About Us

Overview

Next Step Ministries is a 501c3 non-profit organization committed to helping students grow closer to Christ through a life-changing, one-week mission trip. Students work on challenging construction projects in communities that desperately need help. These projects are part of a larger Next Step Cause that focuses on producing real, long-term change in these communities. We work on these projects week after week, year after year, so students know they’re part of a real change.

Students are immersed into the culture and life of a community, meeting people who help them see God from a totally new perspective. Their faith will be confronted, and their eyes will be opened as they watch God move in these new and unfamiliar environments.

Powerful messages and electric worship encourage students to dig deeper and take the next step in their faith. In the process, they create unforgettable memories and friendships while worshiping and growing together in God’s name.

Students return home with the tools and desire to implement the same amazing changes in their own community that they saw on their trip.

History

During the summer of 2002, two young college students and their passionate youth pastor decided to take a group of students overseas for a week-long mission trip. It was here, behind the fancy hotels and sandy white beaches, that we discovered a hidden world of extreme poverty and fleeting hope. We saw barefoot children abandoned on dirt roads left begging for food; elderly left to die in small, rusting tin shacks; communities falling apart while no one watched.

We returned home with heavy hearts, but at the same time, we were truly inspired by what we saw in our students. Something had changed in them. Over the course of one challenging week filled with sweat and tears, forty individuals learned how to work together as one, and in the process, began to learn what it really meant to live for Jesus Christ. They returned to their families and friends with a new-found enthusiasm for Jesus Christ, excited to live life differently.

Six years and many mission trips later, we have had the privilege of watching hundreds of students grow in their relationship with Christ while binding together as one to accomplish seemingly impossible challenges. Yet with every trip we run, with every family and community we help, the more it becomes clear to us that we need to do more.

God has called us, and in response, we have created Next Step Ministries.