Ajay Thomas - Advance Initiative

Ajay Thomas was part of Leaders Collective’s twentieth lead pastor cohort (2023-2024). He served as pastor at Seven Mile Road Church in Philadelphia until 2023 and is now the full-time executive director of the Advance Initiative. This is a bit of his story.

About twenty-five years ago, I was attending a worship service on a Sunday morning at Loudonville Community Church in Albany, NY. Only, I couldn’t sing. I was at my favorite church in college, about to hear my favorite preacher, and I couldn’t open my mouth. I stood overwhelmed as I thought about my South Asian peers. I was burdened by these questions: When are they going to get to sing the songs that I’m singing? When are they going to hear the gospel I’m about to hear?

I wouldn’t have known what to call that burden or that moment then, but looking back, I think it was the seedling of my calling. Over time, God nurtured that seedling and in 2009, it blossomed into planting Seven Mile Road Church in Philadelphia. Our dream was to plant a church that could reach South Asians and yet be multiethnic at the same time. Today, we celebrate that God made that dream a reality. But it was just the start.

The reality is that every fourth person on the planet is South Asian. Yet as the least reached peoples, more than anyone else, South Asians have missed out on the good news of Jesus Christ. But, South Asians are also the largest diaspora group in the world. That means that God has sovereignly scattered the least reached to places like Nairobi and New York, Dubai and Dallas, Melbourne and Memphis, where they can be reached, and in turn, reach others as well. Imagine the impact if South Asians were reached with the love of Christ and became a global missional force!

We believe that God has a role for South Asians to play in the global advance of the gospel and so we launched The Advance Initiative (advanceinitiative.org). Our mission is “to catalyze a global movement of gospel-centered, multiethnic churches planted by or among South Asians.” Let me tell you what that means and why that matters by telling you about Boto.

Boto Joseph planted Jackson Heights Community Church (JHCC) in Queens, NY. The New York Times once described Jackson Heights as the world’s most diverse neighborhood. For example, if you go to the local Wendy’s, you’ll find that the menu is not written in English, but in four South Asian languages. But if you go to Jackson Heights, every Sunday you’ll also find JHCC gathering on the third floor of a Muslim-owned restaurant named Kebab King.

JHCC has baptized former Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists, among others. What’s amazing to me about JHCC and Boto is that Boto’s family came to faith generations ago because missionaries from New York came to Nagaland, his home state in India. And now, in God’s unfolding story, it’s a missionary from Nagaland that is reaching people in New York!

It’s not just Boto. I could tell you about my friend Jason who planted New Hope Church in Harlem, NY, or about Isaac planting Center Church in Dubai. I could tell you about Sujith who immigrated from India to the US pursuing the American dream, only to leave it all and go back to plant Cornerstone Church in Mumbai pursuing an even better dream. It’s for stories like these, and to see countless more, that Advance exists.

So our work is to expose people to the gospel opportunity among South Asians, provide spaces for believers to explore their sense of calling, equip leaders to plant as or among South Asians, and empower pioneers to plant. And all of that is ultimately to advance the gospel, by planting churches, all around the world!

To that end, we would love for you to partner and pray with us. Would you pray Luke 10:2 and Psalm 90:17 for us? We need the Lord of the harvest to raise up more laborers, specifically even for Him to raise up South Asian church planters all around the world. And please intercede for us that God would have favor on our ministry and establish the work of our hands!

Learn more at advanceinitiative.org