There’s a generation of leaders rising up at Grace Evangelical Church in Morton, Illinois, and they have a heart for missions. It’s all part of an intentional effort to help young people embrace the church’s mission focus, and it’s working. Some young adults who grew up at Grace have taken a semester or yearlong break from university studies to serve in missions overseas. Others are considering lifelong mission work, while still others have new eyes to support global missions prayerfully and financially, both now and after college.

Each of these young adults has been exposed early and often to a new way of looking at the world and God’s work in it, not only through Sunday school and Bible study, but also through a wide variety of hands-on mission experiences and evangelism training. Beginning in junior high, Grace youth can participate in a “See the City” one-day event, where they travel to a new place and learn to experience it through the eyes of Christ. Then it’s on to “Seven Cities in Seven Days,” where they see God at work in different ways in different places.

In high school, the training expands to hands-on evangelism through camp counseling experiences, Dare2Share events, and mission conferences, culminating in an overseas missions trip during the junior or senior year. Tim Bertsche, pastor of missions and people care, explains the church’s focus on missions with its young people. “We want to help kids see the world outside of themselves and build a Biblical foundation for missions, not just in the head but in the heart.” To learn more, visit gracemorton.org.