Advance Initiative Cohort: A Reflection

When you launch a ministry effort, you do so because God buries in your heart a burden and passion that sprouts into action. You didn’t put it there. You didn’t make it grow. It has a life of it’s own given by the Spirit. But you feel compelled to do something. 

The Advance Initiative was born out of something like that. It’s not ours. If it is anything, it is God’s, and if not, who cares what it is. We don’t need man-made manufactured ministry. We need manifestations of the Spirit’s power and work in our day. 

That being said, as a human, though you’re a part of this work, you don’t own it. You don’t direct it and grow it. It’s like a plant. You can water, or build a trellis, but God gives the growth. 

A little over two years since the launch of the Advance Initiative, we have no idea what God intends to do with this ministry. That’s probably why we’ll never be very good at fundraising. If you’re going to secure donors, you have to give a compelling, clear vision of where you see this thing going. You have to predict what it will accomplish. You have to envision all the impact it will make. We have that – hopes, dreams, visions, prayers – but no guarantees. Instead, as you’re walking along doing what you subjectively believe that God has called you to do – you wait to see what growth if any the Lord might give.

So for example, a year ago, we launched the Advance Initiative National Cohort. To be honest, it was actually the idea of a white Christian brother. Go figure. We were in a room after the first National Conference in Orlando debriefing on how the conference went. We were in the afterglow of pulling off a conference, still shocked that people actually came, and that by what we could tell, the conference went really well. “Amazing” in fact was one of the words we used to describe it. And a humble, quiet, Caucasian brother who had come just to lend his support piped up one time in our discussion – just to suggest that while you could get theological training anywhere, there might be a unique contribution that we could offer regarding the “Indian-American” piece and so we should consider doing a Cohort for guys interested in church planting among Indians. 

A seed was planted. And with that, we started to water and build a trellis. Five men, from five cities across four states, all in their twenties, joined the cohort. My hat goes off to them because they took a risk jumping into something that was an experiment at best. I know for sure they didn’t know exactly what it was or what to expect because the leaders of the Cohort didn’t know exactly what it was or what to expect. In hindsight, we’ve described it as trying to build a plane while flying it. 

This past weekend, after nine monthly video calls, and two in-person weekends, we gathered in Washington D.C. for one last weekend together to wrap up the year. It was a full weekend – meeting church planters around the city, asking questions, receiving training, presenting and reviewing papers the Cohort men had written, talking on a rooftop till 3am, eating Ethiopian food (from one plate and nine sets of hands), laughing till we couldn’t breath, and so on. 

By far though, my favorite part, was the four hours we spent on the final day debriefing the year. Each of the Cohort men spoke. They shared what this year was like for them. What they learned. What God did in them. Their dreams for what they hope God does through them. Every man spoke of going from not seeing a purpose for their ethnicity to now seeing it as a gift from God and tool for ministry. Every man spoke of a burden for other Indian Americans to know Christ while holding in tension an equally strong burden for multiethnic ministry. Every man spoke of a desire to pursue pastoring and church planting in some way. And perhaps most unexpected but wonderful of all, every man spoke as if they were speaking to brothers. We didn’t know each other before this year began. We left as if we had been friends for decades. 

We do lots of things in ministry wondering if it was worthwhile. Wondering if it’s making a difference or just going through the motions. This Cohort was worth it. God did something and only time will tell what all that something is.

If you’ve read this far, would you take a moment right now to say a prayer for these young men. Pray that God would raise them up as laborers for His harvest. Pray with me that a few decades from now, our sons and daughters would have them to look up to as godly spiritual fathers in the faith. I really think that God will do something through these men and your prayers and can’t wait to see what all that something will be.