We have been serving in Europe since 2007. We served as evangelists and began a city wide youth group in a city in the west of France. The last 8 years we served in Paris. Rich served as a youth pastor and elder in a growing multi-cultural church as well as a conference speaker. Rachel ran the children’s ministry and a team of 70 volunteers for the ministry. We are both speakers at a European Youth Conference called Teenstreet that brings together teenagers from over 20 different countries to be encouraged in their faith, discipled, and to worship together.

We are going to be serving in Birmingham England with a young church plant in a lower-income neighborhood. The church’s desire is that their church represents the multi-cultural community that they are in. We will be serving along side the original church planting family using our experience with the French church that welcomed people from over 35 nations every Sunday. Rich will be focusing on developing a youth group in the church and serving as Assistant Pastor of the church. Rachel will be focusing on women’s ministry to single mothers and we will both be focused on outreach and evangelism to the community responding to both spiritual and practical needs.

We are serving with United World Mission. Their goal is to equip leaders, establish churches, and engage in holistic ministry by partnering with the church globally. They have been a wonderful missions organization to serve with and have cared for our family in ways that goes above and beyond what we would have expected.  The missionaries that are serving in Europe feel like family as many of us have the same heart, have faced many of the same challenges, and have been able to mutually encourage one another in the field.

• Pray that our transition from France to the UK would be a smooth for our entire family.
• Pray that God would already prepare hearts in the neighborhood we will be serving to know Him in a personal way.
• Pray that God would inspire us to creatively share the gospel in ways people will understand clearly.
• Pray for the Teenstreet conference that it would continue to impact teens for Jesus Christ.

We have been serving on the mission field for over 21 years now.  Our passion for the nations began when Mel was leading short term trips with our youth. We knew we were called to equip and disciple the next generation of leaders and felt called to stateside ministry.  But on these trips, Mel and our youth were often serving in children’s ministries or working on building projects.  Mel began to develop a holy discontent as he saw a great need among the youth, yet didn’t see much ministry happening among high school students.  Until we heard about Josiah Venture.  Their vision and mission resonated with our hearts, as they sought to “equip young leaders in central and Eastern Europe to fulfill Christ’s commission through the local church.

Our target demographic is young people between the ages of 15-25 who live in the former Communist bloc.  We are located near our EU headquarters in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic. We moved to Czech in 1998 with three small children and are still here 21 years later.  We began as model makers, growing and developing a healthy thriving youth ministry in a local church.  This grew into a more national role as we led the evangelistic camp ministry for Czech, and then an international role as we led the evangelistic camp thrust for all of JV.  Then, 15 years ago, we moved into leadership of our organization as we shepherd and care for national leaders and teams.  

We serve in the leadership of Josiah Venture- a missionary team that serves in 14 central and eastern European countries.  Our prayer is to see a movement of God among the youth of central and Eastern Europe, that finds its home in the local church and transforms society.

Jon and Rachel spent 12+ years serving in Indonesia focusing on discipleship training of the local church and direct outreach to Unreached People Groups.  Through the use of chronological Bible stories in MP3 format on cell phones and other media, God has raised up believers from Muslim backgrounds and believers from Christian backgrounds who are better equipped to pass on the Good News and to nurture growth of local believers.  Jon grew up in Irian Jaya with Bible translator parents. He and his wife Rachel have 4 sons – Jadon, Brendan, Joshua, and Asher.

Jon and Rachel currently serve in the greater Chicagoland area training/coaching Disciple-makers and reaching out to students, families and groups from the regions of South Asia, Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.

We currently serve with Pioneers. Learn more about them by clicking the button below.