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They plan an eight day mission trip with teenagers that aims to get teens
to share their faith with their friends when they return from the mission.
Each morning, during the mission, they do training in evangelism, and
they do outreach during the afternoons.
The main objective of the mission is to equip youth to share their faith
with their lost friends when they return home.
Over the past few years Honeyridge youth have been part of a beach
mission that has taken place at Margate on the KwaZulu/Natal south
coast.
This training took place each afternoon and the morning was spent down
at the beach where we played sports such as volleyball, touch rugby,
soccer and cricket with the intention of providing a context in which our
youth develop relationships with people on the beach and put into
practise what they earn in the training each day.
Pre-Mission Training
As most of the training happens during the mission, all that was needed
by way of advanced training was a one morning get together where we
explained the purpose of the mission to the team (consisting of six
young adult leaders and 14 teenagers).
We met as leaders before the teens arrived and clarified the roles that
each leader would play.
By the time we had finished the orientation with the teens you could
sense a genuine air of excitement growing in the youth.
We were set aside for the mission during a Sunday evening service two
days before we left Johannesburg for the coast.
Day 1
The first day consisted of travelling to Richards Bay - a trip which takes
about seven hours, although it included us having to tow one of the cars
for a third of the journey.
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We left the church at 7am and arrived in Richards Bay at around 4pm.
After meeting the pastor and youth from the host church we dropped off
the broken vehicle to be repaired and made our way down to the beach.
Our aim was to allow youth to get an idea of the context in which they
would be ministering during the week.
We dropped youth off at their hosts (they were accommodated for the
week in different homes of people from the local church).
Day 2
We began the first real day of the mission with a time of devotions at the
church where we explored God's heart for lost people from Luke 15.
After a time of prayer for the week we launched into the first of the four
training sessions that we would have during the mission.
The first part of the training, CULTIVATING, taught the team how to
build a bridge of friendship with spiritually lost friends by spending time
with them.
We saw how Jesus demonstrated this with the Samaritan woman in John
4:7,9. We taught the team to build relationships with their spiritually lost
friends by following the TLC approach:
(1) Target - We must open our eyes and make contact with people who
do not know Jesus.
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The team had to identify four spiritually lost friends that they would
seek to lead to Christ when they returned from the mission.
(2) Listen - We must open our ears and by listening show that we are
genuinely interested in our spiritually lost friends' life.
We learn how to ask questions that will help us get to know people.
(3) Care - We must open our hands by performing acts of genuine care
and kindness to show that we care about them.
The team felt uncomfortable being at the beach and simply did not seem
confident enough to begin inviting strangers to join them in their
sporting activities.
They needed some time to reach a point where they felt comfortable in
this new environment.
We sensed that after a day or two we would begin to feel like we had a
right to be there.
While we did manage to pull some people into our activities, especially
cricket and touch rugby, we did not see relationships forming at this
early stage.
The church was about five kilometres away from the beach and would
hoped to have success in inviting people we contacted on the beach to
attend.
The first evening coffee bar was a good event that saw youth from
Johannesburg and Richards Bay beginning to mix with each other, but it
was not successful in attracting outsiders to the event.
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We realised early on in the mission that we needed to have done more to
ensure that our youth became a team; that youth from both church
became a team - before we could expect them to include others.
Day 3
On this day we spent the morning at the beach.
We had planned to have devotions on the beach but once the youth from
inland had hit the beach it was virtually impossible to get them together.
We would need to come up with a better venue for the next mornings
devotions.
During the morning we saw that our youth began to make contact with
people.
The leaders took the lead in showing youth how to pull onlookers into
our sports activities.
Volley ball on the beach was a big success and proved to be the sport
most effective in including people.
We left the beach after lunch, allowed the team members to return to
their hosts to shower and prepare for the afternoon training and the
evening coffee bar.
The second part of the training, PLANTING, taught the team how to
sow the seed of their friendship with God by speaking the truth in love.
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Reaching out to spiritually lost friends involves balancing truth and love.
There are three kinds of Christians.
Our aim here is to surface in spiritually lost people a need to know God
personally.
During this session youth had to write their testimony in three steps:
(a) my life before Christ (or childhood years);
(b) how I met Christ; and
(c) my life since I trusted Christ.
Youth spent a lot of time socialising together outside of the venue, but
we noted that relationships were forming.
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Even though many people expressed interest about the coffee bar when
we told them about it on the beach that morning, and some even
promised to come, just two people attended the event.
Day 4
We had morning devotions at a spot that gave a great view of the sea and
the harbour.
The bad weather seriously affected attendance at the beach and we felt
that we lost some momentum from the day before.
At the insistence of our team we spent the early part of the afternoon at
the local mall shopping for gifts and other items.
It was again a great time together as a team, something that we did not
have enough of as we spent a lot of time travelling apart and staying in
different homes.
The third part of the training, REAPING, taught the team how to give a
clear presentation of the good news about Jesus with a call to respond.
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We discovered that without God's involvement in the conviction of sin
and the drawing of the lost to himself there will be no reaping.
Our job is to clearly and concisely present the Good News message
about Christ and people to call them to respond to that message.
God's job is to convict the spiritually lost of sin and convince them of
their need for right living and to draw them to himself.
Youth were then taught how to present the gospel by using the Sonlife
Gospel booklet entitled Knowing God Personally; and by memorising a
one-verse gospel presentation diagram based on Romans 6:23.
The evening coffee bar was encouraging as people we had net on the
beach the day before arrived.
The people who attended were unchurched and from the town.
Day 5
The fifth day followed a similar format as day 4 with morning devotions
held at the main lookout spot in Richards Bay.
Two leaders shared the devotion were the team were challenged to be
witnesses of what Christ had done in their lives.
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We then made our way to the beach where we managed to again attract a
lot of people into our sports events, including volleyball, soccer and
cricket.
We did notice that we our training and practise were out of sync.
The team were by now starting to cultivate friendships, but were not yet
taking the CPR process into the planting of seeds stage.
We did remind ourselves that our objective was not to win Richards Bay
for Christ, but to equip youth from Johannesburg and from Richards Bay
to win their friends for Christ after the mission.
The afternoon training took place at the pastors home as there was a
wedding scheduled at the church.
We had a good time of bonding as a team at the home and had supper
there after the training session.
The fourth part of the training, FOLLOW-UP, taught the team how to
deal with spiritually lost friends who trust Christ and with those who
don't respond.
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We also taught two steps to follow-up with the unresponsive:
(1) Faithfully endure (Galatians 6:9); and
(2) Repeat the eternal CPR process with them.
The evening did not include a coffee bar at the church because of the
wedding, so the team went to the beach.
The weather was not great so there was no one to make contact with at
the beach.
Day 6
The team led the morning service at the local church.
We put together a service that shared with people a passion for reaching
out to lost people.
We used a message from Luke 15; a drama net; songs and input from
various team members on the training that we had experienced.
After the service we went to a beach for a braai and some sport activity.
The evening was spent at one of the host homes where we relaxed
together.
Day 7
The team, after saying goodbyes, left the church at 7:30 for their trip
back to Johannesburg and arrived home at 4pm.
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It is going to be essential that we follow up with the team members to
encourage them to implement the CPR process with their spiritually lost
friends.
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