What To Expect
This section will help you understand what makes a LeaderTreks mission trip different. We want you to know exactly what to expect—from our philosophy of ministry to how we help students serve others, grow in their faith, and discover God’s purpose for their lives. We hope this overview gives you confidence that a LeaderTreks mission trip will make a lasting impact on both your students and your ministry.
About LeaderTreks Trips
A mission trip should be more than a week away from home—it should be a life-changing opportunity to serve others and grow closer to Christ. At LeaderTreks, we believe students are transformed when they step outside their comfort zones to meet real needs, build meaningful relationships, and share the hope of the Gospel. Through practical service and intentional discipleship, students discover that following Jesus means serving others with humility and compassion.
Every LeaderTreks mission trip is designed for your group alone, allowing us to customize the experience to fit your students, your ministry, and your goals. Whether they’re repairing homes, serving children, encouraging seniors, or sharing their faith, your students won’t just complete projects—they’ll make a lasting impact on the communities they serve.
Along the way, students grow in confidence, deepen their faith, strengthen their relationships, and return home with a heart to serve their church, their community, and the world. That’s what makes a LeaderTreks mission trip different.
Trip Programs
We’re committed to helping your students grow and providing your team with an opportunity to leave a lasting impact on a local community. We lead several different styles of trips designed to meet the goals and outcomes that are right for your group. And no matter where we serve, we always work alongside full-time missionaries who know the community and its needs. Read more about our three Trip Programs:
Urban Adventure Serve
Trip Length:
1 week
Trip Focus:
Service community development and teamwork
Trip Sites:
Chicago, Kansas City, Memphis, and Milwaukee
Trip Leadership:
Adult Leaders
An Urban Adventure Serve mission trip is more than a week of serving—it’s an opportunity for students to discover what God is calling them to do with their lives. As they serve alongside local churches in hurting communities, students encounter real needs, build meaningful relationships, and experience the life-changing power of the Gospel. Along the way, they begin to discover that Burden + Passion + Vision = Mission. God uses what breaks their heart, what excites them, and the vision He gives them to reveal their unique calling.
Students will roll up their sleeves to serve through home repairs, children’s ministry, senior care, food distribution, and community outreach. They’ll step outside their comfort zones, experience the diversity of God’s Kingdom, and see firsthand how local churches are bringing hope to communities facing poverty, brokenness, and hardship.
Every day is designed to challenge students to grow spiritually, serve wholeheartedly, and discover that God has created them to make a difference. They won’t just return home with great memories—they’ll return with a deeper faith, a heart for serving others, and a clearer sense of God’s mission for their lives.
Mission Ready
Trip Length:
1 week
Trip Focus:
Evangelism, teamwork and leadership skills
Trip Sites:
Dayton (OH), Florence (SC), Georgetown (SC), Knott County (KY), Knoxville (TN), Pawleys Island (SC), San Marcos (TX)
Trip Leadership:
Adult Leaders
A Mission Ready mission trip gives students the opportunity to make a real difference while discovering they are capable of more than they ever imagined. Your team will partner with a local church to serve through meaningful home repair projects and by leading an outreach ministry such as Vacation Bible School, a Sports Camp, or a senior care program. Students won’t just help—they’ll take ownership of the ministry and share the love of Christ with the community.
What makes Mission Ready unique is that leadership is woven into every part of the experience. Before the trip, students help plan the outreach. During the trip, they lead the ministry, solve problems, encourage one another, and adapt as challenges arise. Every evening, they evaluate the day, celebrate wins, and learn how to serve more effectively tomorrow.
By the end of the week, students have done more than complete projects or run a program. They’ve served people in Jesus’ name, grown in confidence, discovered the joy of leading through serving, and returned home ready to make an impact in their church, school, and community.
Intense Impact
Trip Length:
1 week
Trip Focus:
Leadership and evangelism in difficult environments
Trip Sites:
Knoxville (TN), Pawleys Island (SC), San Marcos (TX)
Trip Leadership:
Student Leaders
An Intense Impact mission trip is our most challenging and rewarding mission experience. Designed for spiritually mature students, these trips give your team the opportunity to serve alongside a local church while taking full ownership of the mission. Students don’t just participate—they lead. Every day is an opportunity to step up, solve problems, encourage teammates, and serve people in Jesus’ name.
The experience begins long before your team arrives on the mission field. Your youth pastor and two student leaders attend Student Leader Weekend at the LeaderTreks office each February. Together, they prepare for the trip, learn our leadership process, and begin planning how their team will serve. Those student leaders return home ready to train, encourage, and lead the rest of the team before the trip even begins.
On the trip, your team will meet real needs through community service projects, relational outreach, and ministry opportunities that support the work of the local church. Students make decisions, delegate responsibilities, navigate challenges, and evaluate their team each day, while LeaderTreks staff coach, encourage, and help them grow without taking over.
The result is a week that stretches students spiritually, emotionally, and as leaders. They return home with a deeper faith, stronger character, greater confidence, and the conviction that God can use them right now to make a lasting impact for His Kingdom.
Daily Trip Schedules
The key to a successful trip is managing your daily schedule. Our schedule has been developed over years of leading trips. The goal is to challenge students while allowing time for reflection and relationship building. The key times in our schedule are personal devotion time in the morning and team time in the evening. The trip book contains the devotions and a prayer journal. These challenge students to build the healthy habits of Bible study and prayer. In the evening at team time, the devotions are reinforced by group discussions.
Typical Urban Adventure Serve Weekly Schedule
Sunday:
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Experiential Learning Day (Mission Race and Vision Prayer Experience)
Thursday:
Serve with local community ministry
Friday:
Saturday:
Typical Urban Adventure Serve Daily Schedule
7:15 AM
Breakfast (prepared by the team)
8:00 AM
Devos: personal time with God, using LT trip book
9:00 AM
Ministry/Adventure activies
12:00 PM
Lunch
12:45 PM
Ministry/Adventure activities
5:00 PM
Showers/Free time
6:00 PM
Dinner (prepared by the team)
7:00 PM
Team Time: Bible Study, worship, debriefing, prayer, etc..
8:30 pm
Adult Leader Meeting
Typical Mission Ready/Intense Impact Weekly Schedule
Sunday:
Monday:
Local Work Project, Prepare for Relational Outreach/VBS
Tuesday:
Local Work Project, Relational Outreach/VBS
Wednesday:
Local Work Project, Relational Outreach/VBS
Thursday:
Local Work Project, Relational Outreach/VBS
Friday:
Saturday:
Typical Mission Ready/Intense Impact Daily Schedule
7:15 AM
Breakfast (prepared by the team)
8:00 AM
Devos: personal time with God, using LT trip book
9:00 AM
Work Project
12:00 PM
Lunch
1:00 PM
Work / Ministry Opportunity
5:00 PM
Showers/Free time
6:00 PM
Dinner (prepared by the team)
7:00 PM
Team Time: Bible Study, worship, debriefing, prayer, etc..
8:30 pm
Adult Leader Meeting
On our mission sites we use time wisely, and still provide for all of the students’ needs. Only a small amount of free time is allotted. We find that when students are focused on the mission of the group, they desire more time to invest in the lives of their teammates and the community in which they are working. The more focused the group is, the more they can accomplish for God and He can achieve in their lives. While our schedule can be adjusted to meet the needs of a group, we highly recommend that this schedule be used as an outline.
Our 5 Distinctives
Our trips go below the surface:
One Group Per Site. We only partner with one youth group at a time, on all of our sites, no matter what you pay. It doesn’t make any sense to put teams together; they don’t share the same vision or the same behavioral standards.
Highly Certified Staff. All LeaderTreks staff are highly trained and certified by our Program Director. Throughout the process of booking, preparing, and leading your trip, our staff are extremely relational and professional, and they care deeply about your students’ development.
Student Leadership Program. From the minute you arrive until the minute you leave, all aspects of the trip will be used to develop your students into leaders. We use the schedule, work site, ministry events, meals, and team time in the evening to challenge your students to grow as leaders.
Real Work, Real Ministry. We build orphanages, pour basketball courts, remodel homes, and go on expeditions in real wilderness locations, and students do it all. We partner with real missionaries with a vision to work with student groups. On missions trips you’ll rub shoulders with ministry visionaries that will give your students a new view of how they can live for Jesus Christ. Our wilderness locations are remote, rugged, and beautiful and will challenge and inspire students in powerful ways.
Intentional Spiritual Development. We provide several Pre-Trip spiritual training resources that fit your group. Our On-Trip journals have a daily devotional, a prayer journal, and a growth journal. Each morning, we set aside 45 minutes for devotions, and every night we have Team Time, where we process all that God is teaching us. You also get Mission Life, a 4-session training for debriefing the trip that challenges students to live the mission life.
Leadership Development on a Trip
LeaderTreks has been pursuing the mission of developing leaders to fulfill the Great Commission for many years. Through the process of teaching and challenging students, we have created a model of leadership development that has the power to revolutionize your ministry. Every student can learn to be a better leader. By making leadership development a foundation of your ministry, you will be able to challenge and grow students in ways you never have before. According to the LeaderTreks Leadership Development Model, there are four stages of leadership development – leadership learned, leadership experienced, leadership challenged, and leadership evaluated. This leadership model can be applied at Sunday youth group meetings, in individual mentoring relationships, on mission trips, and across many other situations.
How Does LeaderTreks Make It Work?
1. Leadership Opportunities
Our philosophy about leadership is that unless a person can make real decisions and experience the results of those decisions, whether failure or success, that person is not practicing real leadership. We know how important it is for students to face real responsibilities. We have seen time and again students find they are capable of doing far more than they ever thought possible. Through our work projects, one-week children’s ministry, and level sensitive responsibilities we provide real leadership experiences for students.
Some groups struggle with feeling they need to have both work and ministry as components of their trip to be participating in real ministry. At LeaderTreks we value trips that focus on work, those that include VBS-type activities, and even wilderness-based trips. In every activity that LeaderTreks runs, students are participating not only in leadership, but in ministry as well.
Whether cooking dinner for their team, painting a house, digging trenches, or running a sports camp, students are ministering to those around them. Each of these experiences is of equal value in the sight of God because He appreciates the humility expressed no matter how the students serve. Several groups have maximized their work site time by looking for evangelism opportunities as well. It is not uncommon that those who live in the homes we renovate are around while we work or that a child wanders up to watch the students. Many times these people do not know Jesus personally. Being ready for those moments will help your team serve faithfully through work and also through sharing their faith when the times arise. Talk about these potential situations as a group before you even leave home and set a plan of action so no matter what you are doing, you will be prepared for the ministry God sends your way.
2. Encouragement
On each trip, we use our words to tell each other how we see God working in each other’s lives. We also use our words to challenge each other to reach our God-given potential. This trip is a great place for students to get a clearer understanding of their gifts and to discover which areas of their lives need improvement. We aim to help students develop individually, to give team members a true view of themselves and to celebrate how wonderfully God has made each of them. Each night, during team time we give away encouragement beads. We challenge team members to give their beads to someone who has done something out of the ordinary. The idea is not about the number of beads given or received, but about the words used to give them away and helping others see what their spiritual gifts are. Encouragement is the key to seeing others reach their potential.
3. Discipleship – Trip Book
We believe that leadership and discipleship are woven closely together. LeaderTreks creates a customized trip book for each team designed to develop spiritual disciplines and personal development in each student. The trip book has three main sections: the daily devotional, a prayer journal and a daily growth journal.
- Bible Study. Each morning, we set aside 45 minutes for devotions. Each Bible study is created around a book or Biblical characters found in Scripture. We use several different Bible study methods to teach these passages. Our goal is two-fold: to teach scripture and to teach study methods students can use when they get home. We don’t just tell students to have a quiet time; we give them the skills to do it.
- Prayer Journal. The daily prayer journal is designed to challenge students to use a prayer method such as ‘ACTS’. Often students tell us that they don’t know how to pray and that they are not sure if God is answering their prayers. The goal of the prayer journal is to get students to understand that prayer is not about changing God’s mind but about changing their actions. By teaching students a pattern of prayer we are able to educate them on the power of prayer.
- Growth Journal. If you don’t have a standard of measurement, how do you know if you are growing? The growth journal is a place to measure your progress every day and keep track of the day’s events. Parents tell us that they love to read the journal when students get home because they can see where growth took place in their students’ lives.
To get the most out of the trip book you need to value it. If you don’t, it won’t have much meaning for you or your students. We believe that it can be the most powerful part of a student’s trip.
4. Student-Driven Learning – Team Time
Every evening on a LeaderTreks trip is an adventure into God’s word. At LeaderTreks, we believe students learn best through student driven learning. On our trips, you won’t find a speaker making an emotional appeal, but instead you will find students studying together while an adult facilitates the discussion and keeps students focused on God’s Word. We sit in a circle and learn from each other through the sharing of insights. This type of learning leads to growth. Too many mission trips end in an emotional high that last only a few weeks. LeaderTreks trips and retreats have a 52-week effect on your youth group because of the sincere growth that takes place.
Encouragement Beads
It’s not about the beads you get; it’s about the words you use to give them away.
It is no secret that words are powerful. On this trip we have the opportunity to demonstrate this power by choosing to invest in one another through words of encouragement, challenge, and insight. Each night, we will gather together to give away beads. We will use four different colors: green for compassion, white for service, red for leadership, blue for risk-taking. You can give away one bead per night. It should be given to someone who has demonstrated the quality of that bead color during the day. If you didn’t see any thing that stood out to you, don’t give a bead. This way you will make sure that every bead you give has meaning. The idea is not to give away as many beads as possible, but to help others see how their spiritual gifts are being revealed on this trip. Use your words to tell someone how you see God working in his or her life. Here is an example of giving a blue risk-taking bead away:
Joey, I see God working in your life so I have a blue risk-taking bead for you. I have seen you take risks in so many ways on this trip. You’ve learned how to do just about every job on the work site even though you had never used a saw or hammer before. During team time, you have become more involved – asking questions now and even sharing your opinion. But what I want to give you a bead for was the risk you took just a minute ago when you chose to give away your first bead. I see God developing in you a heart for those around you and the desire to encourage them in spite of any embarrassment you may feel. Your words were well thought out and they were meaningful. You shared part of yourself tonight; you were encouraging and you were challenging. You took the risk of being vulnerable and caring for another person. Joey, I challenge you to continue to allow God to speak to others through you.
Team Evaluation
One of the four steps to leadership development in the LeaderTreks Model of Leadership Development is “Leadership Evaluated.” Evaluation is the key to team improvement. A team that does not evaluate themselves does not improve. On a trip, we want teams to continually improve their effectiveness. LeaderTreks has developed Target 3 to teach and facilitate evaluation.
Target 3
Target 3 is a daily team evaluation designed to help students improve their performance throughout the week. At the end of each day, the team identifies three things they did well, three areas they want to improve tomorrow, and the action steps they will take to make those improvements.
The leader begins by asking, “What did we do well today?” Students share their observations while the leader records the responses. After everyone has contributed, the team agrees on the three most important strengths and records them in their trip journal.
Next, the leader asks, “What can we improve tomorrow?” Students discuss areas where the team can grow, and together they identify the three most important improvements.
Finally, the leader asks, “What action steps will we take tomorrow?” The team develops specific, measurable actions that address each area for improvement. These action steps become the team’s plan for the next day.
Target 3 helps students celebrate progress, take ownership of their growth, and intentionally become a stronger team each day of the trip.
So how are you supposed to use evaluation in your relationship with students?
It takes a lot of effort to process life and sometimes it can be uncomfortable, so most students don’t take the time to evaluate themselves. While on a LeaderTreks trip, you will have opportunities to challenge students to evaluate their work, their behavior, their spiritual life, or whatever you feel God is prompting to challenge.
Insightful questions are often enough to get some students started. You can even process along with them sharing your personal reflections as an example. Some students need another explanation on the purpose and benefits for undergoing evaluation. Maximizing these daily opportunities will help students develop a healthy, lasting appreciation for evaluation.
