Rick has 2 main jobs. For his first job, he travels to campuses across the U.S.A. for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, doing training and evangelism with an apologetics emphasis. From 2010-2012, he worked at 40 different campuses. His second job involves serving as the InterVarsity staff member at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where there has been an active InterVarsity group since 1941.
Rick received his call into missions in 1978 during a summer evangelism project with InterVarsity in Aspen, Colorado.
Rick was a student leader in InterVarsity at Southwest Minnesota State College in Marshall, Minnesota. When he graduated, it seemed only natural for him to come on staff with InterVarsity, and the Marshall Evangelical Free church became his first sending church.
Sharon Mattson - Wife
Thailand is a primarily Buddhist country with little access to the gospel. Out of the 71.8 million people in Thailand, 71 million are not Christ-Followers. Yes, you read that right, 99.4% of Thais are unreached. In our province of Chumphon, there are 732 villages and only 26 evangelical churches. With a population of over 550,000, only 1,200 (0.2%) in our province are Christians.
PAThs based out of Lomé, Togo represents 32 countries (29 African, and 3 Western) Three quarters of our students hold executive positions in their National Church in Africa. More to come!
Taiwan is predominantly a Buddhist and Taoist practicing country. 19% of the population is still unreached (roughly 4.5 million people), but only 3.3% are evangelical; leaving over 23 million people who have yet to accept the Gospel.
Their passion and heart is to reach the unreached peoples of their region, planting multiplying churches among them, and to show God’s love to the poor and needy in their city. Its their dream that as people in these communities encounter Jesus, their lives, their families and ultimately their community would be radically transformed. That dream is starting to become reality and they are excited to see it continue to unfold!
We have identified 14 strategic nations throughout Africa that will serve as hubs to train and sent teams to reach and disciple the universities of the surrounding nations. As the training Hub for campus ministry in Africa, we hope to have a viable disciple making movement on every major African university resulting in churches planted among Africa's most unreached. Our target nations are: Chad, South Sudan/Sudan, Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa, Angola, Gabon, DRC, Tanzania, Malawi.
River Valley 500. Our focus is equipping local Christian leaders (for Venture and with our local church) in hard to reach (tough) places in SE Asia with resources to help them share the Gospel, plant churches, and build the Kingdom of God.
Patrick and Kalyna live in Moldova where they currently minister to victims of human trafficking at a Freedom Home (safe house).
Chris and Lindsey Carter are missionaries in Japan. They are transitioning from the Philippines where they ministered for three years. Chris will be teaching at Central Bible College in Tokyo starting a Master of Divinity Program. Lindsey's involvment will be children’s ministry. Together they will participate in church planting and evangelism.
Jamie and Tasha Kemp are passionately engaged with Unreached People Groups (UPGs), working to establish a Christian presence in the unreached areas of Indonesia. The Kemps’ main focus is campus ministry- reaching Muslim University students. Jamie also trains churches on how to start local youth ministries.
Cape Town, with a population is 4.5 million people, is known across the continent as the Mother City and is one of the most influential cities on the continent of Africa. With the average age being 29 years old, there is great potential to reaching many university students, young professionals, and families. Nestled behind Table Mountain is the University of Cape Town which is the premier university in all of Africa. Our goal is to launch a thriving Chi Alpha ministry in this influential university of almost 30,000 students. Cape Town is also the Parliamentary capital of South Africa and boasts other major industries like manufacturing, tourism, oil and gas, agriculture, marketing and media in addition to Information Technology an
4% of Generation Z in America have a biblical worldview. 96% of people who make decisions to follow Christ do so prior to their 30th birthday. In MN: there are 425,000 college students and 1.2 million young adults. In USA: there are 18.6 million college students and 21.56 million young adults.
While the Dominican Republic is not in a crisis situation like Haiti there has been an influx of hundreds of thousands of Haitian refugees including many children. The majority of these Haitians live in extreme poverty and are unable to utilize/access the DR medical facilities, schools or assistance programs due to their immigration status. We have partnered with 14 Haitian churches/Schools to implement the Sport Disciple programming into their curriculum.