Global Expeditions Celebrates 25 Years of Teen Missions

This summer, Teen Mania Ministries is celebrating 25 years of sending teenagers around the globe as summer missionaries as part of ministry’s Global Expeditions.

Teen Mania pinpoints the reason Global Expeditions has continued to successfully reach the lost and serve the hurting abroad. That theme is found in Romans 5:5 “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

“Love is what drives us,” says ministry founder and president Ron Luce. “It’s not a love we have generated on our own, either. It’s the pouring out of God’s love, through the Holy Spirit, into our hearts so that our love would grow and grow for the lost and hurting people of this world.”

Since its founding in 1987, Global Expeditions has sent more than 70,000 teens and young adults to more than 69 countries around the globe spreading the Good News of Christ and God’s love with the people they encounter.

“Our focus is to share the love of Christ, so even though we have lots of opportunities for practical work and service on our short-term mission trips, every teenager is taught how and given a chance to actually share their faith,” Luce says.

These missionaries have made their mark on eternity with more than 1 million reported decisions for Christ.

“I can tell you story after story of how God has used teenagers over the past 25 years, filling their hearts with his love, and watching that love pour out over the nations. One young man, a 15-year-old on our team in Guatemala on one of our first GE trips, wanted so badly to preach,” Luce recalls.

“One day, he took the microphone, and he told the gathered crowd, through the translator, ‘I came all the way down here to let you know that God loves you, and that we love you. We came all the way here and raised all this money to let you know God loves you and we love you, too.’ He repeated it over and over, and then he began to weep. We looked around and saw that many of the people there were weeping, too. You see, love is the thing that can get translated, even if you don’t know the language.”

This summer, Global Expeditions will be sending more than 2,000 young missionaries to 33 nations on six continents to share the good news of God’s love and to meet the needs of the poor and suffering in each place.