The Potter's School is committed to helping families achieve academic excellence in home education. Our consistent experience over many years is that academic success depends more on initiative, diligence, perseverance and other character traits than on ability. Godly character is instilled through discipleship within the family and the local church, and it is developed most effectively through integrating school with chores, work, ministry, outreach and other service into the all-encompassing process the Bible calls "labor".

Community service and outreach through the local church are foundational discipleship activities for youth and their families. While service and outreach should begin locally, they should not necessarily end there. There is considerable value in serving beyond the local community, especially as the local community becomes increasingly global.

Our service and outreach trips are unique in their emphasis. While most service trips provide valuable short-term assistance to people in need, we multiply short-term service to long-term benefit by "serving the servants". We take teams of teens and adults to various locations where family support is limited, and provide conferences that include worship (many families live in locations where they cannot worship as a group), devotions, family discipleship teaching and discussions, seminars for teens, kids' Bible programs, and much more. Serving in this manner addresses needs that otherwise often go unmet, strengthening these families to make them more effective in their long-term service.

We frequently hear two things from the families we serve in this manner. The first is that the greatest asset they have in their labor is their own family, since strong family relationships speak more of God's love and grace than mere words ever could. Therefore, anything that strengthens their family also furthers their work. The second is that our seemingly small efforts over time can make the difference between whether they stay where they are to continue serving or come home to meet family and education needs. Our service trips allow the teens and parents on the team to share their strength with families serving overseas, helping those families in their work for God's Kingdom.

While we are pleased to take unaccompanied teens on our trips, we also encourage parents and teens to travel and serve together, since co-laboring as a family makes the labor more effective while simultaneously strengthening the family (an important principle of God's economy that too many families miss!). Our service trips focus on supporting overseas families in education and family discipleship, but they also include spending time with these workers on the field to understand first-hand what they do and who they serve. Interacting with the local people and culture of the regions we visit gives the trip participants a better understanding of God's heart for the world and of the sacrifice involved in restoring that world to Him. Through all these experiences, our trips meet their foundational objective of integrating faith, family, service and education.

Our service and outreach trips vary in location and time from year to year. We announce trips as we commit to them, giving as much advance notice as we can. Family and unaccompanied teen participation is by application and invitation, and we make our selections with as much emphasis on building a strong team as on utilizing individual gifts and strengths. Family members that apply together are considered together unless they request otherwise. Participants raise their own funds, and funds provided to them through The Potter's School are tax deductible for their donors.

For more information about upcoming trips, please go to our Upcoming Trips page.