By Adam McLane The United States Military has a motto, "Leave no man behind," on the battlefield.   In almost every youth ministry interview I have been asked some variant of the question, "What would you do if you discovered that you've left a student at a location?" As a youth worker who loves taking students on road trips, this is a very practical question and it speaks to the very heart of youth ministry road trips. At the end of the day, each child that you take on a trip needs to return on that trip. Every child matters! Especially to their parents.
 

1. We always travel together. On multiple vehicle trips, I always have the group travel together. This seems exceedingly simple but I am surprised to discover that not all youth ministries do this. When we stop for gas, we all stop together and we all leave together. When we leave an event, we don't leave the main location until I've checked every name off the list physically. This means that no matter how large the group, my eyes have made visual contact with every person we've brought. And I won't give the "all clear" to leave the main event location until I have accounted for every student.
2. Never allow students to change vehicles. When I first started doing road trips I thought it would be fun to have a constant shuffling of students in vehicles. From a group dynamics perspective this made some sense but it was terribly hard to keep track of people. So we simply don't allow, no matter how much whining or reasoning, a student to move vehicles on a trip. They can change seats in a vehicle but the vehicle we leave the church in is their vehicle for the trip. This makes it simple for each driver to do a count at each stop before they leave. So my job is to walk around to each vehicle and make sure each driver has everyone. When all the drivers have everyone, we depart.
3. We talk about it all the time. "Nine out of ten, that's an 'A' in my book." I have intentionally ingrained a joke into the youth group for the sake of keeping our desire to bring everyone home that we left with. This is a fun way to keep the discussion on everyone's mind and much less annoying than the trips mantra being "Do we have everyone?" On every road trip I start off by telling everyone how many people are on the trip and then introduce the joke. "Today we are going to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. We're leaving the park at 6:00 PM and it's your responsibility to be at the meet-up location so you don't get left behind. Today there are 36 of you and one of me. In my book 36 out of 37 is 97%. (Pause) And that's an A in my book. Good enough for me." It always gets a laugh and it always keeps the thought in everyone's mind that they don't want to get left behind.