I came across an interesting article from the Barna group that describes the life changing nature of mission trips and who goes on them. Here is an excerpt from the article.
A new study from The Barna Group shows that most of the people who embark on service adventures describe the trips as life-changing. In fact, three-quarters of trip-goers report that the experience changed their life in some way. Yet the research also shows that few adults – including a small percentage of Christians – have ever gone on a short-term service trip…
Just 9% of Americans have ever been on one of these brief service trips, including only 11% of churchgoers. What’s more, most of the people who have ever gone on such a journey did so more than five years ago. To put that in perspective, only 8 million of the 228 adult residents of the U.S. have been on a short-term mission trip in the last five years.
Some population subgroups were more likely than average to participate in short mission trips: adults under age 25, residents of the South and the West, college graduates, political conservatives, and people who are associated with a faith other than Christianity. The most active group of people in terms of short-term trips was evangelical Christians (23% of whom had taken such a trip).
In contrast to evangelicals, residents of the Northeast, Catholics, and political liberals were among the least likely to go on service trips. One surprise from the study was that upscale adults were no more likely than downscale adults to have participated on a short-term service project…
The Barna study gives evidence that the emerging generation wants to serve the needs of others in short-term missions. For instance, young adults are more likely than the Boomer generation to have ever been on a service trip in the past (12% versus 7%, respectively). Moreover, young adults (defined as those under the age of 25) express strong interest in participating in future short-term service trips. Overall, 10% of young adults said they would definitely go on such a trip in the next three years, compared to just 3% among older adults.
To read the whole article go here.
