For students wanting to spend a summer living among an unreached people group, grab your backpack, Chris Townson said — this is your invite.
And it’s right here in the United States.
“The world is coming to our doorstep, and many people don’t even realize it,” he said. “Many who move here are refugees from hard-to-reach countries, and most of them have never even been introduced to Jesus Christ. They’re hungry for freedom and they’re hungry for the Word.”
And students are meeting them with the gospel through Project 52, an organization that links students with unreached people groups living in the United States.
Last summer, Project 52 teams worked among people from more than 60 countries living in Nashville. Those teams saw people come to Christ and Bible studies started in multiple homes, said Townson, coordinator of Project 52.
“This is not their home, and they are looking for help and freedom here,” he said.
Teams of students ages 16–29 met refugees at the airport, took them to Wal-Mart and showed them how to use a stove instead of cooking in the middle of the floor. They did outreach events from block parties to soccer clinics.
This coming summer, teams will expand to Atlanta; New York; Winston-Salem, N.C.; Baton Rouge, La.; and possibly Indianapolis.
“Some of our students will reach people that could never be reached otherwise, and then they may eventually take the gospel back to their country into places we can’t be,” Townson said. “Our goal is to change North America but also to see these groups go back to Burma, Nepal, wherever, with the freedom found in Christ. We will see that difference in eternity.”
At the start of the summer, students spend five to eight days in orientation at Nazareth Baptist Church, Rainsville, training specifically for their city and work.
“Students are trained extensively during orientation in evangelism, team building, interpersonal communication, culture, religion and more,” Townson said. “The bar is raised really high so the students will be for the most part prepared to serve when they arrive on the mission site.”
Students are approved through the North American Mission Board and International Mission Board student departments. The teams are linked with churches and/or North American missionaries to help with local strategies for reaching unreached people groups in the cities where they serve.
“Churches send, students serve, churches and missionaries are helped, the gospel is shared, lives are changed,” Townson said.
And as they serve, students grow in their relationship with God, become a “world Christian” and take ownership in the Great Commission, he said.
It’s not a new concept — it’s something that’s seen fruit for years overseas, said Jess Jennings, who birthed the idea for Project 52 out of an organization called Nehemiah Teams in Asia.
“Since 2008, (my wife) Wendy and I had been praying about starting Nehemiah Teams in the States working among unreached people groups,” said Jennings, a Southern Baptist representative living in the Philippines who coordinates Nehemiah Teams worldwide.
At the same time, he had a conversation with a state-level student leader back in the United States.
“She mentioned how low the numbers were for college students staying in America to do summer missions. I asked her if maybe the reason was because many of the positions being offered were not seen as strategic. She thought that was part of the problem,” Jennings said.
So he and his wife prayed. And when they met with Townson and his wife, Melissa, they felt the Townsons would be great coordinators for Nehemiah Teams in the United States.
“Project 52 is Nehemiah Teams in North America. It is not a new ministry, but it is an expansion of what was already being done overseas,” Jennings said. “The students have the same goal, use the same discipleship materials and attend the same orientation.”
He met Townson at Nazareth Baptist, where Townson served as director of youth ministries for nine years and recently felt the call to mobilize students full time to work with internationals.
“The more we worked with Jess and Wendy and the more we helped students prepare to serve in sacrificial ways, our hearts melted not only for the opportunity to serve but it began to melt for the people our students would reach with the gospel,” Townson said. “We were hooked, sold, whatever you want to call it, but we knew we were to be helping students finish the Great Commission.”
He encourages students to sacrifice and offer their whole summer to God — to accept God’s best for them.
“A good thing becomes a bad thing when it’s not the best thing,” Townson said. “There are many good things that students can participate in. We challenge them to move past good and do something great, for them to hear from Him and find their place in finishing the Great Commission. We want to help them do that.”
For more information, visit www.nehemiahteams.com/Where/whereamerican.html and click on the link for North America.
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