Reaching a World in Need through Lighthouse Service Trips

Lighthouse trips go far beyond the academics of regular study abroad experiences. The J-term Lighthouse program enables students to gain unforgettable, life-changing experiences while learning and serving abroad.

Our students study the cultural, historical, social, and religious aspects of a host country and are equipped to carry out ministry among the local people. They gain experience in cross-cultural outreach, develop their leadership potential, seek justice, grow spiritually, and put their passion for God into action.

And while each Lighthouse service trip is different, from evangelizing in the streets to helping build houses, every team’s goals are the same. We want to enter other cultures as humble servant-leaders, embody the core values in the Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Missions, serve as lights of God’s love and compassion, and become beacons of deeper faith and understanding others who serve in these communities.

Humble Servant-Leaders

  • Lighthouse Service Trips

Support

Without outside support from Taylor University friends, family, and alumni, Lighthouse trips wouldn’t be possible. The support you provide through praying and giving can go beyond the boundaries of the discipleship we pursue through our trips. If you feel led to support Lighthouse missions financially, you can donate to the Lighthouse program online.

Focus: Work with children whose parent(s) are under economic stress
Ministry Partner: Footsteps Missions

  • Assist in the classroom
  • Help different groups with ongoing construction projects
  • Community outreach within Santa Barbara
Support Honduras Team

Focus: Engineering for Missions (Check out what the team did last year!)

Goals for this trip:

  • Renovate flooding and condemned classrooms, divert flood water to useful location
  • Provide sanitary, safe wastewater treatment and add clean water collection tanks
  • Build clean, structurally safe restroom outhouses with flushable toilets for students and teachers. 
  • Provide whiteboards for improved learning

This trip is part of a long-term partnership with the local village and school to promote engineering and valuable trade skills while sponsoring Taylor Engineering students to work side-by-side with Bomet county engineers and the local community. 

Make a generational difference with us:

  • Introduce engineering to young Kenyan students with engineering lab experiences
  • Build a new four-classroom building that will equip the next generation for future learning
  • Support regular school attendance for teen girls by sponsoring feminine hygiene products. 

Focus: work with youth and children
Ministry Partner: Greater Europe Mission

  • Organize youth camps
  • Serve at the local church
  • Serve at the House of Hope community centers in the Albanian and Roma communities
Support Kosovo Team

Focus: building Christ-like relationships with host families
Ministry Partner: The Navigators SEA Tribes

  • Stay in remote islands
  • Engage in conversations and share your faith as you live with host families

 

Support Southeast Asia Team

Focus: Apologetics & Faith Sharing
Ministry Partner: Fellowship of Evangelical Churches

  • Take Contemporary Christian Belief class
  • Immerse in apologetics and the practice of persuasion 
  • Live in Basque country in Spain

 

Focus: work with children, youth, and college-age students
Ministry Partner: World Gospel Mission

  • Serve through community outreach projects
  • Be a part of the University discipleship movement

 

Support Uganda Team

We are also grateful for the long-term partnerships with our host families, host ministries, and organizations founded or run by Taylor graduates. Several partners have been to campus to share their stories personally with students in chapel and other venues, such as:

  • Love Justice International
  • Project Mercy
  • Greater Europe Mission (GEM)
  • Footsteps Missions
  • Immanuel Africa Gospel Church
  • Students International
  • Back2Back 

Locations

Approximately 80-100 Taylor students share in a diverse set of trips each year. Teams have served in Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Nepal, Czechia, Kosovo, Peru, Kenya, Uganda, Spain, Southeast Asia, and other locations.

Every day was filled with eye-opening experiences, new opportunities to serve, and increased growth among the people and within our team. Luke Rutan, Ethiopia Lighthouse Team

Academic Credit

Once you go through the application process and are accepted onto a team, you will be enrolled in a one-credit fall course, which helps prepare you—along with your faculty sponsors and fellow students—for your trip. Students receive three credits during J-term for the on-field service-learning course, which fulfills the general education cross-cultural requirement.

Interested in More About Lighthouse?

Standards in Excellence for Cross Cultural Service Logo

Read student stories from last J-term’s trips on the Lighthouse blog, check out our Taylor World Outreach Facebook page in January for trip updates, or follow Taylor World Outreach on Instagram.

If you have any questions or concerns about Lighthouse missions, please email lighthouse@taylor.edu.