An army of 25,000 student and adult volunteers will mobilize across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico in June, when the North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) World Changers, PowerPlant and Families on Mission (FOM) ministries launch for the summer.
Introduced in 1991 and now in its 19th year, World Changers is a pre-packaged missions experience sponsored and managed by NAMB, enabling students to donate a week (Saturday to Saturday) of their summer to help rehabilitate housing in struggling neighborhoods — at no charge to homeowners.
World Changers — the largest of the three summer ministries — will sponsor 92 projects in 85 cities between June 8 and Aug. 1, attracting 23,000 middle school, high school and college students.
World Changers will reach the milestone of renovating its 20,000th house sometime during the summer, said Jonathan Wilson, NAMB’s strategy development coordinator for World Changers and PowerPlant.
Several new areas are scheduled, including Daytona Beach, Fla.; San Diego, Calif.; Franklinton, La.; and Corpus Christi, Texas.
“We’ve been holding our collective breaths to see what impact the economy would have on World Changers this summer,” Wilson said. “But just a few weeks away from the start of this summer’s projects, we’ve got 25,000 people committed to come to World Changers and PowerPlant.
For PowerPlant, another 2,000 students — middle school to college-aged — have signed up for 16 projects this summer. Wilson described PowerPlant as providing students with real-world experience in Southern Baptist church planting and evangelism.
First-time PowerPlant cities include Minneapolis, St. Louis, Memphis and Indianapolis.
Minneapolis has one of the lowest number of evangelical churches in the country, Wilson said. “But in Minneapolis on the University of Minnesota campus, we’ll have a group of guys who worked in PowerPlant as former students and staff, who are now church planters on campus who’ll serve as core leaders for this summer’s PowerPlant project up there.”
World Changer and PowerPlant students pay their way “to come sleep on the floor, work on someone else’s house or work with a church they didn’t know existed,” Wilson said.
The last of NAMB’s trio of summer ministries is FOM, now in its fourth year. FOM is a pre-packaged weeklong missions opportunity for families — mom and dad, kids and even grandparents.
Some 650 people are registered as families to participate in one of six missions trips: Big Stone Gap, Va., June 6–11; Helen, Ga., June 13–18; Bryson City/Cherokee, N.C., June 20–25; Broken Arrow (Tulsa), Okla., July 4–9; Ruston/Farmerville, La., July 11–16; and Columbiana (Birmingham), Ala., July 18–23.
FOM provides children, their parents and grandparents with a hands-on experience of missions awareness, missions projects, worship, evangelism, family group discussions and interaction with local missionaries and members of the community.
Susan Peugh, NAMB’s coordinator for FOM, said, “From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., we’re out at the ministry sites as families. We’ll be doing resort ministry at campgrounds and helping local church planters identify new people groups in the area through the use of block parties, surveys and backyard Bible clubs.”
Peugh said families also would be involved in local food and clothing distribution ministries, direct evangelism, ministering to local merchants and light construction projects assisting local residents such as house painting, yard maintenance and minor home repairs.
Following six hours of ministry work in the community, the families will return to their hotels, eat dinner, hold family worship sessions and then enjoy free time the rest of the evening. Each FOM week runs from Saturday to Wednesday.
For more information on World Changers or PowerPlant, access www.world-changers.net or www.power-plant.net; for FOM, e-mail fom@namb.net or call 1-800-462-8657, ext. 6456. (BP)
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