Venture | By Jessica Beamond | Director, MDC Communications
They put their back tires in the Pacific Ocean, pointed their bikes toward New York City, and got their first flat tire before even leaving the parking lot.
In 2002, three North Central University students heard a missionary speak in chapel and felt compelled to respond. They were not experienced cyclists, but biking across the country to raise $17,000 for missions was an initiative that eventually became the beginning of what we know as Venture.
Today, Venture partners with local leaders in some of the world’s toughest places, areas marked by injustice (UNsafe), limited resources (UNresourced), and little access to the Gospel (Unreached). Venture focuses on responding to urgent physical needs like anti-trafficking, refugee care, and women’s health, while making disciples and helping to start new churches.
Executive Director Paul Hurckman notes, “We are committed to ‘Both’ – to fighting injustice and to proclaiming hope. We do not choose between evangelism and compassion – for us it is always both.” Rather than making itself the center of the solution, Venture partners with leaders who are already rooted in the communities they serve, balancing the compassion of Jesus and the message of the Gospel as they assist these communities.
Hurckman describes that approach as the “inseparable nature of the Gospel.”
For Hurckman, missions also means being “available for the interruption.” Sometimes interruption means a crisis overseas, like the recent flooding in Nepal. Other times, it is an unexpected idea, like Brent Silkey’s goal to run 30 miles on his 30th birthday and raise $30,000 to fight human trafficking. That idea grew into 30 for Freedom, a movement that has raised millions of dollars, though Speed the Light, for anti-trafficking efforts.
Through it all, Hurckman says that partnership with the local church remains central.
“It is a joy and an honor to serve the local church,” he said. “Venture doesn’t exist without the local church.” Whether believers gather in huts, caves, and fields overseas, in a multi-campus church, or in a congregation of 50 people in rural Minnesota, Venture’s goal is the same: to join forces with local believers as they respond to needs and share the hope of Christ.
For more information on how to partner with Venture, visit venture.org.
