Religious travel planning guide sample by Premier Travel Media

2013 EDITION

A Premier Tourism Marketing publication www.ReligiousTravelDirectory.com

ON THE COVER: Travelers make spiritual connections as they rejoice in God’s Creation. (©iStockphoto.com/Vernon Wiley)

VOL. 3, NO. 1 • JANUARY 2013

FEATURES

Planning a Youth Mission Trip

BY DANIEL MORRILL

Opportunities abound for students wishing to make a difference in the world

Best Practices for Organizing and Marketing Religious Tours

BY VANESSA DAY

Church leaders rely on professional tour operators to smooth the way

Tour-Planning Timeline

BY CINDI BRODHECKER

Setting up a time frame for meetings and deadlines is key to keeping plans on track

Chartering a Bus for Your Group Be ready to ask the right questions when booking a bus for your next church outing

On Retreat: A Spiritual Journey

BY RACHEL GILMORE

An expert’s planning tips will help your team organize a successful retreat

24 ©iStockphoto.com/digitalskillet

Directory Resources

contents 4

Religious Travel Planning Guide

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Randy Mink

Taking Time Out For Group Travel Vol. 3, No. 1, 2013 Edition

s many of you know, there’s nothing like a trip to recharge your spiritual batteries. Getting away from the routine provides much-needed perspective and a fresh way of looking at things. Just creating some distance from the everyday whirl can be a welcome antidote to the burdens of 21st century life. Traveling with like-minded folks, those who share your faith, only enhances the travel experience, whether it’s a weekend retreat or a week-long cruise.

Whether your church has an active travel program or is merely contemplating the formation of a travel ministry, we hope youʼll find inspiration in these pages Church group trips blend the excitement of exploring new destinations with the chance to bond with fellow congregation members in a more casual setting and meet new people as well. This third annual edition of Religious Travel Planning Guide abounds with new content, addressing divergent elements of the faith travel picture. Our aim is to provide practical tips and insights for anyone involved in planning and marketing a trip for church members. The article “Planning a Youth Mission Trip,” for example, looks at opportunities in locations around the world and partnering with organizations that specialize 6

Religious Travel Planning Guide

in mission projects. Another piece focuses on working with professional tour operators to organize and market your trips. Rachel Gilmore, author of The Complete Leader’s Guide to Christian Retreats, lends her expertise on how to set up a successful retreat. As for nitty-gritty logistics, you’ll find guidelines on chartering a bus and setting up a time frame for putting together all the pieces of the trip-planning puzzle. All this adds up to our most well-rounded issue ever. Besides the annual print publication, we also have online resources for planning and marketing your group trip. ReligiousTravelDirectory.com is the premier research tool for the faith travel market. Our monthly e-newsletter, InSite on Religious Travel, offers plenty of ideas as well. Whether your church has an active travel program or is merely contemplating the formation of a travel ministry, we hope you’ll find inspiration in these pages. Please consider passing along this copy of the 2013 Religious Travel Planning Guide to colleagues who might find it helpful. Or let them know they can download it for free. We wish you the best in creating meaningful travel programs that will excite, inspire and make a lasting impact on your community of faith.

Editorial Office 621 Plainfield Road, Suite 406 Willowbrook, IL 60527 P 630.794.0696 • F 630.794.0652 info@ptmgroups.com

Publisher – Jeffrey Gayduk jeff@ptmgroups.com

Managing Editor – Randy Mink randy@ptmgroups.com

Contributing Writers Cindi Brodhecker Rachel Gilmore Vanessa Day Daniel Morrill

Director, Design & Production – Robert Wyszkowski rob@ptmgroups.com

Advertising Sales Office Phone: 630.794.0696 advertising@ptmgroups.com www.ptmgroups.com

The publisher accepts unsolicited editorial matter, as well as advertising, but assumes no responsibility for statements made by advertisers or contributors. Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information published, but the publisher makes no warranty that listings are free of error. The publisher is not responsible for the return of unsolicited photos or manuscripts. Religious Travel Planning Guide is published annually by Premier Tourism Marketing, Inc., 621 Plainfield Rd., Suite 406, Willowbrook, IL 60527. Postage paid at Willowbrook, IL and Lebanon Junction, KY. The magazine is distributed free to religious group travel organizers and travel suppliers catering to the market. Single copies for all others is $9.95.

Send Address Change to: Premier Tourism Marketing, Inc. P.O. Box 609, Palos Heights, IL 60463

Happy traveling,

A Randy Mink Managing Editor

publication

Your Guide to Planning a Mission Trip By Daniel Morrill

aybe you are one of the many Christians who look back on a high school mission trip as a turning point in your life. Perhaps it gave you a global perspective, made you appreciate what you had, recharged your spiritual life or sparked a passion for service. While serving and evangelizing are at the heart of all missions, short-term trips inevitably have a great effect on those who go on them.

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Opportunities for young Americans include working with needy children in Liberia, West Africa.

“The sad truth is that students don’t always connect with Christ while they are at church growing up,” said Nick Cocalis, director of Next Step Ministries, an organization that arranges oneweek mission trips for junior high and high school groups. “But when you get out in the mission field and you are serving and looking outward for things to do, those are the times you are acting most like Christ, when you are most around what God is up to.” Is your youth group growing stale, bored or disunified? Are members too hung up on material possessions? Or do they simply have a desire to go out and put their faith to work? If so, putting together a short-term mission trip is something to pray about. 8

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Timing Planning a mission trip can be a daunting task, so make sure to give yourself plenty of time to pull everything together. If you are planning your first trip, don’t set the date any sooner than a full year away. Not only will this allow you to deal with planning components one at a time, families will appreciate knowing far in advance when their son or daughter will be off in the mission field.

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Establishing a Partnership

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Before you decide on where you are going, you’ll need to find someone to partner with. In today’s mission field, it is essential to connect with an organization, missionary or church in the area you wish to serve. This goes for both domestic and overseas trips. You need to work with someone who knows the community, language, culture and what to do in an emergency. “Always connect with a parent organization that can keep you in the loop and keep you safe,” said Dr. Sandy Friesen, coordinator of service opportunities and intercultural studies at Evangel University, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the effect of short-term missions. “You need to have a contact on the ground.” Partnerships do more than just ensure your group’s safety. If you really want to make a difference in an area, you need to work with someone who has a long-term missions plan in place. “It’s not a one-week handout that these communities need,” Cocalis said. “They need long-term investment and they need people building up their leaders and who will be there after you are gone. A one-week missions trip is not going to save a community. But if you can get involved with an organization that can take your one week and put it in a plan and a process of being there week after week and year after year, then you can really see the fruit of your labor.” Does your church support any missionaries? Do you have a sister church in an urban area? Do you know of an organization that might fit your needs? These are all logical places to start looking for a partnership. If nothing immediately jumps to mind, start searching online for an organization to work with. There are dozens that run youth mission trips year-round. “The number one thing is partnering with someone who is actually in the community that you serve,” Cocalis said. “Someone who understands the needs and the resources that the community has and someone who is there for the long haul.” Working with an organization can also make things much easier for first-time trip planners. These organizations can take care of all the logistics for you, while you will most likely have to arrange travel, housing and insurance on your own if working with missionaries or a local church. “For some reason we love to do the stuff that no one wants to do,” Cocalis said. “We’ll take the nuts and bolts and the little stuff on so the trip leaders don’t have to worry about it. They can just lead their students.” Religious Travel Planning Guide

Debenport

Feeding the hungry in the inner city and building houses in underdeveloped nations are ways that young people can serve the less fortunate.

Choosing a Location and Deciding What to Do If you choose to work with a missionary or sister church, your location may already be in place. If you are working with an organization, it most likely has a bevy of domestic and overseas trips to choose from. Make sure to keep your group in mind—what they would be interested in doing and where they might like to go— when choosing a location. “So often we think of the missions experience as one week, but I feel that if you focus on that one week, you miss out on 51 weeks of excitement leading up to the trip and commitment afterwards,” Cocalis said. “Find a place that your students are excited about going to, so they can start spreading the word and spreading their faith six months before the trip.” Domestic Trips. More and more groups are choosing to do their mission trips within the U.S., both because of lower travel costs and the fact that our country has plenty of places in need of service. Mission opportunities include helping in homeless ministries, assisting immigrants, doing community outreach, teaching English and practicing street evangelism. In addition, due to the recent destructiveness of nature on U.S. soil, many groups have jumped at the chance to work in disaster relief. “Students are becoming more in tune with the needs around them, and they want to be involved in causes and the things that are being talked about,” Cocalis said. “We’ve seen incredible popularity in our trips to New York after Hurricane Sandy, to Haiti after the earthquake and to Joplin, Missouri after the tornadoes. Those have quickly trended to be our most popular trips.” Latin America and the Caribbean. If your students have taken Spanish classes in school, they may be excited to use the language on a trip to Mexico, the Caribbean or Central or South America. Trips to these locations can be eye-openers for students who thought of these places as merely beach resorts. Extreme poverty plagues many of these “idyllic” locations, and groups can take part in community development, hunger ministries, orphanage outreach, medical missions, church planting and evangelism. Africa. When it comes to mission work, Africa is often the place most people think, and for good reason. Poverty, hunger and disease make everyday life a struggle for many rural Africans. The 10

Religious Travel Planning Guide

opportunity to teach the gospel to unreached groups is also a major draw for youth missions. Trips to Africa often include evangelism, church planting, children’s ministries, medical missions, teaching English, technology training, and homeless and hunger ministries. Europe and Russia. While poverty is less prevalent in most parts of Europe and Russia, there is still a great need for mission groups. Church planting and evangelism are common activities, and you will still be able to find construction projects or medical missions in these areas. Orphanages, children’s ministries, teaching and refugee relief opportunities are available as well. Asia. While people often think of Asia as restricting entry to Christian mission teams, there are actually plenty of opportunities to do work in countries like China, Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand and India. Most of these destinations will welcome any group coming to teach English, and while you’re there you can take part in church planting, community development, medical missions or children’s ministries.

Leading up to the Trip Once you’ve decided upon a certain trip, begin the process of pulling everything together as soon as possible. Most organizations will handle booking flights, housing, meals and travel insurance, but if you are responsible for these components you will want to have them figured out well in advance. Fundraising. Inevitably you are going to have to do some fundraising to pay for your mission trip. If you choose to set a flat fee that each group member must pay for the trip, some parents will pick up their student’s tab, but you’ll need to assist others in raising money. Writing letters asking for support is the traditional and most effective way of garnering funds. Still, not every student’s family and friends will be able to contribute as much as the next, so get creative. Many organizations will give you a packet of fundraising ideas, with everything from a typical bake sale to selling bobble heads of your senior pastor. Make announcements during church asking for donations and have students share with the congregation why they are going on the trip. Run a car wash or sell spaces in your church parking lot during a local event. The opportunities religioustraveldirectory.com

are endless, so find one or two fundraising techniques that will meet the needs of your church and local community. Training. No matter where you are going, you will need to have your group go through several cultural, language and safety training sessions before departure. Talk to your parent organization or the missionaries on site to figure out what you should tell your group to expect and be ready for. “Always do safety and security training so that students understand everything from pickpocketing to keeping your passport safe,” Friesen said. “Always train students on cultural implications—what women making eye contact means, what clothes to wear and what phrases not to say.”

On The Trip Enjoy your mission trip. Have fun, serve the community you are in and let God do what he wants through your group. You may find that the people you came to serve will teach you something. “They might not have the most money in the world or the most material goods, but maybe because they lack material goods they have such a heart and such a passion for Christ,” Cocalis said. “Some are so tuned in to who God is and what he means to their life that when we are serving them, we are really being served relationally and spiritually.” Don’t let your service be an excuse not to take advantage of op-

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portunities for spiritual growth. Debrief with your group each night, do worship and give a message or devotion. Find fun ways to bring your group together and build camaraderie. Consider using “prayer partners.” Give everyone a name of someone on the trip to secretly pray for and give gifts and encouraging notes to them.

The Afterglow Most people on a mission trip come away with a “spiritual high.” Serving and being a part of what God is doing in other parts of the world will have your students eager to live out what they learned when they get home. Unfortunately, this zeal often wears off once your group gets back into its everyday routine. But there are things you can do to keep your group on-track and energized. Schedule get-togethers often to keep the trip in everyone’s mind. Discuss what was learned, how you are incorporating it into everyday life and continue to foster relationships established on the trip. Encourage group members to connect with people from your parent organization on social media, or even with people in the community you served. You never know what your youth mission trip could spark in one of your group members. “The short-term trip has almost become the new church camp, where students go on a trip with their youth group and want to stay longer than just 10 days,” Friesen said. “These short-term trips are the building blocks of long-term missionaries.” U

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Religious Travel Planning Guide