Two years ago a small group of Indian Americans huddled in a conference room in Orlando Florida, seeking God’s heart and dreaming about how we in the Indian American community of believers could play a greater role in advancing our Lord’s kingdom. It was there that the idea of the Advance Initiative was birthed.

The purpose of The Advance Initiative (AI) was and continues to be to empower, equip and encourage Indian Americans to give their lives to advancing Jesus’ Church, particularly through healthy ministry in the local church and the planting of gospel-centered multiethnic churches.

This past month, many of those same people gathered in the same conference room in Orlando, marveling at what the Lord has built among us. To date we have held two national conferences and are planning our third in October. We have had multiple regional gatherings and currently have a cohort of five men who are in a year-long journey of exploring the possibility of being actively involved in planting churches. The Lord is definitely at work among us.

As we look into this new year, we prayerfully work towards the following:

• CONFERENCE We will continue the conversation on church planting by and among Indian Americans at our next conference in Princeton, NJ on October 20 and 21. This year’s theme of “Centered on the Gospel” will help us to focus on the meaning, challenges and implications of being Gospel-centered particularly in the Indian American context.
• REGIONAL GATHERINGS Regional gatherings around the country are currently being planned and will continue the conversation in more local settings.
• COHORT Our inaugural cohort launched in 2016 with five participants from around the US.   Onsite meetings, regular virtual connections and a yearlong curriculum provide vision, exposure, encouragement, training and mentoring/coaching to participants who are exploring a call to plant Gospel centered multiethnic churches. We plan to run similar cohorts in the future.
• CONTENT We are working towards generating content in the form of articles and blogs that will capture our learning and journey. We pray that this will be a blessing both for our Indian American community and the broader church.
• COMMUNICATION We are hoping to create a steady stream of communication from and within the Advance Initiative in the form of blogs, updates, tweets, etc. The Lord is doing so much among us so let’s make it known!

Join us as we trust our Lord in seeing Indian Americans embrace our unique role in advancing the Kingdom!