Why serve on a short-term mission team?
Because you may experience God’s call on your life more deeply than ever before, while at the same time being the hands and feet of Jesus to people in desperate need.
Since 1983, Forward Edge has mobilized more than 17,000 volunteers to serve on mission trips in many parts of the U.S. and 33 foreign countries. With more than 30 years of experience in short-term missions, we’ve learned the importance of doing things with people, not just for them.
And we know what it takes to make a mission trip meaningful—not just for those who go, but those they go to serve. Significantly, the programs our mission teams support are ongoing, long-term programs, designed and directed by local Christ-followers. This allows our mission team activities to effectively support long-term investment that aligns squarely with the vision of their in-country hosts.
You can join or send a mission team with Forward Edge, and experience the joy of living your mission as you empower the poor, vulnerable, and forgotten to live theirs.
Contact us below to get started!
Dear Pastor or Church Leader,
You have a very important, but very difficult job. Making disciples and inspiring an active faith is not easy. We want to do what we can to help. Mission trips can be a great tool to help you develop mature Christ-followers while fulfilling the Great Commission. After mobilizing more than 500 churches over the past 35 years, we’ve become experts at doing short-term mission trips the right way—a way that develops disciples, does no harm, and bears lasting fruit for all involved. We’d love to help you make a difference for your church body and for a world in need.
With our help, you can provide a meaningful mission trip for your church that will:
- Cultivate passionate disciples
- Increase volunteering within your church
- Build church unity
- Free up church staff from trip logistics
- Equip church members to share the Gospel
- Help people hear God’s call and discern their gifts
- Make a meaningful and long-term impact where you serve
Start talking with us about a vision or mission trip today!
Coming soon, we’ll be offering comprehensive Accelerated Mobilization Plans (AMPs) for churches. AMPs include extensive training materials (a spiritual gifts inventory, a passion profile, a life experience inventory, a life mission statement worksheet, etc.) to help individuals in your church find the right places to apply their God-given gifts, passions and experience in service at your church and in your community.
If you’d like to go deeper…
You can strengthen your global missions impact through a long-term relationship with a church in the developing world. To learn more, check out our Strategic Community Partnerships program.
College and University students are ideal short-term mission trip members. They’re on the cusp of their futures, and we provide opportunities for them to launch into those futures with unique mission trip experiences. These young adults have a passion to serve, and to be the catalyst for change as they live their mission. We can often create opportunities to serve that aligns with their degree programs, which deepens their understanding of the field they are pursuing, and provides a cultural experience that enhances their course of study.
Students will join with their classmates to become a team that works together as servants. As a team, they are immersed into the culture, and as they put their faith into action, they obtain a deeper understanding of what servanthood is and how it applies to their own lives. With opportunities to build relationships with the local people we serve, they develop life-long friendships and a sense of community on a global scale.
Practically, Forward Edge ensures a consistent mission trip experience, regardless of where they serve, through complete logistical and practical coordination from start to finish. The location may vary, but the key components of devotions, debriefs, relationship building, and serving will be present in every trip. Each team will have a unique mission trip experience based on where they serve, but the foundation will always be solid, and the team can be confident that they will have the spiritual and logistical guidance necessary to ensure an amazing mission trip experience.
Want to talk more about planning a group mission trip?
Fill out the form below, and we’ll be happy to reach out.
Groups
Our mission teams typically consist of 10 or more volunteers. If you know 10 other people who want to serve on a mission trip, you have a team! If your church, small group, youth group, family, group of friends or business wants to form a team and serve together, we’ll help you make it happen on dates that work best for you!
The first step is for your group to decide where you will serve. Many groups decide based on passion for a certain location or a certain cause. Do you want to help vulnerable children? Do you want to help disaster victims? Do you want to serve people in Cuba, Haiti, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua or in the United States? Check out our mission trip opportunities and connect with one of our Team Coordinators. They would love to help you plan your trip!
Individuals
If you’re an individual and not part of an existing team, no problem! We have a number of open teams designed with you in mind. Check back in August 2019 when we’ll publish out 2020 open team opportunities! We’re committed to making sure everyone with a heart to serve has that opportunity.
Baltimore
Baltimore, MD statistically ranks high among U.S. cities for issues of drug use, child poverty, violence, gang activity, sex trafficking and teen pregnancy. Teams in Baltimore work and stay with our partners at The Transformation Center, which focuses on alleviating material, emotional, and spiritual poverty in Baltimore’s most impoverished communities.
Project Opportunities include building projects, outreach and/or sporting camps, homeless ministry, meal ministry, helping with ongoing Transformation Center projects, and a fun and historical excursion day at the old Baltimore Harbor.
Baltimore is the perfect location for middle to high school teams because it exposes U.S. students to poverty and real-life difficult situations happening right here in America.
See more trip details on our Baltimore 101 blog.
Team Coordinator: Sheri Stanley
If you're interested in organizing a team of 10 or more people you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Cuba
The recent “normalizing” of relations with the U.S. has provided a historic opportunity to support the work of the Church in Cuba. For more than 50 years, Cuba was officially off limits to U.S. travelers. But that is changing. Now YOU can be part of what God is doing there!
For most of the past half-century, Cuba was officially an atheist state. In 1962, Cuba’s government seized and shut down 400 Catholic schools, and many church leaders, including pastors and priests, were sent to labor farms for “re-education”. While both Protestant and Catholic churches remain restricted in their activities, they were never outlawed altogether. In 1984, Catholics and Protestants were allowed to conduct mass and worship services respectively. Since then, the growth of the Church inside Cuba has been phenomenal. By 2004, almost 20% of all Cubans were attending weekend religious services, compared with less than 1% in 1984; a growth rate of 1,960 percent!
Since personal income is regulated by the government and ranges from $20-$50 a month, most of the country suffers from extreme poverty. In keeping with its primary mission, Forward Edge teams to Cuba focus primarily on supporting church-run children’s programs. Additional ministry opportunities include construction or renovation of church buildings, reconstruction of homes destroyed by Hurricane Matthew, relational evangelism, and training of Cuban church leaders.
Team Coordinator: Jen Goheen
If you're interested in organizing a team of 10 or more people you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Haiti
On January 12, 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 300,000 people and displacing more than a million others. In October 2016, Hurricane Matthew devastated this already-fragile country, killing 500 people, displacing 175,000 others, and increasing the ever present needs of this impoverished nation.
Forward Edge teams to Haiti get to serve some of the most vulnerable children and families hit hardest by Hurricane Matthew in a small community called Vernet. Vernet is located just outside the city of Les Cayes in the southern region of Haiti. The devastation of Hurricane Matthew has made survival increasingly difficult for the 3,000 people that live here, and out of desperation, many parents have turned to the practice of restavek, giving their children away in a form of slavery.
Forward Edge teams to Vernet will support Pastor Prenor Coudo and his wife Antonise, who lead a community-based ministry for vulnerable children they call “Kids Club.” On a weekly basis, they touch the lives of over 100 children—some from restavek homes—with the Gospel, a healthy meal and other activities to give them hope. Teams will have the opportunity to come alongside this critical ministry to serve the children and their families, making a lasting impact on their lives.
Team Coordinator: Jen Goheen
If you're interested in organizing a team of 10 or more people you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Kenya
In the mountains about 50 kilometers northwest of Nairobi is a town called Kijabe. Due to the staggering amount of orphans in the area, many are without access to adequate food, safe water, and a secure place to live.
Forward Edge teams to Kenya get to share Christ’s love with impoverished children, including many AIDS orphans, by serving them food, administering medical care, and renovating a school to improve their learning environment. Many of these children come from Mama Beth’s, Forward Edge’s children’s program in Kijabe, and visiting teams spend much of their time serving, playing and praying with them.
Team Coordinator: Sheri Stanley
If you're interested in organizing a team of 10 or more people you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Mexico
Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca is home to one of the largest concentrations of indigenous people groups in the world. It’s also one of the poorest regions in North America.
Teams to Oaxaca get to help feed and tutor more than 100 children at Trigo y Miel, Forward Edge’s children’s program on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. They also get to help repair the homes of needy families and engage in other community-related projects.
Team Coordinator: Jen Goheen
If you're interested in organizing a team of 10 or more people you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Uganda
Our program, Light a Candle Uganda, serves 400 children in some of the most difficult areas of Kampala, Uganda. Kampala has 3.5 million people living within the city limits, including 57 slum areas where the poorest of the poor live. Of those living within these slums, 50% are children under the age of 15.
Most have only one parent or no parents at all due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and many are in danger of sexual exploitation. By providing meals, education, and mentoring, we are giving these precious children opportunities that brighten their future, protect them from sexual abuse, and help them reach their full, God-given potential.
Teams will have the opportunity to serve at the children’s feeding program, lead games, activities and bible studies, with options to minister to families and communities through home visits and medical clinics.
Team Coordinator: Sheri Stanley
If you're interested in organizing a team of 10 or more people you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is second only to Haiti as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Children and families served by Forward Edge teams to Managua come from extremely impoverished and dangerous environments, including life inside a city dump.
These living conditions often leave children severely malnourished, neglected and abandoned, with a high risk of physical abuse, sex trafficking, rape, and teen pregnancy.
Forward Edge teams to Managua work on projects at schools and churches in poor communities, serve at feeding programs, and pray with suffering families. They also get to stay at Villa Esperanza, Forward Edge’s home for at-risk girls.
Team Coordinator: Sheri Stanley
If you're interested in organizing a team you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Puerto Rico
On the morning of September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico. It was the largest hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. Territory in 80 years, leaving the entire island without electricity and whole communities destroyed. Local authorities are saying it will take decades to rebuild. Thousands of Puerto Ricans are still living without electricity, safe water or reliable sources of food. More than 200,000 Puerto Ricans have fled the island since Maria struck to stay with friends and family on the mainland, but are anxious to return.
Teams will have the opportunity to work alongside the local church and help families rebuild their homes and lives. Regardless of your skill set, together we can provide the free labor needed to clean up, gut homes, install roofs, and assist the community in rebuilding their homes. Our initial focus will be assisting the most vulnerable: widows, seniors, single moms, and low-income families living in the rural interior of the island. These families need hope and you can provide it.
Team Coordinator: Jen Goheen
If you're interested in organizing a team of 10 or more people you can contact us by filling out the short form below. If you're an individual looking to join a team, you can scroll through our list of open teams at the bottom of this page.
Help People Rebuild Their Homes and Lives
Forward Edge has a rich history of Phase II disaster-recovery work, assisting disaster victims long after first responders have left. We focus on the long-term recovery effort for the most vulnerable – widows, elderly, single moms, low-income families, and others unable to rebuild on their own. Since 1992, more than 4,500 Forward Edge volunteers have come to the aid of more than 31,000 disaster victims in the U.S. and abroad.
Internationally, we limit our disaster-recovery work to locations where we have ongoing programs. In the event of a significant disaster in one of these locations, Forward Edge will mobilize volunteers and raise funds to assist those affected. Domestically, we mobilize volunteers and raise funds in response to major disasters that receive significant and sustained national media coverage.
You can help those in need after a major disaster through our disaster recovery fund.
Disaster Recovery Fund
Serve on a disaster recovery team to Puerto Rico
