• Tell us a little about some of the things that are exciting you at The Avenue right now.

The Avenue just had its second birthday in October! We started with a small missional community simply trying to live like Jesus in our neighborhood and on campus. In a two-year period of time we started Sunday gatherings, we began reaching into many campus groups and we have seen 45 students and neighbors give their life to Christ. From that initial missional community came one huddle of leaders. Most of those leaders just launched their own huddles, that one missional community has become 5 MC’s and we now have over 60 leaders in huddles!

We also started an apprentice program called the Multiplicity Project our vision was to give students an opportunity to become kingdom workers now! In year one we had 5 students, participate, this year we have 32 apprentices, 2 interns and one church planting resident involved. Each of them lives life together and is being trained to engage the campus and community with the love of Christ. We just launched a second Sunday gathering and we are continuing to see God open doors that only he could open and giving us persons of peace all over campus.

• You are on the team that’s helping to develop The TOM Project, the new university initiative we’re going after. What’s stirring in your heart about this project?

Our vision from day one at the avenue has been to create a movement of multiplying disciples and churches on college campuses. Lets be honest, the statistics we see coming from the college campus are not encouraging. 70% of students will walk away from their faith between the ages of 18-25 and on our campus the University of Louisville only 6% of the 27,000 students attend church. The norm is around 4 to 5%. There is a very real fear that we are loosing a generation. I think an argument could be made that the college campus is the largest unreached people group in the US. The honest truth is that the western church has failed to influence culture on secular college campuses. Most of the campus ministers I speak too are frustrated with methods and models of ministry that make consumers and not disciples and planting churches on college campuses has not been economically feasible for most. So what excites me the most about the TOM Project is a reimagining of what God could do if we would awaken this generation back to His plans and His purposes.

• You’re also one of the Network Leaders for The NewThing Network. Tell us a little bit about this partnership with The TOM Project and how it came about.

NewThing for me has been an amazing brotherhood of church planters who are passionate about creating a movement of multiplying churches. When God first started prompting my heart to plant the avenue nearly everyone I spoke to discouraged me. I was working at a mega church in town and most believed it wasn’t financially feasible, 8 church plants had already failed at the University and they believed we were next in line. I called the guys at new thing and all of them listened to the vision and said, “God can do that through you.” You can’t imagine how encouraging it was to begin dreaming with other church planters who had been in my shoes and how exciting it was to start this journey with a brotherhood of practitioners walking with me through the good and bad.

Recently, NewThing asked me to lead a network of church plants on college campuses. Just today, I got off the phone with a church planter who was just like me a few years ago and I said, “God can do that through you!” Our vision is provide, relationships, resources, and coaching that will develop the DNA of reproducing churches to a new generation of college church plants. Imagine what happens when 10 church planters start new communities of faith on the college campus, then those 10 plant 10 more and suddenly a network has become a movement. That kind of feels like Jesus stuff to me and it’s what I long to give my life to!

I connected with 3DM, two years ago at the Exponential conference. We had bought into the philosophy of missional communities and huddles but we had no idea how to live them out in practice. So a friend sent me to Mike’s books I devoured all of them in a week (there a good book plug Mike you can send me the check next week.) I connected to a learning community and a coaching huddle I met my good friend Doug Paul and we started dreaming about this TOM Project and what it would look like if we took the DNA of New thing and the rapid reproduction of leaders we are seeing there and we connected that to the training and discipleship principles of 3DM and TOM. For us at the Avenue it has been a perfect marriage of brotherhood and training and we are praying for the same thing in this TOM Univeristy iniative.

• What is the great hope you have in your heart for colleges and cities in the next 10-20 years?

Our prayer at the avenue for this year has been simply, “Lord gives us eyes to see and courage to believe.” I believe this is my prayer as well for the future of college ministry. I pray that in the midst of our re-imagining that we would have eyes to see what God is doing and where to join Him. I pray that we would have to courage to believe that he has given us all authority in heaven to do the work he has called us to. I pray that we would begin to really have faith that God can bring revival to our campuses. Maybe even bigger than that, I pray that we would have the courage to believe that God wants to use “ordinary and unschooled men” like me & you to reveal his Glory.

When we launched the avenue last year 3 girls from the swim team started coming to our Sunday gathering. One accepted Christ as her savior and was baptized in the same pool that she swims in, they jumped in Missional Communities, and they began inviting their teammates. On Easter Sunday last year one of the girls brought 20 teammates. A few more became believers, then suddenly some of the men’s team started coming, where the girls are the guys usually follow. Nearly the entire team is now a part of the avenue. Just a few disciples of Jesus have decided that they want to make their campus their mission field. One of the sports teams at UofL actually brings their athletes to the Avenue when they come on recruiting visits. One of the swimmers told me that the faith of their team is being talked about all over the country in the swimming community. He said what is crazy is all of these students who visit want to be on our team but what they really want is to be a part of what God is doing with our team. They want to be a part of our “family on mission.” Our prayer is that every student group on campus experiences the same revival and that every campus in the US is changed by groups of disciples who desire to see their worlds transformed by Jesus.