School of Divinity partners with North American Mission Board for summer internships at new churches

During last month’s Church Advancement Week at Liberty University, Yanni Tsamoutalidis, national church advancement coordinator for the John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, spoke in classes across campus, encouraging students from all academic programs to consider giving six to eight weeks of their upcoming summer to serve at a church plant through the North American Mission Board’s GenSend program.

As Liberty’s GenSend campus mobilizer, Tsamoutalidis disciples and trains the students throughout the school year in preparation for the summer internship in one of 29 cities where GenSend is partnering to plant new churches.

Close to 400 college students will join GenSend this summer, with a large number of them from Liberty.

“This really gives Liberty students the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, I might not be a ministry major, but I can use the gifts that God has given me to somehow serve in the local church and maybe (someday) even help plant a church,” Tsamoutalidis said.

GenSend students will be encouraged to make disciples as they evangelize door to door and help the church plant with community-related projects and assimilate new believers into the church. Each GenSend team will have four to six students.

“It’s a great way for us to get the minds and the hearts of students at Liberty to start looking at their vocation as a means to advancing the Kingdom of God,” Tsamoutalidis said.

During Church Advancement Week, GenSend National Director Steve Turner and other members of the organization accompanied Tsamoutalidis as they visited classrooms.

“We got a lot of commitments from students already, and some others are praying about it,” Tsamoutalidis said. “It was awesome to see students passionate about serving the church and just surrendering their vocation to God’s glory.”

Tsamoutalidis said students will choose where they want to serve.

“I want to give them a chance to go to a location where they have a passion for or may feel led to,” he said. “What’s really awesome is that it kind of gives students the freedom of making a big life decision.”

This big life decision, in some cases, leads to GenSend students eventually moving back to their host city.

“There are two goals to GenSend: to teach students to live on mission and to provide them with a potential location that they can relocate to after they graduate,” Tsamoutalidis said.

One of those students, first year Master of Divinity student Jaxson Rees, intends to travel to Los Angeles with GenSend this summer and said he feels well prepared for the trip.

“Liberty wants to set you up for the most success possible,” he said. “I really value that Liberty wants to teach us things that we probably either wouldn’t learn until we got there or maybe not until a few weeks in.”

While Tsamoutalidis is taking the lead with Liberty’s GenSend initiative, he said that he could not do it without support from the School of Divinity’s Center for Church Advancement and its director Dr. Chris Dowd, which is seeking to continue the vision of Liberty founder Dr. Jerry Falwell to plant thousands of churches throughout the nation.

“We really want the GenSend program to be an aid in reframing the focus of all Liberty students to surrender their vocations to the glory of God,” Tsamoutalidis said. “We really want to be a catalyst for Liberty students to start thinking that way.”