Beach mission has become a summer holiday tradition for Joel Atwood, 21. He has led junior teen teams on Scripture Union Family Missions at Hallidays Point and Harrington for the past four years and is now preparing for a year's short-term mission in Vanuatu.

He answers our questions about his insights into the joys and challenges of beach mission.

What has kept you coming back to beach mission each year?

You get to have a heap of fun, surf lots, and most importantly have a captive audience for the gospel!

How has beach mission developed you as a Christian, and your understanding of mission in general?

Beach mission forces you to wrestle with the essentials of the gospel - when you’ve only got a single conversation, or at most, ten or so days to hold out God’s Word, you want to make sure you get the important bits out first! It teaches you to seize every opportunity to meet, strike up friendships with, and preach the Word to anyone and everyone. And it taught me to pray - to pray earnestly, at great length, and at times in great desperation.

With regard to my understanding of mission in general, I think it has contributed to my grasping the goal of all mission. It is not to have fun, because it isn’t always fun; it is not to show off, because you will always be humbled; it isn’t to win, because we often don’t see our victories; it is to bring glory to God’s name: in our triumphs and our defeats, our joys and our frustrations, through rain and sun to sing His praises and proclaim Him who calls us from death to life! (" did I get a bit carried away there?)

Is beach mission a worthwhile mission strategy? If so why?

I think mission is still worthwhile, but holds a different role than, say, 30 years ago when my Dad went. It is not and cannot be the sole focus of our outreach efforts for the year as it is in some churches. But that said, thousands of people still set up in camp sites and caravan parks over summer - and importantly they tend to be the people who we see least in our churches, the people we need to reach out to rather than expect to come to us.

What are the positives of mission in this context?

I think I answered some of this above…the working class that we reach on mission we struggle with in most of our churches because we do not reach out on their level, in their environment, within their culture. But at beach mission we are allowed into their world, their culture, and once the relationships there are built we discover just how much they are longing for Jesus.

Were there any particular things in the SUFM structure that you found particularly effective, for example visitation?

The most effective parts of the structure of mission (at least our mission) are those that put you in situations that are relationally ‘deep’  enough (you get past pleasantries down to how they think and their real opinions) and temporally long enough to clearly and boldly preach the gospel. This varies from year to year and team to team - at times it is the late night conversations with the teens, or the breaks between sets while surfing, but for us this year, visitation and cook’s night off (where team members are encouraged to organise to have dinner with campers they have met during the week) need far more training, prayer, and effort than they currently get!

What gains have you seen for the gospel in your time doing beach missions?

I have personally seen three young men become Christians, many more be confronted with Christ…I’ve had forty-year old bikers cry on my shoulder, tipsy old men fall silent as they realise their own sin… not to mention the changes wrought in the lives of team members by their labour for the gospel.

What would you say are the drawbacks of beach mission as a mission strategy?

You’d never catch me saying this in the last few days of mission, but the weakness of mission is, it is far too short. Ten days is not a long time to build trust with Australians and follow-up is traditionally very poor so even those who are interested rarely get established in a local church or small group. That aside, another drawback is that beach mission is not treated enough like other missions…there is too little thought / training / praying through the cultural issues that are more akin to going short-term OS that running a kids’ club from your church hall. This leaves a lot of the team bewildered or exhausted, and the campers stand-offish or uncertain.

One issue that has come to the fore in this article is follow-up. Have you been able to keep in contact with many of the campers you have met?

Follow-up is a big issue! I still keep in touch with one of the boys I saw come to Christ on my second ever mission. However, despite my best and repeated efforts not many of the other teens I’ve gotten to know are very good at regular contact…and this year because of my slightly different role as team leader in my section I didn’t really get close to any of the teens.

Is follow-up necessary to the success of a mission - or would you see beach mission as more of a seed-planting exercise?

Follow-up is essential! Some of these kids we’ll never see in a park again, and if we are serious about seeing them come to Christ we need to be prepared to go way out of our way to keep friendships going with them.

What have been the main challenges/difficulties you have faced on beach mission?

Two I can think of: first the lack of teens in the park! For the first half of mission, the more outgoing members of our section spent our days and nights roaming the skate park, beach and caravan park just trying to connect with the teens that were around. We met quite a few but they were very flighty and not keen on talking about God very much. The next challenge came in the second half, where I found myself doing less ‘frontline’ work with the teens than I’m used to and a lot more training and leading of the team members in my section.

Does beach mission run the risk of being fun activities without gospel impact? Why or why not?

With any outreach program there’s the risk of getting so wrapped up in the activities we run that we forget to mention the little thing called the gospel. It’s even easier to get so caught up in the structure you’ve prepared that flexibility and adaptability go out the window in preference to doing what you’ve organised - again and again we need to refocus on why we are there and what we can do to achieve that at any cost to ourselves.