The Online Missions Trip went amazingly well last year! Around 3,000 youth leaders and teenagers from every continent except Antarctica intentionally used social media online to share Christ with unsaved friends. Many teenagers trusted in Christ for salvation as a result and many youth group teens were challenged to take God into yet another part of their world: the Internet.

Although this idea started originally for my own youth group out of my discontentment with outreach events, it’s a great experience when we can all connect together online through this “outreach campaign.”

The Internet has never made it so easy to share Christ with those all over the world! Teenagers spend a crazy amount of hours talking with friends on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, World of Warcraft and other such social hangouts online, as youth workers, let’s train them to share their faith and encourage them to do it online. The Online Missions Trip is a 2-week campaign to empower them to use social media to share Christ with their friends who don’t yet know Him.

The structure looks like this:

January 10-30, 2010

Pre-trip training. Use youth group meetings to train kids how to share their faith, think through the Online Missions Trip concept, and start praying for unsaved friends.

January 31 to February 13, 2010

Online Missions Trip! During these two weeks teens and youth leaders are engaging in spiritual conversations with unsaved friends online. They’re uploading videos, photos, posting links, using status updates to share what God’s doing in their lives, writing notes, sending messages, posting on blogs, creating event invites to youth group, and anything else that will bring God up in a conversation that starts online and hopefully spreads to a face-to-face discussion.

February 14, 2010

Outreach event/series and new-believer follow-up starts. Follow-up on this missions trip with a series that helps the new teens in your ministry either investigate Christianity a bit closer or start growing in their new faith. Be sure to follow-up one-on-one with new converts, as well.

To learn more about this trip, visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com. There are many ideas, free resources and tools, a 24/7 Prayer Room that will open in 2010, and more. It also has a video of me explaining the trip in more detail.

Also, you have to see this video about the social media revolution, which underscores why this outreach campaign comes at such a key moment in history.

While you’re there, become a fan of The OnlineMissionsTrip.com Facebook Page and meet some of the other teens and youth leaders who will be attending this missions trip with you next year.

[ Visit OnlineMissionsTrip.com ]

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Posted on September 8, 2009