Hope Channel Sends Young Christian Professionals Home With Two Mission Fields
They came to Texas to be with each other, and left carrying 50 people groups in their prayers.
Jeanne DamasioUnited StatesSep 2, 2026, 6:00 PM
A young lawyer from Canada stopped at the Hope Channel exhibit in San Marcos, Texas, and left with two mission fields, the desk in her office and the territories across the world that are hostile to the gospel of Jesus. Hope Channel brought its To the Ends of the Earth exhibit to Unshaken 2026, a convention of young Christian professionals held from August 20 to 23, and spent four days on the exhibition floor putting names and faces to the people groups who have not yet heard the gospel of Jesus.
Hope Channel’s 90 channels broadcast in about 120 languages and reach into countries where missionaries cannot enter, carrying the gospel of Jesus through visual media where it is dangerous to carry it face-to-face. In San Marcos the request was simple: prayer.
“If I could go back in time and tell myself one thing when I was in my twenties, it wouldn’t even be to buy Bitcoin. It’s something even more life transforming. I would teach young Sam to exercise his authority in the unseen realm. That’s why we traveled to Texas. The success of Hope Channel in preaching the gospel behind enemy lines will demand an army of young and old Christians winning these battles in the unseen realm first. The enemies aren’t the governments stopping people from hearing the gospel. Our enemies are in the unseen realm. And our young people here can become powerful warriors to break down these strongholds in the 10/40 window.” Sam Neves, vice president for advancement, communication, and marketing at Hope Channel International, said of the prayer focus.
Gerald Bedney is president of Adventist Young Professionals (AYP), the independent network that runs Unshaken and gathers Christians in their twenties and thirties, finishing school or building careers. He said the network exists because the move from student to working adult leaves people on their own.
“One of the biggest gaps as they are growing, and as they’re making a transition into being a young professional, is finding others that are going through the same struggles that they are going through,” Bedney said. “Providing community in those pivotal time frames helps people to have something that they wouldn’t be able to have otherwise.”
Plenty of professional networks offer community. Bedney said AYP carries something more essential. “God is supposed to be the constant through all of that. If they can connect the value system and the love that they have for God in the middle of that process, it makes it just that much more impactful for them.”
A young Christian professional is affirmed at Unshaken
Danielle Rodriguez knew no one attending Unshaken, and nothing about AYP. Tickets from Canada to central Texas were expensive, so she asked God to make the decision clear for her. When she checked again a few days later, the price had fallen by half.
The young lawyer shared her story with Kevin Christenson, head of Hope Studios, at the Hope Channel exhibit. Christenson was impressed by the ideas and clarity she shared and surprised she isn’t yet published.
Christenson said, “She is so well-spoken and relevant that people need to hear what she has to share.”
Rodriguez was moved. “No one had said something like that to her, affirming her voice in that way,” Christenson said. “It seemed like maybe this was one of the reasons God called her to attend AYP, if nothing else, to be affirmed that she has a voice to be used for mission.”
Careers are gifts to further mission
Enoch Cheristol, 21, studies computer science and engineering and holds a full-time job. About three years ago, he partnered with his best friend, Christian Stepney, to launch the Crosswalk Initiative, targeting people 18 to 35 experiencing school-to-work transition.
According to Cheristol, most people assume serving the mission means only preaching or singing from a platform, and that assumption keeps them from ministering.
“[God] has given some of us a gift that doesn’t fit into those traditional spaces,” he said. “You may be really good at technology. You may be really good at taking photos. You may be really good at building houses. The calling is for you to submit that to Christ.”
Cheristol says this assumption holds back ministry in his own field. “I’m a computer science and engineering major, so my gift is way outside what is typically considered a common gift for service,” he said. “Start looking at what God has already given you for service, because I truly believe that everybody is built with the capacity for service from the get go.”
Media, for example, can be a ministry tool when submitted to Christ. “For some, it may be journalism,” he said. “I have a couple friends who are studying journalism right now in college, and that’s what they’re submitting to Christ.”
Connecting career and community
Myles Chapman is a chemical engineer who leads music at his church and directs its youth club ministries. He has attended Unshaken for three years and has observed that people in technical fields often struggle to see a connection between career and ministry.
“This is the place where you can come and you can be equals with other leaders in other parts of ministry around the church,” Chapman said. “And whatever you do, we do it all for God’s glory.”
Torie White, 22, a computer science graduate, is executive assistant to the president, project coordinator, and copywriter for AYP. In her experience, the hardest part of this stage of life, often called the school-to-work transition, is maintaining faith while navigating competing demands. “Staying connected in faith, there’s so many distractions,” White said.
Esfir Zavrichko, an auditor, attended Unshaken after receiving a WhatsApp group chat message. What interested her most was meeting other Christians with diverse work-life experiences.
“I haven’t met somebody that does auditing as me, but it’s really interesting to meet a doctor, to meet an engineer, and to meet a nurse, and hear their conversation,” she said.
Serving San Marcos on Friday
On Friday, Unshaken participants packed hygiene kits and snack boxes for the local community, shared a meal with residents at Sunrise Village, decorated the Ronald McDonald House, built accessibility ramps for individuals with limited mobility, and spent the afternoon cleaning and preparing meals at the Southside Community Center.
Lori Ann Grose, who has worked the front desk at Southside Community Center for three years said, “The impact is great, especially for the neighbors in need. They’re not college students. They’re young people that are already out working and that they came to spend their time here with the people and give back to the community.”
Rosemary, 22, last name withheld for privacy, is a resident served by the center. She watched volunteers carry donations in from the storeroom that afternoon.
“Honestly, I think people should always help out,” she said. “It is always appreciated, no matter how big or small.”
For Zavrichko and Cheristol, the community service was about the mission. Zavrichko shared, “Wherever we are, it’s a mission field, and we don’t have to go to different countries and travel much.”
Taking the mission home
The Prayer Partner Station at Hope Channel’s To the Ends of the Earth exhibit was built to highlight that mission at the ends of the Earth. There are places where one in a thousand or fewer follows Jesus. According to Joshua Project, half of them live inside 38 people groups, each larger than 10 million people. The majority reside in what missiologists call the 10/40 window, the band of land between 10 and 40 north latitude, which includes the world’s least evangelized countries, most unreached people groups and cities, is home to the majority of the world’s poor, and is dominated by non-Christian faiths.
Hope Channel and Joshua Project agree prayer is one gap in reaching these frontier peoples. Hope Channel’s answer is to raise intercessors, and it came to the Unshaken Convention in San Marcos to find more of them.
The To the Ends of the Earth exhibit featured 50 unreached people groups for Unshaken participants to raise in prayer.
Participants spin a wheel to select from 50 unreached people groups, then download the group’s information card to their phone. At the prayer table, the visitor is invited to ask God for a specific miracle for those people.
The request is written on dissolvable paper and placed in a bowl of water as they pray, keeping it between them and God, as Jesus taught in Matthew 6:6, “pray to your Father, who is unseen” (NIV). Participants may also write their name on a paper link and add it to a chain on the wall.
“The vision was to create more than an exhibit,” said Quei Montanari, the lead architect who created the exhibit for Hope Channel International. It is shaped as a journey, she said, so that a visitor would “encounter the global mission, connect with its stories, and recognize that, despite the many resources available to us and the different institutions we represent, we are one global church, one family united in carrying the message of eternal hope to the ends of the Earth.”
What surprised the team was what people wanted to talk about. “People were curious and excited to learn more about what Hope Channel is doing to reach the unreached,” said Cinthya Molina, marketing coordinator at Hope Channel International.
The chain, of orange and white, began at Hope Channel’s leadership conference in New Zealand in July and has traveled with the exhibit since. It left San Marcos with new names added, and in October will go to Annual Council, a gathering of Adventist Church leaders in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA.
Carrying prayer into the ordinary week
As the prayer chain continues its journey, so too do Unshaken participants. “I enjoy these gatherings, these events, where we can connect and just recharge, and then go back to our mission field and do our job and serve God,” Zavrichko said.
The mission field is further away than a legal office or community center in Texas, and the young Christian professionals who visited the Hope Channel exhibit now have names for the unreached. Now, when they pray, they can do so for people almost nobody else prays for.
“This season of life can be lonely, and there are days you will feel like part of a community nobody can see. Your prayer tonight for a people whose name you cannot pronounce joins a prayer in Manila, and one in São Paulo, and one in Nairobi, and together they give God the legitimacy he needs to impact the hearts of people that would otherwise remain unreached.” Neves said.