After several years of discussion and work, I am pleased to announce the start of The TOM Project.

What is it, exactly? It is a global initiative to see fruitful Kingdom communities on every college campus in the United States and Europe in the next 20 years. (For a lot more info, you can read this whitepaper that Jo Saxton and I wrote)

Why college campuses? We are in the midst of a discipleship crisis here in the Western church and you have to pick a piece of the elephant to start chewing on (hopefully you’ve heard that metaphor!). We’ve decided and feel the Lord calling us to go after college campuses as we believe if you can send out missionary families of graduating seniors, when they hit various cities across the Western world, they will have a force and momentum behind them as they are some of the most important culture creators. And they will be the future of the church.

How are we going to accomplish this? Simple. But let’s focus on the United States for now, as that’s what I’ll be focusing on. We’ll do this through planting new churches and training leaders who are already on college campuses.

• Plant on the 100 most influential college campuses in the United States. We are not trying to plant a ton of new churches. Rather, we want to plant flagship churches on influential campuses that can serve as models for future planters or current leaders to learn from. Ultimately, we’d love to see each of these become a sending and training center. We are going to re-imagine training, planting, growing, multiplying, funding…the whole she-bang. You can read more about that process here.
• Train leaders who are already on college campuses. The majority of the work will be spent working with those already on college campuses. Whether it’s a college church or para-church chapter, we’re going to be training the leaders already doing outstanding work in things like Missional Communities and Huddles specifically for the university context. And we’ll do it through a vehicle we know well…the Learning Community.

How might this intersect with you?

• Are you or someone you know already on a college setting? We’d LOVE to talk with you about the Learning Community.
• Are you interested in starting something on a college setting or joining someone who is already at work? Let’s talk!

This is a HUGE undertaking and we are looking for as many Persons of Peace as possible!

You can reach me at [email protected].

We’ll be doing more posts in the next couple of days, but here it is!