A list of resources used by the committee.
This resource provides suggestions of mindfulness practices for youth (and others).
As you prepare and plan for your mission trip experience, find ways to ensure that it is an enriching experience for both you and the community you will be visiting. Start with this best practices guide. We also provide resources on selecting a destination, sample schedule and other information here.
Deciding on your mission trip destination is a discernment process that can engage your congregation’s or presbytery’s mission committee and other groups. We encourage you to think of the mission trip not as an end unto itself, but as one step in a journey of deeper engagement in the global mission of the church. The questions in this document will help your group in the discernment process of selecting a destination. You can find more information, tools and resources on short-term mission trips here.
Mission is the life we bring with us when we go to another place to serve, and it is the even richer life that we take back with us when we return. This letter from former mission co-worker Doug Orbaker provides context for mission trips. More information, resources and tools for short-term mission trips are available here.
This article - When Canned Food Drives Are No Longer Enough - from Presbyterians Today (2012) can serve as a starting point for congregations who want to do short-term mission trips. More resources, information and tools on short-term mission trips are available here.
Use this mission trip schedule template to ensure that your trip offers a good balance between activity and relationship-building; action and reflection; giving and receiving. Find more information, tools and resources for short-term mission trips here.
Leaders humbly connect us in the Body of Christ, helping all participants in the short-term mission experience to learn from each other, reflect on how God is present in the place being visited, and perhaps to help us think about what the short-term experience will mean in the long-run after we return home. More resources, tools and information about short-term mission trips are available here.
A study of the Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay, the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy.
212th General Assembly (2000) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) There is strong evidence that the death penalty is applied in a racist manner. In 1987, in McCleskey v. Kemp, the United States Supreme Court refused to act on data demonstrating the continuing reality of racial bias. Justice William Brennan in his dissenting opinion said: It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is ultimately corrosive, for the reverberations of injustice are not …