We get the emails and texts from parents every week. They read the headlines and they worry. War in the Middle East. Political chaos at home. Economic uncertainty everywhere you look. And then their 19-year-old tells them she wants to spend a year overseas serving in places most Americans could not find on a map.

I understand the fear. I have kids of my own. I have grandkids.

But here is what I want to say to every parent gripping the steering wheel a little too tight: the world has never been safe. Not once. Not in any century, on any continent, under any administration.

This side of eternity, it never will be. Jesus told us that plainly. "In this world you will have trouble." He did not stutter. He did not add an asterisk.

He said it, and then He said something far more important. "But take heart. I have overcome the world."

If we are waiting for the world to calm down before we send our kids into it, we will be waiting forever.

The Christ Who Sends

I have been doing this work for nearly 40 years. I have watched thousands of young people board planes with nothing but a backpack and a prayer.

And I have watched what God does when they land. He breaks them open. He rebuilds them from the inside out. He gives them eyes to see a world that is both desperately broken and achingly beautiful at the same time.

Jesus didn’t tell His followers to go to all the comfortable nations. He said all the nations.

That includes the ones that make your stomach turn when you read about them. The ones where the water is not clean and the government is not stable and the spiritual darkness is thick enough to feel on your skin. He didn't promise it would be easy. He promised He would be there.

And He is. I have seen it with my own eyes more times than I can count.

What I See in This Generation

People love to write off Gen Z. They call them anxious. Fragile. Addicted to their phones. And yes, some of that is true. But underneath all of it, I see something the critics may miss.

I see a generation that is soul-sick from comfort. They have had life handed to them and they know in their bones that it is not enough. They are starving for something worth giving their lives to.

That hunger isn’t a problem to be fixed. It is the Holy Spirit doing what He has always done. Stirring the waters. Making the comfortable uncomfortable. Calling people out of their small stories and into the great one.

I watch our World Race and Journey School participants land in places like Albania, Guatemala, Thailand. And within weeks something shifts. The anxiety that owned them back home starts to loosen its grip.

The loneliness that was eating them alive gets replaced by the kind of community that only forms when you are doing hard things together. They stop performing and start being real with each other and with God.

They did not need a better algorithm. They needed a bigger mission.

A Word to Parents

Maybe you are thinking about everything that could go wrong. You have played every scenario in your head at 2 AM.

But let me ask you a harder question. What happens if they stay?

What happens when a young person with fire in their chest sits in a cubicle for 40 years because nobody told them it was okay to go? What happens when the safest choice becomes the most dangerous one because it slowly kills something inside them that God put there on purpose?

The most loving thing you can do for your children is not to protect them from the world. It is to release them into the hands of the God who made them for it.

The fields are not getting less ripe. The need is not going away. There are villages and cities and entire people groups who have never once heard the name of Jesus spoken with love. That was true in the first century and it is true right now.

Go Anyway

The world is on fire. It has been on fire since Genesis 3. And into that fire, God has always sent His people. Not because it is safe, but because it matters.

I am watching a generation rise up that is willing to walk straight into the mess. They aren't waiting for permission. They aren't asking for guarantees. They want to go where the gospel has not gone and do the things that nobody else will do, and they want to do it together.

If your son or daughter comes to you and says they want to spend a year on the mission field, my counsel is to not try to talk them out of it. Instead, pray. Weep if you need to. And then lay your hands on their heads and send them.

The world will still be broken when they get back. But they will not be the same. And that changes everything.