At Journey, one of our core beliefs is the importance of global impact, because we believe we are called to make a difference in the world. (Mt. 28:19-20) Because of this, we also believe everyone should go on at least one mission trip in their lifetime. Not only will you help transform the lives of people in developing countries, but we pray that you come away transformed as well. Our Global Impact trips are a great way to serve those in need, while growing in your walk with Christ.
We have several different trip categories to help you find the best fit with what you’re looking for and how you want to serve. These categories reflect our church’s overall discipleship strategy, which we call the four Es: Experience, Engage, Embrace, and Equip. Whether you’re brand-new to missions or you have specific skills you’ve been using in a global capacity for years, we have trips that will expand your horizons (literally!) as well as your heart for other nations. Check out some of the upcoming trips we have planned!
These Global Impact trips are great for anyone who has never been on a mission trip before. They are designed to give you exposure to multiple different ministry opportunities and outreach strategies on the mission field, as well as teach you about another culture and God’s heart for all nations and people groups in the world. The goal of these trips is to help you better understand how God has shaped you with specific skills and giftings to serve Him in His global Church.
On this trip we will be partnering with a local ministry to evangelize to people living in the community. Through pre-trip and on-the-ground training, as well as hands-on cross-cultural ministry, you will be prepared to take healthy next steps in missions. During your week in Costa Rica you will be involved in activities such as prayer-walking, evangelism, discipleship, leadership development, and community outreach. All of these activities are part of an effort to help the local missionary partner with the natives to plant a church. You will learn more about God’s heart for other people groups and more about why missions exist through this trip.
Our efforts in Guatemala are part of what’s called Total Village Transformation. Total Village Transformation is a unique opportunity to partner with an organization called Hope of Life in Guatemala that works with villages to bring a sustainable impact. We have a special partnership with the villages of Pena Blanca and Las Sidras, we not only get to help with providing their most urgent needs but get to serve the people in the community and bring the Gospel to them. On this trip you will learn about the Guatemalan culture and work with the local Pastor’s. We will do some sort of outreach ministry such as kid’s ministry, youth ministry, building projects, painting, prayer-walking. The ministry we do will depend on the needs of the church and our teams giftings. This is a great trip to learn what it looks like to be a part of the Global church by using your specific giftings!
This trip is a great first step into global missions. You will get to learn from and be trained by
our missionary partners in Panama. They will teach you a variety of things about what being a missionary looks like and different ways to get connected in the community. You will learn about the Panamanian culture and its similarities and differences from American culture. After some training, you will get to put it into practice by serving the community through outreach events like English language arts (ELA) classes or coordinating college ministry events. Our desire for you on this trip is for you to learn more about how God has shaped you to serve Him in His global Kingdom.
Step into ancient, sacred places and experience the spiritual journey of a lifetime as we visit Israel. On this trip, we will be walking in the footsteps of Jesus and visiting some of the most important historical landmarks of Christianity. We will walk in our faith as we visit notable sites from both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Your knowledge of Scripture and history will be enriched as we tour through key places in Jesus’ life and ministry, such as Galilee, Nazareth, and Jerusalem. You will also have the opportunity to learn from our missionary partners, Tents of Mercy and Beit Eliyahu, who minister to Israel’s diverse population.
Engage trips are designed for people who want to put their specific gifts and skills to work. We have trips that focus on things such as construction, medical assistance, kids ministry, sports training, youth ministry, and more. These trips are organized to offer opportunities for you to use your God-given gifts to serve those in another culture and context. We want you to use your skills to engage with the community you are in and serve others in a practical way, with the end goal of sharing the Gospel and getting those in the community connected with the local church we are partnered with.
This trip is catered to those with specific skills in construction as we seek to build new infrastructure for our mission partner, Young Life Scotland. Previously, we built a kitchen for Young Life Scotland’s camp, which allows them to offer meals for the kids who come to camp to hear the Gospel. Through future construction projects, we will get to love our Scottish brothers and sisters in a way that will have long-term impact, as well as get to know more about their culture and church history. We will make a direct impact on the Young Life camp and our work will allow them to better serve local students in a more functional environment.
This trip is mainly for our high school and college students, and will be focused on evangelism and outreach We will train our team members to share their faith with others in a confident way. The students will also learn how to embrace another culture with grace and kindness. We will serve in the high school where our partner church, Cornerstone Community Church, meets and will partner with the Young Life ministry in Scotland. We will serve in different ways, but this trip is very much focused on local outreach, and specifically outreach to the Scottish students to get them connected with Young Life and with the local church.
Our efforts in Uganda are part of what is called Total Village Transformation, a unique opportunity we have to partner long-term with a village in a developing country to create sustainable impact. We have a special partnership with the village of Zimudi, where we not only get to help provide their most urgent needs such as a school, homes, and a church building, but also serve people in the community and share the Gospel with them. On this trip, we will do several pop-up medical clinics and minister by meeting people’s physical needs. We will also facilitate various outreach events for kids, with the end goal of sharing the Gospel and getting these kids and their families connected to the local pastor.
On this trip we will be doing medical clinics and kids’ outreach in two villages, Peña Blanca and Las Sidras, that we’ve partnered with to do a Total Village Transformation (TVT). Through the TVT model, we’ve been able to build meaningful relationships with the people in these villages and the local pastors are like family to our church. These efforts are a great way for us to work with the local pastor to get people in the community connected to the local church. Things we do during these medical clinics include malnutrition, pre-natal care for expecting mothers, vaccinations, vitamin administration, wound/infection treatment, de-worming, and vision exams. We love to take medical professionals on this trip, but you do not have to be in the medical field to go. We also need people who enjoy working with youth and kids to help with the kids’ ministry. This is a great trip for families to go on and serve together!
This trip will be primarily for young adults to partner with a ministry called Crown Jesus in order to assist this ministry with evangelistic outreach in and around Belfast and help connect those people to local churches. Outreach efforts will include homeless ministry, street evangelism, and facilitating kids’ ministry events. This is a great opportunity for those who want to grow in boldness and in their confidence with evangelism. You will better understand the importance of knowing God’s Word and how to articulate it in a way that makes sense to someone in another culture.
On this trip we will partner with some of our missionaries that live in Poland and work for Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), a ministry that uses sports to reach athletes with the Gospel. This trip will be a mix of encouraging our missionaries and supporting them with their local FCA sports camps. This trip will be great for those who are passionate about sports, know how to teach a sport, knowledgeable about training athletes, or for those who simply love working with kids. We will partner with the FCA staff in Poland and help teach kids different sports, and participate in huddles where we get to share the Gospel with these kids. We may also work with the local church to different outreach events.
This trip is catered to those with specific skills in construction as we seek to build new infrastructure for our global partner, Field Life. This is a missionary care organization that does retreats, coaching, debriefing, and counseling for missionaries that are leaving the field or still on the field. Their ministry is very impactful for the well-being and longevity of missionaries all over the world. Field Life has a retreat center in Arkansas and this is where we will go to do construction work. For this trip, we’ll likely be doing electrical and plumbing work on a new building at their retreat center. By helping Field Life build more infrastructure, we have an effect on their ability to impact and care for more missionaries.
On this trip we will work with Samaritan’s Purse to do disaster relief in an area that’s recently experienced a natural disaster. Tasks could include repairing damaged roofs, mudding out flooded homes, cutting and removing fallen trees, sifting through the ashes of someone’s home, and/or repairing and rebuilding destroyed neighborhoods. Whatever the needs are from the natural disaster that occurs is what we will be doing. This is a great trip for people who love doing hands-on serving projects and is a great way to show the love of Jesus to those who have lost so much in just a moment. It is also a great way to form a spiritual community as we will spend a lot of time together.
Embrace trips are centered around visiting and encouraging one of our missionary partners. These trips are comprised of smaller groups so as not to burden our missionaries, and our main goal on these trips is to help lift them up and be a refreshing source of encouragement for them. These trips may also have serving opportunities to help the missionary with specific projects they may have. For a lot of our missionaries, it is a huge blessing to have community from their home church come visit them and for us to bring a little bit of home with us, especially for our partners who live in countries that are not predominantly Christian.
A small group of people will travel to Turkey to spend time with our missionary partners there. The team will learn a lot about what it looks like to live in and embrace a culture much different from our own. It will be quite an adjustment to what our culture here in America is like. The overall goal of this trip is to spend time visiting our partners and encouraging them and their family. We will get to have meals with them and learn more about their experiences adjusting to living in a new country, as well as see what their daily life looks like. Additionally, there will be a specific emphasis on prayer for the region. This is a great opportunity to learn how to love others with different backgrounds and beliefs.
The goal of this trip is to visit and connect with our missionary partners in Panama. We want to encourage them while we are there and be intentional with them in conversation. We will attend a small missions conference at their local church while we are there to support their current efforts. Any additional serving projects we do will be tailored to the skills and talents of the team that goes, as well as what our missionary partners need. Overall, this is a great trip for someone who loves to serve and encourage others, as well as for someone who wants to learn more from our missionary partners about what missionaries do and experience
Equip trips primarily focused on equipping local people groups to make disciples and lead others spiritually. This can look different depending on the trip; on some trips this may look like teaching discipleship classes for local church members, while other trips might entail teaching classes with more specific focuses like apologetics. Other Equip trips may have a heavier emphasis on pastoral training for the local pastors. While these trips can look quite different, they are all driven by the same goals of equipping the local community with tools that will help them grow in their walk with God, establish a firm foundation in their local churches, and lead others well spiritually.
On this trip, we will be partnering with World Help to facilitate pastoral training for a group of local pastors. These pastors, who are scattered in rural villages all along the Amazon River, will travel to be a part of the conference where this training will happen. We will help host and facilitate this conference in an effort strengthen the local church ministry in Peru. Areas of training and discussion could include theology, discipleship, apologetics, etc. This trip will be a smaller group, with a heavy emphasis on equipping pastors so that they can then teach the indigenous people they are leading.
On this trip, we will be partnering with World Help to facilitate pastoral training for a group of local pastors. These pastors, who are scattered in rural villages all along the Amazon River, will travel to be a part of the conference where this training will happen. We will help host and facilitate this conference in an effort strengthen the local church ministry in Peru. Areas of training and discussion could include theology, discipleship, apologetics, etc. This trip will be a smaller group, with a heavy emphasis on equipping pastors so that they can then teach the indigenous people they are leading.
On this trip, we will be partnering with World Help to facilitate pastoral training for a group of local pastors. These pastors, who are scattered in rural villages all along the Amazon River, will travel to be a part of the conference where this training will happen. We will help host and facilitate this conference in an effort strengthen the local church ministry in Peru. Areas of training and discussion could include theology, discipleship, apologetics, etc. This trip will be a smaller group, with a heavy emphasis on equipping pastors so that they can then teach the indigenous people they are leading.
On this trip, we will be partnering with World Help to facilitate pastoral training for a group of local pastors. These pastors, who are scattered in rural villages all along the Amazon River, will travel to be a part of the conference where this training will happen. We will help host and facilitate this conference in an effort strengthen the local church ministry in Peru. Areas of training and discussion could include theology, discipleship, apologetics, etc. This trip will be a smaller group, with a heavy emphasis on equipping pastors so that they can then teach the indigenous people they are leading.
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
