Engaging the Next Generation

With a growing number of partnerships, VMMissions helps young people grow in discipleship and explore their missional calling.

By Martin Rhodes

Thought leaders and practitioners of global missions are finding that this method of mentored ministry is now more relevant than ever as the next generation is joining the work of missions. In recent surveys, organizations like The Missions Academy are finding the primary learning characteristics of Generation Z and Alpha are experiential, participatory, and connected. Unlike previous generations of mission practitioners, the recent generation does not prefer to receive verbal instruction and then go and do. Rather, they are looking to go and do alongside older, wiser mentors who help them succeed, even through experimentation and failure.

And doesn’t this model look a lot like Jesus’ own model of discipleship? Jesus invited 12 ordinary human beings (some of them likely quite young) to walk alongside him and learn from him as he taught and healed and loved people into the Kingdom. Jesus saw in his followers the potential to become fishers of people under his loving instruction.

Through robust partnerships with our constituency churches and the SLAQ (Servant Leader Quest) program, VMMissions is seeing a healthy influx of mission applications from teenagers who desire to follow Jesus in mentored ministry with coaching support from experienced practitioners.

The partnership between VMMissions, SLAQ, and local congregations has borne much fruit. Each time I get to share about SLAQ with friends and colleagues, I hear “Wow, tell me more,” and “This is exactly what our youth and parents need to grow in gospel confidence.” And from our young people, it has been transformative and birthed in them a desire to serve the world in mission. One hundred percent of our SLAQ graduates have continued to serve. Some have stayed with the program as “Serving Leaders” to assist Ken and VMMissions in seeing more young people join the missional adventure. Others have applied to participate in missional gap year programs through the tranSend program of VMMissions.

These high school youth have been discipled in their congregations and in the SLAQ program to see life with Jesus as an adventure, learning and maturing in a loving community that provides both invitation and challenge. We are blessed to partner in this work of training and equipping these young people into God’s mission.

And yet, there has been a gap in our programming. Teenagers often desire the support and camaraderie of peers in a team environment as they are finding their way to independence and greater maturity in the faith. We have typically sent tranSend participants into mentored ministry who are ready to join a mature team of adult mentors. So the question for us became, how can we help use the strength of our tranSend program to facilitate missional teams of young people learning and serving together?

Within the past year, I have had the joy of calling up colleagues at sister mission agencies and asking for them to partner with VMMissions in sending gap year students into team ministry assignments. Eastern Mennonite Missions, Rosedale International, and VidaNet all have robust gap year programs for youth and young adults that combine three to four months of intentional discipleship training and service with an additional five to six months of overseas ministry.

Each of these organizations has agreed to partner with us in jointly appointing youth in our constituency to serve in their short-term gap year programs. These like-minded Anabaptist agencies have welcomed this partnership to strengthen our ties to each other for the good of raising up young servant leaders for the church and mission.

Our sister mission agencies and their constituent churches have also expressed a desire to learn how to replicate VMMissions’ programs like SLAQ in partnership with their constituency churches as well. Next spring, Ken Wettig and VMMissions will begin the process of training leaders how to replicate facets of the SLAQ program so that we can continue to equip the church to make disciples near and far. In a culture where competition is enshrined as a virtue, VMMissions and our partners are leaning into collaboration to bring each of our strengths into mutually beneficial partnerships. I am excited to continue these partnerships long into the future.

I am deeply grateful that partnership is a strategic priority for VMMissions. SLAQ began as a partnership between a local pastor with a vision for youth formation and missions, and other churches, pastors, and families who desire to see youth cohorts shaped by commitment to the way of Jesus and in service to the world. Through these conversations, SLAQ joined VMMissions as a program.

Nurturing relationships with young people pushed us to develop new partnerships. We’ve found sister organizations who share the goal of shaping servant leaders willing to be sent into the world as bearers and messengers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we walk with the next generation of missional leaders through mentoring and coaching relationships, we are providing an experiential and relational context for discipleship and Kingdom growth.

The writer of Hebrews encourages us to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (10:24). This is a wonderful descriptor of the call to partnership and collaboration in the Kingdom. To “stir up” is a call to action; to mix it up with one another in an adventure of life with God. We are called to use all our strength to encourage each other to love and growth in obedience as we follow our Lord Jesus.

I pray that VMMissions will continue to follow the Spirit’s invitation to build partnerships where all are stirred up to follow Jesus in mission.

Martin Rhodes is Director of Training and Short-term Missions for VMMissions.