SUMMER OPPORTUNITIES
YOUTH HOSTEL MISSIONS
At its core YHM is designed to challenge students to intentionally engage in their surroundings with a gospel-oriented mindset so that their fellow teammates, travelers, and passersby can see and hear about the work Christ has done in their lives. The goal is for this team to see the world, experience culture, meet new people and figure out how to share their beliefs with people that lead different lives than them. The goal is for the team to gain insight into why some people experience hurt within the church, to recognize how both Christianity and other religions have shaped history, and to be challenged by seeing their faith in action in environments that aren’t set up for their success.
Western Europe (like most of the world) is incredibly lost - but something that makes them unique in reference to the other trips FBCO sends is the post-Christian context that the YHM team will find themselves in. Most people the team will encounter have some sort of experience with God, the Church, or both - and actively have chosen to disengage from the faith for one reason or another. It is rare that the team will introduce someone to God for the very first time. Instead, it is more common for them to have the opportunity to listen to people’s stories and seek to understand their beliefs. Oftentimes, this provides a conversation in which they can share with them the hope we find in Christ, and how they too can know Him. Many people in these hostels, trains, museums, etc. are people our age that would tell you they are traveling Europe to “find their purpose in life” or to “figure themselves out before they enter the workforce and start a family.” They are hungry for truth, and are turning every which way to find it.
Students will learn how to: operate within a team, recognize and trust in God's hand abroad, and mindfully engage with other people that need to know who Christ is!
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Giving Link:
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Spend your summer in an adventurous context unreached by the Gospel, in an evangelism strategy modeled from Luke 10:1-3. A few weeks will be spent in an urban context, and the next month traveling to coastal people groups who have little access to the Gospel. This trip is very activity-heavy, meaning that physical fitness is a prerequisite and there will be very few, if any, of the ‘creature comforts’ of the first world. This is a new area of the world for our college ministry and church missions as a whole to venture into, and is also our first time partnering with this specific missions agency.
This area of the world has one of the highest concentrations of unreached people groups around the world, meaning that many of the people living there have no meaningful access to ever hear the Gospel in their own language. This team will be joining in front-line evangelism work under the care and supervision of a long-term missionary team that has been planted there many years and who works closely with national believers of the host country. Like all cross-cultural mission efforts, the long-term goal of the missionaries there is to pass off the work of evangelism and church planting to the national believers, but the percentage of these is still too low to be self-sustaining, and so cross-cultural workers are still needed. One platform the long-term workers are engaged in (to give themselves standing in the local area and help support themselves) is adventure tourism. There are things like scuba-diving that are very common in this area, so the summer student team may help with these ventures and see how God uses this business to reach more people with the Gospel.
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Giving Link:
NORTH AFRICA
This is a large industrial city in North Africa. There is a mix of Arab, African and European cultures. The biggest factor for most of life is the cultural coating of Islam that all things come under. Most people find the big city life to be the most jarring aspect of culture. The setting is a large city with many people who need to hear the good news. The purpose of this trip is to find English speakers, share the good news with them, and then hand off those who are ready to the long-term team. This is also a time for the FBCO team to experience life in a large city and encourage the long-term missionary team.
The long-term missionary team in this city is one we have sent summer teams to every year since 2021. Their team consists of four families, and we consider them dear friends and partners in the Gospel work. Many of the young people that our team will interact with are questioning the Islamic faith that they have been fed since they were very young. They see it as the religion of their parents or even grandparents, but not necessarily as theirs. Our student team will have the unique opportunity to find them in malls, parks, and other areas where they congregate in order to strike up conversation. Because faith and spirituality is a very regular part of their culture, it is not seen as strange to openly talk about religion, even with someone you may have just met.
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Giving Link:​
https://fbcopelika.tpsdb.com/OnlineReg/841/giving/38418
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TORONTO
Take part in groundbreaking work at a college campus in Toronto. Spend a month with missionary partners, reaching the diverse campus landscape in this unique city that ranks among the most globally diverse in the world. This team will have the opportunity to share the gospel with a wide array of religious perspectives and encourage the believers on campus. They will also spend time serving local church plants and their endeavors to reach the globally diverse communities surrounding the city.
Our partners here are with the IMB and are dear friends in the Gospel work. They previously served in reaching Central Asian peoples located in a large European city, and are relatively new to Toronto, but God has provided much fruit from their laboring on university campuses in Toronto. There are over 200,000 university students in the Greater Toronto Area, a majority of whom come from other nations to study there and who have never heard the Gospel. This trip offers college students an incredible opportunity to reach people in their same season of the life with the Gospel. Toronto is also unique in that the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board is also at work, alongside the International Mission Board. There is much being done to plant healthy churches across the Greater Toronto Area, and this team of student will join in some of this work as well across diverse neighborhoods and areas of the city.
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Giving Link:​
https://fbcopelika.tpsdb.com/OnlineReg/843/giving/38420
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EASTERN EUROPE
Join the Eastern Europe Xtreme team in the Caucasus region, where students will scope out the progress of the spread of the Gospel. The team will seek to find healthy churches and know more about the status of true Biblical Christianity in these areas. While not lacking many worldly or physical comforts, the population is incredibly lost and lacks a solid evangelical presence. They will assist long-term missionaries by researching where they can best focus their efforts so Eastern European peoples come to know and worship the one true God!
This team of students will be at work specifically in cities where there is either not IMB personnel or they have no idea what the state of the missionary task there is. The beginning of the trip consists of training in Budapest and will include Entry, Evangelism, and Discipleship training. The IMB will also train the teams in running in two lanes: Lane 1 will be harvest field evangelism while Lane 2 will be how to interview local church leadership on the state of their work in a positive way.
Our long-term field partner working with this team is over the entire Eastern European region within the missionary organization and is a new connection our church made through a short-term youth trip taken in the summer of 2024. Eastern Europe is sometimes overlooked for missionary work and presence, so it is exciting to join in on what God is doing in this area of the world.
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Giving Link:
https://fbcopelika.tpsdb.com/OnlineReg/842/giving/38419
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SOUTH ASIA 1
Commit to pioneering frontline work in an extremely unreached area in terms of both evangelism and discipleship. The team will partner with national believers to help encourage the local church, while also broadly sowing Gospel seeds in a place where few to none have heard the Good News of Jesus. This team will work directly under one of FBCO’s very own sent-out missionaries! She is currently working a two-year term with her missions agency and was the product of our church pouring into her, as well as exposure via short term mission trips to the same country.
The team will be focusing on reaching Muslims in a predominantly Hindu culture. The majority of the time they will be walking around public spaces looking for people to talk to, and hopefully share with! This looks like walking around on beaches, in malls, parks, etc. The goal is to have meaningful, Gospel conversations. We see in the parable of the sower (Matthew 13) that many seeds will fall on ground that is not ready to produce a crop. We also see that the seeds that fell on good soil “produced a crop of a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.”
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Giving Link:
https://fbcopelika.tpsdb.com/OnlineReg/838/giving/38415
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SOUTH ASIA 2, 3
Reach fellow college students with the Good News of Jesus. Partner with both local believers and a long-term missionary team to reach more university students in this city with the Gospel and discipleship. Two teams will go through an orientation together, then split off and evangelize in different cities for the majority of their month in country.
These teams will be focused on reaching young adults/college students in a Hindu and Muslim culture. The majority of their time will be spent walking college campuses, parks, malls, and public spaces, getting to know people and sharing the Gospel with them. They will also have the opportunity to visit some small churches in the area and check up on how they are doing spiritually in order to report to the long-term missionaries. This enables those missionaries to follow up with healthy churches and seek out new partnerships to see this extremely unreached area come to know the Lord!
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Giving Link for South Asia 2: https://fbcopelika.tpsdb.com/OnlineReg/839/giving/38416
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Giving Link for South Asia 3: https://fbcopelika.tpsdb.com/OnlineReg/840/giving/38417
PORT ST. JOE, FL
Work a job and make money while living at the beach and partnering with a local church! This team focuses their efforts on stewarding their jobs well while serving their community through WindMark Beach Church. FBCO is greatly blessed by this partnership, and want to serve them in any way we can! This has long been a wonderful trip for any student, but particularly those younger in age or newer in the faith. Students who join this trip will get real-life work experience and learn what it means to faithfully work 40+ hours per week while not neglecting 1) their own time abiding with God in His Word and prayer nor 2) close-knit community with fellow believers.
Students return from this trip better equipped to boldly declare the Gospel to those they work with, sit next to in class, or call neighbors. This trip also allows students the opportunity to learn what it means to join and serve a healthy church outside of FBCO, which is something they will be faced with upon graduation and most likely moving away from Auburn/Opelika.