You’re back from the mission trip and after all the shared stories and pictures and some intentional debrief, you soon slide back into the busyness of life.

The liminal experience of being outside of your comfort zone and growing tremendously during your trip is all but forgotten and the rich soil of community that was cultivated among the team members on the trip has quickly dried up due to the scorching demands of the day once you return.

As the days turn into months, you talk less and less to the team members that had become like family. When you do run into each other, an exchange of memories and smiles occurs, but deep down you long that God was still doing amazing things through each of you, “like God did on that trip.” Over time, you resign yourself to the lie that only on mission trips do amazing things happen and you, like many others, start living mission trip to mission trip. It doesn’t have to be like this. There’s more than just living mission trip to mission trip.

It can be difficult, a challenge at the very least, to reprioritize our approach to youth ministry away from attractional to missional.

At the risk of oversimplification, attractional youth ministries are largely focused on getting students in the door, and missional youth ministries are largely focused on sending students out the door. While some attractional mantras might echo, “If we could just get them in the door, we could convince them of who Jesus is and their need for Jesus in their lives.” But a missional mantra might be heard stated more like, “If we could just get them out the door with the passion for being and doing God’s work and accomplishing God’s mission, we could help them convince others of their need for Jesus.”

A few weeks ago four middle school girls came up to me and said they wanted to be baptized. We did some Bible study, talked about what baptism means, and came to the realiza- tion that what they were really signing up for was a lifetime commitment to Jesus. They still wanted to do it. Excellent.

One of them went rogue and got baptized with her parents the Sunday before the other three were immersed. But on the appointed weekend I found myself standing backstage in our church with the remaining three girls who were about to commit their lives to following Jesus.

Lately I feel like I’ve been driving a ticking time bomb.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I live with the constant, nagging feeling that I’m on the verge of something bad with my car. I have two hopes—that it won’t be today, and even better, that the check-engine light will turn off, and whatever it is lurking below the hood of my car will magically get better on its own.

But you’d think I’d know better. I once destroyed an engine by ignoring that little red light of doom. I kept hoping the problem would go away. Instead I ended up on the side of a road with a smoking, very dead car.

What's left of the human race continues to rage against the machines in Terminator Salvation (2 out of 4 stars).

But without Arnold front and center, the heavy-metal fracas is just not much fun. Christian Bale stars in this lackluster fourth installment in the Terminator series, but his Batman-Terminator crossover doesn't work. Things do explode well, and loudly. The machines are bigger, shinier and meaner than ever, and the world they inhabit is even more grim and bleak. But the dramatic elements flat-line; any kind of humanity is in short supply.