How Do You Prepare Your Team's Hearts for a Mission Trip?
Preparing your team's hearts for a mission trip includes bonding as a group, learning about the community and partners you will serve alongside, praying together, and focusing on your posture (how you will serve) rather than your agenda. More than getting all your logistics in order, this spiritual and relational preparation will shape how well your team listens, serves, and grows during your mission trip.
1. Bond as a Team
We serve others better when we practice loving, self-sacrificial, mutual relationships with one another. But this can be hard to do if you do not know your team members very well, or only have a surface-level relationship. So, as you prepare for your mission trip, it is important to set aside time to get to know each other more deeply before you go.
The best way to bond is through shared experiences, whether fun or tough, organic or manufactured, and you may have to manufacture some early on. This could include fun icebreaker activities at the start of each team meeting. If you are not planning to have pre-trip team meetings, you should! View EM's Pre-Trip Training and Team Meetings Outline for a detailed outline. Bonding time could also look like serving together locally or at church on a Sunday morning to learn how your group functions in that environment. It is important that your bonding time include opportunities to get to know each other personally, whether through wacky games or standing shoulder to shoulder on a service project.
2. Learn Together
One of the biggest mistakes we can make preparing for a mission trip is not taking the time to learn more about the community, culture, and struggle we are stepping into. Spend part of your pre-trip meetings asking and seeking answers to big questions related to your trip, such as: What is the historical context of the place we are going? What needs are present, and what factors have created those needs? In what ways have people like ourselves been helpful or harmful in this setting in the past?
This is critical to serving well. We are better able to empathize with and dignify others when we know more of the story. We are humbled when a story is more complex than the simple stories we have heard in the past. We come ready to listen and learn more about what we do not already know, one of the best postures of service to others.
3. Pray Together
One of the best ways to prepare your heart and mind to serve is to invite God into your experience. Whether you pray as a group or provide guided prayer meditations for your team members on their own, prayer has a way of reminding us why we are embarking on this trip in the first place.
As you pray, ask God to soften your heart to whatever this experience will be. Ask God to open your hands to give and also receive through the experience. Practice gratitude for the privilege to take part in an experience like this. Ask God to open your eyes to what he is already doing in this community and how you might join in.
4. Focus on the "How"
When we set out to prepare for a mission trip, it can be easy to spend our mental energy on the "what": Where are we going? What is our project? Who are our partners? What will make this feel worthwhile? But in doing so, we neglect to consider the "how": our approach and posture toward this experience, the community we are entering, and the people whose homes we are invited into.
At Experience Mission (EM), we invite all Short-Term Mission Trip teams to consider this: how you serve others, not what you accomplish, is the actual legacy of your missions experience.
Ahead of your trip, engage your group in discussions about your posture, your biases, your mentality, and your agenda, whether overt or subconscious. Is this trip about what you have decided you are going to accomplish? Or is it about what God will do in the growing and meeting of his children?
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How far in advance should we start preparing our team?
Start team bonding, learning, and prayer at least 4 to 6 weeks before you go, ideally through a series of short team meetings rather than a single long session. Spiritual and relational preparation works best as a rhythm your team builds together over time, not a single briefing right before departure.
Who should lead our team's pre-trip meetings?
Your own group leaders are best positioned to lead these meetings, since they will be joining your team on the trip and helping team members serve and grow throughout. EM provides the Pre-Trip Training and Team Meetings Outline to give leaders a ready-made structure, including discussion questions and prayer prompts, so they do not have to build it from scratch.
What if our team does not have time for multiple team meetings before the trip?
Even one or two intentional meetings are better than none. Prioritize the "Learn Together" and "Focus on the How" pieces if time is short, since posture and cultural understanding shape how your team serves more than any other single factor. Bonding can then continue informally throughout your trip.
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Ready to put this preparation into practice? Explore EM's Short-Term Mission Trips and find a community ready to serve alongside your team.
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