A Story Unfolded, by Antioch Church team planter Jonathan Braden

This Sunday at the 9 a.m. Sojourn Gathered worship service, we will formally send and bless the new Antioch Church plant, which is led by former Sojourn elder Todd Robertson.  Here, we present to you a story by one of Pastor Todd’s core team: former Sojourner Jonathan Braden:

Friends invited me to Sojourn back in the fall of 2002. I began attending every now and then while serving at a church in Southern Indiana. After leaving that position in January of 2003, I began to dive into community life at Sojourn.

A few months later, I met some folks interested in planting a church. This strongly resonated with me because I was taking church planting classes and had been part of church plants in the past. Though I was new to the Sojourn body, I was sent out as part of the core of Ekklesia. Through this experience, I grew in my understanding of what intentional gospel relationships and community meant and how to better live life with Christ at the center.

In 2004, while a member of Ekklesia, I went with 19 Sojourners to Ethiopia. There, my heart broke for the Amhara people. Since that time, I have traveled with Sojourn to Ethiopia four times and Southern Sudan three times. This time overseas radically changed both my life and my worldview. I continue to learn from my time in Africa and what it means to display Christ’s glory among the nations.

There was a season in my life when I strongly desired to feel the same passion here in the U.S. as I did overseas. I struggled to find a job that would enable me to pay my bills while affording me the chance to work with internationals. God opened a window and I accepted a job at the Starbucks located in the Louisville International Airport; a place where I could build relationships and work with internationals.

More recently, something exciting began happening outside of my workplace. A group of people began to meet and discuss a multi-ethnic church plant in South Louisville. The talks of church planting, Bible-storying, and a neighborhood filled with many ethnicities, religions, and languages reignited my passion and purpose and provided a renewed sense of direction.

To be part of this new community known as Antioch Church is like having an opportunity to go on mission around the world. The 40214 area of Louisville is rich in cultural diversity. More than 60 nations are represented with various languages, customs, religions and cultures.

This is international missions in our own backyard, but it is not going to be easy. It means praying about an opportunity to move into a new community. It means leaving a growing church and an established community. It means committing to the hard work of overcoming cultural barriers by submitting to the gospel. For me, these changes are necessary to answer the call of obedience with the hope of seeing many nations, languages, and people come together as one body to worship and glorify Jesus Christ.