Not sure the last time you went on a church trip for youth, but there is something universal about the experience. Every youth trip is different, and yet, always always the same.
Perhaps Aristotle said it best:
“Teenagers these days are out of control. They eat like pigs, they are disrespectful of adults, they interrupt and contradict their parents, and they terrorize their teachers.”
It is might great joy in life to serve in youth ministry now for over twenty years, and there’s something about those summer youth week trips that exhaust me and fill me with the joy of the Lord unlike anything else in life. So I thought it might be fun to share some comics to end out the next month of summer with (mostly) true tales from youth ministry trips that will either scare you away from volunteering or you’ll nod your knowing brow and think, “Yes, I’ve BEEN on that exact trip.”
There’s nothing quite like the 21st century church bus. No matter when your church bought it, the paint is chipped, the air conditioning does not actually work, and it will never make it further than the city limits without needing a tow. The youth both love and hate the church bus, for it is both a beacon of communal adventure, and a harbinger of unplanned for adversity. Once summer, as our church bus coasted down a West Virginia mountain on its 6 hour voyage to summer mission week, the gas pedal ceased to function. No amount of tapping, pressing, or cursing would engage the gas pedal back into its one job, and so, the bus came to a natural and complete stop partially up the next mountain, when its momentum finally gave way.
Fortunately, we had a full hour before the mountain thunderstorms began. Plenty of time to hold our cell phones high for a signal until we could find a towing company up ahead in the town of Hazard (our maps revealed we were halfway between two towns called Happy and Hazard). Ever impressed that any tow truck could haul away our giant 15-passenger bus while we sat on the road wondering about the rest of our journeys, I soon learned from a passerby that we were less than a mile from a gas station, so we headed there to beat the storm.
What happened there, well…you’ll just have to tune in next week as the adventure continues.
PS. I would absolutely LOVE to hear your stories of youth trip misadventures, so please pass them along to me!