This is Part 1 in my series, How to Best use Social Media to Enhance your Church’s Mission Trips. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here and Part 4 here.
A few months ago, some good friends of mine went on a trip to Haiti – you may have followed them on Twitter or Facebook. It was the Youth Ministry Advance Team: Haiti. What happened on that trip was pretty amazing…but what was new to so many people was the way they harnessed the power of social media to share their stories from the mission field. They all wrote many stories about the trip and Lars Rood wrote an article for Youth Worker: Engaging Missions via Social Media. I would highly recommend giving it a read to get a feel for how they were able to share their stories while still out on the mission field.
In many ways, I felt as though I was a part of the mission experience they were having as I followed along and got real-time updates on the work they were doing in Haiti. It was unlike the normal way we think about mission trips: a group goes on a trip, has life-changing experiences, and then when they get back, someone makes a PowerPoint slideshow to show in church and a handful of kids get to share. And that got me thinking.
