Planning a Spring Break Trip for Your Church Youth Group

I have been in church leadership for over two decades and during that time I have either planned, helped plan, planned and participated in, or planned and directed, over three dozen Church Youth Group Trips. I will say right off the bat that planning for a Church Youth Group Trip that will take place during Spring Break is especially tricky. It will require more site evaluation time, more preparation/planning time, and more education time on acceptable trip behavior (for both directors and students). Then add even more education time on acceptable trip behavior (for directors and students). The levels of testosterone and estrogen that is immediately generated by students at the first hint of a spring break trip is nothing compared to those levels during the actual trip. Just for kicks, read those last two sentences over again and know that you have been duly warned, I mean notified. Please do not make the mistake of saying outloud, or even thinking to yourself how well behaved your Church Youth Group is. Go back and reread the words printed in bold and italicized. In no way am I trying to dissuade you from taking your youths on a trip, at Spring Break or any time. I am merely stating that you will find that trip behavior will be what is remembered most by you, your students, their parents, and anyone your group comes in contact with during your trip. A good key in maintaining the appropriate trip behavior is by having enough directors/parents and by having as much planned activity time as possible. Lack of oversight and too much free time lends itself to the dreaded phone call to parents as the result of a behavioral issue. The other phone calls you want to avoid are those that are made to the Pastor letting him know how rude your kids were or how badly they behaved in a public setting. Once again, I am merely putting the emphasis on trip behavior first because it can and will determine your desire to ever want to take that same group, or perhaps any group ever again, on another trip. So, if you will keep trip behavior in mind when selecting a site for your trip, especially if it is a Spring Break Trip, it will serve you well. For example, when planning a Church Youth Group Trip over Spring Break stay away from the obvious, the beaches. Even if you have the best youth leader in your group come up to you and say, "Pastor, we have been thinking about what you said about taking a Spring Break Trip to South Padre Island and how that is not the place for our youth to be hanging out. Well, we all feel that we could have an amazing testimony to those teens who are drunk and carrying on badly. So, maybe that is exactly where our group needs to be, so we can minister to those teens." DON'T FALL FOR IT! However sincere they may or may not be, DON'T FALL FOR IT! Testosterone, Estrogen, Desire and Temptation seem to always win out over, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, especially on the beach (No disrespect for the Gospels or your youth group intended).

When selecting your Spring Break site consider locations that have multiple sleeper bunking quarters, say 20 or 40 to a room, depending on your size group. Then they should have either separate floors for girls and boys or better yet, totally separate bunkhouses for girls. Bunkhouses should be your first question to the facility manager, or the first thing you look for on their brochure/website. There will probably be two sets of doors into the bunkhouse, one on each end. I would recommend that a director/parent be bunked at each end of the bunkhouse so that should anyone feel the need to venture away from their bunks after "lights out", they will have to go past one of your chaperons. This can be a key to you having an uneventful trip. Uneventful in terms of phone calls home or to your Pastor. It simply discourages good kids from doing bad things by eliminating the availability to yield to temptation. I would say that the majority of the mischief takes place after "lights out". The second most popular time to seek out trouble is during "free time". All free time should always be accompanied by an adult. If you allow them time to just hang out, there needs to be an adult in the hang out place. If you allow them to go on a hike during their free time, there needs to be an adult go on the hike with them. A controlled free time will be your best friend. Trust me when I say that, when it's all over and you have provided your Church Youth Group with plenty of planned fun activities, you, your selected site, your students, your parents, your pastor, and your congregation will be thankful for the controlled free time. Your kids do not set out to get into trouble, so helping them by giving them controlled fun and exciting planned activities and limiting their free time (always with supervision) is the answer.

Once you have selected the perfect site with great bunkhouse arrangements (good job on sourcing that out), make sure your activities fit your site selection. Do they have a gym for both rainy days and for indoor game or competition time? What kind of games etc., can be played on their site? I would suggest you have some of your student leaders of your youth group put out a survey as to what kind of stuff they would want to do. Make sure when you give them a survey it already contains some suggestions from both you and your student leaders. You will see that when you get the survey back that "free time" will be somewhere at the top of the list. They can have all the free time you feel they need as long as it is accompanied by an adult.

In summary, first and foremast make sure you have a sufficient number of chaperons. 1 to 6 students works well. Then make sure your site will adequately sleep/bunk your students in bunkhouses with multiple beds per room. You can find a site that will house both your girls and your boys in separate units and with the number of beds you need. Then make sure the activities you have planned can work at that site, or plan your activities around their accomodations, both indoors and outdoors. And by all means have supervised free time. I have experienced great Church Youth Group Trips during Spring Break but I learned the hard way. I would have loved to have had this article to prepare me mentally and physically for our trip.