What would it look like if your church had the opportunity to send teens on a mission trip and your church did not have to do any of the pre-trip scouting or set up? What if your teens could connect with teens around the state and serve our risen Savior together? Big church, small church, city church, rural church all in one location serving the Lord together. This is the dream.

As someone who has worked with teens for over fifteen years, an important part of the ministry has always been to get students involved in serving – specifically serving in the local church, the local community, and if possible, beyond. I have heard before that teens who serve are more likely to stay connected to a local church after they graduate from high school. They understand they are gifted by God and vital to the body – not to the next generation, but to this generation. They learn the importance of serving the needs of others, and they are called by God to serve. Many times, teens have opportunities to serve in their local church and even their community but serving outside their community can come with a variety of challenges. What if the opportunity to serve on a mission trip was as simple as signing up, paying, and going?

The desire to bridge youth on mission is something that could happen as early as the summer of 2026. The goal is to have a central location for teens to gather for a week with their local church and connect with churches from around the state to worship together and serve on a mission. Each day would start by being in God’s Word, eating breakfast, and then being sent into the mission field to participate in a mission project. Churches can be partnered together to serve, so church size is not an issue. At the end of each day, churches would come back to the central location, clean up, eat, worship together, get fed by the Word, and have church wrap up before bed.

Each summer, the central location would move around the state so each of our many regions would have an opportunity to serve closer to home. What a way to see brothers and sisters from around the state, our beautiful state itself, and all for the purpose of serving our Savior on mission!

This is still in pre-planning stages, but the goal is to have access to a trip like this on the Bridge Fellowship website as details become available. If you would like to connect with me and help make this a reality, I would invite you to reach out at [email protected].

Rob Tahtinen is an Associate Pastor at Calvary Baptist Church (Greenville)