Story number 4 for 23 Jul 2001

(USA)–Next, short-term missionary trips are the focus of a series of reports this week. Youth For Christ’s David Schultz is the associate director of Project Serve. Schultz says short-term work is having a huge impact on young people. “When you get a kid or young adult in another culture, when you come back, a vast majority of our kids really say that they’ve had a deep experience with the Lord. And, they go on and are able to be better participants of their youth groups, better witnesses for Christ.” Some mission leaders say short-term programs do little to encourage full time mission work. However, Schultz disagrees with that. “If they’re just tracking people that come back to their own mission then they can probably do a good job of tracking that. But, Youth For Christ, our missions trips, we have many people that come back from our trips that are impacted by the trip, but they don’t necessarily go with Youth For Christ. Maybe they go with Crusade or Young Life.”