pastors
Our mission trips were created to serve you. Our mission is to support and come alongside youth workers by helping to equip and expose your students to the reality of a world without Christ. We believe your students will return from a Royal Servants mission trip ready and eager to serve.
If you are a pastor or a youth worker with any kind of experience, you’ll probably resonate when we say we are tired of seeing students crash and burn in their faith. You know, the ones that turn atheist or adopt new progressive theologies - students whose truth is based on subjective feelings or those that simply walk away and/or become apathetic in their faith walk.
Many Gen Zs arrive on Royal Servants with faith that has been largely shaped and informed by culture with little real understanding not only of what they believe but why they believe it. In response, Royal Servants has placed a greater focus on building and/or strengthening the core, historic elements of Christianity, such as the reliability of Scripture, Biblical vs. subjective truth, finding an identity in Christ alone, and helping them develop a Christian worldview.
We believe your students will return from a Royal Servants mission trip spiritually strengthened, equipped to communicate their faith, and ready and eager to serve. As a youth worker, you can know with certainty our mission trips are:
Discipleship Focused
Royal Servants has been facilitating mission trips since 1982. We do mission trips because we love students. Our leaders come alongside and help them mature in their faith and become passionate disciples of Jesus. We believe a complete disciple makes disciples, and that implies evangelism. The foreign mission field is not only a prime opportunity to teach evangelism and discipleship, it is also a fantastic environment for working in the student’s lives.
Professionally Led
Unlike most student-focused mission trips, Royal Servants mission trips are led by Reign Ministries’ staff, not summer volunteers. Our Trip Leaders range from Millennials to Boomers, and on average they have 11 years of mission experience and 15 years of youth ministry experience. We’re not perfect, but our hearts beat for students! Therefore, each staff member is intensively prepared and experiences at least a full year of mission trip leadership training before taking a team of their own. Our leaders are not well-intentioned chaperones, but rather leaders who take modeling seriously and are fully engaged in every aspect of the mission trip; they work hard to build bridges across the generation gap and to earn and build each student’s trust.
Church Honoring
There is no substitute for the local church in a believer’s life. We believe that. We live and conduct our ministry by it. We are tightly focused on serving local churches, not competing for their youth. This idea is not just rooted in theology; it is a part of our DNA. The moment your student arrives, our purpose is to train him or her to return to you and serve with you.
Theologically Safe
Check out our statement of faith. Our biblical worldview is best described as historic Christianity. We focus on Christ and what unites us, and on those questions that may be different among the denominations (tongues, baptism of the spirit, etc.), we steer students to seek answers from their parents, pastors, and local church community.
Transformational
Royal Servants is a mission trip designed to be a time of leadership preparation, mission exploration, and spiritual training. A Royal Servants mission trip isn’t a mission-vacation but an in-depth summer of Biblical training, missions experience, and personal growth. We aren’t about bubble wrapping our participants but challenging them through grace-filled accountability. Many students later report back to us that their season with Royal Servants was a defining moment in their lives and walks with Christ.
Safe
Each Reign Ministries staff member is aware that on every trip we are entrusted with a parent’s most valuable treasure, their children. We have the policies in place and leaders with the experience to make the right choices in the event of a crisis while on the mission field, whether it be an individual’s medical issue, political instability, or a nationwide medical emergency. We will never compromise the safety of the team.
Culture Responsible
Most of our teams serve alongside local missionaries and indigenous believers in each country. We often go to the same locations because we have developed a strong trust and effective working relationships with our ministry partners. Each team’s ministry reflects the vision and desire of our hosts. We don’t arrive with a mindset of “this is what you should do, and let us show you how to do it.” We engage in activities that local believers know are right for their culture. The maturity and experience of our Trip Leaders enable them to help students deal with cultural frustrations healthily and teach them how to enjoy, celebrate, and, in many cases, embrace the unique customs and idiosyncrasies of the host country.