Johnson Ferry’s family mission trip exposes children to Gospel service

MARIETTA, Ga. — When Allison Young was 10 years old, she moved to Hong Kong with her missionary parents. That significant life change sparked in Young a love for missions that continues to the present – and that she wants to extend not just to other individuals, but to entire families.

“I saw as a child with my own eyes what it was like to live out missions – not just hear about it, not just see it at church, but to live it out,” Young said.

As associate of children’s missions and disciple-making at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church in Marietta, Young set a goal when she began a year and a half ago to start a family mission trip for families who had never taken such a trip together before. She accomplished that goal in September when the church sponsored a family mission trip to Chattanooga, Tenn. – with 20 people from six families participating.

It was the first mission trip experience for 15 of those 20 people.

“The benefit for kids is to be able to see what they’re hearing at a young age,” Young said. “You can hear about things all day long, but until you live out an experience, what you have been reading about in the Bible or hearing others talk about, you cannot fully understand what all of that means.”

The Johnson Ferry group partnered with Day Star Baptist Mission in Chattanooga Sept. 22-26 for a variety of outreach and ministry efforts. The volunteers worked with a local food pantry and afterschool programs, and they helped serve with a local church plant, interacting with residents in that church’s neighborhood.

Andy Gunter and his wife Patricia, members of Johnson Ferry, took their three elementary school-aged daughters to Chattanooga – their first family mission trip.

“We want to show (our kids) how important it is and impactful it is to serve others and have unique opportunities to get the word out about Jesus Christ,” Gunter said.

“We get locked in as parents and families to our own communities, and maybe we see some needs in our own communities, but once you take your family on a family mission trip, it opens their worldview up to how great the need is for Jesus across the world,” Keller said.

“I’ve seen families who have talked about how good it is to unplug and just be a family together for a few days or for a week, and to serve beside each other for a week,” she said. “They have talked about how good it is for their children to see them serve, and how fun and engaging it has been to see their children serve other people.”

Gunter said he and his wife enjoyed serving alongside their daughters in Chattanooga. While the trip was work, it was also spiritually rejuvenating, and it gave him a chance to talk to his kids throughout the day about their efforts, who they were helping and why it was important to talk to people about Jesus.

“They did not see it as work,” Gunter said about his daughters. “They saw it as a service that was fun.

“I think they’ll remember that we did it in service of some churches and some Christian-based programs. And I think they’ll remember that we talked to people about Jesus.”

He hopes the trip will help lay a foundation for future mission efforts as well as help his daughters be more comfortable with Gospel conversations, either at home with friends or with strangers on future mission trips.

Young said she chose Chattanooga as a destination because it was close enough to Marietta to make travel easy, but far enough away where participants couldn’t just run home and resume normal daily activities. Young hopes the experience will spark a desire in church members to further their commitment to missions. 

She encouraged churches that may need help in starting a family mission trip to reach out to the local association or state convention for resources and ideas on how to address the needs within the local community and the state. For parents who may want to get their families involved in mission efforts, Young said local food pantries or clothes closets are a great way to introduce children to ministering together as a family.

Keller, likewise, said WMU has resources that can help parents. She’s a huge advocate for family mission trips, due in part to the effect it had on her family. Her youngest son Landon came to Christ at age 7 while serving with his parents on a family mission trip.

“He looked at us,” Keller said, “and he said, ‘It’s pretty cool that we went on a mission trip to tell people about Jesus, and I’m the one that found Jesus.’”

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This story first appeared in Baptist Press.