Thrive Training Inspires a Next Gen Missions Pipeline
“God brought me into ministry using statistics,” Zach Howell said. The statistic that changed everything for him? Hearing that around 70% of high school seniors leave the church after graduation. “It was heartbreaking.”
At the time, Howell was 17 and heavily involved in the student ministry at his church, Mt. Elon Baptist in Hartsville, South Carolina. "It was very interesting coming into ministry at that time. I didn't really know what I was doing,” he said. His calling was confirmed over time, “just being obedient, listening to God along the way, not always being perfect.”
That obedience led him to Ridge Church in Summerville, where he currently serves as the Next Gen Pastor. There, he felt the Lord stirring him to get the next generation involved in missions. “I've always wanted to do mission trips with our youth ministry and take them places, but I just needed to know how to do it.”
Thrive Equips Youth Leaders
While taking a group of students to SummerSalt, a camp for 7th-12th graders, Howell had the opportunity to attend a missions training for youth leaders, called “Thrive.” SummerSalt has always been about the students, but with so many student leaders in one place, Charlie Swain and his team saw an opportunity to invest in them, too.
Swain, Director of Next Generation Mobilization at SCBaptist, said, “With Thrive, we wanted to give student leaders free resources, free training, and an opportunity to get around each other to learn how iron sharpens iron.” The focus of the training in 2025 was on missions mobilization.
Howell knew he wanted to be part of Thrive. Hearing about it, Howell said, “I got my team together. We all went. And that's ultimately where God did a lot of speaking.” The impactful part for Howell was getting to work through practical questions with other leaders.
Through talking to one another and listening to what God was trying to tell us in that moment, we got to work together as a community of churches to strengthen one another and build one another up,” he said. And besides just cooperation, they walked away with action steps. “Every single leader in that Thrive training left with some sort of plan that they could implement that day.”
The Acts 1:8 Mandate
For Howell and Ridge Church, those action steps turned into a churchwide missions strategy. “When we got back from Thrive training, we hit the ground running,” he said. “We had started planning our annual vision for our church, and missions was at the forefront of our minds.”
He felt the Lord moving him toward what would become the “Acts 1:8 Mandate,” a missions pipeline strategy that starts from children’s ministry and involves the whole church. Beginning with a culture of education and engagement, the plan explains the need for missions and engages each demographic in age-appropriate outreach opportunities.
The plan starts with children's ministry — teaching kids to be missional right where they are through things like food drives and donation closets — and builds toward national and international mission trips by the time students reach high school and college.
“Missions has just become the very core of what we're doing,” Howell said, “and having the whole church become a part of it has made the Next Gen part so much easier.” The year already includes several trips, including New York City, Peru, and Boston.
A Missions Pipeline
For Howell, a plan like this is about creating a pipeline to missions, not just a program. "If all our ministry is based on is fun games, loud music, or fancy lights," he said, the mission gets lost. "If we're not training up the next generation to be missionaries, whether that's a foreign missionary or one right there in their backyard, then we're seeing the decline of the Gospel in our own churches, in our own ministries."
His vision for what that next generation could become is clear. "You're sitting in your ministries right now with the next generation of missionaries, the next generation of Janie Chapmans, the next generation of Annie Armstrongs," he said. "If you're not giving them opportunities to go and to serve, we're almost wasting our time."
The Janie Chapman Offering for State Missions funded the training that equipped Howell with a missions strategy. In his eyes, the next Janie Chapman might already be sitting in a youth group in South Carolina, growing a heart for the nations even now.