Paving for Mission

The theme for the past two Sundays at Grace have been called "Taste of Grace," the annual series designed to engage people to be involved in serving in different capacities. Part of this Sunday's message was about what kind of community we are - how many of our community are already serving. PastorMark outlined two elements of serving - the summer mission adult and student teams. Here are the metrics from both:

Students -- 81 people || $61,000 || $753
Adults -- 38 people || $76,000 || $2000

[I wrote about specific student historical financial metrics previously in this post.] From a purely monetary perspective, we are getting a better deal on the student side. Of course, the finances are not the only thing we measure.

It's important to keep in mind finances from the perspective of students. Students don't have the financial viability that adults have - most of their friends don't have full time salaried careers, the majority of support come from their parents' friends and "taxable donation" is a nonsensical term to a sixteen year old. So when we look at trip destinations and partnerships, we have to keep overall costing in mind. If it is very ambitious financially, that is somewhat of a flag. Adult teams may not have the same kind of considerations for if a trip goes or not.

Of course, I'm super proud to see that our students are, in some ways, leading the greater body in this way. When SPACE first started, adult mission trips were here or there and this summer, there have been seven. It's what teenagers are good at - innovate, risk and pave the way a little bit.