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.
What's Included?
Your LeaderTreks mission trip includes nearly everything your team needs—housing, meals, all construction materials and tools, ministry supplies, a customized Trip Book for every student, and experienced LeaderTreks staff. The only additional costs are your transportation to and from the trip, dinner on the last evening, and any VBS materials needed for your team.
Trip Resources
Every LeaderTreks mission trip includes a 4-session pre-trip study on the biblical foundation for missions, a customized Trip Book with Bible study methods, a prayer journal, and a growth journal, plus a 4-session post-trip study that helps students continue living on mission long after the trip ends.
Your Mission Trip Manager
From the day you register until you return home, your dedicated Mission Trip Manager is your personal guide. They handle pre-trip communication, answer your questions, help your team prepare, and know every detail about your mission trip site. Their goal is simple: to make planning easy and ensure your team has an incredible, life-changing mission trip experience.
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 on a Trip
We believe students become leaders when they are empowered with real ownership. By trusting them to make meaningful decisions, they gain confidence and wisdom and discover they are capable of more than they ever imagined. Through work projects, ministry opportunities, and hands-on responsibilities, students experience authentic leadership that prepares them to lead wherever God calls them.
How does that leadership play out? Here are a few examples:
Leadership on Worksites
For Mission Ready trips, usually two students each day are assigned as worksite leaders. They will be the ones to get the instructions for the day and then plan out the people and tool resources to accomplish the task.
Leadership in Vacation Bible School
For Mission Ready trips, you will come with a VBS already planned and ready to go, so your students are learning leadership even in the preparation process. They will then lead that VBS in the community where you are serving.
For Intense Impact trips, you will also have two students who will be leading from planning through execution of the entire trip and will be assigning these leadership roles to their teammates.
Leadership at Ministries
For Urban Adventure Serve trips, your students will have the opportunity to lead each other in the various ministries. The leadership roles will vary based on the ministry, but the students are challenged to lead as much as possible.
Cooking Teams
Each student is assigned to a rotating cooking team, where they will have the opportunity to lead their teammates in preparing the meal for the rest of the team. This allows students to gain confidence in leadership and also learn how to make simple meals and build important life skills.
Cleaning Teams
The same teams that rotate through cooking also rotate through cleaning. Whether cleaning up after the cooking team, or cleaning the host church, students have the opportunity to lead their team in making sure everything is in tip-top shape.
Regardless of what your team is doing during the day or week, your students will be challenged to lead their peers and likewise challenged to listen to and follow their peers. Both are vital aspects of leadership. You will play a pivotal role in determining what is the best spot for each of the members of your team in order to maximize their leadership development.
LeaderTreks staff are with your team 100% of the time and will walk with your students every step of the way, leading and guiding them through this leadership experience.
Discipleship on a Trip
At LeaderTreks, we believe leadership and discipleship go hand in hand. A mission trip should do more than create great memories—it should produce lasting spiritual growth. That’s why every student receives a customized Trip Book designed to help them develop habits that continue long after they return home.
Every morning begins with 45 minutes of Morning Devotions. During this time, students learn how to study God’s Word, pray with purpose, and evaluate their own spiritual growth. Rather than simply encouraging students to spend time with God, we teach them practical Bible study methods, prayer journaling, and growth journaling that they can continue using long after the mission trip is over.
Bible Study
Each morning, students study a book of the Bible or a biblical character using practical Bible study methods. Our goal is two-fold: to help students understand Scripture and to equip them with Bible study skills they can use for a lifetime.
Prayer Journal
Many students want to pray but don’t know where to begin. Our guided prayer journal introduces students to proven prayer models, like ACTS, helping them develop a meaningful conversation with God. Along the way, they discover that prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind—it’s about allowing God to change their hearts.
Growth Journal
Transformation doesn’t happen by accident. Each day, students reflect on what God is teaching them, evaluate their growth, and record the lessons they’re learning. These daily reflections become a powerful reminder of how God worked throughout the week, and many parents tell us the journal is one of their favorite things to read after the trip.
Team Time
Every evening, teams gather for Team Time, a student-centered discussion facilitated by the LeaderTreks staff. Rather than listening to another sermon, students open God’s Word, process the day’s experiences together, discuss what they’re learning, and challenge one another to take the next step in their faith. Our staff guides the conversation, asks thoughtful questions, and keeps the team focused on Scripture while students do the discovering. This student-driven approach creates ownership and lasting transformation.
Encouragement Beads
One of the most meaningful moments each day is Encouragement Beads. Students intentionally recognize the Christlike character and leadership they see in one another, speaking words of life, affirmation, and challenge. More than handing out beads, they’re helping each other recognize their God-given gifts and encouraging one another to become the people God created them to be.
Our goal isn’t to send students home with an emotional high that fades in a few weeks. We want them to return home with new spiritual habits, greater confidence in God’s Word, deeper relationships with Christ, and a faith that continues to grow long after the mission trip is over.
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.
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.
