to join us.
Servant Leadership
The world is thirsting for leadership - the kind the church can provide. We need selfless, humble, obedient, servant leaders who follow Christ. We desire to emulate the model of Christ, our servant leader (John 13). By serving the church, youth ministers and adult leaders, we believe servant leadership will be contagious. Adults will serve teens, teens will serve communities and communities will serve the world. By serving these, as Christ commands, we also serve Christ Himself.
Relationship Oriented
Our ministry philosophy is a relational one - one that has at its core a ministry of presence. It is our deep desire to create and be in relationship with the people we serve. We believe that by following Jesus' example, loving as He loved and embodying a Christ-in-the-flesh model, we will make friends. We believe it is in real friendship that we give and receive without demeaning each other or stripping one another of dignity. The work we do on our trips is focused on the work of building relationships.
Life Change
We believe the message of Christ is about life-change. It was impossible for the disciples of Jesus not to have had the direction of their lives changed forever! We desire to present the message of Christ and challenge of Christ in all aspects of our mission trips. We trust God will work powerfully to create life-change in our lives, and in the lives of every student that participates in a YouthWorks mission trip.
Multi-Denominational
We love the church, and believe it is instrumental in God?s plan to reach the world. There is so much that divides and separates us in the church today. The interesting thing is that the focus on denominational similarities and differences tends to be an adult thing most youth do not seem to care. United by our shared love of Christ, we believe our denominational differences only make us stronger in our diversity. We celebrate the richness of all our Christian traditions.
Ministry Focused
Our primary work is ministry. Although we use the building and repairing of homes as a way to see the love of Christ (1 John 3:18), this is not an end all. We also love community children and elderly, and serve with local ministries. We do not call our trips work camps. We do not spotlight new or repaired houses, or highlight what we have accomplished during our stay. The works in our name are the works God will do in our hearts and lives if we allow it. Needless to say, all we are and all we hope to be, is Christ-centered.
