GenSend students wrap up summer mission service with an eye toward future ministry

3 min read
27 Aug 2024
By Brandon Elrod

BOSTON – Every summer, the North American Mission Board (NAMB) deploys college students throughout North America for an immersive experience on the mission field where they learn what it takes to live and share the gospel in daily life.

The 2024 season of GenSend Summer recently concluded as just over 350 short term missionaries served for six to eight weeks in 26 cities and neighborhoods that need a greater gospel presence. Together, the students reported having just shy of 4,500 gospel conversations.

During a GenSend Summer, college students find ways to reach out to the local community where they are staying for six to eight weeks. This event in Boston allowed GenSend students to connect with others in the area over pizza. (Photo by Alana J Photography)

“In Utah we saw two young ladies come to Christ from a Latter-Day Saints background. Of those students who served in that area, 72 percent of participants said they were likely to highly likely to return to live and serve in the city post college,” said Steve Turner who is transitioning to a new role at NAMB after leading GenSend Summer for 10 years. “Eight students are preparing to move back to Salt Lake City at the beginning of 2025 for their spring semester.”

GenSend Summer affords college students an opportunity to explore the call to the mission field, and the program is designed to encourage participants to consider whether God might be calling them to the field. Overall, more than 35 percent of participants expressed a certain degree of likelihood that they would move back to their place of service after college.

“We really do believe that GenSend is a farm system to help discover, develop and deploy diversly gifted men and women who are sent to engage cities with the Gospel, make disciples and help plant local churches,” said Jon Chasteen, who has served and led GenSend teams in Boston. As he follows Turner, Chasteen will lead GenSend Summer and be at point for NAMB in mobilizing the next generation.

In response to a survey, students shared some of the lessons they learned from serving through GenSend. One student said, “I learned that God is over and above everything, and we can trust Him with our lives.”

College students on a GenSend Summer missions experience live in a city or neighborhood for six to eight weeks and learn how to be “on mission” in that community by serving alongside new churches and missionaries who are engaging that city with the gospel. (Photo by Alana J Photography)

Another spoke about how cities often open the door to reach people from around the world. “God’s heart for the nations and people were so evident,” one participant said. GenSend “broadened my perspective and deepened my faith.”

GenSend participants connect with practitioners, those pastors and ministry leaders who are reaching their communities through church planting and compassion ministry. They receive training and coaching before going out and ministering as they live in the city.

“Our goal is to develop future church planters and church planting team members,” Chasteen said.

“As we move to GenSend 2.0 in 2025, we will continue to build upon the success of the current program,” Turner said, “strengthening our ties to church planting efforts and becoming even more focused on developing and deploying the next generation for the Kingdom of God.”

Chasteen says GenSend will continue to undergird NAMB’s goal of helping churches reach North America through evangelism, church planting and compassion ministry.

“A tagline that we’ll be dropping this year is, “’GenSend: More than a Summer,’” said Chasteen. “This captures the vision of GenSend to mobilize students to engage in church planting post-college. It’s really about seeing students reshape their lives around the mission of God and committing to living somewhere strategic for the glory of God.”