Urban mission trips can help needy people and transform suburban teenagers, but they can be counterproductive if they're not done right, urban missions organizer Noel Becchetti told a workshop at the National Youth Workers Convention last week.

The convention, which ends tomorrow at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, has drawn 3,000 Christian youth ministers. It is sponsored by Youth Specialties, an evangelical company whose influence has spread so widely that a Catholic Mass is among the worship options.

The organization fuses spiritual concern with social awareness. Among the more popular exhibits is a 3,000-square-foot mock-up of an African village, sponsored by the relief agency World Vision. Convention-goers use MP3 players to re-enact a day in the life of a real African whose life has been affected by AIDS.

Mr. Becchetti, president of the Center for Student Missions in El Cajon, Calif., which links church youth groups with organizations that need volunteers, began his two-day workshop with a field trip to The Pittsburgh Project on the North Side and Hosanna House in Wilkinsburg. Both achieved the difficult balance of using short-term volunteers in an effective year-round community ministry, he said.

For young volunteers "it's a real opportunity to experience loving your neighbor, the neighbor Jesus is talking about who is poor, hungry and needy," Mr. Becchetti said.

Brandon Sloterbeek, a youth minister at Lighthouse Community Church in Allendale, Mich., said the field trip gave him an idea of how to begin ministry in a Hispanic neighborhood near his church.

"At Hosanna House, they threw block parties and then asked the people at the parties what their needs were. They built Hosanna House based on those needs," he said.

Mr. Becchetti urged youth groups to partner with people who work year-round in an inner-city community, and to make sure that those people really need outside volunteers.

A big mistake is for the youth group to try to control the agenda of the mission trip, he said. A woman who runs a ministry for families of inmates in California's Folsom Prison regularly refuses food and clothing offered by well-meaning suburbanites. Her organization instead needs young people to talk and play with the children of inmates.

"What if she didn't have the backbone to say no [to the food and clothes]? Then she would have to spend time and money warehousing stuff she doesn't need, and the relationship stuff wouldn't be happening," Mr. Becchetti said.

His main theme was that relationships with people of the community are more important than tasks. If volunteers don't enjoy spending time with local people, and if they don't try to blend in and eat whatever the locals eat, the impression the people of the community are left with will be more negative than positive, he said.

He confessed that he had once offered to send volunteers to help an inner-city black congregation build a church. The pastor was too polite to tell him that would take good jobs away from local people.

Instead, the pastor asked for volunteers to talk with youths at a notorious housing project about Jesus. Somewhat to his surprise, Mr. Becchetti was able to recruit a white, suburban youth group.

"That is now one of the most powerful ministry things that we do, but we don't do anything. We just hang out with people," he said.

His white volunteers are accepted because it is known that they have the blessing of the local pastor. Without the pastor as a sponsor and mentor, it would be virtually impossible for outsiders to work in that neighborhood, he said.

He warned against caving in to expectations of the home church that participants in urban mission trips will return with quantifiable evidence of accomplishment. When Jesus said that entrance to the kingdom of God depends on caring for the poor and imprisoned, he didn't promise that it would end poverty or crime, Mr. Becchetti said.

But great things can come of caring, said participant April Blaine, of Riverside United Methodist Church in Columbus, Ohio. A few years ago, her confirmation class cooked, served and shared a free meal at an inner-city church. Afterward, one of her teenage girls was crying because, "They're going to be hungry again tomorrow."

Ms. Blaine challenged the girl to think about how to respond. Today, her church has an extensive partnership with the other church.

That meal "triggered a lot of the things that came afterward. They can't pretend that they don't know what's happening 10 minutes from their own church," she said.

One-day registration for the convention costs $100. See www.youthspecialties.com and www.csm.org. for more information.