Global Ministries

Bradley (“Brad”) Kenn is a mission intern with the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church, initially serving with the Shade and Fresh Water Project of the Methodist Church of Brazil.

Mission interns serve half of their three-year terms in international assignments and half in their home countries. Brad was commissioned in August 2012. Young adult mission service through Global Ministries expands participants’ mission vision and offers faith contexts for the use of skills.

Shade and Fresh Water is a national network of afterschool programs for at-risk youth ages 6 through 14. Currently, some 70 projects, mostly located in low-income neighborhoods, seek to meet local needs and develop local partnerships; the network shares the common goal of providing healthy alternative environments for young people. The programs include educational enrichment, recreation, and Christian education. Each of three of Global Ministries’ mission interns with Shade and Fresh Water is part of an educational team.

Brad Kenn is from Phoenix, Arizona, in the Desert Southwest Annual Conference, and is a member of the Village Church in Misenheimer, North Carolina, where he attended Pfeiffer University, within the Western North Carolina Annual Conference. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in youth ministry, with a minor in Christian education. He has college work experience as a youth pastor and as a resident assistant at Pfeiffer.

His childhood, Brad recalls, centered around going to church with his grandmother and attending church camp at the conference’s Mingus Mountain Center in Prescott. “Mingus Mountain was my sanctuary,” he says. “I went back each year until I graduated from high school, thanks to the gracious members of my home church.” He vividly recalls the encouragement in faith he received from counselors at the camp. Brad was also deeply influenced to pursue ministry by a mission trip to Costa Rica in 2011.

“I firmly believe that God is calling me to ministry,” says Brad. “I want to explore the many possible ways to express my faith and help people, not only spiritually but physically as well.”