Rachel Brentner, a Lawrenceville, Va., kindergarten teacher, developed a passion for Belize and the people of that Central American nation on two mission trips with the Baptist Student Union at Pennsylvania State University.
When she looked for a connecting organization to help her return there to minister, she found it among Virginia Baptists — and their new Venturers Program.
Brentner and four other individuals — Amy Douglas, Megan Redd, Shelly Webb and Paul Williams — will be the first commissioned Venturers, which assists individuals to serve in hands-on mission roles in the United States and around the world for a period of six months to two years.
“I'd already decided Belize was where I was called to minister,” said Brentner, who graduated from Penn State in 2005. “The Venturer Program worked with me and with Virginia Baptists' partners to make it happen.”
“We think Venturers will greatly expand missions opportunities for Virginia Baptists and others,” said Terry Raines, the Virginia Baptist Mission Board staffer who is coordinator for the Venturer Program.
Brentner is the only one of the first Venturers class to serve on an international field. The other four will be involved in campus ministry — three of them in conjunction with Virginia Baptists' Impact Northeast partnership.
Williams, a Harrisonburg native and 2004 graduate of the College of William and Mary, will work with Daphne Almarode, Baptist campus minister at James Madison University.
Williams, a member of West Side Baptist Church in Harrisonburg, has spent the last year volunteering with Almarode at JMU.
“Venturers will give me freedom to have time to be available to minister to people on campus,” he said.
Douglas, a Dallas native and 1995 graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas,, has been Baptist campus minister at Harvard University for the past three years and will continue that role with Venturer's support.
Douglas, who also works with a church start in Cambridge, Mass., is part of the Baptist Convention of New England's collegiate ministries staff.
A graduate of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, she has been a journeyman in Canada with the SBC's International Mission Board.
“This assignment will give us an opportunity to reach the future leaders of our nation and the world,” said Douglas.
Megan Redd of Chatham, Va., will minister at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.
“I'm excited to have the time to invest in people's lives and to encourage them in their relationship with the Lord,” said Redd, a May graduate of Virginia Tech. Redd's father, Mark Redd, is pastor of Greenwood Baptist Church in Axton. Webb, a Red Oak, Texas, native, will serve at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been since February.
A 1994 graduate of East Texas State University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Webb is a former campus minister at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and in Kilgore, Texas. She has been a journeyman in Japan through the IMB.
“I'm thankful for Virginia Baptists' vision to support ministry in a difficult but strategic location,” she said.
Venturers was launched last year with the support of the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and Woman's Missionary Union of Virginia. An advisory group comprised of VBMB and WMUV representatives selects candidates, who must be at least 18 years of age and meet a set of spiritual and health criteria.
Venturer funds basic living needs and, in some cases, a modest stipend.
The Venturer Program is part of Virginia Baptists' Mobile Mission Connection, which also includes Ambassadors, who serve long term assignments; Servants,who serve from one week to six months; and Responders, who have specific skills and are on call to serve in a particular role as needed.
“It's appropriate that the first class of Venturers includes candidates who will work with our Impact Northeast partnership,” said Raines.
Impact Northeast is a broadbased partnership started in 2000 which links Virginia Baptists with the state Baptist conventions of Pennsylvania/South Jersey, New York and New England.
“It is not an overstatement to say that a disproportionate number of the world's most influential institutions for higher education are located in the Northeast,” said Raines. “Despite the enormity of both need and opportunity for Christian ministry and witness these schools provide, Baptists of the Northeast are under-resourced to meet the challenge.
“Many of the staff members at the state conventions in the Northeast come from the North American Mission Board's semester missions program,” he continued. “However, it is difficult to sustain long-term ministries with such short-termed leadership. With the Venturer Program, Virginia Baptists are well-placed to help by assigning individuals with longer terms of service.”
While the first class of Venturers has a strong campus ministry component, Raines said subsquent classes will be involved in missions in a variety of settings, both at home and abroad. He also stressed that the Venturer Program is not just for recent college graduates. Recent retirees are also great prospects for service.
“I really like the flexibilty of this program,” said Laura McDaniel, WMUV's associate executive director, who is a member of the advisory group. “It can attract people just out of college up to post-retirement.”
Billy Hutchinson, pastor of Lawrenceville Baptist Church, also praised the program. It was Hutchinson, a member of the Mission Board's glocal missions and evangelism subcommittee, who introduced Venturer to Rachel Brentner, a member of his church.
“If you're a pastor or a mentor, it's a program you can plug people into and feel good about what you're plugging into,” he said.
For information about the Venturer Program, contact Raines at (804) 915-5000 or at [email protected].