Dave & Connie Patty were sent by Grace Church of DuPage to the Czech Republic in 1993. There they sought the Lord to help churches establish strong youth ministries. Now, Dave is the Founder and Executive Director of Josiah Venture, a ministry that is flourishing in 14 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. We have been blessed to partner with them in the raising up and sending of various team members, church planters, and short-term youth teams to join in this movement of God in Central and Eastern Europe.
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JV Team Members from Grace Church of DuPage
Grace Church began supporting Dave & Connie Patty in the Czech Republic in 1993 to help churches establish strong youth ministries. Dave is the Founder and Executive Director of Josiah Venture, a ministry that is now flourishing in 14 countries, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe.
Josiah Venture (JV) exists to establish a movement of God among the youth of Central and Eastern Europe that finds its home in the local church and transforms society. The focus of JV has been to train up youth ministry leaders and to evangelize the youth.
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Claire grew up the daughter of Josiah Venture leaders Dave & Connie Patty. Through her experience as an MK and during training at Moody Bible Institute, she developed a heart to equip and support JV kids and their families in the challenges they face as "third-culture" kids. Grace Church of DuPage is Claire's sending church. Claire is based out of the Czech Republic, but serves JV kids and their families all across Central and Eastern Europe.
We are blessed to have Theresa Kerns serving with us from the states as she supports the work God is doing through Josiah Venture from their home office in Wheaton, IL. Theresa began serving full-time with Josiah Venture as Human Resource Director in 2002. Theresa builds relationships with Josiah Venture team members by providing admin assistance to those on the field and by preparing new workers for the field. She also spends time visiting the JV women overseas, encouraging and helping the women better serve the Lord, their families, and the nationals.
In addition to her work in Eastern Europe, Theresa has also conducted women’s seminars in Israel in conjunction with the Kashtan Family.
Heidi Ansiel grew up at Grace Church of DuPage. During her youth and young adulthood, she went on several short-term evangelistic trips with Josiah Venture (JV). Heidi’s studies at Cedarville University, and then her work as Communication Assistant at Grace Church, began fostering in her a passion for using media as an evangelistic tool. Additionally, her love for making disciples of Christ of the youth both in Warrenville and abroad led her to pursue a summer internship with JV’s Communications Team. Through this experience, Heidi sensed the Lord was calling her to make a long term commitment to the Josiah Venture Team in Slovenia. Our Grace Church family has confirmed Heidi’s calling with joy!
Short-term global outreach teams have four subordinate aims in light of gathering Christ-worshippers. Short-termers go 1) to support, encourage, and edify Grace Church global outreach partners, 2) to prepare the ground for the potential establishment of a career global outreach team, or church partnership, 3) in response to a discernible leading in their lives in pursuing a potential career ministry in global outreach, and 4) to become vibrant, passionate world-Christians who feel the urgency of the spread of the gospel.
Our goal in short-term outreach is not to take the place of long-term outreach, but rather assist bridging the gap between the nation and the local church through this ministry partnership with our global outreach partners. Our short-term teams must have a strategic evangelistic outreach to the nations. Our passion is to see all peoples shout to God with loud songs of joy (Psalms 47:1)! We seek and desire to be used by God to bring people to repentance, and a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that through these global outreach projects you would personally experience, even for a brief time, what world-outreach really means, and as a result, that it might spark a fire for you to see the importance of global outreach, and possibly be used of God to direct you towards being a career global outreach partner.